‘Was she with a woman?’
‘I couldn’t see. I got the impression that she was well dressed, and that the train consisted of only first-class carriages.’
Janvier, as usual, had been taking notes, not very many, because all this chatter could be summed up in a few words.
‘When your niece lived here, did you know anything about the company she kept?’
‘To hear her, she didn’t keep company with anyone. But it’s hard to trust a girl who hides people under her bed.’
‘I’m very grateful to you, mademoiselle.’
‘Is that all you want to know?’
‘Unless you have any other information?’
‘I don’t think so. No. But if I remember anything else …’
She watched them regretfully as they walked to the door. She really would have liked to have something else to say. Lognon let Maigret and Janvier go in front of him and was the last to walk down the stairs.
Once out in the street, Maigret wasn’t quite sure what to say to him.
‘I’m sorry, my friend. If I’d known you were there …’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You did a good job. It’s quite likely things will move faster now.’
‘Does that mean you don’t need me any more?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Lucien’s wife was watching them through the windows of the herbalist’s shop.
‘For the moment, I have nothing particular for you to do. Maybe it’s time you had a rest and looked after your bronchitis.’
‘It’s only a cold. Thanks, anyway.’
‘Can I drop you somewhere?’
‘No. I’ll take the Métro.’
He just had to emphasize the difference between them, the fact that they were going off in their car while he was heading for the Métro, where, as it was six o’clock, he would find himself caught up in the rush hour.
‘Well done. If you find out anything new, phone me. And I’ll keep you up to date.’
When he was again alone in the car with Janvier, Maigret sighed:
‘Poor Lognon! I’d have given a lot to arrive after he left.’
‘Are you going back to headquarters?’
‘No. Drop me off at my apartment.’
It wasn’t far. They didn’t have time to comment on what they had just learned. Both of them were doubtless thinking about the sixteen-year-old girl who had run away from her mother and had had to hide under a bed every day for months.
The widow Crêmieux had said of her that she was proud and didn’t condescend to talk to anyone. Rose, the Larchers’ maid, had seen her spend hours, all alone, on a bench on Place de la Trinité. All alone, too, she had gone twice to Mademoiselle Irène’s shop. All alone, she had gone to the Roméo and, all alone, finally, she had left there, refusing the offer from a taxi-driver, who had later seen her crossing Place Saint-Augustin in the rain, then reaching Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
After that, there was nothing more but a body lying on the wet pavement of Place Vintimille.
She no longer had the velvet cape or the silver handbag she had borrowed, and one of her high-heeled shoes was missing.
‘See you tomorrow, chief.’
‘See you tomorrow, Janvier.’
‘Any instructions?’
It was impossible to question Jeanine Armenieu, now Madame Santoni, because she was honeymooning in Florence.
‘I’m expecting a phone call from Nice this evening.’
There were still lots of blanks to fill in.
And there was someone somewhere who had killed the girl and then moved her body to Place Vintimille.
6.
In which there is talk of a strange father and Maigret’s qualms
Over dinner, Madame Maigret talked about the daughter of their next-door neighbour who had gone to the dentist for the first time that day and had said … What in fact had she said? Maigret didn’t realize he was only listening with half an ear. He was looking at his wife, whose voice flowed like pleasant music, and she broke off to ask him:
‘Don’t you think that’s funny?’
‘You’re right, it’s very funny.’
His mind had gone blank. It happened to him sometimes. When it did, he looked at people with big eyes that were a little too fixed, and those who weren’t familiar with him could not have known that those eyes were only a kind of wall, a backdrop.
Madame Maigret didn’t insist. She went to do the washing-up while he sat down in his armchair and opened his newspaper. When the washing-up was over, there was no noise in the apartment, except every now and again the rustling of the paper as he turned the page. Twice, they heard the rain falling outside.
At about ten o’clock, when she saw him carefully fold the newspaper, she hoped for a moment that they would go to bed, but instead he chose a magazine from the pile and started reading again. So she carried on sewing, making the occasional idle comment just to fill the silence. It didn’t really matter if he replied or not, or merely grunted something: it made for a nice feeling of intimacy.
The people on the floor above had switched off their radio and gone to bed.
‘Are you waiting for something?’
‘I may get a phone call.’
Féret had promised him that he would question Louise’s mother again as soon as she got back from Monte Carlo. It was possible that Féret had been detained by another job. On the eve of the Battle of Flowers, they must be busy down there.
Later, Madame Maigret became aware that her husband was forgetting to turn the page. His eyes were still open. She waited for a long time before suggesting:
‘Don’t you think we should go to bed anyway?’
It was after eleven o’clock. Maigret didn’t object but took the telephone into the bedroom with him, connected it and put it on the bedside table.
They undressed and took turns in the bathroom, performing their little nightly rituals. Once he was in bed, Maigret switched off the light, turned to his wife and kissed her.
‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight. Try to sleep.’
He was still thinking about Louise Laboine and the other characters who had appeared one after the other, emerging from anonymity to form a kind of procession. The only difference from earlier was that these characters were growing blurred and grotesque and eventually getting all mixed up, playing roles that weren’t theirs.
Later still, it seemed to Maigret that he was playing chess, but he was so tired and the game had been going on for so long that he no longer recognized the pieces, taking the queen for a king, the bishops for knights and forgetting where he had placed his rooks. It was nerve-racking, because the commissioner was watching him. The game was vital to Quai des Orfèvres. His opponent, in fact, was none other than Lognon, who had a sarcastic smile on his face and was waiting, sure of himself, for the opportunity to checkmate Maigret.
That mustn’t happen. The prestige of the Police Judiciaire was at stake. That was why they were all behind him, watching him: Lucas, Janvier, young Lapointe, Torrence, others still whom he couldn’t make out.
‘You whispered something to him!’ Lognon said to someone standing by Maigret’s shoulder. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’
Lognon himself was all alone. There was nobody to help him. If he won, what would people say?
‘Whisper as much as you like. All I ask is that there’s no cheating.’
Why did he think Maigret intended to cheat? Was it something he was in the habit of doing? Had he ever cheated in his life?
As long as he found his queen, which was the key to the game, he’d pull it off. The best thing was to examine the squares again one by one. His queen couldn’t be lost.
The telephone rang. He reached out his arm. It took him a moment to find the light switch.
‘A call from Nice.’
It was 1.10 by the alarm-clock.
‘Is that you, chief?’
‘Just a second, Féret.’
‘You did the right thing.’
He took a gulp of water. Then, as his pipe was on the bedside table, with some tobacco still in it, he lit it.
‘Right, go ahead.’
‘I didn’t know what to do. Since all I know of the case is what I’ve read in the newspapers, it’s hard for me to judge what’s important and what isn’t.’
‘Did you see the Laboine woman?’
‘I’ve only just left her. She didn’t get back from Monte Carlo until half past eleven. I went to see her where she lives, which is a kind of boarding house. Virtually the only people there seem to be batty old women like her. Strangely enough, they’re almost all ex-actresses. There’s also an ex-circus rider, and the woman in charge, if she’s to be believed, used to be an opera singer. It’s hard to explain how you feel when you’re there. Nobody was in bed. In the evening, those who aren’t at the casino play cards in a drawing room, where everything looks a hundred years old. It’s a bit like being in a wax museum. I must be boring you!’
‘No.’
‘The reason I’m telling you all this is I know you like to see things for yourself, and as you couldn’t come here …’
‘Carry on.’
‘First of all, I know now where she’s from. Her father was a schoolteacher in a village in the Haute-Loire. She left for Paris at the age of eighteen, and for two years was a walk-on at the Châtelet. Eventually, they let her do a few dance steps in Around the World in Eighty Days or Michael Strogoff. Then she joined the Folies-Bergère. And finally she went on tour with a company to South America, where she stayed for several years. It’s impossible to get any precise dates from her, because she keeps getting confused.
‘Are you still there? I wondered again if she was on drugs. Then when I observed her more closely, I realized that wasn’t it. Basically, she’s not very bright. I think she might not even be like other women.’
‘Has she ever been married?’
‘I’m getting to that. She was in her thirties when she started performing in nightclubs out East. That was before the war. She hung around Bucharest, Sofia, Alexandria. She spent several years in Cairo and apparently even went to Ethiopia.
‘I had to drag this information out of her bit by bit. She was slumped in an armchair, stroking her swollen legs, and after a while she asked me if she could take her corset off. To cut a long story short …’
That reminded Maigret of Jeanine Armenieu’s aunt, Mademoiselle Poré, and her interminable monologue.
Madame Maigret was watching him through half-opened eyes.
‘It was in Istanbul, when she was thirty-eight, that she met a man named Van Cram.’
‘What name did you say?’
‘Julius Van Cram, a Dutchman, it seems. According to her, he looked like a real gentleman and lived at the Pera Palace.’
Maigret had frowned. That name reminded him of something. He didn’t know what, but he was sure this wasn’t the first time he’d heard it.
‘Do you know how old this Van Cram was?’
‘Much older than her. He must have been over fifty at the time, which means that he’d be nearly seventy by now.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘I have no idea. Hold on, I’m trying to tell you things in the right order, so that I don’t forget anything. She showed me a photograph of herself taken at the time. I must say she was still beautiful then, already quite mature, but very attractive with it.’
‘What did this Van Cram do?’
‘She doesn’t seem to have been too concerned about that. He spoke several languages fluently, especially English and French. German, too. He went to embassy receptions. Apparently, he fell in love with her, and they lived together for a while.’
‘At the Pera Palace?’
‘No. He’d rented an apartment not far from the hotel. Sorry, chief, if I can’t be more specific. If you only knew how hard it was to get this information out of her! She kept breaking off to talk about some woman she’d known in some cabaret or other and tell me her story, after which she’d start moaning and saying:
‘ “I know you think I’ve been a bad mother …”
‘In the end, she offered me a glass of liqueur. She may not take drugs, but I think she likes her booze.
‘ “Never before going to the casino!” she said. “And I don’t drink when I’m playing either. Just a small glass afterwards, to get rid of the tension.”
‘According to her, of all human activities, gambling is the most exhausting.
‘To get back to Van Cram. After a few months, she realized she was pregnant. It was the first time it had ever happened to her. She couldn’t believe it. She told Van Cram, assuming that he’d advise her to get rid of the baby.’
‘Was she prepared to do that?’
‘She doesn’t know. The way she talks about it, it was just a bad trick that fate had played on her.
‘ “I could have got pregnant a hundred thousand times before, and it had to happen when I was already thirty-eight!”
‘Those are her words. But Van Cram took it in his stride. After a few weeks, he asked her to marry him.’
‘Where did they get married?’
‘In Istanbul. But that’s where things get complicated. I think she was really in love with him. He took her to an office, she doesn’t know where exactly, where she signed some papers and made her vows. As long as he told her she was married, she believed him. A few days later, he suggested they move to France.’
‘Together?’
‘Yes. They got on an Italian ship bound for Marseille.’
‘Did she have a passport in the name Van Cram?’
‘No. I asked her that. Seems they hadn’t had time to get her passport changed. They spent two weeks in Marseille, then moved to Nice. That’s where the child was born.’
‘Were they staying in a hotel?’
‘They’d rented quite a nice apartment not far from Promenade des Anglais. Two months later, Van Cram went out to buy cigarettes and didn’t come back. She never saw him again.’
‘Did she ever hear from him?’
‘He wrote to her several times, from all over, London, Copenhagen, Hamburg, New York, and each time he’d send her some money.’
‘A lot of money?’
‘Sometimes, yes. At other times, almost nothing. He’d always ask her to let him know how she was, and especially how their daughter was.’
‘And did she?’
‘Yes.’
‘I assume she wrote to him poste restante?’
‘Yes. That’s when she started gambling. Her daughter grew up and went to school.’
‘Did she ever see her father?’
‘She was two months old when he left, and he hasn’t been back to France since, at least as far as his wife knows. The last money order he sent her, a year ago, was for a fairly large amount, but she lost it all in one night.’
‘Has Van Cram ever asked her where his daughter was? Does he know she left Nice for Paris?’
‘Yes. Only the mother didn’t know the girl’s address.’
‘Is that all, my friend?’
‘Pretty much. I didn’t get the impression she was being completely honest when she said she didn’t know how her husband made his living … Oh, I almost forgot the main thing. When she had to renew her identity card a few years ago, she wanted to have the name Van Cram put on it. She was asked for her marriage licence. She showed them the only document she had, which was written in Turkish. They examined it carefully and sent it to the Turkish consulate. Eventually, they told her the document was worthless and that she definitely wasn’t married.’
‘Was she upset?’
‘No. Nothing seems to upset her, except maybe seeing the red come up twelve times when she’s betting solidly on black. Listening to her, you get the feeling you’re dealing with a person who isn’t quite real. She doesn’t live in the same world as us. When I talked to her about her daughter, she
didn’t show the slightest emotion. All she said was:
‘ “I hope for her sake she didn’t suffer too much …” ’
‘I assume you’re going to bed now?’
‘Unfortunately not! I have to rush over to Juan-les-Pins, where someone’s just been nabbed for cheating at the casino. Do you need me any more, chief?’
‘Not for the moment. Hold on a minute. Did she show you a photograph of her ex-husband?’
‘I asked her for one. Seems she only ever owned one, which she took without his knowledge, because he hated having his photograph taken. When her daughter left for Paris, she must have taken it with her, because it went missing.’
‘Thanks.’
Maigret hung up. Instead of putting his head on the pillow and switching off the light, he got out of bed and went and filled another pipe.
The widow Crêmieux had mentioned a picture her lodger had kept in her wallet, and he had been too focused on the girl herself to think much about it.
He stood there in his pyjamas, barefoot in his slippers. His wife avoided asking him any questions. Perhaps because of his dream, he was thinking about Lognon. Hadn’t he said to him earlier, without really thinking about it, ‘I’ll keep you up to date’?
Well, the existence of Julius Van Cram might change the course of the investigation.
‘I’ll call him tomorrow morning,’ he said under his breath.
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing. I was talking to myself.’
He looked for the number of Lognon’s apartment on Place Constantin-Pecqueur. This way, he couldn’t be blamed.
‘Hello? May I talk to your husband, please? I’m sorry if I woke you, but—’
‘I wasn’t sleeping. I never sleep more than an hour or two a night.’
It was Madame Lognon, her voice both sharp and whining.
‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’
‘I recognized your voice.’
‘I’d like to have a word with your husband.’
Maigret and the Dead Girl Page 9