Maigret's Holiday

by Georges Simenon

  ‘I hope so.’

  The ominous tone in which Maigret said those words made Monsieur Georget shudder.

  ‘In any case, inspector, he’s an honest boy. His only fault, you could say, is a certain wariness … That’s not the right word … He tends to be withdrawn … It’s as if he’s always afraid of a mocking smile, a rebuff, or simply condescension … His family’s poverty weighs on him and yet he is not ashamed of it … When someone asks what his father does, he’s quick to reply “night watchman”.

  ‘And he doesn’t take the trouble to add that Duffieux only took on the job after having his right arm amputated …

  ‘I don’t know if I’m making myself clear … He wants to succeed at all costs … He will work as hard as is necessary to do so … He has read tons of books, whatever he can get his hands on … His mood swings between anxiety and ebullience …’

  ‘Women?’ asked Maigret.

  The printer jerked his head in the direction of the office.

  ‘Has she gone out?’ he asked quietly, meaning the typist.

  He went next door to be certain.

  ‘As you have seen, Mademoiselle Berthe is pretty, delectable even. All my male employees have tried to woo her. The fact is that she’s head over heels in love with Émile Duffieux and defends him fiercely if you say a word against him in front of her. She did everything she could to attract his attention. She became flirtatious, changed her dress two or three times a week. I wonder whether he even noticed. He had set himself a goal. I was always expecting to see him leave for Nantes or Bordeaux, like most of our ambitious youngsters. But he went straight to Paris …’

  ‘Did he tell you in person?’

  ‘No, by letter.’

  ‘Which you received the day after his departure?’

  ‘Exactly … Like his parents … It was as if he was afraid that at the last minute someone would put a spoke in his wheel … No need to add that he left everything in good order … If you would like to see the letter …’

  Maigret merely glanced at it. Émile apologized very nicely and, just as nicely, thanked his employer for all he had done for him.

  ‘Did his sister ever come to the office to see him?’

  ‘I don’t recall … Besides, Duffieux spent little time in the office … These past months at least he was very much involved with the newspaper, both the news side and the classified ads, because in a little establishment like ours, you have to turn your hand to everything.’

  ‘I should like to have as precise an idea as possible of his schedule.’

  ‘He would arrive at around nine, sometimes earlier, because he wasn’t a clock-watcher … And he would generally stay in the office until ten thirty … Then he’d drop into the police station for the latest news, then the town hall and the sub-prefecture … Sometimes, we would just see him for a few minutes around midday, other times he came back only after lunch. In the afternoon, he would write his articles and go into the workshop to supervise the layout … He’d also run a few errands, telephone lawyers, estate agents, the managers of the cinemas whose programmes we print …

  ‘That’s on a normal day … On Fridays, the day the paper is printed, he’d often stay behind with me until nine o’clock at night.’

  It was more or less the life of a provincial reporter.

  ‘In short,’ Maigret summed up, ‘it was mainly in the morning that he was out and about. Do you know whether he received any private telephone calls?’

  ‘That depends what you mean by private. I knew he was the correspondent for a Paris paper. He had asked my permission to accept the job. It took very little of his time because it was the same news as ours that he sent them … I gave him permission to use one of our telephone lines and he kept a note of his calls, which the book-keeper deducted from his pay each month. I never caught him making a private call, to a friend, for example …’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No one has been able to contact him in Paris yet?’

  ‘He only gave his parents a poste restante address.’

  ‘That can take a day or two, of course …’

  The printer had just unwittingly given Maigret an idea. The minute he was back at the hotel, he called the Police Judiciaire.

  ‘Hello! … Is Lucas there? … Who’s speaking? … Torrence? … Maigret here … Still on holiday, yes … What? … Is the weather good? … I have no idea … I’ll go and have a look … It’s not sunny, but it’s not raining … Is Janvier still at his desk? … Put him on, would you … Yes, thank you … Hello, is that you, Janvier? … Not too busy? … The usual? … Right … Do you want to run an errand for me? … I’d like you to go to Post Office 26 … That’s the one in Faubourg Saint-Denis, isn’t it? … Yes, I know … Go and see the poste restante clerk and ask him if there are any letters for Émile Duffieux … Yes, make a note … Émile … Duffieux … No, double F … F for Fernand … Hold on! … The most important thing is to ask whether anyone has turned up to collect his post … Yes … And on what date … If he hasn’t come yet, ask the clerk to telephone you as soon as he does … Tell him to waylay his customer for a few minutes somehow and you jump into a taxi …

  ‘Above all, no blunders. Simply ask him for his address … Follow him if necessary …

  ‘Don’t hang up yet … After that, go down and have a look at the hotel records from the past few days … Especially those from the 31st of July and the 1st of August … Look for the same name …

  ‘That’s all … No, it’s not an important case … A simple errand on a personal matter …

  ‘Thank you, my friend … That’s right … She’s better, yes … Say hello to Marie-France for me …’

  ‘The gentlemen from Poitiers are already about to eat,’ murmured Monsieur Léonard, who was standing behind Maigret holding a bottle.

  ‘Let them stay where they are.’

  ‘But you’ll have a little …’

  Go on! It would be best to have a little drink so as not to offend the good man.

  ‘I found them two rooms, in different hotels. They aren’t very happy. Is it my fault? To your good health …’

  ‘To yours, Monsieur Léonard …’

  ‘Do you think they’ll find the bastard who strangled the girl?’

  It was eight o’clock. The lights had been switched on. The two men were sitting in the back room, between the kitchen and the dining room. Behind them, the waitresses were going back and forth carrying trays.

  Was it Monsieur Léonard’s words that suddenly gave Maigret food for thought? He frowned.

  ‘Are you not eating?’

  ‘Not now …’

  He was about to go up to his room, and do something he rarely did, and only in particularly serious cases.

  He remembered his anguish the previous evening, when he had desperately sought to identify the girl he had encountered on the stairs at the doctor’s. The people he had questioned looked at him in amazement, even Mansuy, even the guardroom officers. And yet, if at that point he had been able to find out a name, an address, Lucile would still be alive.

  Maybe he was completely wrong. But if he wasn’t, then other people were in danger, starting with himself.

  That was why he had to go up to his room and put his suspicions down on paper.

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘Just for an hour. Save me something to eat …’

  He would write his report at night, calmly, before going to bed. Now, he headed for the railway station. Hadn’t Émile Duffieux, in his letter to his mother, said that he’d bought his ticket in advance?

  The ill-lit station was almost dese
rted. On the tracks, there was only a local train with old-style carriages. The man at the ticket window wore a deputy stationmaster’s cap.

  ‘Good evening, inspector …’

  Too many people recognized him, that was a fact.

  ‘I would like to ask you something. Do you know young Duffieux?’

  ‘Monsieur Émile? … Of course I knew him … As a reporter, he would come to the station every time an important person was expected … I let him on to the platform …’

  ‘In that case, perhaps you can tell me whether he came to buy a ticket for Paris at the end of last month?’

  ‘I am well placed to answer you since I was the one who sold them to him.’

  Maigret was immediately struck by his use of the plural.

  ‘You sold him several tickets?’

  ‘Two, second class …’

  ‘Returns?’

  ‘No, singles …’

  ‘Around what time did he come and pick them up?’

  ‘In the morning, just before midday … He wanted them for the last train, the 22.52 …’

  ‘Do you happen to know whether he took that train?’

  ‘I presume so … I’m going to leave the station in a few minutes … At that time, it’s the deputy night stationmaster who’s on duty …’

  ‘Is he here yet?’

  ‘He must be … Come into the office …’

  They went on to the platform and then into an office where the telegraph was whirring and clicking away.

  ‘Hey, Alfred … This is Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, you must have heard of him …’

  ‘Pleased to meet you …’

  ‘He’d like to know whether young Duffieux boarded the 163 on one of the last days of July … I sold him two second-class singles for Paris in the morning … He was planning to get the 22.52.’

  ‘I don’t remember …’

  ‘Do you think you’d have seen him if he’d taken that train?’

  ‘I can’t swear to it … Sometimes, at the last minute, you’re called away to the telephone or to the mail compartment … I’d be surprised, though, if I hadn’t noticed him …’

  ‘Is it possible to find out whether the tickets have been used?’

  ‘In theory, yes … We’d just have to ask Paris … As you know, passengers have to hand in their tickets at the exit … but some of them get off before Paris … Others get swept along by the crowd and forget to hand in their ticket … It’s rare … It’s against the rules … You’re supposed to …’

  He pondered for a moment, and murmured:

  ‘There’s something odd …’

  He looked at his colleague, as if he too should be struck by something that wasn’t right.

  ‘Émile Duffieux took the train several times, to Nantes, to La Roche or to La Rochelle … Each time he had a free pass …’

  He explained to Maigret:

  ‘Journalists are entitled to travel free in first class. They simply have to request a pass from their newspaper. It would have been particularly worth his while this time, since it was a long journey … I wonder why he bought second-class tickets when he could have travelled first class free of charge …’

  ‘He wasn’t alone,’ Maigret pointed out.

  ‘Of course … It was probably a woman. But you know, even in such cases, these gentlemen from the press blithely take advantage …’

  Maigret found himself in the street, and a little later walked past La Popine’s shop. The shutters were closed and there was a light beneath the door. It was much too early. Francis must be busy serving dinner at the doctor’s house.

  He continued down narrow, dingy streets, shivering occasionally on hearing footsteps behind him.

  If he was right, if events had taken place as he had gradually pieced them together, although there were some gaps, shouldn’t they expect further victims − at least one − in addition to Lili Godreau and little Lucile?

  He suddenly swung round and went into the Hôtel de Vendée.

  ‘Is Madame Godreau still here?’ he asked the owner, who sat at the counter herself, wearing black silk and a large cameo brooch.

  ‘You are forgetting, inspector …’

  He was furious at being recognized wherever he went.

  ‘You are forgetting that her name is no longer Madame Godreau, but Madame Esteva … She and Monsieur Esteva left on the 5.30 train.’

  ‘I presume,’ he added tetchily, for he knew the reply already, ‘that her son-in-law came to see her yesterday evening?’

  ‘That’s correct … They were in fact the last to leave the little parlour …’

  ‘Was Monsieur Esteva with them?’

  ‘I think, but I can’t be sure, that Monsieur Esteva was the first to go upstairs.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  He had spent the entire day saying ‘Thank you very much’.

  One person at least was in danger, or else he was completely mistaken.

  And, unfortunately, about that person, he knew nothing, not even whether it was a man or a woman, and he could guess neither their age nor their profession.

  All he knew was that they were in the town, in the centre of town most likely, within a radius that he could almost have drawn on a map.

  There was no way he could deal with it that evening. He would have to wait until daylight, when the shops and cafés were open.

  Then the hunt would be on, the only vital lead being his conviction, and he would have to keep repeating his never-ending thank-yous.

  Providing there was still time!

  The two inspectors had finished dinner and were smoking cigarettes and drinking brandy when Maigret sat down at the table in the almost empty dining room.

  ‘Well, chief?’

  And he, surlier than ever, an unpleasant taste of tiredness in his mouth, like after a long train journey, grunted:

  ‘Well, nothing, dammit!’

  8.

  At eleven o’clock the next morning, Maigret pushed open a door, perhaps the hundredth, and this time it was a leather goods shop. He had started at one end of the town at eight o’clock, when the bigger and more elegant establishments are still closed. He entered shops that only the women in the neighbourhood went to. Anyone observing from the outside would see him, too tall and too broad, scraping his head on the brooms and mops hanging from the ceiling, looking around sullenly, waiting his turn, surrounded by bareheaded housewives. They would also note that after the fourth or fifth shop, it was clear that his lips formed the same words each time.

  With the difference that, initially, he had felt obliged to buy something. In the cafés, it was easy: he would drink a glass of white wine. In a grocer’s, he had bought a small packet of pepper, because at that point he thought that he would have a lot of other shops to visit and he couldn’t saddle himself with bulky items.

  In a haberdasher’s with grimy windows, where he had bought a reel of cotton, an elderly spinster sprouting hairs on her chin and exuding a strong, musty smell had given him a funny look.

  ‘Do you know Madame Bellamy?’ recited Maigret.

  ‘The mother or the wife?’

  ‘The wife.’

  ‘I know her and everyone else.’

  ‘Do you sometimes see her walk past in the street?’

  These were the ritual questions he tirelessly asked.

  ‘Now look here, monsieur. I have enough work not to poke my nose into what’s going on in the street. If I have a piece of advice for you, it’s to do the same.’

  When people thought he meant Madame Bellamy the mother, their faces generally became hos
tile. La Popine was right: the elderly lady with a walking stick inspired little affection among the town’s shopkeepers.

  So to keep things simple, he had learned to say:

  ‘Do you know Doctor Bellamy’s wife?’

  And he had stopped making purchases. Either people already knew him by sight, or they assumed he was a police officer.

  He had started out in the northern part of town, in other words, in the port district, combing the streets that Madame Bellamy could have taken to go to the fish market, for example.

  ‘Of course I know her. I often used to see her. She’s a very beautiful woman. I still see her drive past in the car, with her husband—’

  ‘But you don’t see her out and about?’

  Husbands turned to their wives, or wives to their husbands.

  ‘What about you, do you ever see her walking past?’

  They shook their heads. Odette Bellamy did not come to this neighbourhood, or that of Notre-Dame, or the town centre.

  ‘Excuse me, madame, do you know Doctor Bellamy’s wife?’

  He did not only ask the shopkeepers. He asked women in their doorways and even an elderly cripple who must spend his days sitting at his open window.

  It was a painstaking, repugnant task, which made him feel slightly ashamed. He could imagine the comments being made behind his back.

  At ten o’clock, he had covered most of the arc of the circle around the doctor’s house. If Odette Bellamy ever went out alone, on foot, it was now certain that she could only follow Le Remblai.

  He returned there. Most of the shops were expensive-looking.

  ‘Excuse me, madame, do you know …’

  And now, at last, his efforts were rewarded. It began with the cake shop almost next door to the big white house.