‘Thank you,’ he sighed, putting his wallet back in his pocket.
That was a blow. He had been almost certain that he was on the right track, but his theory was falling apart right from the start.
His taxi was waiting and he told the driver to take him to Rue Jacob, because it was the closest. He went into the café where Piquemal was in the habit of having his breakfast. At this hour, the place was almost deserted.
‘Would you have a look at this photo?’
He hardly dared watch the owner, so apprehensive was he of his reply.
‘That’s him all right. Except he seemed a bit older to me.’
‘That’s the man who accosted Monsieur Piquemal and left here with him?’
‘That’s him.’
‘You’re absolutely certain?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Aren’t you having a drink?’
‘Not now, thank you. I’ll be back.’
This testimony changed everything. So far, Maigret had assumed that the same individual had visited the various places – Mademoiselle Blanche’s apartment, Piquemal’s little café, the Hôtel du Berry, the professor’s widow and Boulevard Pasteur.
Now he realized there were at least two men.
Next he paid a call to Madame Calame, whom he found reading the newspapers.
‘I hope you’re going to find my husband’s report. Now I understand why he was so tormented during his final years. I’ve always had a horror of filthy politics!’
She eyed him warily, telling herself that it was perhaps in the name of ‘filthy politics’ that Maigret was coming to see her.
‘What do you want this time?’
He held out the photograph.
She studied it carefully and looked up, surprised.
‘Should I be able to recognize him?’
‘Not necessarily. I wondered whether it was the man who came to see you two or three days after Piquemal’s visit.’
‘I’ve never seen him.’
‘No possibility of a mistake?’
‘None. He might be the same type of man, but I’m certain he’s not the one who came here.’
‘Thank you.’
‘What’s happened to Piquemal? Do you think they’ve killed him?’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. If they want to hush up my husband’s report at all costs, they’ll have to do away with all those who are acquainted with it.’
‘They didn’t do away with your husband.’
His reply disconcerted her. She felt she had to protect Calame’s memory.
‘My husband knew nothing about politics. He was a scientist. He did his duty by writing his report and delivering it to the authorities.’
‘I am sure he did his duty.’
He decided to leave before she obliged him to discuss the matter in more detail. The taxi-driver shot him an inquiring look.
‘Where now?’
‘To the Hôtel du Berry.’
He found two journalists there trying to find out about Piquemal. They hurried over towards Maigret, but he shook his head.
‘Nothing to tell you, boys. Just a routine check. I promise you that—’
‘Are you hoping to find Piquemal alive?’
Them as well!
He left them in the corridor while he showed the photo to the owner.
‘What do you want me to do with this?’
‘Tell me if that’s the man who came to talk to you about Piquemal.’
‘Which one?’
‘Not my inspector, who rented a room, but the other one.’
‘No.’
He was categorical. So far, it seemed that Benoît was the character who had left the little café with Piquemal, but he wasn’t the one who had made any of the other visits.
‘Thank you.’
He jumped into the car.
‘Keep driving …’
Only once they were on the move, well out of earshot of the journalists, did he give the address on Boulevard Pasteur. He didn’t knock on the concierge’s door but went straight up to the third floor. There was no answer when he rang the electric bell and he had to go back downstairs.
‘Is Madame Gaudry not at home?’
‘She went out half an hour ago with her little boy.’
‘You don’t know when she’ll be back?’
‘She wasn’t wearing her hat. She’s probably gone to the local shops. She won’t be long.’
Rather than wait in the street, he went into the bar where he had gone that morning and called the Police Judiciaire on the off-chance. It was Lucas who picked up the phone in the inspectors’ office.
‘Nothing new?’
‘Two phone calls about Piquemal. The first from a taxi-driver who claims to have driven him to Gare du Nord yesterday. The other from a cinema cashier who says she sold him a ticket last night. I had them checked.’
‘Is Lapointe back?’
‘He came in a few minutes ago. He hasn’t started typing yet.’
‘Put him on, please.’
And, to Lapointe:
‘Well? The photographers?’
‘They were there, chief, and they kept on snapping us while Mascoulin was speaking.’
‘Where did he see you?’
‘In the Salle des Colonnes. In other words, it was like the concourse of Gare Saint-Lazare! The ushers had to move the crowd so we could breathe.’
‘Was his private secretary with him?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. I wasn’t even introduced to him.’
‘Is it long?’
‘It’ll be around three typewritten pages. Some journalists took it down at the same time as I did.’
That meant that Mascoulin’s statement would appear that evening in the late edition of the newspapers.
‘He told me to bring it to him for signing.’
‘What did you reply?’
‘That it was none of my business and that I’d wait for your orders.’
‘Do you know whether there’s a late-night session in the Chamber?’
‘I don’t think so. I heard that they’d finish at around five p.m.’
‘Type out your report and wait till I get there.’
Madame Gaudry had not returned yet. He paced up and down on the pavement and saw her coming back carrying a bag of groceries, her son trotting beside her. She recognized him.
‘Is it me you want to see?’
‘Just for a moment.’
‘Come on up, I was doing my shopping.’
‘It’s probably not worth my while.’
The boy tugged her arm, asking:
‘Who’s he? Why does he want to talk to you?’
‘Be a good boy. He just wants to ask me something.’
‘What does he want to ask?’
Maigret had taken the photo out of his pocket.
‘Have you ever seen this man?’
She wriggled free and leaned over the scrap of glossy paper, then said spontaneously:
‘Yes, that’s him.’
So now Eugène Benoît, the man with the cigar, had been identified in two places: Boulevard Pasteur, where he had probably stolen the Calame Report, and the café in Rue Jacob, where he had accosted Piquemal and had been seen going with him in the opposite direction from the École des Ponts et Chaussées.
‘Have you found him?’ asked Madame Gaudry.
‘Not yet. It won’t be long, I’m sure.’
He hailed another taxi to take him to Boulevard Saint-Martin, wishing he had taken a Police Judiciaire car, because once again he would have to argue over his expenses with the accounts department.
The building was old. The bottom windows were of frosted glass and in black letters were the words:
The Benoît Agency
All types of detective work
On either side of the arch, name plates announced a dentist, an artificial flower business, a Swedish masseuse and a range of other
professions, some of them fairly unusual. The staircase on the left was gloomy and dusty. Benoît’s name was there again, on an enamel door plate.
He knocked, knowing in advance that no one would reply, because there were leaflets poking out from under the door. After waiting for a moment out of duty, he went back down and eventually found the concierge’s lodge at the end of the courtyard. There was no concierge but a shoemaker, with the lodge doubling up as his little shop.
‘How long is it since you’ve seen Monsieur Benoît?’
‘I haven’t seen him today, if that’s what you want to know.’
‘What about yesterday?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I didn’t notice.’
‘And the day before yesterday?’
‘Not the day before yesterday either.’
He didn’t seem to care, and Maigret thrust his badge under his nose.
‘I’ve told you what I know. No offence meant. The residents’ doings are none of my business.’
‘Do you know his private address?’
‘It must be in the book.’
He got up reluctantly, ambled over to a kitchen dresser and fished out a grimy register whose pages he flicked through with his tarry hands.
‘The last one I have is on Boulevard Beaumarchais.’
It wasn’t far away. Maigret went there on foot.
‘He moved out three weeks ago,’ he was told. ‘He only stayed here two months.’
This time he was sent to a rather seedy furnished lodging house on Rue Saint-Denis in front of which stood an enormous girl who opened her mouth to speak to him, but must have recognized him at the last moment and gave a shrug.
‘He’s got room 19. He’s not in.’
‘Did he spend last night there?’
‘Emma! Did you do Monsieur Benoît’s room this morning?’
A head appeared over the banister on the first floor.
‘Who’s asking for him?’
‘Never you mind. Answer.’
‘No. He didn’t sleep here.’
‘What about the night before?’
‘Neither.’
Maigret asked for the key to the room. The girl who had replied from the stairs followed him up to the third floor on the pretence of showing him the way. The doors were numbered, he didn’t need her. All the same, he asked her a few questions:
‘Does he live alone?’
‘You want to know whether he sleeps alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fairly often.’
‘Does he have a regular lady friend?’
‘He has lots.’
‘What sort?’
‘The sort who’s prepared to come here.’
‘Often the same?’
‘I’ve already seen the same face two or three times.’
‘Does he pick them up in the street?’
‘I’m not there when he chooses them.’
‘So he hasn’t set foot in the hotel for two days?’
‘Two or three. I’m not exactly sure.’
‘Does he sometimes entertain men?’
‘If I get your drift, he doesn’t go in for that sort of thing, and nor does this establishment. There’s a hotel for those people at the bottom of the street.’
Maigret didn’t learn much from the room. It was typical of that kind of hotel, with its iron bedstead, old chest of drawers, sagging armchair and washbasin with running hot and cold water. The drawers contained underwear, an opened box of cigars, a watch that had stopped and different sized fish hooks in a cellophane packet, but not a single interesting document. In an extendable suitcase he found only shoes and dirty shirts.
‘Does he sometimes not come back to sleep here?’
‘Quite often. And, every Saturday, he goes away to the country until Monday.’
This time, Maigret had the taxi drive him back to Quai des Orfèvres, where Lapointe had long since finished typing up Mascoulin’s statement.
‘Telephone the Chamber and find out whether the deputies are still there.’
‘Should I say you want to speak to him?’
‘No. Don’t mention me or the Police Judiciaire.’
When he turned to Lucas, the latter shook his head.
‘There was another phone call after the first two. We checked. Torrence is still on the way. Red herrings.’
‘It wasn’t Piquemal?’
‘No. The taxi-driver was the most certain, but we found his customer in the building where he picked him up.’
There would be more, especially in the following day’s post.
‘The session in the Chamber ended half an hour ago,’ announced Lapointe. ‘They just had to vote on—’
‘I don’t care what they were voting on.’
He knew that Mascoulin lived in Rue d’Antin, a stone’s throw from the Opéra.
‘Are you doing anything?’
‘Nothing important.’
‘In that case, come with me and bring the statement.’
Maigret never drove. He had tried, at the time when the Police Judiciaire had the use of a number of little black cars, but on several occasions, lost in thought, he had forgotten that he was at the wheel and only remembered to brake at the last minute, so he preferred not to drive.
‘Shall we take the car?’
‘Yes.’
It was almost as if to redeem himself for all the taxis he had taken that afternoon.
‘Do you know what number Rue d’Antin?’
‘No. It’s the oldest building.’
The apartment block was respectable, old-fashioned but well maintained. Maigret and Lapointe pulled up in front of the concierge’s lodge, which resembled a petty bourgeois sitting room and smelled of floor polish and velvet.
‘Monsieur Mascoulin.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
Maigret ventured a ‘yes’. At the same time, the woman in black looked at him, then glanced at the front page of the newspaper and back at him.
‘I suppose I should let you go up, Monsieur Maigret. It’s the first floor on the left.’
‘How long has he lived here?’
‘It’ll be eleven years in December.’
‘Does his secretary live with him?’
She gave a little laugh.
‘Most certainly not.’
He felt as if she had read his thoughts.
‘Do they work late into the evening?’
‘Often. Nearly always. I think Monsieur Mascoulin is one of the busiest men in Paris. Simply answering all the letters he receives here and at the Chamber.’
Maigret was tempted to show her the photograph of Benoît and ask her whether she had ever seen him, but she would probably mention it to Mascoulin and Maigret preferred not to reveal anything.
‘Do you have a private telephone line to his apartment?’
‘How do you know?’
It wasn’t difficult to guess, because as well as the normal telephone, there was a lighter one on the wall. Mascoulin was cautious.
So she would alert him to the arrival of Maigret as soon as he and Lapointe were on their way upstairs. It did not matter. He could have prevented her by leaving Lapointe in the lodge.
There was no immediate reply when he rang the bell and, after a while, it was Mascoulin himself who came and opened the door, without bothering to feign surprise.
‘I thought you would show up in person and that you would choose to come here. Follow me.’
The hall floor was cluttered with piles of newspapers, magazines and reports of parliamentary debates. There were more in what served as the sitting room, which was barely more welcoming than a dentist’s waiting room.
Mascoulin clearly was not interested in either luxury or comfort.
‘I suppose you’d like to see my study?’
There was something insulting in his irony, in his way of appearing to guess Maigret’s intentions, but the latter remained composed.
He merely retorted:
‘I’m not a female admirer who has come to ask for your autograph.’
‘This way.’
They went through a double padded door that led into a spacious study with both windows overlooking the street. Two of the walls were lined with green files. Elsewhere were rows of law manuals like those found in every lawyer’s office, and lastly, on the floor again, newspapers and as many reports as in a ministry.
‘May I introduce René Falk, my secretary?’
The young man could not have been more than twenty-five; he was fair-haired and puny, with a curiously childlike peevish expression.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he mumbled, glaring at Maigret in the same way as Mademoiselle Blanche had done the first time.
Like her, he must be fanatically devoted to his boss and consider any stranger as an enemy.
‘Do you have the statement? Several copies of it, I imagine?’
‘Three copies, two of which I require you to sign, as you stated you would, the third for your record or for whatever else you wish to do with it.’
Mascoulin took the documents and held one out to René Falk, who began to read at the same time as he did.
Sitting at his desk, he picked up a pen, added the occasional comma and crossed out a word, muttering to Lapointe:
‘I hope you’re not offended?’
When he reached the last line, he signed, and he made the same corrections on the second copy, which he also signed.
Maigret reached out, but Mascoulin did not hand him the documents. Nor did he make the corrections on the third copy.
‘Correct?’ he asked his secretary.
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Put them through the machine.’
He shot Maigret a mocking look.
‘A man who has as many enemies as I do can’t be too careful,’ he said. ‘Especially when it is in so many people’s interest that a certain document does not come to light.’
Falk pushed open a door which he did not close behind him, revealing a narrow room, a former kitchen or bathroom where, on a white wood table, stood a Photostat machine.
The secretary pressed buttons. The machine made a gentle humming sound and he inserted the sheets of paper one at a time, as well as other sheets of a special paper. Maigret was familiar with the system but had rarely seen a machine of that kind in a private home. He watched the operation with seeming indifference.
Maigret and the Minister Page 12