But maybe the waffles were intended for the companion that Monsieur Saimbron had spotted.
‘Shall I carry on?’
‘Of course.’
That gave Maigret a little pang. He would have loved to do it himself, just as when he was a humble inspector.
‘Where are you off to, chief?’
‘Down the road to have another look.’
He wasn’t hoping for anything in particular. Simply, as he was no more than a hundred metres away, he wanted to see the place where Monsieur Louis was killed one more time. It was about the same time of day. Today, there was no mist. The alleyway was completely dark nonetheless, and it was even harder to see anything against the glare of the lights in the jeweller’s shop.
Because of the waffles and the memories of fairgrounds that came back to him, Maigret wondered for a moment whether Thouret went into the alley to answer the call of nature, but given that there was a urinal on the street just opposite, that explanation seemed fairly unlikely.
‘If only I could find the woman!’ sighed Neveu, who must have had sore feet from all his traipsing around.
For his part, Maigret would have preferred to find the man who came and sat down on the bench after silently requesting Monsieur Louis’ permission when the latter was having a conversation with the book-keeper. That was why he was looking at the benches one after another. On one of them an old tramp had placed a half-full bottle of red wine. But it wasn’t him. Monsieur Saimbron would have used the word ‘tramp’.
‘If I were you I’d concentrate less on the shops than on the people on the benches.’
He had spent enough time on the beat in his younger days to know that each bench has its regulars, who occupy it at the same time every day.
Passers-by never notice them. No one ever glances much at people sitting on benches. But the occupants of the benches know each other. Wasn’t it by chatting with the mother of a small boy on a bench in Square d’Anvers while waiting for her dentist’s appointment that Madame Maigret, without realizing it, had picked up the trail of a murderer?
‘Do you want me to round them up?’
‘Absolutely not! Just sit on the benches and get to know them.’
‘OK, chief,’ sighed Neveu, who was less than enthused by this prospect. He would rather have done more walking.
He had no idea that Maigret would have swapped places with him at the drop of a hat.
4. A Funeral in the Rain
The next day, a Wednesday, Maigret had to give evidence in court and lost most of the afternoon waiting in the dingy room set aside for witnesses. No one had thought to turn on the heating, so it was freezing in there. Then, when they did turn it on, within ten minutes it became too hot, with a strong odour of unwashed bodies and clothes that never got aired.
The defendant was a certain René Lecœur, who had beaten his aunt to death with a bottle seven months earlier. He was only twenty-two years old, built like a market porter but with the face of a naughty schoolboy. Why didn’t they have better lighting in the rooms of the Palais de Justice? Any light here seemed to be swallowed up by the gloom.
Maigret felt depressed when he finally emerged from the room. A young lawyer who was starting to make a name for himself, not least because of his aggressive manner, was subjecting the witnesses to ferocious grillings, one after the other. When it was Maigret’s turn he tried to establish that the accused had only confessed after being roughly treated at Quai des Orfèvres, which was simply not true. Not only was it untrue, but the lawyer knew it to be untrue.
‘Can the witness tell us how many hours the first interrogation of my client lasted?’
Maigret had come prepared:
‘Seventeen hours.’
‘Without food?’
‘Lecœur refused the sandwiches we offered him.’
The lawyer appeared to be saying to the jurors:
‘You see, gentlemen? Seventeen hours with nothing to eat!’
Yet in that whole time Maigret himself had eaten only two sandwiches, and he hadn’t killed anyone!
‘I put it to the witness that, on 7 March, at three o’clock in the morning, he struck the accused, without any provocation from the latter, who at the time had handcuffs on his wrists.’
‘No.’
‘The witness denies striking the accused?’
‘At one point I boxed his ears, as I might have done to my own son.’
The lawyer was in the wrong. This wasn’t proper procedure. But he was only interested in the reaction of the audience and how this would play in the newspapers.
Now, contrary to court rules, he addressed Maigret directly, his tone smooth but cutting at the same time.
‘Do you have a son, detective chief inspector?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t have any children, do you? . . . I’m sorry . . . I didn’t hear your reply.’
Maigret had to repeat out loud that he had had a daughter, but she did not survive.
That was it. When he left the witness box, he had a drink at the bar in the Palais de Justice and then returned to his office. Lucas, who had just concluded an inquiry that had been running for a fortnight, had joined in the Thouret case.
‘Any news on young Jorisse?’
‘Still nothing.’
Monique Thouret’s lover had not returned home the previous evening; nor had he turned up for work at the bookshop this morning or at midday at the cheap restaurant on Boulevard Sébastopol where he usually had lunch with the young woman.
Lucas was in charge of tracking him down and was in contact with all the railway stations, local police stations and border posts.
As for Janvier, along with four of his colleagues he was continuing to question all the hardware-shop owners in the hope of finding the one who had sold the knife.
‘Has Neveu rung in?’
Maigret really should have got back to the office sooner.
‘He telephoned half an hour ago. He will ring again around six.’
Maigret was feeling a little weary. He couldn’t get the image of René Lecœur sitting in the dock out of his head. Or the voice of the lawyer, the statuesque judges, the crowd in the dimly lit courtroom with its dark wood panelling. That was none of his business. Once a man left the Police Judiciaire and was placed in the custody of the examining magistrate, the inspector’s role was at an end. Sometimes things didn’t turn out quite the way he would have liked. He knew only too well what would happen. If it had been up to him . . .
‘Has Lapointe discovered anything?’
Everyone had ended up with a specific task. Young Lapointe had the job of visiting rented rooms in an ever-increasing circle starting from Boulevard Saint-Martin. Monsieur Louis must have changed his shoes somewhere. Either he was renting a room under his own name or he was using someone else’s lodging, perhaps the woman with the fox-fur stole who had seemed like a legitimate wife and for whom he had bought a ring.
Santoni, for his part, continued to follow Monique, in the hope that Albert Jorisse would attempt to make contact with her or send her a message.
The family had had the corpse picked up the previous evening by an undertaker. The funeral was set for the following day.
More papers to sign, forms to fill in, boring telephone calls to make. He found it strange that not a single person had rung, written or turned up in person with information about Monsieur Louis. It was as if his death had left no trace.
‘Hello!’ said Maigret, picking up the receiver.
Inspector Neveu was on the line. He was in a bar, because there was music in the background, probably a radio.
‘Still nothing definite, chief. I’ve found another three people, one of them an old woman, who spend part of their time on the benches on the boulevards and who remember him. Everyone says the same thing: he was very nice, polite to everyone, always willing to chat. According to the old lady, he would head off afterwards in the direction of Place de la République, but she would quickly lose si
ght of him in the crowd.’
‘She never saw him with anyone else?’
‘Not her. A tramp told me:
‘“He was waiting for someone. When the man arrived, he went off with him.”
‘But he couldn’t give me a description of the man. He just repeated:
‘“Just ordinary-looking, like thousands of others.”’
‘Carry on,’ Maigret sighed.
Then he telephoned his wife to say that he would be home a bit late, went downstairs to get the car and gave the driver the address in Juvisy. A strong wind was blowing. The sky was low with scudding clouds like at the seaside when a storm is brewing. The driver had difficulty finding Rue des Peupliers. This time there was a light on upstairs as well as in the kitchen.
The bell didn’t work. They had disconnected it as a mark of respect. But someone had heard him coming, and the door opened. He saw a woman whom he didn’t recognize, who resembled Madame Thouret but was four or five years older.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret . . .’ he said.
She turned towards the kitchen and called out:
‘Émilie!’
‘I heard. Show him in.’
They received him in the kitchen, because the dining room had been transformed into a chapel of rest. There was a strong smell of flowers and candles permeating the narrow hallway. A group of people were sitting down to a cold supper.
‘Excuse me for disturbing you . . .’
‘Allow me to introduce Monsieur Magnin, my brother-in-law, who is a train inspector.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’
Magnin was rather solemn, but stupid with it. He had a red moustache and a prominent Adam’s apple.
‘You know my sister Jeanne already. This is Céline . . .’
There was barely enough space in the tiny room for them all to squeeze in. Only Monique didn’t stand up but merely looked at the inspector with a fixed stare. She must have been thinking that it was her that he had come to see, to question her about Albert Jorisse, and she was rigid with fear.
‘My brother-in-law Landin, Céline’s husband, will be coming back tonight on the Blue Train. He will just get here in time for the funeral. Would you like to sit down?’
He shook his head.
‘Perhaps you would like to see him?’
She was very keen to show him that everything had been done properly. He followed her into the adjoining room, where Louis Thouret was laid out in an open coffin. She whispered:
‘It’s as if he were sleeping.’
He did what he was expected to do: dipped a box sprig in the holy water, made the sign of the cross, mouthed a few words, then crossed himself again.
‘He never imagined dying . . .’
She added:
‘He loved life so much.’
They left on tiptoes, and she closed the door behind them. The others were waiting for Maigret to leave so that they could return to their meal.
‘Are you coming to the funeral, inspector?’
‘I’ll be there. In fact, that’s the reason for my visit.’
Monique still didn’t stir, but she seemed somewhat relieved to hear him say this. Maigret appeared not to be paying her any attention, so she kept very still, as if this were enough to save her from whatever fate had in store for her.
‘I assume you and your sisters will know most of the people who will be at the funeral, which I won’t.’
‘I get it!’ said Magnin, as if he and Maigret were thinking along the same lines. Turning towards the others, he seemed to be saying: ‘You’ll see!’
‘What I would like, quite simply, is for you to let me know if there is someone whose presence you find strange.’
‘Do you think the killer will be there?’
‘Not necessarily the killer. I’m trying to cover all possibilities. Remember that a part of your husband’s life over the last three years remains unknown to us.’
‘Are you implying there was a woman?’
Not only did her face harden, but those of her two sisters automatically took on the same expression.
‘I’m not implying anything. I’m searching for something. So tomorrow, if you signal to me, I will know what you mean.’
‘Anyone whom we don’t know?’
He nodded, then apologized again for having disturbed them. It was Magnin who saw him out.
‘Do you have any leads?’ he asked, man to man, as if he were talking to a doctor who had just left his patient.
‘No.’
‘Not even an inkling?’
‘Not even that. Good evening.’
This visit had done nothing to lift the weight that had fallen on his shoulders as he waited to testify at the Lecœur trial. On the car ride back to Paris his mind drifted to matters of no consequence. When he had first arrived in the capital at the age of twenty, what had troubled him the most was the constant ferment of the city, the hundreds of thousands of people milling round in search of something or other.
At certain key points this ferment was more perceptible than at others: for example, Les Halles, Place Clichy, the Bastille and Boulevard Saint-Martin, where Monsieur Louis had met his death.
In former days what had struck, you might say even romantically inspired, him about this crowd in perpetual movement were those people who, discouraged, defeated and resigned, had given up on life and been swept along by the flow.
Since then he had come to know them, and they were no longer the ones who made the biggest impression on him; rather, those who did were on the rung above, the decent, honest, inconspicuous types who struggled day in, day out to stay afloat, or to foster the illusion, the belief, that they really existed and that life was worth living.
Every morning for twenty-five years Monsieur Louis had taken the same train with the same travelling companions, his lunch under his arm in an oilcloth, and in the evening he had returned to what Maigret was tempted to call the house of the three sisters, since even if Céline and Jeanne lived on other streets, they were somehow omnipresent, blocking the horizon like a stone wall.
‘Back to the office, chief?’
‘No. Back home.’
That evening, he took Madame Maigret to the cinema on Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, as usual. Arm in arm with his wife, he passed by the alleyway off the Boulevard Saint-Martin both on the way there and on the way back.
‘Are you in a bad mood?’
‘No.’
‘You haven’t said a thing all evening.’
‘I hadn’t realized.’
It started to rain around three or four in the morning, and he could hear the water flowing down the gutters in his sleep. When he was having breakfast it was bucketing down in great squalls, and on the pavement people were clinging to their umbrellas, which constantly threatened to turn inside out.
‘All Saints weather,’ Madame Maigret remarked.
He himself always thought of All Saints as grey, windy and cold but not rainy; he couldn’t put a finger on why.
‘Do you have a lot of work on?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘You would be better off wearing your galoshes.’
He put them on. By the time he had hailed a taxi, his shoulders were soaked, and cold water continued to drip from his hat as he sat in the car.
‘Quai des Orfèvres.’
The funeral was at two o’clock. He dropped by the commissioner’s office but didn’t stay to the end of the briefing. He waited for Neveu, who was meant to come and pick him up. He was taking him on the off chance, since now Neveu knew lots of people from the Saint-Martin neighbourhood by sight, and Maigret wanted to follow this line of inquiry.
‘Still no news of Jorisse?’ he asked Lucas.
For no obvious reason, Maigret was convinced that the young man had not left Paris.
‘You should draw up a list of his friends and acquaintances of the last few years.’
‘I’ve started doing that.’
‘Keep going!’
Neveu appeared in the doorway, soaked to the skin too, and they went off together.
‘Nice day for a funeral!’ grumbled Neveu. ‘I hope they’ve laid on cars.’
‘I very much doubt it.’
At 9.50, they were standing outside the house of mourning. Black curtains embroidered in silver hung in front of the door. People were standing holding umbrellas on the unpaved roadside, where the rain was washing away the yellowish clay and forming rivulets. A few went inside to pay their respects and came out with sombre and self-important expressions, conscious of the duty they had just performed. There must have been around fifty people there, but there were some a bit further away, sheltering in the doorways of their houses. There would be other neighbours too, watching from indoors, who would only emerge at the last minute.
‘Aren’t you going in, chief?’
‘I came yesterday.’
‘It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs in there.’
Neveu wasn’t just talking about the atmosphere today, but about the household in general. Yet thousands of people dreamed of owning a house like this.
‘Why did they decide to live out here?’
‘Because of her sisters and their husbands.’
There were a number of men present in railway uniforms. The marshalling yard was just up the road. Most of the lots were occupied by people with a close or distant connection with the railways.
The hearse arrived first. Then, striding along quickly under his umbrella, a priest in a surplice, preceded by an altar boy carrying a cross.
There was nothing in this street to break the wind, which stuck damp clothes to people’s bodies. The coffin was soon streaming wet. As the family stood waiting in the hallway, Madame Thouret and her sisters whispered to each other. Maybe they didn’t have enough umbrellas? Everyone was dressed in full mourning, including the brothers-in-law and, behind them, the girls, Monique and her three cousins.
That made seven women altogether, and Maigret would swear that the young ones resembled each other as much as their mothers did. It was a family of women, and you got the impression that the men were aware of being in the minority.
The horses snorted. The family took up position behind the hearse, followed by others who must have been friends or neighbours exercising their right to be near the head of the procession.
Maigret and the Man on the Bench Page 6