Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses

by Georges Simenon

  ‘What did Zuber die of?’

  ‘Cancer. He had an operation at St Joseph’s.’

  ‘So, if I’ve understood correctly, his money is what has kept the Lachaumes going, more or less?’

  ‘Not exactly. When she married Madame Paulette brought a substantial dowry …’

  ‘Which she invested in Lachaume Biscuits?’

  ‘Pretty much. Let’s say that it was called on whenever it was needed.’

  ‘And then, when the dowry ran out? Presumably it ran out quickly, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did they manage then?’

  ‘Madame Paulette would go and see her father …’

  ‘He wouldn’t come here?’

  ‘I don’t remember seeing him. If he came it would’ve been in the evening, upstairs, but I’m not sure he did.’

  ‘I really can’t see what you’re driving at, detective chief inspector,’ the lawyer objected again.

  The magistrate, by contrast, seemed extremely interested. There was even an amused glint in his pale eyes.

  ‘Nor can I,’ admitted Maigret. ‘You see, maître, at the start of an investigation you’re always in the dark. All you can do is feel your way … So, Frédéric Zuber, who had an only daughter, gave her in marriage to the younger of the Lachaume sons, Armand, having set her up with a sizeable dowry. You don’t know how much?’

  ‘I object …’

  Radel again, naturally. He couldn’t keep still.

  ‘Fine. I won’t press the point. The biscuits gobbled up the dowry. Then Paulette would periodically be sent to see her father, whom they wouldn’t see socially …’

  ‘He didn’t say that.’

  ‘I’ll rephrase. Whom they wouldn’t see socially or who wasn’t a regular visitor to the house … Daddy Zuber coughed up …’

  Maigret was being coarse mainly in protest against the magistrate’s and the young lawyer’s presence.

  ‘Then Zuber died. Did the Lachaumes go to the funeral?’

  Monsieur Brême gave a wan smile.

  ‘That’s none of my concern …’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I assume there’s a marriage contract? An old fox like Zuber can’t have …’

  ‘They married under the convention of separate assets.’

  ‘And then Paulette Lachaume inherited her father’s fortune a few months ago, is that right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So she’s the one who holds the purse strings now? She’s the person you have to go to if there’s no money in the till to pay suppliers or wages?’

  ‘I don’t know where this is getting you,’ Radel piped up again, buzzing around annoyingly like a bluebottle.

  ‘I don’t either, maître. But nor do I see where it would get me to search Paris for a burglar who is stupid enough to break into a house without any money on the premises, using a heavy ladder and breaking a windowpane when there’s a glass door on the ground floor, all for the purpose of going into a sleeping man’s bedroom, killing him with a loud gunshot and taking a more or less empty wallet.’

  ‘You just don’t know.’

  ‘No, I don’t! Léonard Lachaume could have asked his sister-in-law for some money yesterday evening, for all I know. It is nevertheless a fact that there is an enormous safe in this office that would be child’s play to open which hasn’t been touched. It is also a fact that there were at least six people in the house at the time of the crime.’

  ‘More baffling break-ins have been known.’

  ‘Granted. To gain access to the courtyard where the ladder was, somebody would have had to jump over the wall, which is about three metres fifty high, if I’ve got that right. And a final detail: two people were sleeping a few metres away from the bedroom where the shot was fired, and they didn’t hear a thing.’

  ‘We’re near a railway line with trains going by pretty much non-stop.’

  ‘I don’t deny that, Monsieur Radel. My job is to look for the truth, and that is what I’m doing. Your presence in fact would incline me not to look very far, because it’s very unusual for the relatives of a murder victim to send for a lawyer before they can even be questioned by the police.

  ‘I’m going to ask you a question which you probably won’t answer. Armand Lachaume rang you in my presence to ask you to come here. Where do you live, maître?’

  ‘Place de l’Odéon. Just around the corner.’

  ‘Ah yes, and you got here in less than ten minutes. You didn’t seem very surprised. You didn’t ask many questions. Are you sure you weren’t aware of what had happened last night before us?’

  ‘I vigorously object to …’

  ‘To what? Of course I’m not accusing you of breaking into the house last night through that window. I’m just wondering if there wasn’t an initial telephone call early this morning to inform you of what had happened and ask your advice …’

  ‘I reserve my full right, in the presence of the examining magistrate, to take any action warranted by such an accusation.’

  ‘It’s not an accusation, maître. It’s a simple question. And, if you’d rather, a question I’m asking myself.’

  Maigret’s hackles were up.

  ‘Monsieur Brême, thank you. I’ll probably need to come back and ask you some further questions. The examining magistrate will decide whether the offices need to be sealed off …’

  ‘What do you think?’ the examining magistrate deferred to Maigret.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any point, and from what Monsieur Brême has told us, the accounts probably won’t reveal anything either.’

  He looked around for his hat, realized he had left it upstairs.

  ‘I’ll go and get it for you,’ the book-keeper offered.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’

  As he started up the stairs, Maigret sensed a presence. Looking up, he saw Catherine’s face peering over the banisters. She must have been watching out for him.

  ‘Are you after your hat?’

  ‘Yes. Isn’t my inspector up there?’

  ‘He left ages ago. Catch!’

  Without letting him go upstairs she threw him his trilby and then spat, as he went to pick it up off the doormat.

  The lawyer hadn’t followed them into the street. The unrelenting rain, still as cold and dreary as in the morning, had reduced the crowd of onlookers to a smattering; one uniformed policeman was enough to keep them in check.

  By some miracle, the newspapers hadn’t been tipped off yet.

  The two black cars belonging to the Police Judiciaire and the examining magistrate were still parked by the kerb.

  ‘Are you going back to Quai des Orfèvres?’ asked the magistrate, opening his car door.

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’m waiting for Janvier, who should be around somewhere.’

  ‘Why do you need to do that?’

  ‘Because I don’t drive,’ Maigret replied candidly, pointing to the police 4CV.

  ‘Do you want me to drop you off?’

  ‘No thanks. I’d rather wait and have a sniff around.’

  He expected detailed questions, maybe objections, urgings to show caution, restraint. But the magistrate only said, ‘I’d like you to call before midday and bring me up to date, detective chief inspector. I intend to follow this case very closely.’

  ‘I know. Goodbye, for now.’

  The handful of onlookers were staring at them. A woman who was hugging a black shawl to her chest, whispered to another woman:

  ‘That’s Maigret, he’s famous.’

  ‘Who’s the young one?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Turning up the collar of his overcoat, Maigret set off along the pavement. He had hardly gone fifty metres before someone waved to him from the doorway of a little bar called Aux Copains du Quai. It was Janvier.

  The bar was empty except for the landlady behind the counter. A large, dishevelled woman, she was keeping an eye through the k
itchen door on a saucepan that was steaming on the stove, giving off a strong smell of onions.

  ‘What are you having, chief?’ asked Janvier, adding, ‘I had a toddy. It’s real flu weather.’

  Maigret had a toddy as well.

  ‘Did you find out anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought it best before leaving to put the seals on the bedroom door.’

  ‘Have you rung Doctor Paul?’

  ‘He’s still on the job. One of his assistants told me that they found a fair amount of alcohol in the stomach. They’re working out the blood alcohol level.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘They’ve recovered the bullet, which they’re going to send to ballistics. According to the doctor, it was a small calibre, probably a 6.35. What do you reckon to it all, chief?’

  The landlady had gone off to stir her concoction with a wooden spoon.

  ‘I liked this morning’s case better.’

  ‘The Monk?’

  ‘At least people like him don’t clam up.’

  ‘Don’t you believe their story of a burglary?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither. Forensics looked for prints on the ladder and window but didn’t find anything. Only some of the foreman’s old prints on the ladder.’

  ‘The guy could have been wearing gloves. That doesn’t prove anything.’

  ‘I had a look at the outer wall.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The top’s covered with jagged glass. On one section, not far from the house, the glass had been crushed. I had photographs taken.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know a cat burglar always prepares for a job, chief. If he knows a wall is covered with broken glass, he’ll bring an old sack, or a bit of board. Then you’ll find the glass broken in a particular way. But here the glass has been smashed to pieces as if someone hit it with a hammer.’

  ‘Did you question the neighbours?’

  ‘They didn’t hear anything. Everyone keeps telling me that the trains make a hell of a racket and that it takes years to get used to. I noticed that there aren’t any shutters on the first and second floors, so I went to question the crew of the barge you can see unloading over there. I wanted to know if anyone had seen any lights on in the house after midnight.

  ‘They were asleep, as I’d expected. Those guys go to bed early and get up early. But the wife told me something that might be interesting. Last night a Belgian boat was moored next to them and it left early this morning. It’s called the Notre-Dame and is on its way to the Corbeil flour mill.

  ‘It was the skipper’s birthday yesterday. Some people from another barge, also Belgian, which was moored upstream, spent part of the night on board the Notre-Dame, and there was a guy with an accordion …’

  ‘Do you know the name of the other barge?’

  ‘No. According to the wife, it will have left too.’

  Maigret called to the landlady and paid for the two toddies.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Janvier.

  ‘To have a look around the neighbourhood first. There’s something I’d like to find.’

  The little black car only had to go a few hundred metres in the neighbouring streets.

  ‘Stop. It’s here.’

  They saw a long, cracked wall, an unpaved courtyard, an assortment of buildings, some wooden, some brick, that were open at both ends like tobacco-drying warehouses. Over the gate was written:

  F. ZUBER

  Hides and skins

  with underneath, painted more recently in aggressive yellow:

  David Hirschfeld, Successor.

  Janvier, who didn’t know the connection, kept his foot on the clutch.

  ‘The Lachaumes’ cash cow for the last six years,’ muttered Maigret. ‘I’ll explain later.’

  ‘Shall I wait?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll only be a few minutes.’

  He found the office without difficulty because the word was written above the smallest of the buildings, a hut, really, in which a secretary was typing next to a stove like the one in the house by the river.

  ‘Is Monsieur Hirschfeld here?’

  ‘No. He’s at the abattoir. What’s it concerning?’

  He showed his Police Judiciaire badge.

  ‘Had you started at the firm when Monsieur Zuber was in charge?’

  ‘No. I’ve always worked for Monsieur Hirschfeld.’

  ‘When did Monsieur Zuber sell his business?’

  ‘A little over a year ago, when he had to go into hospital.’

  ‘Did you meet him?’

  ‘I typed up the bill of sale.’

  ‘Was he an old man?’

  ‘You couldn’t tell his age because he was already sick by then and had lost lots of weight. His clothes hung off him, and his skin was as white as that wall you see over there. I know he was only fifty-eight, though.’

  ‘Have you ever met his daughter?’

  ‘No. I’ve heard about her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘When those gentlemen were discussing the sale. Monsieur Zuber was under no illusions about his health. He knew he only had a few months left, a year at most. The doctor had told him straight out. That’s why he chose a donation inter vivos, just keeping enough money in his name to pay for the hospital and the doctors. It saved him a lot in inheritance tax.’

  ‘Can you give me the figure?’

  ‘You mean the price Monsieur Hirschfeld paid him?’

  Maigret nodded.

  ‘There was enough talk about it in professional circles for it not to feel indiscreet. Three hundred.’

  ‘Three hundred what?’

  ‘Million, of course!’

  Maigret couldn’t help looking around him at the tatty office, the muddy courtyard, the tumbledown, rank-smelling buildings.

  ‘And Monsieur Hirschfeld paid that amount in cash, did he?’

  She gave a slightly pitying smile.

  ‘You never pay an amount like that in cash. He paid part, I won’t tell you exactly how much, but you can ask him. The payments for the balance are spread over ten years …’

  ‘All of it goes to Zuber’s daughter?’

  ‘In the name of Madame Armand Lachaume, yes. If you want to talk to Monsieur Hirschfeld, he’s usually back from the abattoirs around eleven thirty, except on days when he has lunch at La Villette …’

  Janvier looked curiously at Maigret, who came back to the car in a trance, his head bowed as if dumbfounded. He stopped by the kerb, filled his pipe.

  ‘Do you smell that?’

  ‘It stinks, chief.’

  ‘You see that yard, those sheds?’

  Janvier waited for what was coming next.

  ‘Well, son, all that is worth three hundred million. And do you know who got that three hundred million?’

  He slid into the seat, shut the car door.

  ‘Paulette Lachaume! Now, back to the office …’

  Until he walked into his office with Janvier still in tow, he didn’t say another word.

  4

  Opening the cupboard to hang up his damp coat and hat, Maigret glimpsed his face in the mirror above the wash-basin. He almost stuck out his tongue, he thought he looked so grim. The mirror was slightly distorting, admittedly. But Maigret still felt that he had come back from Quai de la Gare looking like one of the people who lived in that stupefying house.

  After spending as many years on the police force as he had, of course you’re not going to believe in Santa Claus any more, in the picture-postcard world of edifying literature, with its neat divisions – rich and poor, upstanding citizens and bad lots – its model families grouped around a smiling patriarch, as though posing for a photographer.

  But sometimes he unwittingly clung on to childhood memories and was as shocked as a teenager by certain aspects of life.

  He had rarely had such an intense experience of this as at the Lachaumes’. For once he had really felt out of his depth, and he still had a sort of bitter aftert
aste in his mouth. He needed to reclaim his office, sink heavily into his chair, stroke his pipes, reassure himself, as it were, that there was such a thing as everyday life.

  It was one of those days when the lights wouldn’t be switched off and runnels of rainwater would zigzag down the windows. Janvier had followed him into the office and was waiting for instructions.

  ‘Wasn’t that Loureau I saw in the corridor?’

  Loureau was a reporter who had been hanging around the Police Judiciaire’s offices since Maigret was a junior inspector.

  ‘You could tip him off about this …’

  Usually he avoided saying anything to the press at the start of an investigation because, in their fervour to discover everything as quickly as possible, they were liable to spread confusion, if not actually put the suspects on their guard.

  He wasn’t sending the journalists to Quai de la Gare as a way of getting his own back on the Lachaumes and the examining magistrate. He simply felt helpless confronted with that bewildering house, where everyone was silent and he had to wear kid gloves. He quite enjoyed the prospect of the reporters getting involved. They didn’t have to be as circumspect as him. They didn’t have a young magistrate on their backs, or a Radel who would create an almighty scene at the slightest misuse of authority or irregularity.

  ‘Don’t give him any details. He’ll find them out himself. Come back and see me afterwards.’

  He picked up the phone, asked for Ivry’s chief inspector.

  ‘Hello, Maigret here. You were kind enough to offer me your inspectors’ assistance this morning. I’d be glad to accept. I’d like them to find out what was going on last night in the vicinity of the house … You understand? Particularly between midnight and, say, three in the morning. Could you perhaps also find in your records an up-to-date address for Véronique Lachaume, the deceased’s sister, who appears to have moved out of the house on Quai de la Gare some years ago? Will you get someone to call me as soon as you have it? Thank you. Goodbye for the moment.’

  He could have telephoned Lucas too, but when he needed to speak to one of his inspectors, he preferred to get up and go and open the connecting door to their office. Not to keep an eye on them, but to take the office’s temperature, so to speak.

  ‘Can you come here for a moment, Lucas?’