‘Anything against him?’
‘No, nothing. He’s from a good family in Milan. His father’s a big shot in vermouth, and Marco represents the brand throughout France. He’s seen in the bars on the Champs-Élysées and in all the top restaurants, always with pretty girls. A few months ago, one of them hooked him.’
‘Jeanine Armenieu.’
‘I didn’t know her name. We have no reason to take an interest in him or his love affairs. I only found out he was getting married because he held a big bash in a nightclub that he hired for the occasion.’
‘I’d like you to find out what you can about his wife. She lived in the Hôtel Washington over the last few months. I need to know where she’s from, what she did before she met him, and who her friends were. Especially her female friends.’
Priollet was writing a few words in pencil on a notepad.
‘Is that all? Is there any connection with the dead girl on Place Vintimille?’
Maigret nodded. ‘I don’t suppose you have anything in your files on a girl named Louise Laboine?’
Priollet turned to an open door. ‘Dauphin! Did you hear the name?’
‘Yes, chief.’
‘Can you check?’
A few minutes later, Inspector Dauphin shouted from the next room, ‘Nothing on her.’
‘Sorry, old man. I’m going to look into Madame Santoni. But it’s going to be difficult to question her for a while. According to the newspapers, the newlyweds are in Italy.’
‘I don’t want her to be questioned for now.’
It was a few minutes to midday according to the clock on the mantelpiece, the same black clock as in Maigret’s office and in the offices of all the chief inspectors.
‘How about a drink?’
‘Not now,’ Priollet replied. ‘I’m waiting for someone.’
It was as if Maigret didn’t know what to do with his big body. They saw him slowly walk down the corridor and look morosely into the waiting room with its windowed walls, where two or three people were twiddling their thumbs. A few minutes later, he was climbing the steps of the narrow staircase and opening the door to the lab right at the top of the Palais de Justice. Moers was bent over a microscope.
‘Have you examined the clothes I sent you?’
Here, there was never any bustle; men in grey overalls carried out meticulous work, handling complicated equipment, in a calm atmosphere. Moers was the very image of inner peace.
‘The black dress,’ he said, ‘has never been sent to the dry cleaner’s, but the stains have often been cleaned with benzine and regularly brushed. All the same, there were still some residues of dust encrusted in the fabric. I’ve analysed them, and I’ve also examined a few stains that resisted the benzine. That’s how I found green paint.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Almost. There are a few grains of sand, too.’
‘River sand?’
‘Sea sand, the kind you find on the coast of Normandy.’
‘Isn’t it the same as the sand you find on the Mediterranean?’
‘No. Or on the ocean.’
Maigret hung about the lab a while longer. He emptied his pipe by knocking it on his heel. By the time he got back downstairs, it was past midday, and the inspectors were already going to lunch.
‘Lucas is looking for you!’ said Jussieu, who was working in his department.
He found Lucas with his hat on his head.
‘I was just about to leave. I left a note on your desk. Féret wants you to call him as soon as possible. Apparently, it’s about the dead girl.’
Maigret went back into his office and picked up the phone.
‘Put me through to the Flying Squad in Nice.’
They had never received so few telephone calls after the publication of a photograph in the newspapers. So far there had only been one, the one from Rose, the young maid in Rue de Clichy.
And yet dozens, hundreds of people must have seen the girl, who had been in Paris for several months at least.
‘Hello, Féret?’
‘Is that you, chief?’
Inspector Féret had worked for Maigret before being assigned to Nice, where he had asked to be transferred because of his wife’s health.
‘I had a telephone call early this morning about the person you’re interested in. By the way, do you now know her name?’
‘Apparently, it’s Louise Laboine.’
‘That’s right. Shall I give you the details? Mind you, it’s not much. I was waiting for your instructions before starting a more in-depth inquiry. Anyway, this morning, about eight thirty, I had a telephone call from a fishmonger, a woman named Alice Feynerou … Hello?’
‘I’m still here.’
Maigret noted down the name on one of Lognon’s pieces of paper, just in case.
‘She claims she recognizes the photograph that’s just been published in the Éclaireur. But it’s from quite a long way back. Four or five years, apparently. The girl, who was only little at the time, lived with her mother in the building next door to the fishmonger’s.’
‘Was this woman able to provide details?’
‘Seems the mother was a bad payer, that’s the thing she remembers most. “The kind of people you should never give credit to,” she told me.’
‘What else did she tell you?’
‘The mother and the daughter lived in a fairly decent apartment, not far from Avenue Clemenceau. The mother had been quite a looker once, it seems. She’s older than the mother of a daughter of fifteen or sixteen usually is. At that time, she was well past fifty.’
‘What did the two of them live on?’
‘Nobody knows. The mother used to dress up, go out after lunch and not come back until late at night.’
‘Is that all? No man involved?’
‘No. If there’d been anything irregular, the fishmonger would have been only too happy to tell me.’
‘Did they leave the neighbourhood together?’
‘So it seems. One fine day, they vanished, and apparently they left quite a few debts behind them.’
‘Have you checked that the name Laboine isn’t in your files?’
‘That was the first thing I thought of. There’s nothing. I’ve asked my colleagues. One of the old timers says it sounds familiar, but he can’t quite remember.’
‘Will you look into it?’
‘I’ll do my best. What do you want to know in particular?’
‘Everything. When the girl left Nice. What became of the mother. How they got by. The people they rubbed shoulders with. By the way, if the girl was fifteen or sixteen at the time, it’s likely she was still going to school. Can you check the local schools?’
‘Got it. I’ll call you as soon as I have anything new.’
‘Check the casino, too, for the mother.’
‘Actually, I was just thinking that.’
So now a few more features had been added to the picture. This telephone call had evoked an adolescent girl, a girl who went and bought fish from a fishmonger her mother owed money to and who received her coolly.
Maigret put on his hat and coat and went downstairs, where he passed a man being brought in by two gendarmes but didn’t look at him. Before crossing the courtyard, he went into the office of the Hotel Agency. He had written Louise’s name on a piece of paper, as well as that of Jeanine Armenieu.
‘Can you ask your men to check these two names in their records? Last year rather than this year.’
It was better if poor Lognon didn’t know they were doing part of his work.
A shower having finished a few minutes earlier, the sun had come out and you could already see the rain drying on the cobbles. Maigret almost stopped a passing taxi, changed his mind and walked slowly to the Brasserie Dauphine, where he went and stood at the bar. He didn’t know what he wanted to drink. Two inspectors who were not in his department were discussing the pension age.
‘What’ll it be, Monsieur Maigret?’
Anyone would
have thought he was in a bad mood, but those who knew him realized that this wasn’t the case. It was just that he was everywhere at the same time, in the widow’s apartment in Rue de Clichy, at the dress shop in Rue de Douai, on the bench on Place de la Trinité, and now in Nice, imagining an adolescent girl at a fishmonger’s.
All these images were mixed up together, still vague. Something was bound to come out of it in the end. There was one above all that he couldn’t get rid of: the image of a naked body beneath a harsh electric light, with the figure of Dr Paul in his white coat, putting on his rubber gloves.
‘A Pernod!’ he said mechanically.
Hadn’t Paul told him that before she received a number of blows to the head, the girl had fallen to her knees?
A little earlier, she had been at the Roméo in Rue Caumartin, where a taxi-driver had noticed her shabby dress, where the barman had seen her make her way through the dancers, and where she had talked to the head waiter, then the bride.
Subsequently, she had walked in the rain. She had been seen crossing Place Saint-Augustin, then glimpsed on the corner of Boulevard Haussmann and Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
What was she thinking during that time? Where was she going? What was she hoping for?
She had almost no money left, barely enough for a meal. Old Madame Crêmieux had thrown her out.
She couldn’t have gone very far. Somewhere along the way she had been slapped or punched and had fallen to her knees, and then someone had struck her on the head with a blunt instrument.
That had happened around two o’clock, if the postmortem was to be believed. What had she done from midnight to two o’clock?
After that, it had no longer been in her hands but in those of the killer, who had gone to the trouble of dumping her body in the middle of Place Vintimille.
‘Strange girl!’ he muttered.
‘What did you say?’ the waiter asked.
‘Nothing. What time is it?’
He went home for lunch.
‘That question you asked me last night,’ Madame Maigret said as they were both eating. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all morning. There’s another reason for a girl to wear an evening gown.’
He wasn’t as tactful with her as he had been with Lognon. Without giving her time to speak, he murmured distractedly:
‘I know. It was for a wedding.’
Madame Maigret said nothing more.
5.
About a lady who earns her living at the roulette wheel, an old maid determined to tell all and a girl who hides under the bed
Twice, perhaps three times, that afternoon, Maigret raised his head from his papers and looked at the sky, and as it was such an innocent-looking blue, with gold-fringed clouds and sunlight streaming from the roofs, he broke off with a sigh and went and opened the window.
On each occasion, he barely had time to go back to his seat and savour a breath of spring that gave a particular flavour to his pipe before the papers started rustling, flying up and scattering around the room.
Now the clouds were no longer white and gold but blue-grey, the rain was falling diagonally, pattering on the window ledge, and out there on Pont Saint-Michel people were suddenly walking more quickly, as in the old silent films, and the women were holding their skirts.
The second time, it wasn’t rain that fell, but hailstones that bounced like ping-pong balls, and when he closed the window again, he found some of them in the middle of the room.
Was Lognon still outside, sad-eyed, ears down like a hunting dog, following God knows what lead amid the crowds? It was possible. It was likely. He hadn’t phoned. He never took an umbrella with him. Nor was he the kind of man to take shelter in a carriage entrance with other people and wait for the shower to ease off. On the contrary, he probably felt a kind of bitter pleasure in getting soaked, in walking the streets alone in the driving rain, a victim of injustice and his own conscience.
As for Janvier, he had returned about three o’clock, slightly tipsy. It was rare to see him like this, his eyes brighter than usual, his voice more cheerful.
‘I did it, chief!’
‘What did you do?’
To hear him, you might have thought he had just found the girl alive again.
‘You were right.’
‘You’ll have to explain.’
‘I went to all the bars and cafés.’
‘So I see.’
‘The only place she stopped was on the corner of Rue Caumartin and Rue Saint-Lazare. The waiter who served her is called Eugène. He’s bald, lives in Bécon-les-Bruyères and has a daughter about the same age as the dead girl.’
Janvier stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and lit another.
‘She arrived about ten thirty and sat down in a corner near the cash desk. She seemed to be cold and ordered a toddy. Then, when Eugène served it to her, she asked for a telephone token. She went into the booth. She came out again almost immediately. From then until almost midnight, she tried at least ten times to get someone on the phone.’
‘How many toddies did she drink?’
‘Three. Every few minutes, she’d go back to the booth and dial a number.’
‘Did she get through in the end?’
‘Eugène doesn’t know. Each time, he expected her to start crying, but she didn’t. After a while, he tried to strike up a conversation, and she looked at him without replying. You see, it all fits. She left the shop in Rue de Douai just after ten. She had time to walk down as far as Rue Caumartin. She stayed in the café, trying to get someone on the phone, until she set off for the Roméo. For a girl, three toddies isn’t bad. She must have been a bit sozzled.’
‘And she had no more money in her bag,’ Maigret remarked.
‘I hadn’t thought of that. It’s true. What should I do now?’
‘Do you have anything underway?’
‘Only routine stuff.’
Now he, too, was bent over his desk, doubtless regretting that his rounds hadn’t taken longer.
Maigret leafed through some files, made a few notes and every now and again phoned another department. It was nearly five o’clock when he saw Priollet come in.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you?’ Priollet asked before sitting down.
‘Not at all. I’m wrapping up some old cases.’
‘You know Lucien, one of my inspectors, who lives not far from you?’
Maigret vaguely recalled him. He was a small, fat man with very dark hair, whose wife ran a herbalist’s shop in Rue du Chemin-Vert. He had often seen him in summer in the doorway of the shop, when Maigret and his wife went to dinner with Dr Pardon.
‘A quarter of an hour ago, I asked Lucien, just in case, like I’ve asked all my men.’
‘About Jeanine Armenieu?’
‘Yes. He looked at me and frowned. “That’s odd,” he said. “My wife was just talking about her over lunch. I didn’t really pay much attention. Hold on a minute. I’m trying to remember what she said. Oh yes. ‘You remember that pretty redhead with the nice breasts who used to live next door? She’s just married into money. They hired a whole nightclub for the reception.’ My wife said her name. And it was Armenieu. She added, ‘I don’t suppose she’ll be coming in any more to buy cupping glasses.’ ” ’
Maigret might have met her in the neighbourhood, too, and Madame Maigret might have done her shopping in the same shops as her, because she bought almost all her food in Rue du Chemin-Vert.
‘Lucien asked me if he should look into it. I told him you’d probably prefer to stay in charge of the case.’
‘Anything on Santoni?’
‘Nothing interesting, apart from the fact that his friends were surprised that he was getting married. Until now, his love affairs have never lasted long.’
They were between showers. The sun was shining, the rain drying. Maigret had a strong desire to be outside, and he was just about to grab his coat and hat when the telephone rang.
‘Hello, Detective Chief Inspector Maigret her
e.’
It was Nice. Féret must have something new, because he was as excited as Janvier had been earlier.
‘I tracked down the mother, chief! I had to go all the way to Monte Carlo to talk to her.’
It’s almost always the same. You flounder for hours, days, sometimes weeks, then all the information comes in at the same time.
‘Was she at the casino?’
‘She still is. She told me she can’t leave the roulette table until she’s got back her stake and won what she needs.’
‘Does she go there every day?’
‘Just like other people go to the office. She plays until she wins the few hundred francs she needs to live on. Once she does, she leaves without ever trying for more.’
Maigret knew that way of life. ‘What’s the weather like down there?’
‘Fantastic. The place is full of foreigners who’ve come for the carnival. The Battle of Flowers is tomorrow, and they’re just putting up the platforms.’
‘Is her name Laboine?’
‘It says Germaine Laboine on her identity card, but she likes to be called Liliane. The croupiers all know her as Lili. She’s nearly sixty, heavily made-up and covered in fake jewellery. You know the type, I’m sure. I had a hard time of it dragging her away from the roulette table. She was settled in like an old regular. To make her mind up for her, I had to tell her straight out, “Your daughter’s dead.” ’
‘Hadn’t she seen it in the newspapers?’ Maigret asked.
‘She doesn’t read the papers. The only thing these people care about is roulette. Every morning, they buy a little news sheet that lists the numbers that came up the previous night and the night before that. There are a few of them like that. They all take the same bus in Nice and rush to the tables like assistants in a department store rushing to their counters.’
‘What was her reaction?’
‘Hard to say. The red had just come up for the fifth time, and she had her bet on the black. First of all, she pushed a few chips across the baize. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. It wasn’t until the black finally came up and she collected her winnings that she stood up. “How did it happen?” she asked me.
‘ “Why don’t you come outside with me?” I said.
Maigret and the Dead Girl Page 7