‘No. Maybe an hour before the girl came in, he mentioned Brussels again. This time, he wanted to know what the best hotel was. I told him I always stayed at the Palace, opposite the Gare du Nord.’
‘What time was it when you told Lognon this?’
‘Nearly one in the morning. It took longer than with you, because I had customers to serve.’
‘Do you have a railway timetable?’
‘If it’s to find out about trains to Brussels, don’t bother. The inspector went downstairs to phone the station. There were no more trains that night. The first was at five in the morning.’
‘Did he tell you he’d be taking it?’
‘He didn’t need to tell me.’
‘What do you think he did until five in the morning?’
‘What would you have done?’
Maigret thought this over. He had just heard about two foreigners who both seemed to have lived in the area and who had both discovered Pickwick’s Bar.
‘Do you think Lognon made the rounds of the local hotels?’
‘You’re the one investigating, aren’t you? I’m not responsible for what Inspector Hard-Done-By gets up to.’
‘Janvier, can you go downstairs and phone the Palace Hotel in Brussels? Ask them if they’ve seen Lognon. He would have arrived about half past nine in the morning. He may still be waiting for the American to get there by car.’
During Janvier’s absence, he didn’t say a word, and Albert, as if considering the conversation at an end, sat down behind the bar and resumed eating.
Maigret hadn’t touched his second drink, but had finished the tray of olives. He was still staring down the length of the room, at the line of stools, the little staircase at the far end, and it was as if he was populating the decor with the people who had been there on Monday night, when Louise Laboine had made her entrance in her blue evening gown and velvet cape, a silver handbag in her hand.
His brow was deeply furrowed. Twice he opened his mouth to speak, but both times he thought better of it.
More than ten minutes went by and the barman had time to finish his meal, collect the breadcrumbs on the counter and drink the last of his coffee. Grabbing a dubious-looking cloth, he was starting to wipe the dust from the bottles on the shelf when Janvier reappeared.
‘He’s on the line, chief. Do you want to talk to him?’
‘There’s no point. Tell him he can come back.’
Janvier hesitated, unable to conceal his surprise, wondering if he had heard correctly, if Maigret had really thought it through. Finally, accustomed to obeying, he turned on his heels, murmuring, ‘All right!’
As for Albert, he hadn’t registered any surprise, but his features had hardened. He was still mechanically wiping the bottles one by one. He could see Maigret in the mirror behind the shelves, even though he had his back to him.
Janvier returned.
‘Did he object?’ Maigret asked.
‘He started to say something, then changed his mind and just said, “Well, if it’s an order!” ’
Maigret got down off his stool, buttoned up his coat and pulled down his hat. ‘Get dressed, Albert,’ he said simply.
‘What?’
‘I said, get dressed. We’re going to take a ride to the Quai des Orfèvres.’
Albert didn’t seem to understand. ‘I can’t leave the bar.’
‘You have a key, don’t you?’
‘What exactly is it you want of me? I’ve told you all I know.’
‘Do you want us to take you by force?’
‘I’m coming. But …’
He sat alone in the back of the little car and didn’t say a word throughout the ride. He stared straight ahead, like a man trying to understand. Janvier didn’t say anything either. Maigret smoked his pipe in silence.
‘Upstairs!’
He let him into his office first. In front of him, he asked Janvier:
‘What time is it in Washington?’
‘It must be eight in the morning.’
‘By the time you get through, even if they give you priority, it’ll be nearly nine. I want you to get me the FBI. If Clark’s there, try and get him on the line. I’d like to talk to him.’
He calmly took off his hat and coat and hung them in their cupboard.
‘You can take your coat off. This may take a while.’
‘You still haven’t told me why—’
‘How long were you in this office the day we talked about the gold ingots?’
Albert didn’t need to search in his memory. ‘Four hours.’
‘Did you notice anything in Tuesday morning’s newspaper?’
‘The photograph of the girl.’
‘There was another photograph, of three men, real tough characters, the ones they called the wall breakers. It was three o’clock in the morning when they confessed. They’d been in here for a very long time. Nearly twenty hours.’
Maigret went and sat down in his seat and arranged his pipes, as if looking for the best one.
‘You preferred to come clean after four hours. Personally, it’s all the same to me. There are quite a few of us here, we can take turns and we have all the time in the world.’
He dialled the number of the Brasserie Dauphine.
‘Maigret here. Can you send me up a few sandwiches and some beer? … For how many?’
He remembered that Janvier hadn’t had lunch either.
‘For two! Right away, yes. Four beers, of course.’
He lit his pipe, walked to the window and stood there for a moment watching the movement of cars and pedestrians on Pont Saint-Michel.
Behind him, Albert was lighting a cigarette with a hand he was trying to keep steady. He had the grave air of a man weighing the pros and cons.
‘What do you want to know?’ he asked at last, still hesitant.
‘Everything.’
‘I told you the truth.’
‘No.’
Maigret hadn’t turned to look at him. Seen like that, from the back, he really did seem like a man who has nothing else to do but wait, smoking his pipe and gazing out at the bustle of the street.
Albert was silent again. He was silent long enough for the waiter from the brasserie to arrive with his tray, which he put down on the desk.
Maigret went and opened the door to the inspectors’ office. ‘Janvier!’ he called.
Janvier appeared. ‘They’re putting the call through in about twenty minutes.’
‘Help yourself, it’s for both of us,’ Maigret said, motioning him into the adjoining office to get his sandwich and his beer.
Maigret made himself comfortable and started eating. The roles were reversed. Earlier, in Pickwick’s Bar, it was Albert who had been having lunch behind his counter.
Maigret seemed to have forgotten he was there and looked for all the world as if he was thinking about nothing but chewing and taking a swig of beer every now and again. His gaze wandered over the papers scattered on his desk.
‘You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?’ Albert said.
Maigret nodded, his mouth full.
‘You think I’m going to confess?’
Maigret shrugged, as if to say he didn’t care.
‘Why did you call Inspector Hard-Done-By back to Paris?’
Maigret smiled.
And at that moment, Albert angrily tore the cigarette he was holding to shreds, burning his fingers in the process. ‘Shit!’ he grunted.
He was too tense to remain seated and stood up, walked to the window, stuck his forehead to the pane of glass and also now looked at the bustle outside.
When he turned, he had made up his mind, his agitation had abated and his muscles had relaxed. Without being invited to, he took a sip from one of the two glasses of beer that were still on the tray, wiped his mouth and sat down again. It was his last gesture of defiance, a way of saving face.
‘How did you guess?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t guess,’ Maigret replied calmly. ‘I knew immediately.’<
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9.
In which it is demonstrated that a staircase can play an important role and in which a handbag plays an even more important one
Maigret took a few puffs at his pipe and looked at Albert in silence. It was as if he was making a dramatic pause, like an actor, to give more weight to what he was about to say. Not that he was playing to the gallery in any way. He barely saw the barman’s face. It was Louise Laboine he was thinking about. All the time he had sat silently in the bar in Rue de l’Étoile, while Janvier was downstairs on the telephone, she was the one he’d been trying to see, coming into the bar filled with customers, in her shabby evening gown and the velvet cape that didn’t suit her.
‘You see,’ he said at last, ‘at first sight your story’s perfect, almost too perfect, and I would have believed it if I hadn’t known the girl.’
Surprised, Albert asked in spite of himself, ‘You knew her?’
‘I’ve ended up getting to know her quite well.’
As he continued talking, he imagined her hiding under the bed at Mademoiselle Poré’s, then, later, arguing with Jeanine Armenieu in their apartment in Rue de Ponthieu. He followed her into her shabby furnished room in Rue d’Aboukir and to the stall outside the store on Boulevard Magenta where she worked in all weathers.
He could have repeated all the phrases that had been used about her, whether by the concierge or by the widow Crêmieux.
He saw her going into Maxim’s, just as he saw her, a month later, making her way through the wedding guests at the Roméo.
‘First of all, it’s highly unlikely she would have sat at the bar.’
Because she felt out of place, felt that everybody was looking at her, sure from the start that she was wearing a second-hand dress.
‘Even if she’d sat down, she wouldn’t have ordered a Martini. The mistake you made was thinking of her as just another of your female customers, and when I asked you what she drank, you replied automatically, “A Martini.” ’
‘She didn’t drink anything,’ Albert admitted.
‘And she didn’t go downstairs to read her letter either. As is usually the case in bars like yours that cater for regulars, there’s no notice above the staircase. Even if there had been one, I doubt she’d have had the courage to walk past twenty customers, most of whom were probably drunk to a greater or lesser degree.
‘Last but not least, the newspapers didn’t publish all the post-mortem results. They said the dead girl’s stomach contained alcohol, without mentioning that the alcohol was rum. Martini is made with gin and vermouth.’
There was no triumph in Maigret’s voice, perhaps because it was still Louise he was thinking about. He spoke in a low voice, as if to himself.
‘Did you really give her the letter?’
‘I gave her a letter.’
‘You mean an envelope?’
‘Yes.’
‘With blank paper in it?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did you open the real letter?’
‘When I was sure Jimmy had taken the plane for the United States.’
‘Did you have him followed to Orly?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? You didn’t yet know what it was all about.’
‘A guy who comes out of prison and takes the trouble to cross the ocean in order to give a message to a girl – it had to be something important.’
‘Have you kept the letter?’
‘No, I destroyed it.’
Maigret believed him, convinced that Albert wouldn’t bother to lie any more.
‘What did it say?’
‘Something like: I may not have paid much attention to you before now, but one day you’ll discover that it was better for you that way. Whatever they tell you about me, don’t judge me too severely. Everyone chooses his own path, especially at an age when we’re lacking in judgement, and afterwards it’s too late. You can trust the person who gives you this letter. By the time you get it, I’ll be dead. Don’t let that make you sad, it’s time for me to go. I have the consolation of knowing that from now on you’ll be well taken care of. As soon as you can, get a passport for the United States. Brooklyn is a borough of New York, you may have learned that at school. There you’ll find, at the address below, a little Polish tailor named …’
Albert broke off. Maigret motioned to him to continue.
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘All right, then! … named Lukasek. Go and see him. Show him your passport and he’ll hand over to you a certain sum in cash …’
‘Is that all?’
‘There were also three or four sentimental phrases I’ve forgotten.’
‘Do you remember the address?’
‘Yes. 1214 37th Street.’
‘Who did you tell?’
Albert was again tempted to say nothing. But Maigret’s eyes were still on him and he resigned himself. ‘I showed the letter to a friend.’
‘Who?’
‘Bianchi.’
‘Is he still with big Jeanne?’
Bianchi was suspected of being the head of the Corsican gang. Maigret had arrested him at least ten times, but had only once managed to get him sentenced. True, that had been for five years.
Maigret stood up and opened the door to the adjoining office. ‘Is Torrence around?’
They went to fetch him.
‘Take two or three men with you. Find out if big Jeanne is still living in Rue Lepic. There’s a chance you’ll find Bianchi at her place. If he isn’t, make sure she tells you where to find him. Be careful, he’s quite capable of defending himself.’
Albert was listening impassively.
‘Carry on.’
‘What more do you want?’
‘Bianchi couldn’t send just anyone to the United States to show up at Lukasek’s and demand the money. He suspected that the Pole had instructions and would ask for proof of the girl’s identity.’
It was so obvious that he didn’t wait for a reply.
‘So you waited for her to show up at Pickwick’s.’
‘We had no intention of killing her.’
Albert was surprised to hear Maigret reply, ‘I know that.’
They were professionals who didn’t take unnecessary risks. All they needed was the girl’s identity card. Once they had it, they would manage to get a passport for some female associate or other, who would take the place of Louise Laboine.
‘Was Bianchi in your bar?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she leave without opening the envelope?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did your boss have a car waiting outside?’
‘With the Tattoo Man at the wheel. Given the mess I’m in, I might as well go on.’
‘They followed her?’
‘I wasn’t with them. All I know is what they told me later. There’s no point in you looking for the Tattoo Man in Paris. He got cold feet after what happened and did a runner.’
‘To Marseille?’
‘Probably.’
‘I suppose they intended to steal her handbag?’
‘Yes. They drove past her. Bianchi got out of the car just as she drew level with them. The street was deserted. He grabbed the handbag, not knowing it was attached to the girl’s wrist by a little chain. She fell to her knees. Seeing her open her mouth to scream, he hit her in the face. Apparently she clung to him and tried to call for help. That was when he took a cosh from his pocket and knocked her out.’
‘So you only invented the story of the second American to get Lognon off your backs?’
‘What would you have done in my place? Hard-Done-By fell for it.’
All the same, for most of the investigation, Lognon had almost always been one step ahead of the Police Judiciaire. And if he had been more concerned with the girl’s state of mind, he would finally have had his victory, the victory he had been waiting for for so long that he’d stopped believing in it.
What was he thinking about n
ow, on the train bringing him back from Brussels? He must be blaming his bad luck, more convinced than ever that the whole world was in league against him. Technically, he had done nothing wrong, and no police training course teaches you to put yourself in the shoes of a girl brought up in Nice by a half-mad mother.
For years, Louise had looked stubbornly for her place without finding it. Lost in a world she didn’t understand, she had clung desperately to the first friend she made, a friend who had eventually let her down.
Left alone, she had grown harder, surrounded by a hostile world where she tried in vain to learn the rules of the game.
Did she know anything about her father? Probably not. Even when she was little, she must have wondered why her mother wasn’t like other people, why the two of them lived differently from their neighbours.
With all her might, she had tried to adapt. She had run away from home. She had read the small ads. And whereas Jeanine Armenieu had no difficulty finding jobs, she had ended up being thrown out of all the places she had applied to.
Had she, like Lognon, ended up convinced that there was a kind of conspiracy against her?
In what way was she so different? Why did all the bad things happen to her?
Even her death was a kind of irony of fate. If the chain of the silver handbag hadn’t been rolled round her wrist, Bianchi would simply have snatched it off her and the car would have sped away.
If she had then told her story to the police, nobody would have believed her.
‘Why did they move the body to Place Vintimille?’
‘First of all, they couldn’t leave it near my bar. Secondly, dressed as she was, she’d look more at home in Montmartre. They chose the first deserted spot they came to up there.’
‘Have they already sent someone to the United States consulate?’
‘Of course not. They’re waiting.’
‘Inspector Clark on the line, chief.’
‘Put him through to me here.’
It was only confirmation they needed now, and it was more out of personal curiosity than anything else that Maigret still had a few questions to ask the FBI.
The conversation, as always with Clark, was conducted, half in Maigret’s bad English, half in the American’s bad French, each making a diligent effort to speak the other’s language.
Maigret and the Dead Girl Page 13