Maigret at the Coroner's

by Georges Simenon

  ‘You spoke to him about it.’

  ‘No. I made sure he wouldn’t be next to her.’

  His friend Mullins was as tall as he was, also dark-haired, a fellow whom girls must have thought good-looking and who vaguely resembled some film star, although it was hard to say which one.

  ‘What happened at one in the morning?’

  ‘We went to Tony’s place. Tony Lacour, the musician.’

  The man must have been in the courtroom, but Maigret didn’t know what he looked like.

  ‘Who paid for the two bottles of whisky you took away with you?’

  ‘I think Wo Lee bought one of them.’

  ‘Had he been drinking with you throughout the evening?’

  ‘No, sir. Corporal Wo Lee does not drink or smoke. He insisted on paying for something.’

  ‘How many rooms are there in the musician’s apartment?’

  ‘… A bedroom … a small living room … a bathroom and a kitchen.’

  ‘What room were you and the others in?’

  ‘All of them, sir.’

  ‘In which room did you quarrel with Bessie?’

  ‘The kitchen. We weren’t quarrelling. I caught Bessie drinking whisky out of the bottle. It wasn’t the first time that had happened.’

  ‘You mean, not the first time that evening?’

  ‘I mean that she’d done it other times before July 27. I didn’t want her drinking too much because afterwards she’d be sick.’

  ‘Bessie was alone in the kitchen?’

  ‘She was with him.’

  He jerked his chin towards Sergeant Mullins.

  And now Maigret, who had been sluggish and somnolent, Maigret, who knew nothing about this case, began opening his mouth at times as if a question were burning his lips.

  ‘Who suggested driving to Nogales to spend the rest of the night there?’

  ‘Bessie.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘Around three in the morning. Maybe two thirty.’

  Nogales was the border town where Harry Cole wanted to take Maigret. Tucson’s bars close at one a.m., but people can drink all night long on the other side of the fence.

  ‘Who got into your car?’

  ‘Bessie and my four pals.’

  ‘Bessie’s brother didn’t go with you? Or the musician, or Erna Bolton, or Maggie Wallach either?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You don’t know what they did?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘When you set out, where were you all sitting in the car?’

  ‘Bessie was up front, between me driving and Sergeant Mullins. The other three were in the back seat.’

  ‘Didn’t you stop the car shortly before crossing the city limits?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you asked Bessie to sit elsewhere. Why?’

  ‘So she wouldn’t be next to Dan Mullins any more.’

  ‘You had her switch places with Corporal Van Fleet and sit in the back. It was fine with you that she’d be behind your back, in the dark, with the other two?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Suddenly, without any warning, the coroner announced brusquely, ‘Recess!’

  He rose and headed towards the neighbouring office marked ‘private’ on the frosted-glass door. Ezekiel pulled an enormous pipe from his pocket and, as he lit it, he shot Maigret a funny little look.

  Everyone left the courtroom: the jurors, the Air Force men, the women, the few curious spectators.

  The room was on the first floor of a vast building in the Spanish Colonial style, with colonnades around a patio. The jail was in one wing, while the other housed the various administrative services of the county.

  The five Air Force men went to sit on a bench by the colonnade, and Maigret noticed that they were not talking among themselves. It was extremely hot. In one corner of the arcade there was a red machine where people were dropping nickels into a slot to get a bottle of Coca-Cola.

  Almost everyone was going there, including the grey-haired gentleman who must have been the district attorney. They were all drinking casually from the bottle, then putting the empties into a bottle crate.

  Maigret felt a little like a boy at his first playtime in a new school, but he had stopped hoping that Harry Cole would soon come and get him.

  He had never been in a courtroom before without a jacket, and this clothing question had been a problem. After crossing a certain line, somewhere around Virginia, he had understood that he could no longer spend his days in a jacket and detachable collar.

  And all his life, he had worn braces. His trousers, tailored in France, came halfway up his chest.

  He no longer remembered in which city one of his colleagues had marched him off to a shop and had him buy a pair of those lightweight trousers he saw all the men wearing out here, and a leather belt sporting a large silver steer-head buckle.

  Other, more flamboyant customers, fresh from parts east, would dash to the store to emerge decked out head-to-toe as cowboys.

  Maigret noticed that two jurors, even though they looked fairly unadventurous, were wearing high-heeled, colourfully decorated boots under their trouser legs.

  The swing-out cylinder revolvers embellishing the belts of the sheriffs fascinated Maigret; they were exactly like those he’d seen in Westerns since he was a child.

  ‘Members of the jury! Let’s go!’ yelled Ezekiel unceremoniously, like a teacher collecting his pupils.

  He clapped his hands and then, keeping a sly eye on Maigret’s pipe, he tapped out his own against his heel.

  Maigret no longer felt like such a greenhorn. He returned to his seat, the only difference being that Harold Mitchell, the brother with the boil below his ear, and Erna Bolton, whom he had unwittingly separated, were now sitting side by side, talking quietly.

  At this point, he did not yet know if, in this tale of beer, whisky and weekly sex, there was also a dead body. What he did know more or less, because he had attended some in England, was how a coroner’s inquest worked.

  Quietly, almost timidly, Sergeant Ward had returned to his chair. Ezekiel was back wrestling with the ceiling fan and with an air of indifference, the coroner picked up where he had left off.

  ‘The first time you stopped the car beyond the city limits was about eight miles out, just beyond the municipal airport. Why?’

  Maigret could not follow, at first. Luckily, Ward’s voice was so low that he was made to repeat his answer, and the big fellow’s blush provided a clue.

  ‘Latrine duty, sir.’

  Perhaps he could not think of any other polite way of saying that they had had to pee.

  ‘Everyone got out?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I walked off, ten yards or so.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘No, sir. With him!’

  Again he pointed out Mullins, against whom he seemed to hold a grudge.

  ‘You don’t know where Bessie went during this time?’

  ‘I suppose she went off as well.’

  It was hard not to think about the twenty beers they had each had.

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘Between three and three thirty in the morning, I guess. I don’t precisely know.’

  ‘Did you see Bessie when you got back to the car?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And Mullins?’

  ‘He showed up a few moments later.’

  ‘From which direction?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What did you
say to your friends?’

  ‘I said, “To hell with her! That’ll teach her a good lesson!”’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that had already happened before.’

  ‘What had happened before?’

  ‘That she’d left me without any warning.’

  ‘And you turned the car around?’

  ‘Yes. I drove about a hundred yards back in the direction of Tucson, then stopped and got out again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I figured she’d try to get back to the car and I wanted to give her a chance.’

  ‘Was she drunk?’

  ‘Yes, sir. But that had happened before, too. She still knew what she was doing.’

  ‘Where did you go after leaving the car?’

  ‘I walked towards the railway tracks that run parallel to the highway, about fifty yards away, in the desert.’

  ‘Did you climb up on the tracks?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I went about a hundred yards along it and must have stopped close to the place where Bessie had left us. I was calling her name.’

  ‘Loudly?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t see her. She didn’t answer. I thought she wanted to make me mad.’

  ‘And you returned to your car. Didn’t your friends say anything when they saw you start the engine and drive off to Tucson without bothering about her any more?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Do you consider this the act of a gentleman, abandoning a woman in the desert in the middle of the night?’

  Ward made no reply. He had a low forehead, and Maigret was beginning to find that his heavy eyebrows gave him a mulish look.

  ‘Did you go directly back to your base?’

  Davis-Monthan, one of the main Air Force bases for B-29s, is about ten kilometres from Tucson, off in a different direction from the highway to Nogales.

  ‘No, sir. I left three of my pals in town, near the bus station.’

  ‘You kept one with you. Who?’

  ‘Sergeant Mullins.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to look for Bessie.’

  ‘You drove back along the highway?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I stopped more or less where we parked the first time.’

  ‘Did you go back to the railway tracks?’

  A rather long silence.

  ‘No. I don’t believe so. I don’t remember having got out of the car.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I woke up at the wheel with the car turned towards Tucson, and there was a telegraph pole in front of me. I remember the pole and a nearby cactus.’

  ‘Was Mullins still with you?’

  ‘He was sleeping next to me, his chin on his chest.’

  ‘So, as I understand it, you have no recollection of what happened before you woke up in front of the telegraph pole?’

  When Ward’s lips quivered, Maigret knew that he was about to say something important.

  ‘No, sir. I had been drugged.’

  ‘You mean to say that you weren’t drunk?’

  ‘I have often drunk as much as that and even more. I have never passed out. No one has ever drunk me into a stupor. I know my capacity. On that night, I’d been drugged.’

  ‘According to you, someone might have put something in your drink?’

  ‘Or in a cigarette. When I woke up, I reached automatically for my cigarettes in my pocket. I found Camels. Well, I only smoke Chesterfields. I was smoking a cigarette from that pack when I passed out – for the second time.’

  ‘With Mullins right there.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you suspect Mullins of having slipped some drugged cigarettes into your pocket?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Did you tell him so when you awakened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘No. I drove the car home. I live in town with my wife and children. Mullins came up to the apartment. I tossed him a pillow so that he could lie down on the couch. I went to sleep.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps an hour … At six a.m. I went to the base with him to go on duty and I got my aircraft in flying condition.’

  ‘What does your job entail?’

  ‘I’m a mechanic. I safety-check the aircraft before take-off and I remain on the airfield.’

  ‘What did you do after that?’

  ‘I left the base at around eleven that morning.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘With Dan Mullins.’

  ‘When did you learn of the death of Bessie Mitchell?’

  ‘At three that afternoon.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘In a bar on Fifth Avenue. I was having a glass of beer with Mullins.’

  ‘Had you drunk a lot of beer that morning?’

  ‘Ten or twelve glasses. A sheriff came in and asked me if I was Sergeant Ward. I said I was, and he asked me to follow him.’

  ‘You did not yet know that Bessie was dead?’

  ‘I did not, sir.’

  ‘You did not know that your three friends, whom you’d left in front of the bus station, had taken a taxi back along the highway to Nogales as soon as you’d left them?’

  ‘I did not, sir.’

  ‘You didn’t see the taxi along the way? You neither saw nor heard a train coming from Nogales?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘At the base, that morning, you met none of those three friends?’

  ‘I ran into Sergeant O’Neil.’

  ‘He said nothing to you?’

  ‘I don’t remember his exact words. They were something like, “As for Bessie, that’s all OK.”’

  ‘What did you make of that?’

  ‘That she’d probably caught a ride home by hitchhiking.’

  ‘You didn’t go to her place that day?’

  ‘Yes, I did. When I left the base, at eleven. Erna told me that Bessie hadn’t come home yet.’

  ‘This was after Sergeant O’Neil told you that everything was OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did that not seem contradictory to you?’

  ‘I thought that she had gone someplace else.’

  ‘You did say earlier that you intended to obtain a divorce in order to marry Bessie.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You state positively that you did not see her again after you walked away from the car with Sergeant Mullins?’

  ‘Not alive, no.’

  ‘You saw her again when she was dead?’

  ‘At the morgue, when the sheriff drove me there.’

  ‘That first time you stopped, Sergeant Mullins was not in the car when you got back behind the wheel and he only reappeared a few moments later, correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Any questions, counsellor?’

  The grey-haired attorney shook his head.

  ‘Any questions, members of the jury?’

  Same reaction from the five men and the pudgy woman who, anticipating what the coroner was about to say, was already getting out her knitting.

  ‘Recess!’

  Ezekiel lit his pipe, Maigret lit his. Everyone made a beeline for the arcade and rummaged through their pockets for nickels for the red Coca-Cola machine.

  Some people, however, doubtless habitués, went through a mysterious door, and Maigret noticed when they reappeared that they had alcohol on their breaths.

  Deep down, he was not yet too sure h
ow real everything around him was. The old black juror with close-cropped hair and steel-framed glasses looked smilingly at him, as if they were already chums, and Maigret smiled back.

  2. At the Head of the Class

  Among the regular customers in a café, particularly out in the provinces, occasionally you see someone who has wandered in because he has an appointment, or a train to catch; sitting on a banquette, drowsy and bored, he keeps a vague eye on the card game in progress at the neighbouring table.

  He is obviously unfamiliar with the game, but soon, intrigued, there he is, trying to figure it out. Little by little, he leans in to catch a glimpse of the cards in everybody’s hands. Depending on the plays, now he is giving signs of approval or impatience, and the moment comes when it is all he can do to keep from intervening.

  On that particular afternoon, Maigret saw himself as a little like that intruder in the provincial café, and this bothered him a bit. It was stronger than he was, though: he was hooked. He was in on the game. Already, during the interrogation of Sergeant Ward, he had been growing restless on his bench. There were questions the greenest of his inspectors would not have failed to ask but which had evidently never occurred to the little judge, so meticulous in his gestures and attire.

  Of course, a coroner’s inquest is not a trial. What the jurors had to decide was whether they thought Bessie Mitchell had died a natural death, an accidental death, or a death due to a malicious or criminal act.

  The rest, in the case of those last two hypotheses, would come later, before a different jury.

  • • •

  ‘Tell us what happened on July 27, after seven thirty that evening.’

  Wasn’t it already rather naive to have allowed the four young men to hear their friend’s testimony?

  Sergeant O’Neil was smaller and stockier than the others. His light hair was wavy, slightly reddish. With his blunt features, he rather resembled a peasant from the north of France, a peasant well washed and polished to a shine.

  Well washed they all were, along with almost everyone in the courtroom. These people had a look of health and cleanliness rarely seen in a European crowd.

  ‘We went to the Penguin and did some drinking.’

  This fellow was the good schoolboy, not necessarily the class brain, but the hardest worker. He looked up at the ceiling before answering, as if taking time to think in class, then replied slowly in an even, neutral voice while turning obediently towards the jury.