‘The two brothers locked themselves in a room on the first floor and initially Alfred Meurant’s voice was loud and tough. Although you couldn’t hear the words, it was clear he was angry.
‘Then the other one, the Parisian, began to speak, in a much more muffled voice. He went on for a long time, virtually without stopping, as if he were telling a story he’d rehearsed.
‘The landlady winked at her companions and came to set my place, as if to create a distraction. Then the others ordered aperitifs. Kubik went to talk to Freddo in the kitchen and I didn’t see him again.
‘I suspect he made a run for it as a precaution, because I heard a car engine.’
‘You have no idea what happened upstairs?’
‘Only that they stayed locked inside the room for an hour and a half. In the end, it sounded as if Gaston Meurant, the Parisian, had the upper hand, and it was his brother who spoke in a quiet voice.
‘I’d finished eating by the time they came down. Alfred Meurant looked miserable, as if things hadn’t gone the way he’d wanted, while the other man, on the contrary, looked more relaxed than when he’d arrived.
‘ “You’ll have a drink, won’t you?” suggested Alfred.
‘ “No, thank you.”
‘ “Are you leaving already?”
‘ “Yes.”
‘They both looked at me and frowned.
‘ “I’ll drive you back into town.”
‘ “There’s no need.”
‘ “Don’t you want me to call you a taxi?”
‘ “No, thank you.”
‘They spoke grudgingly, and you could tell that the words were only to fill the silence.
‘Gaston Meurant went out. His brother closed the door behind him, was on the verge of saying something to the landlady and Falconi, but then changed his mind on spotting me.
‘I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t dare telephone the chief to ask for instructions. I thought it best to follow Gaston Meurant. I went outside as if going out for a breath of fresh air after dinner, without taking my haversack.
‘I found my man walking at a steady pace down the road back into town.
‘He stopped for a bite to eat on Boulevard de la République, and then he went to the station to ask about train times. Next, he went back to the Hôtel des Voyageurs, picked up his case and paid his bill.
‘Since then, he’s been waiting. He’s not reading the newspapers, he’s doing nothing, just looking straight ahead, his eyes half-closed. You couldn’t say he was smiling, but he does seem quite pleased with himself.’
‘Wait till he gets on the train and call me back to let me know which carriage he’s in.’
‘OK. Tomorrow morning I’ll make my report to the superintendent.’
Inspector Le Goënec was about to hang up when Maigret had second thoughts.
‘I’d like to make certain that Alfred Meurant doesn’t leave Les Eucalyptus.’
‘Do you want me to go back there? Don’t you think my cover’s blown?’
‘I just need one of your men to keep an eye on the place. I’d also like the telephone to be tapped. If anyone calls Paris, or any other city, I want to be informed as soon as possible.’
The routine began again, in the reverse direction: Marseille, Avignon, Lyon and Dijon were alerted. They were allowing Gaston Meurant to travel alone, like a big boy, but were passing him from hand to hand, as it were.
He wasn’t due to arrive in Paris until eleven thirty.
Maigret went to bed, and felt as if he’d barely slept when his wife woke him, bringing him his first cup of coffee. The sky was clear at last and he could see the sun above the rooftops opposite. People in the street walked with a lighter step.
‘Will you be home for lunch?’
‘I doubt it. I’ll phone you before midday.’
Ginette Meurant hadn’t left the hotel in Rue Delambre. She was still spending most of her time in bed, only going downstairs to eat and to renew her stash of magazines and romantic novels.
‘No news, Maigret?’ inquired the public prosecutor.
‘Nothing specific yet, but I shouldn’t be surprised if there were some developments very soon.’
‘What’s become of Meurant?’
‘He’s on the train.’
‘Which train?’
‘The one from Toulon. He’s on his way back. He went to see his brother.’
‘What happened between them?’
‘They had a long conversation, at first stormy, apparently, and then calmer. The brother isn’t happy. Gaston Meurant, however, is acting like a man who knows where he’s going at last.’
What else could Maigret say? He had nothing precise to tell the prosecutor. For two days he’d been groping around in a sort of fog, but even so, like Gaston Meurant, he had the feeling that something was becoming clearer.
He was tempted to go to the station a little later and wait for the picture-framer himself. But wouldn’t it be better for him to stay at the centre of operations? And, if he followed Gaston Meurant in the street, might he not ruin everything?
He chose Lapointe, knowing that would please him, and then another inspector, Neveu, who hadn’t been involved in the case so far. For ten years, Neveu had worked in the traffic division and had specialized in pickpockets.
Lapointe left for the station unaware that Neveu would shortly be following him.
But first of all, Maigret had to give him precise instructions.
7.
With his pale complexion, ginger hair, blue eyes and mild manner, Gaston Meurant had probably always been shy, but above all he was patient and determined and had worked hard to carve out his own happy little world among Paris’ three million inhabitants.
He had learned his craft to the best of his ability, a delicate craft that demanded discernment and attention to detail, and it is not hard to imagine the satisfaction he must have felt on overcoming the biggest hurdle, the day he had set up his own business, even though it was at the far end of a courtyard.
Was it his shyness, or his caution, the fear of making a mistake, that had made him avoid women for a long time? When being questioned, he had admitted to Maigret that, until meeting Ginette, he had contented himself with little – the minimum – brief brushes with women, which he considered shameful, except for a relationship he’d had at around eighteen with a woman who was much older than him, and which had lasted only a few weeks.
The day when, blushing, he had finally asked a woman to marry him, he was well over thirty and fate had it that she was a girl who, a few months later, told him that she was unable to have children, whereas he’d been waiting impatiently for her to announce a forthcoming birth.
He had not been outraged. He accepted it, just as he accepted that she was so different from the companion of his dreams.
They were a couple, despite everything. He wasn’t alone, even if there wasn’t always a light in the window when he came home in the evening and he was often the one who cooked dinner, and afterwards they had nothing to say to each other.
Her dream had been to live amid the hustle and bustle of her own restaurant, and he had given in, with no illusions, fully aware that the venture could only end in failure.
Then, without showing any bitterness, he had returned to his workshop and his frames, obliged, from time to time, to go and ask his aunt for help.
During those years of marital life, as during the preceding years, he gave no sign of anger or impatience. He followed his path with a quiet doggedness, bowing his large ginger head when necessary, raising it when fate seemed to be smiling on him.
In short, he had built a little world of his own around his love and he clung to it with everything he had.
Did that not explain the hatred that had suddenly hardened in his eyes when Maigret had testified in court, painting a very different picture of Ginette from the one he had created?
Acquitted against his will, so to speak, released because of the suspicion that now hung over
his wife, he had still left the Palais de Justice with her, side by side; and although not arm in arm, they had gone back to their home on Boulevard de Charonne.
But he had not slept in their bed. Twice, three times, she had come to talk to him, trying perhaps to tempt him, but she’d ended up sleeping alone, while he’d spent most of the night awake in the dining room.
At that point, however, he was still fighting, resolutely doubting. Perhaps he would have been capable of believing again. But for how long? Could life have continued as before? Would it not have gone through a series of painful ups and downs before finally falling apart?
Alone and unshaven, he had stood gazing at a hotel façade. To give himself courage, he had drunk three brandies. And then he had faltered before walking through the daunting entrance to Quai des Orfèvres.
Had Maigret been wrong to talk to him so heartlessly, pushing the button that would have been pushed sooner or later?
Maigret could not have acted differently, even had he wanted to. Meurant acquitted, Meurant not guilty meant that there was a man at large who had slit Léontine Faverges’ throat and then suffocated a little four-year-old girl, a devious, cold-blooded killer who had framed another man and had almost succeeded in seeing him convicted.
Maigret had acted in the heat of the moment, suddenly forcing Meurant to open his eyes, to finally face the truth, and it was a different man who had left his office, a man for whom nothing mattered more than his mission.
He had ploughed on, feeling neither hunger nor tiredness, going from one train to another, unable to stop before arriving at his goal.
Did he suspect that Maigret had set up a surveillance network around him, that the police were waiting for him as he passed through the stations and that there was someone constantly tailing him, ready to intervene at the last minute if necessary?
He didn’t appear to be worried about it, convinced that police cunning could not thwart his determination.
There were telephone calls after telephone calls, reports after reports. Lucas had combed through the classified ads in vain. The tapping of Ginette Meurant’s hotel telephone in Rue Delambre had yielded nothing.
The lawyer Lamblin had not put a call through to the south, or to any other city.
In Toulon Alfred Meurant, the brother, had not moved from Les Eucalyptus, nor had he made any telephone calls either.
They were faced with a void, a void in which there was only a solitary, silent man behaving as if in a dream.
At eleven forty Lapointe called from Gare de Lyon.
‘He’s just arrived, chief. He’s eating a sandwich in the buffet. He’s still got his little case. Was it you who sent Neveu to the station?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘I was wondering if you wanted him to relieve me. Neveu’s in the buffet too, right next to Meurant.’
‘Don’t worry about him. Carry on.’
A quarter of an hour later, it was Inspector Neveu’s turn to report back.
‘I’ve done it, chief. I bumped into him on the way out. He didn’t notice anything. He’s got a gun. A large automatic, probably a Smith and Wesson, in the right pocket of his jacket. It’s not too visible under his raincoat.’
‘Has he left the station?’
‘Yes. He got on to a bus and I saw Lapointe jump on behind him.’
‘You can come back.’
Meurant had not visited a gunsmith’s. He must have got his hands on the automatic in Toulon, and it could only have been given to him by his brother.
What exactly had happened between the two men, on the first floor of the bizarre family guesthouse which was a gangsters’ favourite haunt?
Gaston Meurant knew now that his brother had also had intimate relations with Ginette, and yet that wasn’t the reason he’d gone to confront him.
In making the trip to Toulon, had he not been hoping to find out about the short man with very dark hair who, several times a week, had accompanied his wife to Rue Victor-Massé?
Did he have a reason to believe that his brother knew something? And had he finally discovered what he was looking for – a name, a vital clue that the police had been seeking for several months in vain?
It was possible. It was likely, because he had demanded that his brother give him a gun.
If Alfred Meurant had talked, it wasn’t out of affection for his brother, in any case. Was he afraid? Had Gaston threatened him? With some revelation? Or of doing him in one day?
Maigret asked to be put through to Toulon, and managed, not without difficulty, to get hold of Detective Chief Inspector Blanc.
‘It’s me again, old friend. I apologize for all the work I’m giving you. We may need Alfred Meurant any minute. We won’t necessarily be able to locate him when we need him, because I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a sudden urge to go on a trip. So far, I’ve got nothing on him. Could you arrest him on some plausible enough pretext and keep him for a few hours?’
‘Certainly. That’s not difficult. I always have questions to ask that bunch.’
‘Thank you. Try to find out whether he owned a fairly high-calibre automatic and whether it’s still in his room.’
‘Understood. Nothing new?’
‘Not yet.’
Maigret almost added that it wouldn’t be long. He had just told his wife not to expect him home for lunch and, loath to leave his office, had ordered sandwiches from the Brasserie Dauphine.
He was still sorry he wasn’t out there following Gaston Meurant himself. He smoked pipe after pipe, impatient, constantly glancing at the telephone. The sun was shining and the autumnal leaves on the trees gave the Seine riverbanks a festive look.
‘Is that you, chief? I’ve got to be quick. I’m at Gare de l’Est. He’s put his case in left-luggage and has just bought a ticket to Chelles.’
‘In Seine-et-Marne?’
‘Yes. The slow train leaves in a few minutes. I’d better go. I presume you want me to stay on his tail?’
‘Of course!’
‘No specific instructions?’
What was in the back of Lapointe’s mind? Had he suspected the reason for Neveu’s presence at Gare de Lyon?
Maigret grunted:
‘Nothing particular. Do as you think best.’
He knew Chelles, some twenty kilometres from Paris, between the canal and the Marne. He remembered a huge caustic soda factory in front of which barges were always being loaded and where once, when he was passing through the area on a Sunday morning, he had seen an entire flotilla of canoes.
The temperature had risen over the past twenty-four hours, but the maintenance man in charge of the Police Judiciaire heating system hadn’t regulated the boiler and the heat in Maigret’s office was suffocating.
He ate a sandwich standing at the window, vaguely staring out at the Seine. He took the occasional sip of beer and kept glancing restlessly at the telephone.
The train, which stopped at every station, would take at least half an hour, perhaps an hour, to reach Chelles.
The inspector keeping watch on Rue Delambre was the first to call.
‘No change, chief. She’s just come out and she’s having lunch in the same restaurant, at the same table, as if she were already a regular.’
As far as they could tell, she was still strong-willed enough not to make contact with her lover.
Was he the person who, back in February, before the double murder of Rue Manuel, had given her instructions as to what to do afterwards? Was she afraid of him?
Which of them had had the idea of the telephone call that had led to Gaston Meurant being charged?
At first, Meurant had not come under suspicion. He had gone to the police spontaneously and presented himself as the nephew of Léontine Faverges, whose death he had learned about from the newspapers.
There had been no reason to search his home.
But someone had grown impatient. Someone was in a hurry to see the investigation take a particular direction.
Three or four
days had passed before the anonymous telephone call came, revealing that there was a certain blue suit with bloodstains on it hanging in a wardrobe at Boulevard de Charonne.
Lapointe still gave no sign of life. Now it was Toulon calling.
‘He’s in my inspectors’ office. They’re asking him a few trivial questions and we’ll keep him until we hear back from you. We’ll find some pretext or other. We’ve searched his room but found no gun. However, my men state that he was in the habit of carrying an automatic, which he’s been sent down for twice.’
‘Has he had other convictions?’
‘Never anything major, other than on charges of procuring. He’s too shrewd.’
‘Thank you. I’ll speak to you later. I’m hanging up because I’m expecting an important call any moment now.’
He went into the adjacent office where Janvier had just arrived.
‘You’d better be ready to leave and make sure there’s a free car in the yard.’
He began to regret not having told Lapointe the entire story. He recalled a film about Malaya in which an indigenous character enters in a frenzied state, suddenly possessed by a diabolical fury. Wielding a dagger, he walks straight ahead, his pupils dilated, killing everything that crosses his path.
Gaston Meurant was neither Malay nor in a frenzied state. Even so, for more than twenty-four hours now, had he not been on a mission, and was he not capable of dispatching anything that got in his way?
The telephone, at last. Maigret leaped towards the desk.
‘Is that you, Lapointe?’
‘Yes, chief.’
‘In Chelles?’
‘Further. I’m not exactly sure where I am. Between the canal and the Marne, around two kilometres from Chelles. I’m not certain because we took a roundabout route.’
‘Did Meurant appear to know the way?’
‘He didn’t ask anyone. He must have been given precise directions. He stopped every so often to identify a crossroads and eventually took a dirt track that leads down to the river. At the intersection of this path and the old tow-path, which is now just a footpath, there’s an inn, where I’m calling you from. The landlady warned me that out of season she doesn’t serve food and doesn’t rent out rooms. Her husband is the ferryman. Meurant walked past the place without stopping.
Maigret in Court Page 10