Félicie

by Georges Simenon

‘She never saw us!’

  This time she is sure of herself.

  ‘So you made sure you kept out of sight?’

  Here is the house, which they see just as a large car from Criminal Records drives off, leaving Lucas standing at the door like some upright, law-abiding householder.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Photographers, experts …’

  ‘Of course! Fingerprints!’

  She is well informed. She has read lots of novels, including detective stories!

  ‘How’re things, Lucas?’

  ‘Not much to report, sir. The intruder wore rubber gloves, just as you said. So they just took casts of his shoe-prints. Brand-new pair. Hadn’t been worn more than three days.’

  Félicie has gone up to her room to change out of her mourning clothes and remove her veil.

  ‘Anything new with you, sir? It’s as if …’

  He knows him so well! At times Maigret has a way of becoming expansive; he beams and seems to suck in life through his pores. He looks around him now at these surroundings which have grown so familiar that with unconscious mimicry he begins to think and act like the locals.

  ‘Fancy a drop of something?’

  He goes to the sideboard in the dining room, takes out the part-full decanter, pours out two liqueur glasses and then stands in the doorway. overlooking the garden.

  ‘Here’s to you! … Ah, Félicie, tell me …’

  She has come back down, is wearing an apron and starts busying around making sure the men from Criminal Records haven’t left her kitchen in a mess.

  ‘Would you be kind enough to make a cup of coffee for my friend Lucas? I must go round to the Anneau d’Or, but I shall leave you in the sergeant’s hands. I’ll see you this evening.’

  He is expecting that suspicious, anxious glare.

  ‘I really am going to the Anneau d’Or.’

  And so he is, but not for long. Since there is no taxi at Orgeval, he asks the garage mechanic, Louvet, to drive him to Paris in his van.

  ‘I need to go to Les Ternes. Go along Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.’

  There is no one in the restaurant when he marches in, and the waiter must have been taking a nap somewhere in the back, because he emerges yawning, with his hair ruffled.

  ‘Do you know the address of the man to whom you gave a note from the lady who was with me earlier on?’

  The fool thinks he is dealing with a jealous husband or an angry father. He denies everything, starts getting flustered. Maigret shows him his warrant card.

  ‘I don’t know his name, that’s the truth. He works in this area, but I don’t think he lives around here, because he only comes in at lunchtime.’

  Maigret has no intention of waiting until tomorrow.

  ‘Do you know what he does?’

  ‘Wait a moment. One day I overheard him talking with the boss … I’ll go and see if he’s still in.’

  Obviously, the place is dedicated to the patron saint of the siesta. The landlord appears minus his collar and pushes his untidy hair back with one hand.

  ‘Number 13? He’s in leathers and furs. He told me all about it one day, though in connection with what I couldn’t say. He works for a firm on Avenue de Wagram.’

  With the help of a phone book, Maigret soon comes up with Gellet & Mautoison, Leathers and Furs, Import-Export, 17A Avenue de Wagram. He pays them a call. The clack of typewriters in offices which are darkened by green-tinted windows on which the names of the owners, reading from inside, are reversed.

  ‘You’ll be wanting Monsieur Charles. One moment.’

  He is led through a maze of corridors and stairs which all reek of untreated fleeces, all the way to a small office under the eaves. On the door is a sign which reads: ‘Stationery’.

  There he is, Monsieur 13, looking greyer than ever in his long grey overall, which he wears for work. He gives a start when he sees Maigret walk into his private sanctuary,

  ‘Can I help you? …’

  ‘Police Judiciaire. Nothing to worry about. Just a few simple questions to ask you …’

  ‘I don’t see …’

  ‘But you do see, Monsieur Charles, you see very well. Show me the note the waiter gave you earlier this afternoon.’

  ‘I swear …’

  ‘Don’t swear, or I’ll be forced to arrest you immediately as an accomplice to murder.’

  The man blows his nose noisily, and not as a way of playing for time. He has a permanent cold in the head – hence the thick overcoat and muffler.

  ‘You put me in an embarrassing position …’

  ‘But much less embarrassing for you than the one you will land yourself in if you refuse to answer my questions truthfully.’

  Maigret is using his big voice, he is coming on tough, as Madame Maigret would say, who always finds it very amusing, because she knows him better than anyone.

  ‘Look, inspector, I never thought that what I did …’

  ‘First, let me see the note.’

  The man does not produce it from his pocket but has to climb a ladder to retrieve it from the top of a set of shelves where he had hidden it behind a stack of headed stationery. He does not return with just the note but with a revolver, which he holds carefully, like a man who is terrified of guns.

  Please, don’t say anything, ever, for whatever reason. Throw you know what in the Seine. It’s a matter of life and death.

  Maigret smiles at these last words, which are pure Félicie. Didn’t she say exactly the same thing to Louvet, the garage mechanic from Orgeval?

  ‘When I noticed …’

  ‘You mean when you noticed that you had this gun in the pocket of your overcoat?’

  ‘You know? …’

  ‘You’d just got on the Métro train. You were crushed up against a young woman in full mourning, and just as she was making for the door you felt something heavy being slipped into your pocket.’

  ‘I didn’t realize until afterwards.’

  ‘And you were scared.’

  ‘I’ve never handled a gun in my life. I didn’t even know if it was loaded. I still don’t …’

  To the horror of the stationery clerk, Maigret releases the cartridge clip, from which there is one bullet missing.

  ‘But because you remembered the girl in the mourning weeds …’

  ‘At first, I thought I should hand this … this object in to the police …’

  Monsieur 13 is getting rattled.

  ‘You are the susceptible type, Monsieur Charles. Women unnerve you, don’t they? I’d bet that you’ve never had much to do with them.’

  A bell rings. The clerk gazes in a panic at a panel fixed to the front of his desk.

  ‘That’s my boss. He wants me … Can I …’

  ‘Yes, go! I know everything I wanted to know.’

  ‘But that young woman … Tell me … Did she really …’

  A shadow appears in Maigret’s eyes and then is gone.

  ‘All in good time, Monsieur Charles. Now hurry up. Your boss is getting impatient.’

  For the bell is ringing again, in the most self-important way.

  A little later, the inspector barks to a taxi-driver: ‘Gastinne-Renette, the gunsmith.’

  So over a period of three days, feeling that her every move was being watched, that the house and the garden were about to be searched with a fine-tooth comb, Félicie has kept the revolver on her person! He pictures her in the front seat of the van. The road is not yet quiet enough. Maybe the vehicle is bei
ng followed. Louvet would notice if she … Wait for Paris …

  At Porte Maillot, an inspector picks up her trail. To give herself time to think she goes into a cake shop, where she stuffs herself full of cream cakes. And a glass of port … Perhaps she doesn’t like port but it ranks as one of the rare, rich things like the grapes and champagne which she took to the hospital. … Make for the Métro … Not enough people about at this time of day. … She waits … The inspector is there. He never takes his eyes off her.

  Eventually six o’clock comes round. People crowd on to the trains. The passengers are packed close together … The heaven-sent overcoat with the gaping pockets.

  Such a shame that Félicie cannot see Maigret as the taxi ferries him to the expert gunsmith. If, perhaps for the space of a second, she could forget the scares and panics, would she feel a sense of pride as she reads the admiration in the inspector’s expression?

  6. Maigret Stays Put

  How many million times has he trudged heavily up the wide, dusty staircase of police headquarters in Quai des Orfèvres, where the wooden treads always creak faintly under the soles of his shoes and lethal draughts lurk all through winter? Maigret has some ingrained habits, one of which, for instance, consists of turning as he reaches the last few steps and looking back down the stairwell behind him. Another, when he starts plodding along the high, wide corridor of the Police Judiciaire, requires him to glance casually into what he calls the lantern. Situated to the left of the staircase, it is actually the glass-walled waiting room. Inside are a table covered with green cloth, green armchairs and on the walls black frames containing in small round mounted photographs of policemen who have died in the line of duty.

  The lantern is crowded, although it is already five in the afternoon. Maigret is so preoccupied that for a moment he forgets that these people are here because they are part of his inquiries. He recognizes several faces. Someone bears down on him.

  ‘Ah, inspector! How much longer is this going to take? Isn’t there any way of jumping the queue?’

  The cream of Place Pigalle is assembled here, summoned at his order by one of his inspectors.

  ‘You know me, don’t you? You know I’m going straight and that I wouldn’t get myself mixed up in anything like this. I already wasted the afternoon …’

  Maigret, broad-backed, walks away. As he goes he nudges open, seemingly by accident, two or three of the doors which line up as far as the eye can see. He reigns supreme at Quai des Orfèvres, which he knows like the back of his hand. Interviews are taking place in every available space, even in his own office, where Rondonnet, a new man, is sitting in Maigret’s own chair, smoking a pipe that looks exactly like his. He has carried imitation to the point of having beers sent up from the Brasserie Dauphine. In the hot seat is a waiter from the Pelican. Rondonnet winks at Maigret, abandons his informant for a moment and joins the inspector in the corridor, where so many scenes like this have been enacted.

  ‘There’s something going on, sir. I’m not yet sure what exactly. You know how it works … I’m deliberately letting them stew in the lantern. I’ve a feeling they’re all sticking to the same story. They know something … Have you seen the commissioner? Apparently he’s been trying to get hold of you by phone for the last hour … Oh, by the way, there’s a message here for you …’

  He goes back inside and looks on the desk. It’s from Madame Maigret.

  Élise has just arrived from Épinal with her husband and the children. We’ll all be eating together here, at home. Do try to be back. They’ve brought mushrooms.

  Maigret won’t be there. His mind is elsewhere. He is anxious to try out an idea which he had earlier while waiting for the results of the ballistics tests carried out on the premises of Monsieur Gastinne-Renette. He was walking up and down in a basement, marking time in one of the shooting galleries where a young couple – newlyweds – who were about to embark on their honeymoon in Africa were trying out various kinds of fearsome guns.

  Once more he was transported back to Pegleg’s house. Once again he was – mentally – climbing up the polished stairs when, still in his head, he suddenly paused on the landing, hesitated between the two doors and then remembered that there were three rooms.

  ‘Good God!’

  After that he was in an even greater hurry to get back to where he was almost certain he would make a breakthrough. He already knew what the result of the ballistics test would be: he was sure that old Lapie had been killed by the gun he had recovered in Avenue de Wagram. A Smith & Wesson. Not a toy. Not the kind of gun bought by amateurs, but a serious weapon, the tool of the professional.

  A quarter of an hour later, old Monsieur Gastinne-Renette himself confirmed his theory.

  ‘Absolutely right, detective chief inspector. I’ll send you a detailed report this evening, with enlargements of the photographs.’

  Even so, Maigret had wanted to call in at Quai des Orfèvres to make sure that nothing new had turned up. Now he knocks on the commissioner’s baize door and enters.

  ‘Ah! There you are, Maigret! I was beginning to be afraid of not reaching you by phone. Was it you who sent Dunan to Rue Lepic?’

  Maigret had forgotten all about this. Yes, it was. To be on the safe side. He sent Dunan to do a thorough search of Jacques Pétillon’s room at the Hôtel Beauséjour.

  ‘He phoned in earlier. It seems that someone got there before him. He wanted to see you as soon as possible. Are you going over there?’

  Maigret nods. He is heavy, sullen. He hates the idea that the thread of his thoughts is about to be interrupted. Those thoughts centre on Jeanneville, not Rue Lepic.

  As he emerges from the Police Judiciaire, yet another man runs after him, one of those corralled in the glass cage.

  ‘Isn’t there some way I can be seen now? I’ve arranged to meet someone …’

  He shrugs his shoulders.

  Not long after this, a taxi drops him in Place Blanche. As he is about to get out on to the pavement, he suddenly loses his momentum. The square is brimming with sunshine. The terrace of a large café is alive with customers, and it is as if people have nothing better to do than sit at tables, drink cool beer or aperitifs and allow their eyes to linger on all the pretty women who pass by.

  For a moment, Maigret envies them. He thinks of his wife, who is at this moment being reunited with her sister and brother-in-law in their apartment in Avenue Richard Lenoir. He thinks of the mushrooms simmering gently, giving off an aroma of garlic and damp forest. He loves mushrooms.

  He too would like to sit down at the terrace of that café. He hasn’t slept enough these last few nights, he’s been snatching odd meals, drinking indiscriminately, always on the hoof, and has the feeling that the damned job he has chosen to do makes him live other people’s lives instead of quietly living his own. Fortunately in a few years he will be able to retire. Then he will wear a large straw hat, cultivate his garden, a garden as manicured as old Lapie’s, with a wine store to which he will wend his way from time to time and take a cooling draught.

  ‘Give me a beer, and make it quick.’

  He hardly takes time to sit down. He sees Inspector Dunan, who has been watching out for him.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you, sir. You’ve got to see …’

  Back there, Félicie is most likely cooking her supper on the gas stove, with the kitchen door open to the vegetable patch now gilded by the rays of the setting sun.

  He strides into the lobby of the Hôtel Beauséjour, which is squeezed between a pork-butcher’s and a shoe shop. In the office, behind a small wind
ow, an enormously fat man is sitting in a Louis XV elbow chair next to the key rack, with his dropsical legs soaking in an enamel bucket.

  ‘I can assure you it wasn’t my fault. If you don’t believe me, you can check with Ernest. He’s the one who showed them up.’

  Ernest, the porter, is even more in need of sleep than Maigret, for he works both nights and days, rarely sleeping more than two hours at a stretch. He explains in a drawling voice:

  ‘It was early in the afternoon. At that time of day, we only get the drop-ins, if you take my meaning. All the rooms on the first floor are set aside for the trade. Usually we know all the girls. As they walk past they call out:

  ‘“Going up to number 8 …”

  ‘And when they come down they get their percentage, because we give them a cut of one franc on the room …

  ‘Now, as I said at the time, I didn’t know that one. Brunette, not too shop-soiled. She waited in the corridor to be given a key.’

  ‘What about the man who was with her?’ asks Maigret.

  ‘Couldn’t say. We don’t look too closely, you know, because they don’t like it. Most of the time they’re a bit shy. Some deliberately look away or pretend to be wiping their noses; in winter they turn up the collars of their overcoats. He was just like all the rest. I didn’t notice anything special about him. I showed them up to number 5, which was free.’

  A couple pass by. A voice says:

  ‘Number 9 all right, Ernest?’

  The old man with the dropsical legs checks the key rack and replies with an affirmative growl.

  ‘That’s Jaja. She’s a regular … What was I saying? … Oh yes. The man came down first after about a quarter of an hour. It’s almost always the same. I didn’t see the woman leave and ten minutes later at most I went up to the room, which was empty, and tidied it up …

  ‘“She must have gone without me noticing,” I said to myself.

  ‘But just then a lot of clients arrived, and I thought no more about it. It was a good half-hour later that I was amazed to see the woman walk out behind my back.