Maigret and the Headless Corpse

by Georges Simenon

  Perhaps it was also a kind of defiance? Or disgust?

  Maigret had often tried to get other people, including men of experience, to admit that those who fall, especially those who have a morbid determination to descend ever lower and take pleasure in disgracing themselves, are almost always idealists.

  It was pointless. Coméliau would reply:

  ‘Let’s just say she’s always been depraved.’

  On Quai de Valmy, she had started drinking. That fitted in with the rest. As did the fact that she had stayed, without ever being tempted to run away, and had clung to the atmosphere of the bistro.

  He thought he understood Omer, too, Omer who had realized the dream of so many country boys: to earn enough money as a manservant or a chauffeur to become the owner of a bistro in Paris.

  Omer led a lazy life there, dragging himself from the counter to the cellar, going once or twice a year to buy wine in the Poitou and spending his afternoons in a brasserie near Gare de l’Est playing belote or billiards.

  They hadn’t had time to investigate his private life. Maigret vowed to do so in the coming days, if only for his own satisfaction. He was convinced that, apart from his passion for billiards, Omer had brief, opportunistic affairs with young maids and female workers in the neighbourhood.

  Had he been expecting the inheritance? It was unlikely: like everyone else, he must have thought that Boissancourt had disowned his daughter.

  It had taken the lawyer’s business card to give him hope.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ Canonge said, ‘what’s beyond me, my dear Maigret – and I’ve seen all kinds of heirs in my time – is that she could have refused a heaven-sent fortune.’

  For Maigret, on the other hand, it was only natural. What would the money have brought her at this stage in her life? Would she have moved to the chateau with Omer? Would they have started leading, either in Paris or elsewhere, on the Riviera, for instance, a life modelled on that of the upper middle classes?

  She had preferred to stay in her place, a place she had made for herself, rather like an animal in its burrow.

  There, she would spend days that were all alike, with swigs of cognac behind the kitchen door and a visit from Dieudonné Pape in the afternoon.

  He, too, had become a habit. More than that, perhaps, because he knew, and she wasn’t ashamed in front of him, and they could sit together by the stove, in silence.

  ‘Do you think she killed him?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What about her lover?’

  ‘That’s quite likely.’

  The musicians were putting away their instruments. Here, too, they were about to close. Maigret and Canonge found themselves back out on the street and set off in the direction of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

  ‘Do you live far?’

  ‘Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.’

  ‘I’ll walk part of the way with you. Why did her lover kill Omer? Was he hoping to persuade her to accept the inheritance?’

  They were both unsteady on their feet but they felt good, walking the streets of Paris, where the only thing to disturb them every now and again was a passing taxi.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  The next day, he would have to talk to Coméliau in another tone, because he realized there was something sentimental in his voice.

  ‘Why did he kill him?’

  ‘What do you think Omer’s first concern was when he got back from Saint-André?’

  ‘I don’t know. I assume he was angry and ordered his wife to accept the money.’

  An image came back to Maigret’s memory: a bottle of ink and a blotting pad containing a few sheets of white paper, on the table in the bedroom.

  ‘That’s in his character, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘Let’s suppose Omer tried to force her to sign a paper saying she accepted and she dug her heels in.’

  ‘He was the kind of man who’d have given her a thrashing. I know our peasants.’

  ‘He did occasionally beat her.’

  ‘I’m starting to see what you’re getting at.’

  ‘When he comes back, he doesn’t bother to change. It’s Saturday afternoon, about four. He gets Aline to come upstairs, orders her about, threatens her, hits her.’

  ‘And then her lover arrives?’

  ‘That’s the most plausible explanation. Dieudonné Pape knows the house. Hearing the noise on the first floor, he crosses the kitchen and goes upstairs to rescue Aline.’

  ‘And kills the husband!’ Canonge concluded humorously.

  ‘He kills him, deliberately or accidentally, by hitting him on the head with some instrument or other.’

  ‘After which he cuts him up into pieces.’

  That drew laughter from Canonge, who was in a jovial mood.

  ‘Priceless! And what really strikes me as priceless is the idea of cutting Omer up into pieces. I mean, if you’d known Omer …’

  Instead of sobering him up, the fresh air merely accentuated the effects of the alcohol.

  ‘Will you walk back with me a little way?’

  They both retraced their steps, then turned and did the same thing again.

  ‘He’s a curious man,’ Maigret sighed.

  ‘Who? Omer?’

  ‘No, Pape.’

  ‘To top it all, his name’s Pape?’

  ‘Not just Pape, but Dieudonné Pape.’

  ‘Priceless!’

  ‘He’s the quietest man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Is that why he cut Omer up into pieces?’

  It was true: it took a man like him, solitary, patient, meticulous, to so successfully erase the traces of a murder. Even Moers and his men, with all their equipment, had found nothing in the house on Quai de Valmy to prove that a crime had been committed there.

  Had Aline Calas helped to clean everything thoroughly and dispose of the linen and any objects that might have borne incriminating stains?

  Pape had made only one mistake, a hard one to avoid, as it happened: he hadn’t foreseen that Maigret would be surprised at the lack of dirty washing in the house and would think of asking the laundry.

  What had the couple hoped? That weeks or months would pass before parts of Calas’ remains would be found in the canal, and that by then these remains would be impossible to identify? That was what would have happened if the Naud brothers’ barge hadn’t been transporting a few tonnes of freestone too many and hadn’t scraped the sludge at the bottom of the canal.

  Had the head been thrown in the Seine or in a sewer? Maigret might know in a few days. He was convinced he would know everything in the end, yet that no longer aroused anything in him but a technical curiosity. What mattered was the drama that had played itself out among the three protagonists, and about that he was convinced he wasn’t wrong.

  He would have sworn that, once all trace of the crime had been erased, Aline and Pape had entertained the hope of a new life, not very different from the previous one.

  For a time, Pape would have continued, as he had in the past, to spend an hour or two every afternoon in the little bistro. Gradually, his visits would have grown longer until, with the husband forgotten by the customers and the neighbours, he moved in for good.

  Would Aline have continued to let Antoine Cristin and others have their way with her?

  It was possible. Maigret didn’t dare venture into such deep waters.

  ‘This time, I’ll say goodnight!’

  ‘May I phone you tomorrow at the hotel? I’ll need you for a certain number of formalities.’

  ‘You won’t need to phone. I’ll be at your office at nine o’clock.’

  Of course, at nine o’clock, Canonge hadn’t arrived, and Maigret had forgotten that he had promised to be there. He himself didn’t feel too lively, and it was with a sense of guilt that he had opened his eyes when his wife, after putting his coffee down on the bedside table, had touched his shoulder.

  She had an odd smile, more maternal tha
n usual and quite tender.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  He couldn’t remember ever having such a bad headache on waking, which meant that he had drunk a lot. He had seldom come home drunk, and what most annoyed him was that he hadn’t been aware of drinking. It had happened gradually, one glass after another.

  ‘Do you remember everything you told me last night about Aline Calas?’

  He preferred not to remember, because he had the impression he had become more and more sentimental.

  ‘You sounded as if you were in love with her. If I were a jealous woman …’

  He blushed, and she hastened to reassure him.

  ‘I’m joking. Are you going to tell all this to Coméliau?’

  So he’d told her about Coméliau, too? That was indeed what remained for him to do. Only, he wouldn’t talk to him in the same terms!

  ‘Anything new, Lapointe?’

  ‘Nothing, chief.’

  ‘Can you put an ad in this afternoon’s newspapers asking the young man someone asked to deposit a suitcase at Gare de l’Est on Sunday to make himself known to the police?’

  ‘Wasn’t it Antoine?’

  ‘I’m convinced it wasn’t. Pape wouldn’t have asked someone who was a regular.’

  ‘The man at the left luggage office says—’

  ‘He saw a young man about the same age as Antoine, wearing a leather jacket. There are plenty of people around here who answer that description.’

  ‘Do you have any evidence against Pape?’

  ‘He’ll confess.’

  ‘Are you going to interrogate them?’

  ‘I think at this point in the investigation, Coméliau will want to deal with that himself.’

  It was becoming easy. It was no longer a question of asking questions haphazardly – fishing, as they called it at headquarters. Maigret wasn’t even sure he was all that determined to force a confession out of Aline Calas and Dieudonné. They would both struggle to the end, until they could no longer keep silent.

  He spent more than an hour upstairs in the magistrate’s office. From there he called Maître Canonge, who must have woken with a start when the telephone rang.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked, in such a strange way that Maigret smiled.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Half past ten. Judge Coméliau, the examining magistrate in charge of the Calas case, would like to see you in his office as soon as possible.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be right there. Shall I bring the Boissancourt papers?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t get to bed too late because of me?’

  Canonge must have gone to bed even later. God alone knew where he had wandered when Maigret had left him. At the end of the line, the inspector heard a woman’s voice ask lazily:

  ‘What time is it?’

  Maigret went back down to his office.

  ‘Is he going to interrogate them?’ Lapointe asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Starting with the woman?’

  ‘I advised him to start with Pape.’

  ‘Will he come clean more easily?’

  ‘Yes. Especially if, as I assume, he’s the one who struck the fatal blow.’

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘I have something to find out at the Hôtel-Dieu.’

  It was only a point of detail. He had to wait for the end of an operation in progress to see Lucette Calas.

  ‘I suppose you’ve read in the newspapers about your father’s death and your mother’s arrest?’

  ‘Something like that was bound to happen.’

  ‘When you went to see her the last time, was it to ask her for money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  ‘To tell her I’m going to marry Professor Lavaud as soon as he gets his divorce. He may be curious to meet my parents, and I would have liked her to be presentable.’

  ‘You didn’t know that Boissancourt was dead?’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  Her surprise was genuine.

  ‘Your grandfather.’

  He added in a neutral tone, as if announcing some unimportant news:

  ‘Unless she’s convicted of murder, your mother inherits a chateau, eighteen farms and I don’t know how many millions.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You can see Maître Canonge the lawyer, who’s handling the estate. He’s staying at the Hôtel d’Orsay.’

  ‘Will he be there all day?’

  ‘I assume so.’

  She didn’t ask him what would happen to her mother, and he left her, shrugging his shoulders.

  Maigret didn’t have lunch that day, because he wasn’t hungry, but two glasses of beer more or less settled his stomach. He spent the whole afternoon shut up in his office. He had put the keys to the bistro and Pape’s apartment down on the desk in front of him and he seemed to take a wicked pleasure in polishing off the bureaucratic chores he usually hated.

  Whenever the telephone rang, he would pick it up more briskly than usual, but it wasn’t until a few minutes after five o’clock that he recognized Coméliau’s voice at the other end of the line.

  ‘Maigret?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The judge could hardly contain a quiver of triumph.

  ‘I was right to have them arrested.’

  ‘All three of them?’

  ‘No. I’ve just released young Antoine.’

  ‘Have the others confessed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything we assumed. I had the good idea of starting with the man. When I’d finished giving a detailed account of what must have happened, he didn’t deny any of it.’

  ‘What about the woman?’

  ‘Pape repeated his confession in her presence. There was no way she could deny it.’

  ‘Did she add anything?’

  ‘As she left my office, she simply asked me if you’d taken care of her cat.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘That you had other things to do.’

  For the rest of his life, Maigret would resent Judge Coméliau for that remark.

  1. Commotion at Quai des Orfèvres

  From half past three on, Maigret began to look up now and then at the clock. At ten to four, he initialled the last sheet he had been annotating, pushed back his chair, mopped his brow, and hesitated over his choice from the five pipes in the ashtray which he had smoked without bothering to tap them out afterwards. His foot had pressed the bell under the desk and there was a knock at the door. Patting his face with his voluminous handkerchief, he called out gruffly:

  ‘Come in!’

  It was Inspector Janvier who, like him, had taken off his jacket but had kept on his tie, whereas Maigret had removed his.

  ‘Give this to the typist. Have someone bring it for me to sign when it’s ready. It has to go to Coméliau this evening.’

  It was the 4th of August. The windows were wide open but brought no relief, since they allowed in even more warm air, which seemed to be rising from the melting tarmac, the burning hot stonework, and even the Seine itself: one could imagine the river steaming like a pan of water on a stove.

  The taxis and buses on Pont Saint-Michel were moving more slowly than usual, seeming to drag themselves along, and it was not only in the Police Judiciaire that people were in shirt-sleeves: men walking past on the streets were carrying their jackets over their arms, and Maigret had even noticed one or two wearing shorts, as if they were at the seaside.

  Only about a quarter of Parisians had stayed in the capital, and all of them must be thinking with identical longing of the others, the lucky ones who were at this very moment paddling at the edge of the waves, or fishing in the shade on some quiet riverbank.

  ‘Have they got over there yet?’

  ‘Haven’t seen them. Lapointe’s watching out for them.’

  Maigret,
as if it took some effort, chose one of the pipes and tapped it out, then conscientiously started packing it, before finally moving over to the window, where he stayed standing, his eyes fixed on a certain café-restaurant on the opposite embankment, Quai des Grands-Augustins. The café façade was painted yellow. Two steps led down into it from the street: the interior would be almost as cool as a cellar. The bar still had a genuine zinc counter of the old-fashioned kind, a slate on the wall with the menu chalked up on it, and inside there was a perpetual smell of calvados.

  Even some of the booksellers’ stalls along the embankments were padlocked for the holidays!

  He remained without moving for four or five minutes, drawing on his pipe, then saw a taxi pull up not far from the little restaurant: three men got out and headed for the steps. The most familiar of the silhouettes was that of Inspector Lognon, from the 18th arrondissement, who, from a distance, seemed even smaller and thinner than usual, and who was, for the first time in Maigret’s experience, wearing a panama hat.

  What would the three men be drinking? Beer, no doubt.

  Maigret pushed open the door of the inspectors’ office, where the same torpid atmosphere reigned as in the rest of the city.

  ‘Is the Baron out in the corridor?’

  ‘Has been for half an hour, boss.’

  ‘No other journalists?’

  ‘Young Rougin’s just arrived.’

  ‘Any photographers?’

  ‘Just the one.’

  The long corridor of the Police Judiciaire was almost empty, with a mere two or three clients waiting outside the doors of Maigret’s colleagues. It was at his request that Bodard from the Fraud Squad had summoned for four o’clock the man all the newspapers were talking about, a certain Max Bernat, unknown two weeks ago, and suddenly the central figure in the latest financial scandal, one relating to billions of francs.

  Maigret had no business with Bernat. Bodard had no reason to call him in either, at the present stage of the investigation. But because Bodard had casually mentioned that he would be interviewing this known criminal figure at four p.m. that day, at least two reporters who specialized in crime would be there with a photographer. They would stay until the interrogation was over. Perhaps, if word got around that Max Bernat was at Quai des Orfèvres, a few more journalists would turn up.