It was hideous and monotonous.
Police reinforcements had been posted in the area where the crimes had occurred, known as the Grandes-Carrières. Lognon had, like his colleagues, postponed his holiday leave. Would he ever be able to take it?
The streets were being patrolled. Officers had been stationed at all the strategic points. They had already been in position when the second, third, fourth and fifth murders had taken place.
‘Tired?’ asked Madame Maigret, as she opened the door of their apartment at exactly the moment her husband reached the landing.
‘It was a hot day.’
‘Still nothing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I heard just now on the radio that there had been some excitement at Quai des Orfèvres.’
‘Already?’
‘They seemed to think it was to do with the murders in the 18th? Is that true?’
‘More or less.’
‘Have you got any leads?’
‘Not that I know.’
‘Did you have any dinner?’
‘Yes, and I even had a bite of supper only half an hour ago.’
She didn’t insist, and soon afterwards both of them were asleep, with the bedroom window wide open.
He arrived next morning at his office without having had time to read the newspapers. They had been placed on his blotter, and he was about to look at them when the telephone rang. From the first syllable, he recognized who was on the line.
‘Maigret?’
‘Yes, sir, good morning.’
Coméliau, of course, the examining magistrate in charge of the inquiry into the five crimes in Montmartre.
‘Is all this true?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What all the papers are saying this morning.’
‘I haven’t seen them yet.’
‘Have you arrested anyone?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Perhaps it would be best if you were to come to my office right away.’
‘Of course, sir.’
Lucas, who had come into the room and overheard the conversation, understood the expression on Maigret’s face.
‘Lucas, tell the chief I’ve gone over to the Palais de Justice and probably won’t be back in time for the daily report.’
And Maigret set off in the same direction taken the previous day by Lognon, Lucas and the mysterious visitor, the man whose hat had been hiding his face. In the corridor where the magistrates had their offices, the gendarmes saluted him, while some of those waiting there, witnesses or people called in for questioning, recognized him, and one or two made a sign of greeting.
‘Come in! Read this!’
He had been expecting this, of course, that Coméliau would be jumpy and aggressive, and would be restraining with some difficulty the indignation that was making his little moustache quiver.
One headline read:
Have the police nabbed the killer at last?
Another:
Almighty commotion at Police Headquarters!
Is this the Montmartre maniac?
‘I would observe to you, detective chief inspector, that yesterday at four o’clock, I was sitting here in my office, less than two hundred metres from yours, with a telephone on my desk. I was still here at five, and at six, and I left for another engagement only at ten to seven. Even then, I could have been reached, whether at home, where you have often called me, or later at the home of some friends, whose address I took care to leave with my manservant.’
Maigret, who had remained on his feet, heard all this without reacting.
‘When an event as important as this …’
Looking up, Maigret said quietly:
‘There hasn’t been any event.’
Coméliau, who was already launched so far into his speech that he could not immediately calm down, rapped the newspapers with his clenched fist.
‘And all this? Are you going to tell me this has all been invented by the journalists?’
‘It’s mere speculation on their part.’
‘In other words, nothing whatsoever happened, and these gentlemen speculated that you had an unknown man brought to your office, interrogated him for six hours, then sent him down to the Mousetrap and …’
‘I didn’t interrogate anyone, sir.’
This time Coméliau, taken aback, looked at him in complete incomprehension.
‘I think you had better explain yourself to me, so that I can provide some account to the public prosecutor, whose first action this morning was to call my office.’
‘A certain person did indeed come to see me yesterday afternoon, along with two inspectors.’
‘A person whom the two inspectors had arrested?’
‘It was in the nature of a friendly visit.’
‘And that was why the man was hiding his face with his hat?’
Coméliau pointed to a photograph printed across two columns of the front pages of the newspapers.
‘Perhaps that was mere chance, an automatic movement on his part. We had a chat—’
‘For six hours?’
‘Time passes quickly.’
‘And you had beer and sandwiches sent up?’
‘That is quite true, sir.’
The magistrate once more slapped his hand down on the newspapers.
‘I have in front of me a detailed account of all your comings and goings.’
‘I am sure that is correct.’
‘Who is this man?’
‘He’s a likeable fellow by the name of Mazet, Pierre Mazet, who worked in my squad for a while about ten years ago, just after passing his exams. Later, hoping for faster promotion and also, I believe, because of some unhappy love affair, he asked to be posted to Equatorial Africa, where he stayed for five years.’
Coméliau could make no sense of this and frowned at Maigret, wondering whether the chief inspector was mocking him.
‘He had to leave Africa after an attack of fever, and the doctors have forbidden him to return. When he’s fully restored to health, he will probably apply to be re-employed at the Police Judiciaire.’
‘And it was to receive this man that you created what the newspapers have not hesitated to call an almighty commotion?’
Maigret moved towards the door, to check that nobody could be listening to their conversation.
‘Yes, sir, that’s right,’ he finally admitted. ‘I needed a man whose appearance was as ordinary and non-distinctive as possible, and whose face was not known to the press or the general public. Poor Mazet has changed a lot since his spell in Africa. Do you see what I’m getting at?’
‘I can’t say that I do.’
‘I didn’t tell the reporters anything. I didn’t say a single word to entitle them to think his visit had anything to do with the Montmartre murders.’
‘But you didn’t deny it either.’
‘I repeated that I had nothing to say, which was the truth.’
‘And the result …!’ cried the magistrate, pointing to the papers again.
‘The result was the one I wanted to obtain.’
‘Without consulting me, of course. Or even keeping me informed!’
‘That was entirely so as to spare you from sharing any of the responsibility, sir, it was all mine.’
‘What are you hoping to achieve?’
Maigret, whose pipe had gone out, relit it with a thoughtful expression and then said slowly:
‘I don’t quite know yet. I simply thought that it would be worth trying something.’
Coméliau was still puzzled, and he stared at Maigret’s pipe, to which he had never been able to accustom himself. The chief inspector was in fact the only person who ventured to smoke in his office, and the magistrate considered this a kind of provocation.
‘Sit down,’ he said in the end, regretfully.
And before sitting down himself, he went to open the window.
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin …
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published in French as Maigret et le corps sans tête by Presses de la Cité 1955
This translation first published 2017
Copyright © Georges Simenon Limited, 1955
Translation copyright © Howard Curtis, 2017
GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm
MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited
All rights reserved
Extract from Maigret Sets a Trap © Georges Simenon Limited, 1955
Translation copyright © Siân Reynolds, 2016
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos
Front cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes
ISBN: 978-0-141-98545-9
Maigret and the Headless Corpse Page 16