But he was still concerned, and he sent the driver out to make sure no one tried to escape from the house.
He said to Lucas:
‘Do you want to go round and see there isn’t another car?’
He glanced in the kitchen, where the remains of a cold supper lay on a table, and pushed open a door to a smaller room that must have been used as a dining room.
Then he started up the stairs, his revolver still warm in his hand. Stopping on the landing to listen, he pushed open another door with his foot.
‘Anyone in there?’
There was no one. It was the landlady’s room, its walls covered with photographs of men and women, like Pozzo’s restaurant. There were at least a hundred pictures, many of them signed to Helen, and some of the photographs were of her, twenty years or so younger and dressed as a showgirl.
Before studying them Maigret made sure there wasn’t anyone in the other two bedrooms. The beds hadn’t been slept in. One of the rooms contained suitcases, in which Maigret found silk underwear, toiletries, shoes, but not a trace of any papers.
These were obviously the suitcases Charlie and Cicero had brought during their successive trips back and forth. At the very bottom of the heaviest one there were another two automatic pistols, a silencer, a cosh and a rubber truncheon, not to mention a sizeable supply of ammunition.
Of the woman who had travelled with Sloppy Joe, not a trace. Whereas, on his way back through the kitchen, Maigret picked up a cigarette case with the initials B. L. near the coffee pot, which seemed to suggest that Larner had been there.
Lucas returned from his inspection, his feet muddy.
‘No car in the vicinity, chief.’
In the meantime Torrence had examined the wounded man’s hand, which the bullet had gone through. Strangely, the wound wasn’t bleeding, because the blood had clotted on both sides, but the fingers were swelling almost visibly and turning blue.
‘Is there a telephone in the house?’
There was one behind the door.
‘Call a doctor in Maisons-Laffitte, any one will do, but don’t say we’re the police. Best to say there’s been an accident.’
Lucas gestured to say he’d see to it, and, for the first time, not without hesitation or a certain embarrassment, Maigret tested out his bad English in front of his men.
He spoke to Cicero, who was sitting on a bench, leaning against the wall.
‘Where’s Bill Larner?’
As he had expected, he didn’t get an answer, just a contemptuous smile.
‘Bill was here tonight. Did he give you a black eye?’
The smile vanished, but Cicero’s teeth remained clenched.
‘As you wish. You seem like a tough guy, but we’ve got some tough characters on this continent too.’
‘I want to telephone my consul,’ Cicero said finally.
‘What could be easier. At this hour. And to tell him what, may I ask?’
‘You decide. But you’d better take responsibility.’
‘That’s just what I am doing. Did you get through to the doctor, Lucas?’
‘He’ll be here in a quarter of an hour.’
‘Did you get the impression he’d call the police at Maisons?’
‘I don’t think so. He didn’t bat an eyelid.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they threw some wild parties here. Do you want to call the Police Judiciaire to see if they’ve got any news of the Baron?’
This business with the Baron was still worrying him, as was the woman’s disappearance from the Hôtel de Bretagne.
‘While you’re at it, ask Vacher to send us a second car. Everyone won’t fit into ours.’
Then, turning to face Charlie, he said:
‘Nothing to tell me?’
All he got in reply was one of the crudest insults in the English language, an allusion to the way his mother had conceived him.
‘What’s he saying?’ Torrence asked.
‘He’s discreetly hinting at my parentage.’
‘Vacher hasn’t got any news about the Baron, chief. He just rang his number again a quarter of an hour ago. Apparently Bonfils called to report that a car has been stolen . . .’
‘Rue de Rivoli?
‘Yes.’
‘Did you tell him we’d found it?’
A car stopped at the door, and a youngish man opened it, a black bag in his hand, then recoiled at the sight of the chaotic state of the room, the revolvers on one of the tables, and finally the handcuffs.
‘Come in, doctor. Take no notice. We’re from the police and we’ve been having a talk with these gentlemen and this lady.’
‘Doctor,’ she began, ‘tell the Maisons-Laffitte police, who know me, that these brutes . . .’
Maigret identified himself and pointed to Charlie in the corner, who was about to pass out.
‘I’d like you to fix him up a bit so he can come back to Paris with us. He was injured in Paris first and then again during our discussion here.’
While he attended to Charlie, Maigret went around the house again, paying particular attention to the photographs in the landlady’s bedroom. Then he emptied one of the suitcases and stuffed it with all the photographs he had taken off the wall and the papers he had found in a drawer: letters, bills and newspaper clippings. Finally, after carefully wrapping them, he put in the cigarette case and the glasses and cups they had been using.
When he went back into the main room, Charlie was looking groggy. The doctor explained:
‘I thought it best to give him an injection to sedate him.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘He has lost a lot of blood. They may decide to give him a transfusion at the hospital. He’s tough.’
Cinaglia could only muster a dazed stare.
‘Anyone else I should see to?’
‘You’ll stay and have a drink, won’t you?’
Maigret knew what he was doing.
To prevent the Maisons-Laffitte police or the gendarmerie finding out, he wanted to make sure the doctor didn’t leave before the car he had requested from Vacher arrived.
‘Have a seat, doctor. Have you had reason to come here before?’
‘Several times. Isn’t that so, Helen?’
He seemed to know her very well.
‘But under different circumstances. Once, it was a jockey who had broken his leg and spent a month recuperating on the first floor. Another time I was called out in the middle of the night to attend to a gentleman who had drunk too much and was suffering heart failure. I also seem to remember a girl who got hit on the head by a bottle – an accident, I was told, one night when everyone was in a fairly high state of excitement.’
Finally the car arrived. Charlie had to be carried out, his legs trembling. Cicero walked disdainfully round to the back seat, his hands on his stomach, and got in without a word.
‘Are you going to sit next to them, Torrence?’
Torrence felt gratified, in a small but well-deserved way, since he had done the bulk of the work.
‘Pity it’s not still light and Pozzo’s isn’t still open.’
Perhaps if it had been nine thirty in the morning instead of four thirty, Maigret would have yielded to his desire to pass by Rue des Acacias and ask Pozzo to have a look in the car.
‘Drop Charlie off at Beaujon hospital on the way. Lognon will be pleased to know he’s under the same roof. Take the other one to headquarters.’
Then he said to the woman, who, according to her papers, was called Helen Donahue:
‘Let’s go!’
She looked him in the eye without stirring.
‘I said, let’s go!’
‘You won’t make me budge. This is my home. You haven’t got a warrant. I demand to speak to my consul too.’
‘Of course. We’ll discuss that later. Would you care to accompany us?’
‘No.’
‘Ready, Lucas?’
Both of them took hold of the woman, one on either side, and
lifted her off her feet. The doctor, who couldn’t help laughing at the scene, held the door open for them. Helen struggled so hard that Lucas lost his grip, and she sprawled on the ground. They had to call the driver over to help.
Finally they bundled her into the car as best they could, and Lucas got in next to her.
‘To headquarters!’ Maigret ordered.
After a hundred metres, he changed his mind.
‘Are you very tired, Lucas?’
‘Not too bad. Why?’
‘I don’t like leaving the place empty.’
‘Right you are. I’ll get out.’
Maigret went round to sit in the back of the car. Lighting his pipe, he inquired politely of his neighbour:
‘The smoke isn’t bothering you, is it?’
All he got in reply was the insult he had translated very approximately a little earlier.
8.
In which an inspector tries to remember what he has found out
Comfortably settled in his corner, his overcoat collar turned up, his eyes stinging from tiredness and his head cold, Maigret stared straight ahead, ignoring his neighbour. They had been driving for less than five minutes when Helen started talking – to herself, it sounded like – in short bursts.
‘Some smart-alec policemen are going to be taught a lesson round here . . .’
A long silence. She was probably expecting a reaction, but Maigret was an inert mass.
‘I’ll tell the consul these people behaved like savages. He knows me. Everyone knows Helen. I’ll tell him that they hit me, and that one of the inspectors even felt me up.’
She must have been beautiful once. Now fifty, or maybe fifty-five, she still had a certain style. Was she drunk, or half-drunk, when Maigret had burst into her guesthouse? Perhaps, it was hard to tell. She had that hoarse voice of women who drink and stay up every night, the same slightly blurry look.
It was strange seeing her remain sullenly silent for several minutes, then suddenly mutter something, something short mainly, without appearing to say it to anyone in particular.
‘I’ll say they hit someone when he was on the ground . . .’
She might have been just venting her anger bit by bit, but then again she might also have been trying to make Maigret blow his top.
‘Some people think they’re the cream of the crop because they can put an innocent woman in handcuffs.’
It was sometimes so comical that the driver found it hard not to smile.
Maigret, meanwhile, took short puffs on his pipe and tried to keep a straight face.
‘I bet they won’t even give me a cigarette . . .’
He didn’t bat an eyelid, which forced her to take him to task directly.
‘Do you have a cigarette, then?’
‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were talking to me. I don’t have one on me, no, I only smoke a pipe. But as soon as we arrive, I’ll get one for you.’
The silence this time lasted until Pont de la Jatte.
‘They think the French are the only people in this world with a brain. Still, if Larner hadn’t told them . . .’
This time, Maigret looked at her in the dim light from the dashboard, but he couldn’t decipher any expression on her face. For a while he wondered if she had done it intentionally or not.
The fact was that, with a brief remark, she had just given him an important piece of information. He had suspected as much, in fact. From the start, he had had a feeling that Bill Larner hadn’t willingly collaborated with people like Charlie and Cicero. Besides, his role seemed to be limited to getting them a car, searching Lognon’s papers on Place Constantin-Pecqueur and being the driver, taking them first to one of his friends in Rue Brunel and probably then on to the Bon Vivant.
When Lognon had been taken to the forest, Bill had translated but he hadn’t been violent.
That night, he must have taken advantage of the fact Charlie had gone back to Paris, leaving him alone with Cicero, to regain the freedom he had been craving for a long time, especially since the business had got too hot for him.
Had he told Cicero he was intending to leave? Had Cicero caught him as he was leaving and tried to stop him? Bill Larner, in any case, had hit him. In the face.
‘Do you have a car?’ Maigret asked the woman.
Helen clammed up now he was questioning her and reverted to a look of contempt.
He didn’t remember seeing a garage near the guest-house. Charlie had left for Paris in the car that they had used to get to Maisons-Laffitte. So Larner must have gone off into the forest on foot, towards the main road or the station. He was now at least two hours ahead of them, and there was little chance they’d catch him before he got over the border.
As they passed an already open bistro at Porte Maillot, Helen declared, still without addressing anyone in particular:
‘I’m thirsty.’
‘There’s cognac in my office. We’ll be there in ten minutes.’
The car drove fast through the deserted streets. Some early risers were starting to appear on the pavements. When they stopped at Quai des Orfèvres, in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice, before moving from her seat, Helen asked:
‘Will I really get some cognac?’
‘I promise.’
Maigret heaved a sigh of relief because he had wondered for a moment if he was going to have to carry her as before in the forest.
‘Stay here,’ he said to his driver.
When he tried to help the woman up the stairs, she snapped:
‘Don’t touch me! I’ll tell them you tried to sleep with me too.’
Maybe she was only playing a role. Maybe she spent her whole time playing a role to help her cope with her life.
‘This way . . .’
‘Cognac?’
‘Yes . . .’
He pushed open the door of the inspector’s office. Torrence and his prisoner hadn’t arrived yet because they’d had to stop at Beaujon to drop off the wounded man. Vacher was in there, on the phone, and he gave the American woman a curious look.
‘You say that the receiver is off the hook? You’re sure? Thank you.’
‘Just a moment,’ Maigret put in as Vacher opened his mouth. ‘Watch her, will you?’
He went into his office, got the bottle of cognac and some glasses and gave Helen a drink, who drained it in one and gestured to the bottle again.
‘Not too much at a time. See you in a moment. Do you have any cigarettes, Vacher?’
He put one between the woman’s lips and held out a lit match. Blowing smoke into his face, she said:
‘I hate you all the same!’
‘Haven’t you got anyone who can watch her? We’d better not talk too much in front of her.’
‘Why not put her in the box room?’
It was over the stairs, a narrow cell with just a bench and a straw mattress. It was dark in there. Maigret hesitated, then decided to put the prisoner in an empty office and lock the door.
‘The cognac?’ she reminded him through the door.
‘Later.’
He rejoined Vacher.
‘Whose telephone is off the hook?’
‘The Baron’s. I have been calling his number pretty much every half hour. Until an hour ago, it rang but no one answered. In the last hour I’ve been getting the “engaged” buzz. I got worried after a while and rang the supervisor. She says the receiver’s off the hook.’
‘Do you know where he lives?’
‘Rue des Batignolles. The number is written on my pad. Are you going to go?’
‘I’d better. Meanwhile, put out the word about Bill Larner. He left Maisons-Laffitte about three hours ago. I think the Belgian border needs watching in particular. Torrence is going to show up any moment with Tony Cicero.’
‘What about the other one?’
‘In Beaujon.’
‘Did you work him over?’
‘Not too badly.’
‘What have they said?’
‘Nothing.’
Cocking their ears, they looked at one another, then Maigret made for the office in which he had locked Helen. Despite the handcuffs, she was wreaking havoc, sending the inkwells, desk lamp, papers and everything in her reach crashing on to the floor.
When she saw Maigret, she just smiled, saying:
‘I’m behaving pretty much as you did at my place.’
‘The box room?’ asked Vacher.
‘It’s what she wants.’
On the Pont-Neuf, his car passed the one carrying Torrence and Cicero, and the drivers waved to each other. When he got to Rue des Batignolles, Maigret saw a convertible parked half on the pavement. Looking inside, he read the Baron’s name on the little nameplate, which had a Saint Christopher medal on top.
He rang the bell. The concierge, who was still half asleep, unlatched the outer door, and he had to talk to her through the glass panel of the door to find out what floor the inspector lived on.
‘Did he come in on his own?’ he asked.
‘What difference is that to you?’
‘I work with him.’
‘He can tell you what he did himself.’
It was one of those buildings with several, mainly working-class families on each floor, and lights could already be seen in various apartments. The contrast between this very modest block and the aristocratic appearance the Baron affected was striking, and Maigret now understood why the inspector, a confirmed bachelor, never mentioned his private life.
On the fourth floor, a visiting card with only his name – no mention of his profession – was stuck to the door. Maigret knocked and got no reply. He turned the handle just in case.
The door opened, and he found the Baron’s hat on the floor. He switched on the light and saw a tiny kitchen off to the left, then a Renaissance Revival dining room with doilies, the sort you still see in concierge’s lodges, and finally a bedroom with the door wide open.
The Baron was sprawled fully dressed across the bed, one arm hanging over the side. If he hadn’t been snoring, you might have thought something had happened to him.
‘Baron! Hey! Old friend . . .’
He turned over completely without waking up, and Maigret kept on shaking him.
‘It’s me, Maigret . . .’
This took several minutes. Finally the inspector grunted, half-opened his eyes and moaned because the light was too bright. He recognized Maigret’s face and, with a jolt of something like terror, tried to sit up.
Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters Page 12