Maigret and the Headless Corpse

by Georges Simenon

‘Quiet. I don’t remember them ever being in trouble with us.’

  ‘Is Omer Calas from the country?’

  ‘Quite likely. I could check in the registers. Most bistro owners arrive in Paris as manservants or chauffeurs, marry the cook and eventually set up in business for themselves.’

  ‘Have they been there for a long time?’

  ‘They were there before I was assigned to the neighbourhood. I’ve always known the place as you’ve seen it. It’s almost opposite the police station, and I sometimes cross the footbridge and have a glass of white wine there. Their white wine’s good.’

  ‘Is the owner usually behind the counter?’

  ‘Most of the time. Except for part of the afternoon, when he goes and plays billiards in a brasserie in Rue La Fayette. He’s crazy about billiards.’

  ‘Does his wife serve when he’s away?’

  ‘Yes. They don’t have a maid or a waiter. I seem to remember they did have a girl who helped out for a while, but I don’t know what became of her.’

  ‘What kind of customers do they get?’

  ‘Hard to say,’ Judel said, scratching the back of his neck. ‘The bistros in the area all have more or less similar kinds of customers. And at the same time, they each have a different clientele. Popaul’s, for example, near the lock, is busy all day long. A lot of drinking goes on, it’s noisy and the air’s always blue with smoke. After eight in the evening, you’re sure to find three or four women there, and they all have their regulars, too.’

  ‘And Omer’s?’

  ‘First of all, not so many people pass by there. Secondly, it’s darker, sadder. It’s not much fun in there, as you must have noticed. In the morning, they have the workers from the building sites who come in for a drink, and at midday, there are a few who bring their food with them and order a bottle of white wine. The afternoon’s quieter because, like I said, not many people pass that way. I suppose that’s why Omer chooses that time of day to go and play billiards. Someone probably drops in from time to time. Then just before dinner, people come in for an aperitif and things liven up again.

  ‘I sometimes go in of an evening. Each time I’ve noticed a table with people playing cards and one or two people, no more than that, standing at the counter. It’s the kind of place where, if you’re not a regular, you always feel you’re disturbing something.’

  ‘Are Omer and the woman married?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about it. It’s easy enough to check. We can go straight to the station and look at the registers.’

  ‘Tell me later. Omer Calas seems to be away right now.’

  ‘Did she tell you that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  By now, the Naud brothers’ barge was moored at Quai de l’Arsenal, and cranes had started unloading the freestone.

  ‘I’d like a list of the local bistros, especially those where the owner or the waiter has been away since Sunday.’

  ‘You think …’

  ‘The idea came from Moers. He may be right. I’m going to take a walk over there.’

  ‘To Calas’?’

  ‘Yes. Are you coming, Lapointe?’

  ‘Shall I ask Victor to come back tomorrow?’

  ‘I think it’d be a waste of taxpayers’ money. If he hasn’t found anything today, that means there’s nothing more to find.’

  ‘That’s what he thinks, too.’

  ‘Tell him to knock off when he’s had enough. And remind him to send in his report tomorrow.’

  Passing Rue Terrage, Maigret glanced at the lorries parked outside a huge gate with the words ‘Roulers and Langlois’ above it.

  ‘I wonder how many they have,’ he said, thinking aloud.

  ‘How many what?’ Lapointe asked.

  ‘Lorries.’

  ‘Whenever I go for a drive in the country, I see some on the road. They’re a nightmare to overtake.’

  The chimney pots were no longer pink, as they had been that morning, but were verging on dark red in the rays of the setting sun, and in the sky there were now traces of pale green, the same green, or almost, that the sea turns to just before sunset.

  ‘Do you think, chief, that a woman would have been capable of doing something like that?’

  He was thinking of the thin, brown-haired woman who had served them that morning.

  ‘It’s possible. I have no idea.’

  Was Lapointe also thinking that would be too easy? When a case proves complicated and the problem appears impossible to solve, everyone at headquarters, starting with Maigret, becomes surly and impatient. Conversely, if a case which has seemed difficult at first turns out to be straightforward and trivial, the same men, including Maigret, are unable to conceal their disappointment.

  They had come to the bistro. Because it had a low ceiling, it was darker than the others, and a light had already been switched on over the counter.

  The same woman as in the morning, dressed in the same way, was serving two customers who looked like office workers. She didn’t react on recognizing Maigret and Lapointe.

  ‘What will it be?’ she asked simply, without taking the trouble to smile.

  ‘White wine.’

  There were three or four bottles of it, uncorked, in the zinc tub behind the counter. Presumably, it was necessary to go down to the cellar every now and again and refill the bottles straight from the cask. Close to the counter, the floor wasn’t covered in red tiles, and a trapdoor about one metre square was visible, giving access to the cellar.

  Maigret and Lapointe had not sat down. From the words they heard uttered by the two men standing near them, they guessed that they weren’t office workers but male nurses who were about to go on night duty at the Hôpital Saint-Louis on the other side of the canal. After a while, one of them turned to the woman and asked in the familiar tone of a regular:

  ‘When’s Omer coming back?’

  ‘You know very well he never tells me.’

  She had answered as unconcernedly, as indifferently as when she had spoken to Maigret in the morning. The ginger cat was still by the stove and didn’t seem to have moved.

  ‘Apparently they’re still looking for the head!’ said the man who had asked the question.

  As he said this, he leaned forwards to look at Maigret and Lapointe. Had he seen them by the canal? Or did he simply have the impression they were police officers?

  ‘They haven’t found it yet, have they?’ he continued, addressing Maigret directly.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Do you expect they will?’

  The other man was looking at Maigret’s face and eventually asked:

  ‘You’re Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought as much. I’ve often seen your picture in the newspapers.’

  The woman still hadn’t reacted, didn’t even seem to have heard.

  ‘It’s funny that for once it should be a man who was cut into pieces! Are you coming, Julien? What do I owe you, Madame Calas?’

  They left, waving a perfunctory goodbye to Maigret and Lapointe.

  ‘Do you have a lot of customers from among the staff of the hospital?’

  ‘A few,’ she simply replied.

  ‘Did your husband leave on Sunday evening?’

  She looked at him with expressionless eyes and said in the same indifferent voice:

  ‘Why Sunday?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought I heard someone say—’

  ‘He left on Friday afternoon.’

  ‘Were there a lot of people in the bar when he left?’

  She appeared to think this over. She sometimes seemed so absent, or so indifferent to what was being said, that she came across like a sleepwalker.

  ‘There are never many people in the afternoon.’

  ‘Can you recall anybody?’

  ‘There may have been someone. I don’t remember. I didn’t pay attention.’

  ‘Did he take any luggage with him?’

  ‘Of course.
’

  ‘A lot?’

  ‘His suitcase.’

  ‘How was he dressed?’

  ‘He was wearing a grey suit, I think. Yes.’

  ‘Do you know where he is right now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where he went?’

  ‘I know he must have taken the train to Poitiers, and from there, the bus for Saint-Aubin or another village round about.’

  ‘Does he stay at the village inn?’

  ‘Usually, yes.’

  ‘Does he ever stay with friends or relatives? Or with the vineyard owners who supply him with wine?’

  ‘I’ve never asked him.’

  ‘So if something happened, if you fell ill, for example, and needed to get hold of him urgently, you wouldn’t be able to?’

  The thought neither surprised nor frightened her.

  ‘He always comes back in the end,’ she replied in her flat, monotonous voice. ‘Same again?’

  The two glasses were empty and she filled them.

  3. The Young Man on the Delivery Tricycle

  When all was said and done, it was one of Maigret’s most disappointing interrogations. In fact, it wasn’t an interrogation strictly speaking, since the life of the little bistro went on as usual. For a long time, Maigret and Lapointe stood at the counter, drinking their wine like customers. And in reality, that was what they were: customers. Even though one of the male nurses had recognized Maigret and said his name out loud, Maigret himself, in addressing Madame Calas, made no mention of his official function. He spoke to her from time to time, with long silences between his questions, and she for her part, when he didn’t ask her anything, simply ignored him.

  She left them alone in the room for a time while she disappeared through a back door she left half open. It must have been the kitchen. She was putting something on the stove. While she was gone, a little old man entered and, clearly a regular, walked straight to a table in the corner and took a box of dominoes from a pigeon-hole.

  From the back, she could hear the dominoes he was putting on the table, as if he was preparing to play by himself. When she came back in, she didn’t say hello to him, simply poured a pink-coloured aperitif into a glass and went and put it down in front of him.

  He was waiting. Only a few minutes went by before another little old man, so similar to him in type that they might have been brothers, came in and sat down opposite him.

  ‘Am I late?’

  ‘No. I was early.’

  Madame Calas filled a glass with another kind of aperitif. All this happened in silence, like a mime. In passing, she flicked a switch which turned on a second light at the far end of the room.

  ‘Doesn’t she make you nervous?’ Lapointe whispered in Maigret’s ear.

  It wasn’t nervousness that Maigret felt, but interest: it had been a long time since he had last had the opportunity to show such interest in a human being.

  When he was young and dreaming of the future, hadn’t he imagined an ideal profession which unfortunately doesn’t exist in real life? He hadn’t told anyone, and never uttered these words aloud, even to himself, but he would have liked to be a ‘mender of destinies’.

  Curiously, though, in his career as a policeman, he had quite often come across people whom the vicissitudes of life had steered in the wrong direction and he had been able to put them back where they belonged. Even more curiously, in the course of the last few years, a profession had been born that somewhat resembled the one he had imagined: the psychoanalyst, who tries to reveal to people their true personalities.

  Well, if anyone clearly wasn’t where they belonged, it was this woman who came and went in silence, giving no clue as to her thoughts and feelings.

  Admittedly, he had already discovered one of her secrets, if you could call it a secret: her customers probably all knew. Twice more, she had returned to the back room, and the second time she did this, Maigret had clearly heard the squeak of a cork in the neck of a bottle.

  She drank. He would have sworn she was never drunk, never lost her self-control. Like true drunks, those for whom medical treatment can do nothing, she knew her limits and kept herself in this resolute state, this kind of somnambulistic indifference that was so intriguing at first glance.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked her when she resumed her place behind the counter.

  ‘Forty-one.’

  She hadn’t hesitated. She had replied without either pride or bitterness. She knew she looked older than that. She had probably stopped living for other people a long time ago and no longer cared about their opinions. Her face was withered, with deep circles under her eyes, the corners of her mouth sagged, and there were already weak folds under her chin. She must have lost weight, and her dress, too big for her now, hung from her body.

  ‘Born in Paris?’

  ‘No.’

  He was sure she guessed what was behind his questions, but she didn’t try to avoid them; on the other hand, she didn’t use a single word more than was necessary.

  Behind Maigret, the two old men were playing their game of dominoes, as they probably did at this time every afternoon.

  What bothered Maigret was that she should hide in order to drink. If she didn’t care what people thought, what was the point of going into the back room to get a swig of brandy or wine straight from the bottle? Was it because she still retained a degree of self-respect? It seemed unlikely. When drunks get to that point, they rarely bother to hide, unless those around them are constantly keeping an eye on them.

  Was that the answer to the question? There was a husband, Omer Calas. Could it be assumed that he prevented his wife from drinking, at any rate in front of the customers?

  ‘Does your husband often go to the Poitiers area to buy wine?’

  ‘Every year.’

  ‘Once?’

  ‘Sometimes twice. It depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On the wine they’re selling.’

  ‘Does he always leave on a Friday?’

  ‘I’ve never paid attention.’

  ‘Did he mention in advance that he planned to make this trip?’

  ‘Mention it to whom?’

  ‘To you.’

  ‘He never tells me what he plans to do.’

  ‘To the customers, then, or to friends?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Were those two here last Friday?’

  ‘Not when Omer left. They don’t get here until five.’

  Maigret turned to Lapointe.

  ‘Can you phone Gare Montparnasse and find out the times of the afternoon trains for Poitiers? Ask for the station chief.’

  Maigret spoke in a low voice. If she had watched his lips, Madame Calas would have guessed the words he was saying, but she didn’t bother.

  ‘Ask him to check with the employees, especially at the ticket offices. Give a description of the husband …’

  The phone booth wasn’t at the back of the room, as is usually the case, but near the front window. Lapointe asked for a token and took a few steps towards the glass door. It was quite dark by now and a bluish fog hovered on the other side of the windows. Maigret, who had his back to the street, turned abruptly when he heard Lapointe’s hurried steps. He thought he saw a shadowy figure running away outside, a young face that seemed pale and shapeless in the semi-darkness.

  Lapointe had turned the door handle and was running in his turn in the direction of La Villette. He hadn’t had time to shut the door behind him, and Maigret now stepped forwards and went and stood outside in the middle of the pavement. He could just about make out two figures disappearing into the distance, one chasing the other, but for a time he still heard hurried footsteps on the cobbles.

  Lapointe must have thought he had recognized someone through the window. Although Maigret had seen almost nothing, he was sure he knew what had happened. The young man who had run away resembled the description of the young man with the delivery tricycle who, while Victor was
working at the bottom of the canal, had already run away once before when a police officer approached him.

  ‘Do you know him?’ he asked Madame Calas.

  ‘Who?’

  There was no point insisting. In any case, it was quite possible she hadn’t looked towards the street at the right moment.

  ‘Is it always so quiet here?’

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘The day. The time.’

  As if to prove her right, a siren sounded, indicating the end of the working day in a nearby workshop, and a few minutes later there was a sound like a procession along the street, the door opened and closed and opened again a dozen times, and people sat down at the tables while others, like Maigret, stood at the counter.

  In many cases, Madame Calas didn’t ask them what they were having and automatically served them their usual drinks.

  ‘Isn’t Omer here?’

  ‘No.’

  She didn’t add:

  ‘He’s gone on a trip.’

  Or else:

  ‘He left for Poitiers on Friday.’

  She simply answered direct questions but didn’t go into unnecessary details. Where was she from? He didn’t feel able to make even a hypothesis. The years had tarnished her, as if part of her had somehow drained away. Because of the drinking, she lived in a world apart and had only a superficial contact with reality.

  ‘Have you been living here long?’

  ‘In Paris?’

  ‘No. This bistro.’

  ‘Twenty-four years.’

  ‘Did your husband own it before he met you?’

  ‘No.’

  He made a mental calculation.

  ‘So you were seventeen when you met him?’

  ‘I knew him before.’

  ‘How old is he now?’

  ‘Forty-seven.’

  That didn’t quite match the age given by Dr Paul, but the margin wasn’t as great as all that. Maigret continued to ask questions, but without much conviction, more to satisfy his personal curiosity than anything else. Wouldn’t it have been a miracle if, on the very first day, chance had led to his discovering the identity of the headless corpse without his having to make any effort?

  There was a murmur of conversation, and a thick layer of cigarette smoke began to drift over everyone’s heads. People left. Others came in. The two domino players remained as imperturbable as if they were alone in the world.