Maigret and the Dead Girl

by Georges Simenon

  ‘I thought he was with you. At least, he told me he was working for you.’

  ‘What time did he go out?’

  ‘Straight after dinner. He ate quickly and then left. He told me he’d probably be out all night.’

  ‘Did he tell you where he was going?’

  ‘He never tells me.’

  ‘Thank you, I’m very grateful.’

  ‘Isn’t it true that he’s working for you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Then how come you don’t know—’

  ‘I don’t necessarily know every move he makes.’

  She wasn’t convinced, suspecting him of lying to cover for her husband. She was probably about to ask him more questions, so he hung up. Immediately, he called the station in the second district. An officer named Ledent answered.

  ‘Is Lognon there?’

  ‘He hasn’t set foot in his office all night.’

  ‘Thanks, anyway. If he comes in, tell him to call me at home.’

  ‘Got it, Monsieur Maigret.’

  An unpleasant thought occurred to him, rather like in his dream. It bothered him suddenly to know that Lognon was outside, and that he, Maigret, didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing. There was no point continuing to make inquiries in the nightclubs or question the taxi-drivers. It was obvious there was nothing more to be found out at the Roméo.

  And yet Lognon was spending the night on the trail of something. Could it be that he had discovered a new lead?

  Maigret wasn’t jealous of his colleagues, let alone his inspectors. Whenever a case was solved satisfactorily, it was almost always to them that he gave the credit. He seldom made statements to the press. That very afternoon, it was Lucas he had entrusted with the task of talking to the reporters accredited to Quai des Orfèvres.

  But this particular instance put him in a bad mood. Yes, it was true: just like in the chess game in his dream, Lognon was on his own, whereas Maigret had the entire organization of the Police Judiciaire on his side, not to mention the provincial flying squads and the whole of the police machine.

  This thought embarrassed him, but he was nevertheless tempted to get dressed and go to headquarters. He had work to do there, now that he knew whose photograph it was that Louise Laboine had stolen from her mother and jealously preserved.

  His wife watched him go into the dining room, open the sideboard and pour himself a small glass of sloe gin.

  ‘Aren’t you coming back to bed?’

  Logically, he ought to go. His instinct was urging him to do so. The only reason he didn’t was to give Lognon his chance and to punish himself for having such bad thoughts.

  ‘This case seems to be bothering you.’

  ‘It’s quite complicated.’

  The strange thing, though, was that so far it wasn’t the killer he’d been thinking about, but the victim. The whole investigation had centred on her. Now that at last he knew her a little better, he could start asking himself who had killed her.

  What could Lognon possibly be doing? He went to the window and looked out. The moon was full, the sky calm. It had stopped raining. The rooftops were glistening.

  He emptied his pipe, got heavily into bed and kissed his wife.

  ‘Wake me up at the usual time.’

  This time, his sleep was dreamless. When he drank his coffee, sitting up in bed, the sun was shining. Lognon hadn’t phoned, which seemed to suggest that he hadn’t been to his office and hadn’t gone home either.

  At headquarters, he attended the daily briefing without participating in the conversation and, as soon as it was over, climbed the stairs to Records. There, on kilometres of shelving, stood the files of all those who had had dealings with the law. The clerk wore grey overalls that made him look like a warehouseman, and the air smelled of old paper, like a public library.

  ‘Can you see if you have anything on a man named Van Cram, Julius Van Cram?’

  ‘How recent?’

  ‘Maybe twenty years ago or more.’

  ‘Will you wait?’

  Maigret sat down. Ten minutes later, the clerk brought him a file on someone named Van Cram, but this was a Joseph Van Cram, who had worked for an insurance company in Rue de Grenelle in Paris and had been sentenced two years earlier for forgery and the use of forgeries. Plus, he was only twenty-eight.

  ‘No other Van Crams?’

  ‘Only a Von Kramm, with a k and two ms, and he died in Cologne twenty-four years ago.’

  There were other files, on a lower level, devoted not only to those who had been sentenced for crimes, but to all those the police had had to deal with at one time or another. Van Cram the insurance clerk and Von Kramm from Cologne were here, too.

  Studying the list of international adventurers and eliminating all those who hadn’t lived in the Middle East and whose age didn’t match that of Madame Laboine’s husband, Maigret ended up with just a few files, including one that contained the comment:

  Hans Ziegler, alias Ernst Marek, alias John Donley, alias Joey Hogan, alias Jean Lemke (his real name and background are unknown). Specializes in confidence tricks. Speaks fluent French, English, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish, and a little Polish.

  It was the Prague police, thirty years earlier, that had circulated internationally the photograph of a man named Hans Ziegler, who, with the help of an accomplice, had obtained a large sum of money under false pretences. Hans Ziegler claimed to have been born in Munich. In those days, he had had a blond moustache.

  In London, soon afterwards, the same man had been known as John Donley, born in San Francisco. In Copenhagen, he had been arrested under the name Ernst Marek.

  He was later seen elsewhere under other names: Joey Hogan, Jules Stieb, Carl Spangler.

  His appearance also changed with the years. At first, he was a tall, thin but solidly built man. With time, he had acquired a paunch as well as a certain dignity.

  He dressed well and took care of his appearance. In Paris, he lived in a grand hotel on the Champs-Élysées, in London at the Savoy. Everywhere he went, he frequented the most select places. Everywhere, too, his activities never varied. He employed a technique that had long since been perfected by others but which he practised with rare virtuosity.

  There were two of them, working together, but nothing was known about his accomplice, apart from the fact that he was younger and had a Central European accent.

  In an elegant bar they would choose a victim, someone well-to-do, preferably a provincial industrialist or merchant.

  After a few drinks with his victim, Jean Lemke, or Jules Stieb, or John Donley, as the case might be, would complain that he didn’t know the country.

  ‘I absolutely need to find someone I can trust,’ he would say. ‘I’ve been given an assignment I find somewhat tricky. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to pull it off. I’m so afraid of being taken for a ride!’

  The next part might vary a little, but the basics remained the same. A very rich old lady, preferably an American if this was in Europe, had entrusted him with a large sum of money to be distributed among a certain number of deserving people. He had the money upstairs in his room, in cash. How, in a country he didn’t know, could he judge who was worthy and who wasn’t?

  Oh, yes. The old lady had specified that part of the sum – a third, for example, or a quarter – could be set aside to cover expenses.

  Would his new friend – because he was a friend, wasn’t he, and clearly an honest man – agree to help him? Of course, the third in question would be shared with him … And that was a tidy sum in itself.

  Naturally, he had to be cautious, and felt honour bound to demand a number of guarantees … If his friend could just deposit a certain amount in the bank, to prove his good faith …

  ‘Wait for me … Or, better still, come up to my suite …’

  The banknotes were there. There was a briefcase full of them, in impressive bundles.

  ‘We take them with us, drop by your bank, you withdraw
the sum of …’

  This varied according to the country.

  ‘Then we deposit it in my account, and I hand over the case. All you have to do then is distribute the contents, after you’ve taken off your share …’

  In the taxi, the case with the banknotes would be between the two of them. The victim would withdraw the required amount. Outside his own bank, generally a large bank in the centre of town, Lemke, alias Stieb, alias Ziegler, etc. would leave the case in his companion’s care.

  ‘I won’t be long …’

  He’d rush inside with the victim’s money. The victim would never see him again and would soon discover that the banknotes, apart from those on top of the piles, were only newspaper.

  Most of the time, when the man had been arrested, he had nothing compromising in his possession. The stolen money had disappeared, spirited away by an accomplice to whom he had passed it in the crowd filling the bank.

  In one file, just one, sent by the Danish police, there was this comment:

  According to information we have been unable to verify, this man appears in fact to be a Dutch citizen named Julius Van Cram, born in Groningen. The son of a good family, Van Cram was working, by about the age of twenty-two, in a bank in Amsterdam of which his father was the director. He already spoke several languages, had received an excellent education and frequented the Yacht Club of Amsterdam.

  He disappeared two years later. After a few weeks, it was discovered that he had made away with some of the bank’s funds.

  Unfortunately, it had been impossible to get hold of any photographs of this Van Cram. They didn’t have his fingerprints either.

  By comparing dates, Maigret made another interesting discovery. Unlike most criminals and conmen, this man seldom worked twice in quick succession. He would take weeks, sometimes months, to prepare one of his swindles, which always involved a large sum.

  After which, several years generally went by before he turned up in some other part of the world, again playing his game with the same skill, the same attention to detail.

  Didn’t that suggest that he waited until he was low on funds before he started again? Did he keep something aside for a rainy day? Did he have a nest egg hidden away somewhere?

  His last exploit had taken place six years before, in Mexico.

  ‘Will you come here a moment, Lucas?’

  Lucas looked in surprise at the files cluttering the desk.

  ‘I’d like you to send off a number of telegrams. Before that, I want you to send someone to see the widow Crêmieux in Rue de Clichy and check if this is the same man whose photograph she saw in her lodger’s handbag.’

  He gave the list of the countries where the man had operated, with the names under which he had been known in each one.

  ‘I also want you to phone Féret in Nice. He needs to go back to Madame Laboine and try to get from her the dates and places of origin of the money orders she received. I don’t suppose she kept the stubs, but it’s worth a try.’ He broke off suddenly. ‘Any news from Lognon?’

  ‘Was he supposed to phone?’

  ‘I don’t know. Can you call his apartment?’

  He got Madame Lognon at the other end of the line.

  ‘Is your husband back?’

  ‘Not yet. You still don’t know where he is?’

  She was getting worried, and now so was he.

  ‘I assume,’ he said to reassure her, ‘that the person he’s tailing has left Paris.’

  He had spoken about Lognon tailing someone just in case and now had to endure Madame Lognon’s complaints that her husband was always given the most thankless, most dangerous assignments.

  How could he tell her that, whenever Lognon had got into a sticky situation, he had done it on his own initiative, usually by going against the orders he had received?

  He so much wanted to do well, had such a desire to distinguish himself, that he just put his head down and charged straight ahead, convinced, each time, that he was finally going to prove his worth.

  Everyone acknowledged his worth. He was the only one who didn’t know that.

  Maigret called the second district. They hadn’t heard from Lognon there either.

  ‘Has anyone seen him locally?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard.’

  Next door, Lucas, who had sent an inspector to Rue de Clichy, was busy phoning his telegrams. Janvier was standing in the doorway, waiting for Maigret to hang up so that he could ask for instructions.

  ‘I think Detective Chief Inspector Priollet wants to see you. He came by earlier, but you weren’t in your office.’

  ‘I was upstairs.’

  Maigret went to see Priollet, who was busy interrogating a drug dealer with pinched nostrils and red circles round his eyes.

  ‘I don’t know if this is still of any interest to you, or if you’ve had the information through other channels. I was told this morning that Jeanine Armenieu lived for quite a long time in an apartment in Rue de Ponthieu.’

  ‘Do you have the number?’

  ‘No. It’s not far from Rue de Berri, and there’s a bar on the ground floor.’

  ‘Thanks. Anything on Santoni?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t think he’s done anything crooked. Right now, he’s living love’s young dream in Florence.’

  Maigret went back to Janvier in his office.

  ‘Get your hat and coat.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Rue de Ponthieu.’

  They would probably find out a little bit more about his dead girl. She remained at the forefront of his mind. Only, that damned Lognon was starting to play a major role. Unfortunately, it was a role they knew nothing about.

  ‘Whoever said, “Above all, not too much zeal” was damned right,’ Maigret muttered as he put on his coat.

  It wasn’t very likely that Lognon was still pounding the streets, going from one address to another. The previous day, at five o’clock, as far as they could judge – and, with him, it was never easy to judge – he hadn’t had any leads.

  He had gone home for dinner, then left again immediately.

  Before going out, Maigret put his head round the door of the inspectors’ office.

  ‘I’d like someone to phone the railway stations, just in case, and make sure Lognon hasn’t taken a train.’

  Following someone, for example. It was possible. In which case, he might not have had the opportunity to call either headquarters or his own office.

  In which case, too, he had information the others didn’t have.

  ‘Shall we go, chief?’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Glumly, Maigret stopped the car on Place Dauphine in order to have a drink.

  It wasn’t true that he was jealous of Lognon. If Lognon tracked down Louise Laboine’s killer, all the better. If he arrested him, bravo!

  But, damn it, he could have told them where he was, like anybody else.

  7.

  About an inspector who forges ahead and a girl who has an appointment with fate

  While Janvier entered the building to make inquiries, Maigret stood at the kerb with his hands in his pockets, thinking that Rue de Ponthieu was a little like the backstage area of the Champs-Élysées, or like its service stairs. Every major thoroughfare in Paris has, often parallel to it, a narrower, more animated street filled with small bars and food shops, restaurants frequented by drivers, cheap hotels, hairdresser’s shops and small tradesmen.

  There was a bistro, for example, that Maigret would have loved to try out, and was probably about to do so when Janvier came back out.

  ‘This is the place, chief!’

  They had got the right building at their first attempt. The lodge was no brighter than most lodges in Paris, but the concierge was young and attractive, and a baby was romping about in a playpen of varnished wood.

  ‘You’re also police, aren’t you?’

  ‘Why do you say also?’

  ‘Because someone from the police came last night. I was
just going to bed. He was a little man who looked so sad that before I noticed that he had a cold, I thought he’d lost his wife and was crying.’

  It was hard not to smile at this description of Lognon.

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘About ten. I was busy undressing behind the screen and I had to keep him waiting. Have you come about the same thing?’

  ‘I assume he asked you about Mademoiselle Armenieu?’

  ‘And her friend, yes, the one who was murdered.’

  ‘Did you recognize her photograph in the newspaper?’

  ‘I thought I did.’

  ‘Was she a tenant here?’

  ‘Please sit down, gentlemen. Do you mind if I carry on making the little one’s lunch? If you’re too hot, don’t mind me, you can take off your coats. Aren’t you from the same department as the man yesterday? I don’t know why I’m asking you that. It’s none of my business. As I told your colleague, the real tenant, the one whose name was on the lease, was Mademoiselle Armenieu, Mademoiselle Jeanine, as I called her. She’s married now. It was in the papers. Did you know that?’

  Maigret nodded. ‘Did she live here long?’

  ‘About two years. When she arrived, she was still young and awkward and she often came to me to ask for advice.’

  ‘Did she have a job?’

  ‘At the time, she was a typist in an office not very far from here, I don’t know where exactly. She took the little apartment on the third floor. It looks out on the courtyard, but it’s pretty.’

  ‘And her friend wasn’t living with her?’

  ‘Yes, she was. Only, as I said, she was the one paying the rent, and the lease was in her name.’

  All she wanted was to talk. It was all the easier for her because she had already given out this information the day before.

  ‘I already know what you’re going to ask me. They left about six months ago. More exactly, Mademoiselle Jeanine left first.’

  ‘I thought the apartment was in her name?’

  ‘Yes. The month was almost up. There were still three or four days to go. One evening, Mademoiselle Jeanine came and sat down just where you’re sitting now and said, “I’ve had enough, Madame Marcelle. This time, I’ve decided to have done with it.” ’