‘Time of death?’
‘To establish that more exactly, I’ll need to know the time he had dinner and then run tests on his intestines.’
‘At a rough guess?’
‘Around midnight.’
‘Thank you, doctor.’
Lapointe had left, and his car could be heard turning into the avenue.
There were two men downstairs talking in a foreign language, which Maigret eventually recognized as Arabic. He went down and found Ouéni talking to a stranger in the corridor, as the local inspector looked on, not daring to say anything.
The newcomer looked like a slightly older, thinner version of Félix Nahour. He was taller as well, and his dark hair was greying at the temples.
‘Monsieur Pierre Nahour?’
‘Are you the police?’ the man asked suspiciously.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, head of the Crime Squad.’
‘What has happened to my brother? Where is his body?’
‘He was killed last night by a gunshot wound to the throat, and his body has been taken to the Forensic Institute.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘In a moment.’
‘Why not now?’
‘Because the post-mortem is being performed. Come in, Monsieur Nahour.’
He wondered for a moment whether to ask Ouéni into the office as well but decided against it.
‘Would you go and wait in your room?’
Ouéni and Nahour exchanged glances; Maigret didn’t see any fondness for the secretary in the newcomer’s eyes.
Once the door was shut, the banker from Geneva asked:
‘Did it happen in here?’
Maigret pointed to the large bloodstain on the carpet. The man was lost in thought for a moment, as he would have been if he were standing in front of the body.
‘How did it happen?’
‘No one knows. Apparently he had dinner in town, and that was the last anyone saw of him.’
‘Lina?’
‘Do you mean Madame Nahour? Her maid claims that she also went out for dinner and didn’t come back.’
‘Isn’t she here?’
‘Her bed hasn’t been slept in, and she’s taken her luggage.’
Pierre Nahour did not seem surprised.
‘Ouéni?’
‘He apparently went to a gambling club on Boulevard Saint-Michel and noted the winning numbers until one in the morning. When he came back, he didn’t try to find out if his employer was in the house or not and went up to bed. He didn’t hear anything …’
They were sitting facing one another. The banker had automatically taken a cigar out of his pocket but was hesitating to light it, perhaps out of a sort of respect for the deceased, even though the body was no longer there.
‘I have to ask you some questions, Monsieur Nahour, I apologize if they seem intrusive. Were you on good terms with your brother?’
‘On very good terms, although we didn’t see each other often.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I live in Geneva and, when I do travel, I generally go to Lebanon. My brother had no call to come to Geneva. It wasn’t one of his stamping grounds.’
‘Ouéni has told me that Félix Nahour didn’t have a job.’
‘That’s true to a degree. I think, Monsieur Maigret, that rather than wait for your questions, I should fill you in on various things that will help you to understand the situation. My father was, and still is, a banker in Beirut. His bank started out as a very small concern, mainly intended to finance imports and exports, since Beirut is the gateway for trade with the Middle East. Beirut has the most banks, per capita, of anywhere in the world.’
He finally decided to light his cigar. His hands were as carefully manicured as his brother’s, and he was wearing a wedding ring as well.
‘We are Maronite Christians, hence our first names. My father’s business grew over the years, and he now runs one of the largest banks in Lebanon.
‘I studied at the Law Faculty in Paris and then the Institute of Comparative Law.’
‘Before your brother arrived?’
‘He is five years younger than me, so I have a head start. When he got here I’d almost finished my studies.’
‘Did you move to Geneva straight away?’
‘I worked with my father at first, then we decided to open a branch in Switzerland, the Comptoir Libanais, which I run. It is a fairly small operation with five employees and an office on the second floor of a building in Avenue du Rhône.’
Now that he was dealing with someone who spoke to him with at least a semblance of clarity, Maigret tried to fit the protagonists into place.
‘Do you have other brothers?’
‘Only a sister, whose husband runs another branch like mine in Istanbul.’
‘So you, your father and your brother-in-law control a large part of Lebanon’s trade?’
‘Say a quarter, or if we’re being more modest, a fifth.’
‘And your brother Félix wasn’t involved in the family business?’
‘He was the youngest. He started studying law too, but his heart wasn’t in it, and he spent most of his time in the back rooms of the bars in the Latin Quarter. He had discovered poker, at which he turned out to be very good, and he’d play all night.’
‘Is that when he met Ouéni?’
‘I’m not saying Ouéni, who’s Muslim rather than Maronite, was his evil genius, but I’m not far off thinking so. Ouéni was very poor, like most people from the mountains. He had to work his way through university.’
‘If I understand correctly, judging by various things I found in this office, your brother became a professional gambler.’
‘In so far as one can call it a profession. One day we heard he’d dropped out of law to study mathematics at the Sorbonne. He and my father fell out for a number of years.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’d see him from time to time. I had to lend him money to begin with.’
‘Which he paid back?’
‘In full. You mustn’t think after what I’ve just said that my brother was a failure. The first months or couple of years were difficult, but it wasn’t long before he was winning large sums of money, and I’m sure he had become richer than me.’
‘Did he and your father patch things up?’
‘Pretty quickly. We Maronites have a strong sense of family.’
‘I imagine your brother played mostly in casinos?’
‘At Deauville, Cannes, Evian, Enghien in the winter. For a year or two before Castro he was a technical adviser and, I think, associate of the casino in Havana. He didn’t gamble haphazardly, he put his maths studies to good use.’
‘Are you married, Monsieur Nahour?’
‘Married with four children, one of whom is twenty-two and studying at Harvard.’
‘When did your brother get married?’
‘Wait … It was the year of … Seven years ago.’
‘Do you know his wife?’
‘Naturally I’ve made Lina’s acquaintance.’
‘Did you meet her before the marriage?’
‘No. We all thought my brother was a confirmed bachelor.’
‘How did you find out about the wedding?’
‘By letter.’
‘Do you know where it took place?’
‘In Trouville, where Félix had rented a summer house …’
Félix Nahour’s face had clouded over a little.
‘What sort of woman is she?’
‘I don’t know how to answer that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve only met her twice.’
‘Did your brother go to Geneva to introduce her to you?’
‘No. I came to Paris on business and I met up with them both at the Ritz, where they were living at the time.’
‘Didn’t your brother ever go to Lebanon with her?’
‘No. My father saw them a few months later at Evian, where he had gone to t
ake the waters.’
‘Did your father approve of the marriage?’
‘It is hard for me to speak for my father.’
‘What about you?’
‘It was none of my business.’
They were lapsing back into haziness, into vague or ambiguous answers.
‘Do you know where your brother met the woman who was to become his wife?’
‘He never told me but it was easy to work it out. The year before they got married, the Miss Europe contest was held at Deauville. Félix was there because they played for very high stakes at the casino and the house lost almost every night. The crown went to a nineteen-year-old Dutch woman, Lina Wiemers.’
‘Whom your brother married.’
‘About a year later. In the meantime the two of them travelled around a lot, or more precisely, the three of them, because Félix never went anywhere without Fouad Ouéni.’
They were interrupted by the telephone. Maigret picked up. Lapointe was on the other end of the line.
‘I’m calling from Doctor Pardon’s, chief. He recognized the photograph immediately. It’s the injured woman he treated last night.’
‘Right. Come back here, will you? Drop in at headquarters first and ask Janvier, if he’s there – or Torrence or somebody else if he’s not – to bring a car and meet me at Avenue du Parc-Montsouris.’
He hung up.
‘I’m sorry, Monsieur Nahour. I have an even more indiscreet question to ask – you’ll understand why in a minute. Do you know if your brother and his wife got on well?’
The man’s face seemed to close.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t enlighten you on that subject. I have never concerned myself with my brother’s married life.’
‘His room was on the ground floor, and his wife’s on the first floor. As far as I can tell from the extremely grudging witness statements I’ve secured so far, they didn’t eat together and rarely went out as a couple.’
Pierre Nahour didn’t flinch, but his cheeks reddened.
‘The extent of the staff in this house is a cleaner, Fouad Ouéni, whose role is fairly indeterminate, and a Dutch maid, who only speaks her native language and English.’
‘Besides Arabic, my brother spoke French, English, Spanish and Italian, as well as some German.’
‘Ouéni made his master’s breakfast, and Nelly Velthuis her mistress’s. Lunch was the same, when they ate it here, and they mostly went out for dinner, but to separate restaurants.’
‘I wasn’t aware of that.’
‘Where are your children, Monsieur Nahour?’
‘Well … In Geneva, of course. Or more precisely, eight kilometres outside Geneva, where we have our house.’
‘Your brother’s children live on the Côte d’Azur with a nanny.’
‘Félix often went to see them and he spent part of the year in Cannes.’
‘What about his wife?’
‘I imagine she went to see them too.’
‘Did you ever hear talk of her having a lover or lovers?’
‘We don’t move in the same circles.’
‘I’m going to try to piece together the events of last night for you, Monsieur Nahour, at least as much of them as we know. At some point before one in the morning your brother was hit in the throat by a bullet fired by a large-calibre automatic, the type and probably the make of which we will know when we receive the firearms expert’s report. When this happened, he was standing behind his desk …
‘Now, your brother, like his attacker, was holding a gun, a pearl-handled 6.35 pistol, which was usually kept in the right-hand drawer of his desk which we found half-open …
‘I don’t know how many people were in the room, but we are certain that your sister-in-law was present.’
‘How can you know that?’
‘Because she was wounded by a bullet fired from the 6.35. Have you ever heard of a doctor called Doctor Pardon, who lives on Boulevard Voltaire?’
‘I’m not familiar with the neighbourhood and I’ve never heard that name.’
‘Your sister-in-law must have known him, or the man with her.’
‘You mean there was another man in this studio?’
‘I can’t say for sure. Madame Nahour, before or after these events, hurriedly crammed some clothes and underwear into one or more suitcases. Soon afterwards, dressed in a sealskin coat, she and her friend got out of a red Alfa Romeo outside 76a, Boulevard Voltaire and rang the doctor’s bell.’
‘Who was the man?’
‘All we know is that he’s a twenty-five- or twenty-six-year-old Colombian citizen.’
Pierre Nahour didn’t flinch, or even start.
‘You have no idea who he might be?’ asked Maigret, looking him in the eye.
‘None,’ he said flatly, taking his cigar out of his mouth.
‘Your sister-in-law was wounded in the back, not very seriously though. Doctor Pardon treated her. The Colombian told an outlandish story whereby the woman, whom he didn’t know, was shot metres away from him by one or more individuals ostensibly firing out of a car window.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Most probably in Amsterdam. As the doctor was washing his hands and taking off his bloodstained coat, the couple silently left his office. Next thing we know they’re at Orly, where the red car still is. Two passengers, Dutch and Colombian, answering to their description, boarded the flight for Amsterdam.’
Maigret stood up and went to empty his pipe in the ashtray before filling another one that he took out of his pocket.
‘I’ve put my cards on the table, Monsieur Nahour. I expect you to be equally frank in return. I am going back to my office at Quai des Orfèvres. One of my inspectors will remain in the house and ensure that the cleaner, Ouéni and Nelly don’t go anywhere without my permission.’
‘What about me?’
‘I’d like you to stay here too, because, once the post-mortem is finished, I am going to ask you to come and identify the body. It’s just a formality, but an indispensable one.’
He went and planted himself in front of the bay window. The snow had let up, but the sky wasn’t any brighter. Two of the Police Judiciaire’s little black cars were parked by the kerb, and Lapointe was getting out of one, Janvier out of another. Both of them crossed the garden, and the door could be heard opening on to the hallway.
‘Perhaps the next time we see each other, Monsieur Nahour, you will be able to tell me more about your sister-in-law’s relationship with your brother and, possibly, with other men.’
Without responding, Pierre Nahour watched him leave in silence.
‘You stay here, Lapointe. I’m going to headquarters with Janvier.’
And with that Maigret wrapped the thick scarf round his neck and put on his overcoat.
It was 11.50 a.m. when Maigret, leaning back in his chair, finally got through to Amsterdam.
‘Keulemans? Hello, Maigret here, calling from Paris …’
The head of Amsterdam’s Crime Squad, Jef Keulemans, was still young, hardly forty, with a willowy boyish frame, pink cheeks and blond hair that made him look ten years younger.
When he had come to Paris on a work placement, Maigret had shown him the ropes at the Police Judiciaire. The two men had become good friends and saw each other every now and then at international congresses.
‘Very well, Keulemans, thank you … My wife too, yes … What? The harbour is frozen over? If it’s any consolation, Paris has become a skating rink, and now it’s started snowing again.
‘Hello … Listen, I’ve got a favour to ask you. I’m sorry that’s why I’m calling. All unofficial, of course. I haven’t got time to fill in the paperwork I need to go through the official channels, for one thing. And I don’t have enough facts to hand either.
‘Last night, two people I’m interested in arrived on a KLM flight from Orly that left around three in the morning. A man and a woman. They may have pretended not to be together. The man, who has a Colombian passport, is a
round twenty-five. The woman, Dutch by birth, is called Evelina Nahour, née Wiemers, and sometimes stays for brief periods in Amsterdam, where she grew up.
‘I imagine they both filled out landing cards, which you’ll be able to find at the airport …
‘Madame Nahour doesn’t live in Holland, but she has a friend in Amsterdam, Anna Keegel, who puts a Lomanstraat address on the back of her letters. Do you know it?
‘Good … No, no need to arrest them. Perhaps if you find Madame Nahour, you could just tell her that her husband is dead and that they’re expecting her for the reading of the will. Tell her her brother-in-law has come to Paris too. Don’t mention the police.
‘Nahour has been murdered, yes … Shot in the throat … What? … She probably knows but she may not conceivably. Nothing would surprise me in this business.
‘I don’t want her frightened off. If she is still with her travelling companion, don’t bother him. If they’ve split up, I imagine she’ll telephone him to tell him about your visit …
‘That’s kind of you, Keulemans … I’m going home to have lunch and I’ll expect a call this afternoon … Thank you.’
He took advantage of the direct line to dial his own number.
‘What’s for lunch?’ he asked as soon as his wife came on.
‘I’ve made sauerkraut, which I was pretty sure I was going to have to reheat this evening, if not tomorrow.’
‘I’ll be home in half an hour.’
He chose one of the pipes from the row on his desk and filled it as he walked slowly down the corridor. When he was almost at the end, he knocked on the door of Detective Chief Inspector Lardois, head of the Gambling Squad. Lardois had joined the Police Judiciaire at pretty much the same time as him, and the two men had been on first-name terms from the outset.
‘Morning, Raoul.’
‘What’s reminded you of my existence? Our offices are twenty metres apart, and you only visit me once a year, if that.’
‘I could say the same to you.’
This didn’t prevent them seeing each other every morning at the daily briefing in the commissioner’s office, although on a more official footing, it was true.
‘You’ll think my questions naive, but I haven’t a clue about gambling, I freely admit it. First, is there really such a thing as a professional gambler?’
Maigret and the Nahour Case Page 5