‘Do you want to speak to me first?’ he asked Neveu.
‘No point. Not letting this one out of my sight for a second.’
Only now did Maigret notice that the man was handcuffed.
He opened the door to his office. The prisoner entered, dragging his feet a little. He smelled of drink. Neveu locked the door behind him and removed the handcuffs.
‘Don’t you recognize him, chief?’
Maigret still couldn’t remember his name, but something suddenly dawned on him. The man looked like a clown without his make-up, with his rubbery cheeks and a wide-mouthed grin that was both sour and comical at the same time.
Who was it in this case who had mentioned a clown’s face? Mademoiselle Léone? Monsieur Saimbron, the old book-keeper? One of them, at least, had seen Monsieur Louis on a bench on Boulevard Saint-Martin or Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle with a companion.
‘Take a seat.’
The man replied like a regular visitor to Quai des Orfèvres:
‘Thanks, chief.’
7. The Raincoat Shop
Jef Schrameck, known as Fred the Clown, also known as the Acrobat, born Riquewihr, Haut-Rhin, sixty-three years ago.
Flushed by his success, Neveu introduced his client like a ringmaster at a circus.
‘Do you remember him now, chief?’
It had happened fifteen years previously, perhaps more. The event took place not far from Boulevard Saint-Martin, somewhere between Rue de Richelieu and Rue Drouot.
‘Sixty-three?’ Maigret repeated, looking at the man, who responded to the implied compliment with a broad grin.
He didn’t seem that old, possibly because he was so thin. In fact, he was ageless. His facial expression in particular wasn’t one of a man of advanced years. Even when he was afraid, as he no doubt was now, he seemed not to take people or himself seriously. His face-pulling had become a tic with him, based on a need to make people laugh.
The surprising thing was that he was already past forty-five years old when he had become famous for a few weeks following the events on the boulevards.
Maigret pressed the buzzer and lifted the receiver of the office intercom.
‘Please bring me the file for Schrameck, Jef Schrameck, born Riquewihr, Haut-Rhin.’
He couldn’t remember how it had all begun. It was at around eight o’clock one evening, and the Grands Boulevards were teeming with people; all the café terraces were packed. It was very early spring, as it was already dark.
Had someone spotted a dim light moving round in one of the office blocks? In any case, the alarm was raised, and the police arrived on the scene. As usual, a group of curious onlookers began to gather, most of whom had no idea what was going on.
No one knew that the show was going to last more than two hours, with moments of high drama and comedy, and that in the end it would attract such a crowd that barriers had to be erected.
Cornered inside the building, the burglar had opened one of the windows and had started to shin his way along the front of the building by hanging on to a drainpipe. No sooner had he established a foothold on a window-sill on the floor above than a policeman appeared, and the man continued on his hazardous climb, accompanied by terrified shrieks from the women down below.
It was one of the most eventful chases in police history. Some officers ran upstairs inside the building, opening windows as they went up, while the man seemed to perform a circus act for his own amusement.
He got to the roof first, a steeply pitched roof, and the policemen didn’t dare to follow him. He was impervious to vertigo. He jumped on to the neighbouring roof, and then from building to building, until he reached the corner of Rue Drouot, where he disappeared through a skylight.
He was lost from view until, a quarter of an hour later, he was spotted on another roof. People started pointing and shouting, ‘There he is!’
No one knew whether he was armed, or what it was he had done. A rumour started going round that he had killed several people.
To cap off the whole exciting spectacle, the fire brigade turned up with their ladders, and, some time afterwards, spotlights were trained on the rooftops.
When he was finally arrested in Rue de la Grange-Batelière, he wasn’t even out of breath. He was quite full of himself and mocked the police. And just as they were bundling him into a car, he slipped like an eel from the grasp of those who had arrested him and managed, God knows how, to make a getaway through the crowd.
It was Schrameck. For days the newspapers talked about nothing else but the man they called the Acrobat, until he was eventually recaptured, quite by chance, at a race-course.
He had started quite young in a circus that travelled round Alsace and Germany. Later, in Paris, he had worked in fairgrounds, apart from a few spells in prison for burglary.
‘I never imagined he’d end up seeing out his years on my patch,’ said Neveu.
Schrameck replied earnestly:
‘I cleaned up my act ages ago.’
‘I’d been told about a tall, thin guy of a certain age who had been seen sitting on the benches with Monsieur Louis.’
Hadn’t someone said to Maigret, ‘The sort of man you see sitting on benches . . .’?
Fred the Clown was one of those people that no one is surprised to see hanging round doing nothing for hours on end, watching passers-by or feeding the pigeons. His complexion was as grey as the paving stones; his expression that of a person who had nothing to do nor anyone to see.
‘Before you question him, I should tell you how I laid hands on him. I went into a bar on Rue Blondel, just a short hop from Porte Saint-Martin. It’s called Chez Fernand and it doubles as a betting shop. Fernand is a former jockey, I know him well. I showed him the picture of Monsieur Louis, and he looked at it as if he recognized him.
‘“Is he one of your customers?” I asked him.
‘“Not him, no. But he has come in once or twice with one of my regulars.”
‘“Who?”
‘“Fred the Clown.”
‘“The Acrobat? I thought he died years ago, or was in prison.”
‘“He’s alive and well and he comes in here every afternoon to have a drink and a bet. Although, having said that, I haven’t seen him for a few days.”
‘“How many days?”
‘Fernand thought for a few moments, then went to check with his wife in the kitchen.
‘“The last time he was in was Monday.”
‘“Was Monsieur Louis with him?”
‘He couldn’t remember, but he was sure that he hadn’t seen the Acrobat since last Monday. Do you see what I’m saying?
‘So I just had to find him. Now I knew where to look. In the end I discovered the name of the woman he had been living with for the last few years, a former street vendor called Françoise Bidou.
‘Just earlier, I learned her address: Quai de Valmy, opposite the canal.
‘I found my man there, hiding in the bedroom, which he hadn’t left since Monday. First thing I did was clap the cuffs on him, so he wouldn’t wriggle out of my grasp.’
‘I’m not as agile as I used to be!’ Schrameck joked.
There was a knock at the door. A thick file with a yellow cover was placed in front of Maigret. It was Schrameck’s life history, or rather the history of his brushes with the law.
In no particular hurry, puffing on his pipe, Maigret leafed through it.
It was the time of day that he liked best for interrogations of this sort. Between midday and two o’clock most of the offices are empty, there aren’t so many comings and goings, and the telephone doesn’t ring so much. Just as at night, you get the feeling of having the place to yourself.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked Neveu.
As the latter didn’t know how to reply, he added:
‘You should go and get a bite to eat. You’ll be taking over from me later on.’
‘OK, chief.’
Neveu left, somewhat reluctantly, and the prisoner watched him go w
ith a mocking look. Then Maigret lit another pipe, placed his large hand on the file, looked Fred the Clown in the eye and said:
‘Just the two of us!’
He felt more at ease interrogating this man than he had Monique. Before he began, however, he took the precaution of locking his door, and he even bolted the door that led through into the inspectors’ room. Seeing him glance at the window, Jef murmured with a comical grimace:
‘Don’t worry. I’m too old to climb along ledges any more.’
‘I guess you probably know why you’re here?’
He was choosing to play the fool.
‘It’s always the usual suspects,’ he complained. ‘It reminds me of the good old days. It’s been a while since it happened to me.’
‘Your friend Louis has been murdered. Don’t look so surprised. You know very well what I’m talking about. You also know that there is every chance of you being accused of the crime.’
‘That would be yet another miscarriage of justice.’
Maigret lifted the phone.
‘Put me through to Chez Fernand on Rue Blondel.’
And when Fernand came to the phone:
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret here. I’m ringing about one of your customers, Jef Schrameck . . . Yes, the Acrobat . . . I want to know if he placed any large bets . . . What’s that? . . . Yes, I understand . . . And recently? . . . Saturday? . . . Thank you . . . No, that will be all for now.’
He seemed satisfied. Jef, on the other hand, looked a little worried.
‘Would you like me to repeat what I’ve just been told?’
‘People say all sorts of things.’
‘All your life you’ve been throwing your money away at the races.’
‘If the government had abolished them, I wouldn’t have been able to.’
‘For several years you have been placing your bets at Fernand’s.’
‘He’s got a licence.’
‘Nevertheless, you had to find the money you bet on the horses somewhere. Until about two and a half years ago you only bet small stakes; sometimes you didn’t even have enough left to pay for your drinks, and Fernand let you put them on the slate.’
‘He shouldn’t have done that. It just encouraged me to come back.’
‘You started placing bigger bets, sometimes some quite sizable sums. Then, a few days later, you’d be broke again.’
‘What does that prove?’
‘Last Saturday you bet a very large sum.’
‘What would you say to the owners, then, when they stake as much as a million on a horse?’
‘Where did the money come from?’
‘I have a wife who works.’
‘As what?’
‘She is a cleaner. She occasionally helps out in one of the bars on the embankment.’
‘Do you take me for a fool?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Monsieur Maigret.’
‘Listen, let’s not waste any more time . . .’
‘I’m in no great hurry . . .’
‘I will explain your situation to you. Several witnesses have seen you in the company of one Monsieur Louis.’
‘A fine gentleman.’
‘Never mind that. This isn’t a new acquaintance. It goes back about two and a half years. At that time Monsieur Louis had no job and he was living hand to mouth.’
‘I know the feeling!’ sighed Jef. ‘It’s a long, hard slog when you’re on your uppers.’
‘I don’t know what you were living on at the time, but I’m willing to believe that it was the money your Françoise earned. You hung around on benches. You bet a few francs on a horse and had a slate in the bars. As for Monsieur Louis, he had to resort to borrowing money from at least two people.’
‘I suppose that proves that there are some poor people on this earth.’
Maigret ignored this. Jef was so used to making people laugh that it had become almost a compulsion of his to play the fool. Patiently, Maigret continued to develop his point.
‘Yet it seems that you both became rich all of a sudden. The investigation will establish this, with the exact dates.’
‘I’m terrible with dates, me.’
‘Since then, you’ve had periods when you’ve gambled hard and other periods when you’ve bought your drinks on credit. The logical conclusion is that you and Monsieur Louis had a way of getting hold of money, lots of money, by some irregular means. We’ll deal with that in due course.’
‘That’s a shame. I’m dying to hear how we did it.’
‘You’ll have that smile wiped off your face soon enough. On Saturday, as I said, you were loaded, but you lost the lot in a few hours. On Monday afternoon your accomplice, Monsieur Louis, was murdered in an alleyway off Boulevard Saint-Martin.’
‘A tragic loss for me.’
‘Have you been up in front of a jury before?’
‘No, just the magistrates’ court. Quite a few times.’
‘Well, juries don’t like jokers, especially one with a record as long as yours. There is a very good chance that they would conclude that you were the only person who knew of all Monsieur Louis’ comings and goings and who had an interest in killing him.’
‘If that’s the case, then they are all idiots.’
‘That’s all I wanted to say to you. It is now twelve thirty. There are just the two of us here in my office. At one o’clock, Examining Magistrate Coméliau will arrive in his chambers, and I will send you to him to explain yourself.’
‘Is he the short dark-haired guy with the toothbrush moustache?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve met him before. He’s a bastard. Tell me, he must be getting on a bit now?’
‘You can ask him his age when you see him.’
‘And if I don’t want to see him?’
‘You know what you have to do.’
Fred the Clown gave a deep sigh.
‘You wouldn’t have a cigarette on you, would you?’
Maigret took a packet from his drawer and handed it to him.
‘Matches?’
He smoked in silence for a moment or two.
‘Don’t suppose you have anything to drink?’
‘Are you going to talk?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’m wondering if I have anything to say.’
This could go on for ever. Maigret knew the type. On a whim, he went and opened the door to the adjoining inspectors’ room.
‘Lucas! Would you nip down to Quai de Valmy and bring in a woman called Françoise Bidou?’
Immediately, the clown squirmed on his chair and raised his hand like a schoolboy.
‘Inspector! Don’t do that!’
‘Are you going to talk?’
‘I think a little glass of something would help me.’
‘Just a moment, Lucas. Don’t go until I tell you.’
And to Jef:
‘Are you afraid of your wife?’
‘You promised me a drink.’
Closing the door again, Maigret fetched the bottle of brandy he always kept in the cupboard and measured out a shot into a tumbler.
‘You’re going to let me drink on my own?’
‘Well?’
‘Ask away. I’d like to point out that I am making no attempt to obstruct the course of justice, as the lawyers put it.’
‘Where did you meet Monsieur Louis?’
‘On a bench on Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle.’
‘How did you make his acquaintance?’
‘The way you make the acquaintance of someone you meet sitting on a bench. I said it felt like spring and he said that it was milder than the previous week.’
‘That was about two and a half years ago?’
‘More or less. I didn’t note the date in my diary. We met each other on the same bench on the days that followed, and he seemed pleased to have someone to talk to.’
‘Did he tell you he was unemployed?’
‘He told me the whole story in the end: how he had worked for the
same company for twenty-five years, how the firm was closed down without notice, and how he hadn’t dared tell his wife, who, between you and me, seems a right harpy, and was pretending that he was still working in the warehouse. I got the impression that it was the first time he had got it off his chest, and he seemed relieved afterwards.’
‘Did he know who you were?’
‘I just told him that I had worked in circuses.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘What do you want to know exactly?’
‘Everything.’
‘First of all, I’d like you to check my file and add up the number of convictions. I need to know whether one more conviction would mean I get transported. That would bother me greatly.’
Maigret did as he asked.
‘Unless we’re talking about murder, you still have two convictions to spare.’
‘That’s what I thought. I wasn’t sure if your total was the same as mine.’
‘Burglary?’
‘It’s more complicated than that.’
‘Who first thought of it?’
‘He did, of course. I’m not cunning enough for that. Have I maybe earned a top-up?’
‘Later.’
‘Later’s a long time. You’ll make me tell you everything so fast it will be garbled.’
Maigret backed down and poured him another drink.
‘Basically it all started with the bench.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Since he spent so much time on the bench – almost always the same one – he began taking notice of all the things going on around him. I don’t know if you are familiar with the raincoat shop on the boulevard?’
‘I know the one.’
‘The bench where Louis used to sit was right opposite it. So, almost without realizing it, he got to know all the comings and goings in that place, the habits of all the staff. That’s what gave him an idea. When you have nothing to do all day, you think, you make plans, sometimes plans you have no intention of ever carrying out. One day he told me about them, just to pass the time. There are always lots of people in that shop. It is full of raincoats of all styles – men’s, women’s, children’s – hanging up in every corner. There is also an upstairs. To the left of the shop, like elsewhere in the neighbourhood, there’s an alleyway leading to a courtyard at the back.’
Maigret and the Man on the Bench Page 11