The Late Monsieur Gallet
Page 10
Then there was Henry, who already had a thoughtful and suspicious expression when he was about to take his First Communion, and who at the age of twenty-two didn’t marry Éléonore for fear of losing the pension she might get after her late husband’s death! Henry who had suffered an attack of his liver trouble but still went straight back to work!
It began to rain. The taxi driver pulled in to the side of the pavement so that he could put up the top of the car.
The three bullets had been fired from the same revolver – from which one might deduce that they had been fired by the same person. However, neither Henry nor Éléonore nor Saint-Hilaire could have fired the last two shots.
Nor could a vagrant. A vagrant doesn’t kill for the sake of killing. He steals, and nothing had been stolen.
The lack of progress in this case, circling round the lacklustre and melancholy figure of the dead man, was getting Maigret down, and it was with a grumpy expression that he entered the first concierge’s lodge in the Rue Clignancourt.
‘Do you know a Monsieur Jacob?’
‘What does he do?’
‘No idea. But anyway, he gets letters addressed to that name …’
The rain was still falling heavily, but the inspector was quite glad of it, because in this atmosphere the busy road, full of small shops and run-down buildings, was more in tune with his own frame of mind. This traipsing from building to building was a job that could have been given to a junior officer, but Maigret didn’t like the idea of getting a colleague mixed up in this case; he couldn’t really have said why himself.
‘Monsieur Jacob?’
‘Not here. Try over there, you’ll find some Jews.’
He had popped his head round the door or through the window of a hundred concierge lodges and questioned a hundred concierges, when one of them, a stout woman with tow-coloured hair, looked at him suspiciously.
‘What do you want with Monsieur Jacob? You’re police, aren’t you?’
‘Flying Squad, yes. Is he at home?’
‘You wouldn’t expect him to be at home at this time of day!’
‘Where can I find him?’
‘In his usual place, of course! Corner of Rue Clignancourt and Boulevard Rochechouart. Here, I hope you’re not going to bother him! Poor old fellow like that, I’m sure he never did anyone any harm. So maybe he didn’t always have a trading permit – is that why you’re here?’
‘Does he get a lot of post?’
The concierge frowned. ‘So that’s what you’re here for, eh?’ she said. ‘I might have known it. Not a nice story, that. You must know as well as me that he only got a letter once every two or three months.’
‘By registered post?’
‘No, more like a little package than a letter.’
‘Containing banknotes, I expect?’
‘How would I know?’ she said tartly.
‘I think you do! Yes, I think you do! You felt those envelopes and you, too, had an idea that there were banknotes inside.’
‘And suppose there was? Monsieur Jacob wouldn’t have been breaking no bank!’
‘Where’s his room?’
‘His attic, you mean? Right up at the top. He has a hard time getting upstairs every evening with his crutches.’
‘Has no one ever come looking for him?’
‘Let’s see … about three years ago. Old gentleman with a pointy beard, looked like a priest without a cassock. I told him, like I told you …’
‘Was Monsieur Jacob already getting letters?’
‘He’d just had one.’
‘Did the man wear a close-fitting jacket?’
‘He was all in black, like a priest.’
‘Doesn’t Monsieur Jacob ever have visitors?’
‘There’s only his daughter, she’s a chambermaid in a furnished place in the Rue Lepic, got a baby on the way.’
‘What’s his profession?’
‘You mean you don’t know? And you from the police and all? Are you making fun of me? Monsieur Jacob, why, he’s the oldest newspaper seller in the area. Old as the hills, everyone knows him …’
• • •
Maigret stopped on the corner of Rue Clignancourt and Boulevard Rochechouart, outside a bar called Au Couchant. There was a vendor of peanuts and toasted almonds at the end of the terrace who probably sold chestnuts in winter. On the side of Rue Clignancourt a little old man was sitting on a stool, reciting the names of newspapers in a hoarse voice which was lost in all the noise coming from the crossroads.
‘Intran … Liberté … Presse … aris-Soir … Intran …’
A pair of crutches was propped against the front of his stall. One of the old man’s feet had a leather shoe, but he wore only a shapeless slipper on the other.
At the sight of the newspaper seller, Maigret realized that ‘Monsieur Jacob’ was not his real name but a nickname, because the old man had a long beard divided into two with two pointed ends, and above it was a curved nose in the shape of those clay pipes known as Jacobs.
The inspector suddenly remembered the few words of a letter that Moers had been able to reconstruct: twenty thousand … cash … Monday. And suddenly, leaning over the lame man, he asked ‘Have you got the latest consignment?’
Monsieur Jacob raised his head, opening and closing his reddened eyelids several times.
‘Who are you?’ he asked at last, handing a copy of L’Intransigeant to a customer and looking in a box-wood bowl for the right change.
‘Police Judiciaire! Now, let’s talk nicely, or I’ll have to take you away. This is a nasty business.’
Monsieur Jacob spat on the pavement.
‘Then what?’
‘Do you have a typewriter?’
The old man cackled with laughter, this time spitting out a chewed cigarette end, of which he had quite a collection in front of him already.
‘No point playing who’s cleverest,’ he said in a thick voice. ‘You know it’s not me. Though I’d have done best to stay away from trouble, for the little I’ve got out of it.’
‘How much?’
‘She gave me a hundred sous a letter. So it’s a pathetic business.’
‘A business likely to land those involved in it in court.’
‘You don’t say! So they really were notes of a thousand? I wasn’t so sure. I felt the envelopes, they made a kind of silky sound. I held them up to the light, but I couldn’t see inside, the paper was too thick.’
‘What did you do with them?’
‘Brought them here. Didn’t even need to say when I’d be here … around five the little lady who bought an Intran off of me would turn up without fail, put the hundred sous in the bowl here and slip the package into her bag.’
‘A small brunette?’
‘No, no, a tall blonde. More strawberry blonde, and ever so nicely dressed, my word, yes! She’d come up out of the Métro …’
‘When did she first ask you to do her this service?’
‘It’ll be about three years back … wait a minute. Yes, my daughter had had her first baby, he was out at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges with a wet-nurse … that’s right, a little less than three years ago. It was getting late, I’d packed up the merchandise and was hoisting it on my back; she asked if I had a fixed address and if I could help her. We see all sorts around here. Well, so it was about getting letters addressed to me, not opening them, bringing them here in the afternoon.’
‘Was it you who fixed the price at five francs a package?’
‘It was her … I was just pointing out it was worth more – joking, like – what with the price of a litre of red these days, but she started going over to the peanut vendor … an Algerian, he is. Some folk’ll work for nothing. So I said yes.’
‘And you don’t know where she lives?’
Monsieur Jacob winked. ‘Not so stupid when it comes to it, eh? Even if you are police! There was someone else who tried to find out, early on that was. My concierge only told him I sold my papers here. She described him to me, and I reckoned he was the young lady’s father. So he started hanging around when there was a package for me to deliver, but never said a word to me. Yes, wait a minute – he lay low over there, behind the fruit stall. And then he went chasing off after her, but he didn’t have any luck. In the end he came to find me and offered me 1,000 francs for the young lady’s address. He could hardly believe it when I said I had no more idea than he did. Seems like she led him a fine dance on who knows how many Métro trains and buses, and then she shook him off outside an apartment building with two exits. He wasn’t a joker either, that one. I soon caught on that he wasn’t her father. He tried his luck again, twice. I thought I ought to warn my customer, and I reckon she led him on another merry dance, because he didn’t try again. Well, and so what else do you think I got instead of that man’s 1,000 francs? A whole louis! And I had to pretend I didn’t have any change or I’d only have got ten francs, and she went off muttering something that wasn’t very polite, though I didn’t understand it. She was a sly one! But talk about a cheapskate!’
‘When did that last letter arrive?’
‘I reckon three months back. You’ve got to move about a bit in case the customers don’t see the papers any more. That all I can do for you, then? You’ve got to admit I’m the right sort, and I didn’t try to do you down …’
Maigret put twenty francs in the bowl, made a vague gesture of farewell and walked off with a thoughtful expression. As he passed the entrance to the Métro, he made a face of distaste at the thought of Éléonore Boursang going off with an envelope containing several 1,000-franc notes after throwing five francs to old Jacob, taking ten different Métro and bus lines, entirely at her ease, and to cap it all going through a building with two exits before heading back to her own apartment.
What could that have to do with Émile Gallet taking off his jacket and persisting in climbing a wall three metres high?
Monsieur Jacob, on whom Maigret had pinned his last hopes, was vanishing into thin air.
There was no Monsieur Jacob!
Was he to believe that, instead, there was a couple, Henry Gallet and Éléonore Boursang, who had found out Henry’s father’s secret and were making him pay for it?
Éléonore and Henry, who hadn’t killed anyone!
Saint-Hilaire hadn’t killed anyone either, in spite of his contradictions in the matter of the open gate and the key that he himself had thrown on to the nettle lane, making sure that his gardener found it after the inspector had told him that he was going to get his hands on it at all costs!
None of that made any difference to the fact that two bullets had been fired at Moers, and that Émile Gallet, whose sister-in-law implied that he was bringing shame on the whole family, had been murdered.
At Saint-Fargeau, they were consoling each other by heaping scorn on him, emphasizing the mediocrity of his character and his life, and by the thought that his death, after all, was worth 300,000 francs.
That morning, Henry had gone to deposit securities with the Sovrinos bank and put the 100,000 francs of savings to good account – the savings which must become 500,000 to allow him to go and live in the country with Éléonore.
While she, finally, as calm as when she was exchanging the newspaper seller’s envelope for five francs, was in Sancerre, spying on Maigret, or was coming to see him with an unfurrowed brow and innocent eyes to tell him the story of her life.
And Saint-Hilaire was playing cards with the notary!
The only one absent was Émile Gallet. He was firmly in a coffin, half his face torn away by the bullet, maltreated by the forensic surgeon who had seven guests coming to dinner, a stab wound through his heart, and his grey eyes were open because no one had thought of closing their lids.
‘Last avenue on the left, near the old mayor’s pink marble monument,’ said the verger doing duty as cemetery attendant.
And the undertaker in Corbeil was scratching his head as he looked at an order specifying ‘a simple stone, sober lines, good taste, not too expensive but distinguished’.
Maigret had seen a good deal in his time. Yet he tried to consider the possibility that the tall woman with strawberry blonde hair was not necessarily Éléonore Boursang and that, if she was indeed Monsieur Jacob’s customer, there was nothing to prove that Henry was her accomplice.
The simplest thing, he thought, would be to show the old man her photograph. That was why he had himself driven to Rue de Turenne, where he was almost sure to find a photograph of the young woman in her apartment.
‘Madame Boursang isn’t here, but Monsieur Henry is upstairs,’ the concierge told him.
Evening was drawing in. Maigret bumped into the walls of the narrow staircase on the way up and opened the door indicated by the concierge without knocking.
Henry Gallet was leaning over a table, doing up a rather large parcel. He gave a start then managed to regain his self-control when he recognized the inspector. However, he could not say anything. His teeth were so firmly clenched that it must have hurt. The change in him after a week was alarming. His cheeks were hollow, his cheekbones jutted. Above all, his complexion was an appalling leaden hue.
‘I hear that you had a terrible attack of liver trouble last night,’ said Maigret, with more ferocity than he had intended. ‘Move over, please.’
The parcel was the shape of a typewriter. The inspector tore off the wrapping paper, took a sheet of white paper out of his pocket, typed a few random words on it, took it out of the machine and slipped it into his pocket. Briefly, the noise of the typewriter had broken the silence in the apartment, where dustsheets covered the furniture and there was newspaper stuck to the windows for the holiday season.
Henry, leaning his elbows on a chest of drawers, was looking at the floor, his nerves so tense that it was painful to look at him.
Maigret, heavy, implacable, went on with what he was doing, opened drawers, searched their contents. Finally he found a photograph of Éléonore. Then, ready to leave, his hat pushed back on the nape of his neck, he stopped for a moment in front of the young man and looked him up and down, from head to foot.
‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me?’
Henry swallowed and finally managed to say, ‘No.’
Maigret was careful not to arrive at Rue Clignancourt, where Monsieur Jacob was still sitting in front of his newspapers, until an hour later. Did he want one more piece of evidence? Before he was even level with the old man, he saw Henry Gallet’s long, discoloured face behind the windowpane of a bistro.
Next moment Monsieur Jacob told him, ‘Yes, that’s her all right. Got her!’
Maigret went off without a word but cast an aggressive glance at the bistro. He could have gone in and set off another attack of Henry’s liver trouble simply by putting a hand on his shoulder.
And never mind that they didn’t kill him, he thought.
Half an hour later, he was walking through the Préfecture without greeting anyone, and in his office he found a letter from the inspector of indirect taxes in Nevers.
9. A Farcical Marriage
If you would care to go to the trouble of paying a discreet visit to my home at 17, Rue Creuse, in Nevers, I will give you some information concerning Émile Gallet that will interest you to a very high degree.
Maigret was in the Rue Creuse. In front of him, in a red and black drawing room, was the inspector of indirect taxes for Nevers, who had introduced himself with a conspiratorial air.
‘I sent the maid away! As you will understand, that’s for the best. And so far as anyone who may have seen you arrive is concerned, you are my cousin from Beaucaire.’
‘Are you a former colonial yourself? No? I would have thought … well, that’s a pity, because it would have been easier for you to understand.’
And he continued to bat his eyelids the whole time and adopted an ever more confidential tone; the expression on his face was simultaneously sly and frightened.
‘I myself spent ten years in Indochina, at the time when Saigon didn’t yet have wide boulevards like Paris. It was there that I met Gallet … and what set me thinking along those lines was the way he was stabbed with a knife, as you will see. I’ll bet you’ve found out nothing yet! And you won’t find anything out, because it’s a story that only a colonial can understand. A colonial who has seen the thing itself.’
Maigret had already placed the tax inspector: he knew that with a man of this kind he must possess his soul in patience, be careful not to interrupt, nod now and then – which after all was the only way to gain time.
‘He was a great fellow, our friend Gallet. He was some kind of clerk to a notary who’s made his way since then, he’s a senator. And he was mad on sport – even took it into his head to form a football team. He’d recruited us all, we couldn’t resist him – only there was no other team for us to play against. Well, in short, he liked women even better than football, and there were plenty of chances to meet women out there. Ah, yes, he was a jolly companion. And the tricks he played on the fair sex … excuse me, please.’
On silent feet, he made for the door and abruptly flung it open to make sure there was no one on the other side.
‘Right, well … Once he went too far, and I’m not proud of having played the part of his accomplice, without great enthusiasm, I might add. There was a planter who’d just imported two or three hundred Malay workers, and there were some women and children with them – among others a girl, a little creature who might have been carved from amber. I don’t remember her name now. But I do remember I was just finishing reading a book by Stevenson about the natives of the Pacific and I mentioned it to Gallet. It’s about a white man who organizes a sham marriage, so that he can enjoy the charms of a wild native girl. And my friend Émile got rather carried away by the idea! In those days the Malays couldn’t read, in particular the poorer sort who were transported round the place like brute beasts. So Gallet goes to put his request to the girl’s father. He decks out his future in-laws in ridiculous garments, he gets together a wedding procession to lead the happy couple to this run-down little house that we’d repaired. Another friend played the part of mayor to marry them. He’s dead now, although there’ll be others still alive who remember the joke. He was a great joker, Gallet was, and he made sure the whole farce was as comic as possible. The speeches would have had you rolling in the aisles, and the marriage certificate, which we solemnly handed over to the girl, was complete gobbledegook from start to finish. What larks – at the expense of the head of the family, the witnesses and everyone else!’