He was already angry.
‘I do think it’s going a bit far, to let a stranger in and—’
She left the room and returned with the dish for their midday meal.
‘If you’d seen him—’
‘How old?’
‘Very young. Nineteen? Twenty perhaps?’
‘And what did he want?’
‘He rang the bell. I was in the kitchen and I thought it was the gas man. I opened the door. He asked if this was the right address for Chief Inspector Maigret. I gathered from the way he behaved that he thought I was the maid. He looked nervous, scared almost.’
‘And you showed him into the parlour.’
‘Because he said he absolutely needed to see you to ask your advice. I told him he should go to your office. But apparently it was too personal.’
Maigret still looked irritated, but began to feel like smiling. He could imagine the young man, in a state of panic, and Madame Maigret immediately taking pity on him.
‘What was he like?’
‘A very nice boy. I don’t quite know what to say. Not rich, but well brought up. I’m sure he had been crying. He took out a packet of cigarettes, then apologized at once. So I said:
‘“It’s all right, I’m used to it, you can smoke if you like.”
‘Then I promised to phone you, to check whether you would be coming home.’
‘And the revolver was still on the mantelpiece?’
‘Yes, I’m sure it was. I didn’t notice it just then, but I remember it was there when I was dusting at about nine o’clock, and nobody else has been in here.’
If she had not put the revolver back in its drawer, it was, he knew, because she had never been able to get used to firearms. Even if she had been assured it wasn’t loaded, she would not have touched it for anything in the world.
He could imagine the scene. His wife going into the dining room and talking to him in a low voice on the phone, then returning to say:
‘He’ll be back in half an hour at latest.’
Maigret asked:
‘Did you leave him on his own in here?’
‘Well yes, I had the lunch to see to.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘That’s just it, I don’t know. There was a moment when I was frying the onions and I closed the kitchen door, for the smell not to spread. Then I went into the bedroom to freshen up. I thought he was still there. Perhaps he was. I didn’t want to embarrass him by going into the parlour again. It was only a little after half past twelve when I thought I’d go and tell him to be patient, and then I realized he wasn’t there. Are you angry with me?’
Angry with her for what?
‘What do you think this is about? He really didn’t look like a thief.’
No, he couldn’t have been one, for heaven’s sake! How would a thief ever have guessed that that very morning there would be an automatic on the mantelpiece in the Maigrets’ front room?
‘You look anxious. Was the gun loaded?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then?’
Not worth replying. Someone who takes the trouble to get hold of a revolver intends sooner or later to use it. Maigret wiped his lips, stood up and went to look in the drawer, where he found the cartridges in their place. Before sitting down again, he telephoned the office.
‘Torrence, is that you? Can you call up all the gunsmiths in the city? Hello? . . . Yes, I said gunsmiths. Ask whether anyone has come in wanting to buy cartridges for a Smith & Wesson .45 special . . . What? . . . Yes, a .45 special. In case nobody has turned up yet, tell them that if someone does come in this afternoon or tomorrow, they should keep them waiting somehow or other, and contact the nearest police station . . . Yes. That’s all. I’ll be in the office as usual.’
When he arrived back at Quai des Orfèvres at about half past two, Torrence already had the answer. A young man had walked into a gunsmith’s on Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, but they didn’t have the calibre he asked for and had sent him on to the well-known firm of Gastinne-Renette. And there, they had sold him a boxful.
‘Did the boy show the gun to anyone?’
‘No, he just gave them a piece of paper with the make and calibre written on it.’
Maigret had various matters to see to that afternoon. At about five o’clock, he went upstairs to the laboratory. Jussieu, the director, asked him:
‘Are you going to Pardon’s this evening?’
‘It’s brandade of cod!’ Maigret replied. ‘Pardon phoned me the day before yesterday.’
‘Me too. But I don’t think Doctor Paul will be able to come.’
In the life of married couples, there are times when you see a great deal of another couple, then lose touch for no reason.
For about a year now, once a month, the Maigrets had been regularly visiting the Pardons, for what they called ‘the doctors’ dinner’. It was this same Jussieu, the director of the forensic service, who had first taken Maigret to Doctor Pardon’s apartment on Boulevard Voltaire.
‘You’ll see! You’ll like him. He’s a very competent chap, who could have become a leading consultant. In any field, I could almost say, since after being a houseman at the Val-de-Grâce and assistant to Lebraz, he was at the Sainte-Anne Institute for five years.’
‘And now?’
‘He’s in general practice by choice; he works twelve to fifteen hours a day without caring whether the patients can afford to pay him, and he often forgets to send them his bill. Apart from that, his only passion is cooking.’
Two days later Jussieu had telephoned.
‘Do you like cassoulet?’
‘Why?’
‘Pardon has invited us for tomorrow. When you dine at his house, you just have one main dish, usually some regional speciality, and he likes to know in advance whether his guests will like it.’
‘Cassoulet will do very well.’
Since then there had been more dinners: coq au vin, couscous, sole Dieppoise, and other dishes.
This time it was brandade of cod. Now who was it that Maigret was going to meet tonight, he tried to recall? Pardon had telephoned him two days before.
‘Will you be free the day after tomorrow? Do you like fish? Are you for or against truffles?’
‘For.’
They had got into the habit of addressing each other as ‘Maigret’ and ‘Pardon’, although their wives were on first-name terms. The two couples were near enough in age. Jussieu was ten years younger and Doctor Paul, the pathologist who often joined them, older.
‘Tell me, Maigret, you wouldn’t mind meeting one of my old friends, would you?’
‘Why should I mind?’
‘I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have invited him, except that he asked me to find a way of introducing him to you. He came to see me at the practice just now, because he’s also one of my patients, and he was very insistent to know whether you would definitely be there.’
At half past seven that evening, Madame Maigret, who had changed into a flowered dress and a fetching straw hat, was putting on her white cotton gloves.
‘Are you coming?’
‘I’m right behind you.’
‘Are you still worrying about that young man?’
‘No, not at all.’
One of the nice things about these dinners was that the Pardons lived only five minutes’ walk away. The sun was reflecting off the upper windows. The streets smelled warm and dusty. Children were still playing out of doors and families had brought chairs on to the pavement to take the air.
‘Don’t walk so fast.’
He always walked too quickly for her.
‘Are you sure that was him buying the cartridges?’
Since that morning, and especially after he had told her about the visit to Gastinne-Renette, there had been a weight on her mind.
‘You don’t think he means to kill himself, do you?’
‘Let’s change the subject, shall we?’
‘It’s just t
hat he was so nervous! His cigarette ends in the ashtray were in shreds.’
The air felt mild and Maigret held his hat in his hand as he walked, as if out on a Sunday stroll. They reached Boulevard Voltaire and arrived at the building where the Pardons lived, near the square. They took the lift, which made its usual squeak on starting up, and Madame Maigret gave her usual little jump.
‘Come in. My husband will be back in a few minutes. He was called out urgently, but it’s just round the corner.’
It was rare for one of their dinners to take place without the doctor being summoned. He would say:
‘Don’t wait for me.’
And they would often indeed leave without seeing him again.
Jussieu was already there, alone in the drawing room, where there was a grand piano and embroidered covers on all the furniture. Pardon came bustling in a few minutes later, and disappeared straight into the kitchen.
‘Hasn’t Lagrange arrived?’
Pardon was a small man, quite portly, with a large head and prominent eyes.
‘Now, wait, I want to try something out on you, and I’d like your opinion on it.’
There was invariably a surprise at Pardon’s dinners, perhaps a special wine or liqueur, or in this case a Pineau des Charentes which a vineyard owner in Jonzac had sent him.
‘None for me!’ protested Madame Maigret, who was usually tipsy after a single glass.
They chatted over the wine. Here too, the windows were open; life was going on at a leisurely pace on the boulevard, the air was golden and the light gradually faded into a rosy glow.
‘Well, I wonder what’s become of Lagrange.’
‘Who is he?’
‘I know him from when we were both at the Lycée Henri-IV. If I remember rightly, he had to leave after the fourth year. He was living in Rue Cuvier then, just by the Jardin des Plantes, and I was impressed by his father because he was a baron, at least he claimed to be. I lost touch with Lagrange for a long time, more than twenty years, and it was just a few months ago that he showed up at my surgery, waiting for his turn to see me like everyone else. But I recognized him at once.’
He looked at his watch, then at the clock.
‘What surprises me is that he was so insistent about coming and now he isn’t here. If he doesn’t come in the next five minutes, we’ll start eating.’
He refilled the glasses. Madame Maigret and Madame Pardon said nothing. While Madame Pardon was slim and Maigret’s wife a little on the plump side, they both displayed the same self-effacing attitude vis-a-vis their husbands. It was unusual for either of them to speak up during dinner, and it was only afterwards that they went into a corner of the room to talk quietly. Madame Pardon had a very long nose, excessively long, indeed, and you had to get used to it. At first, it was actually embarrassing to look at her face. Was it because of this nose, which must have made her the target of much mockery from her classmates, that she was so modest and looked at her husband as if she was thanking him for having married her?
‘I’m prepared to bet,’ Pardon was saying, ‘that all of us here had a friend at school who was like Lagrange. Out of twenty or thirty boys, there’s always at least one who is already fat at thirteen, with a podgy face and big pink legs!’
‘Well, in my class, it was me!’ Madame Maigret ventured to say.
And Pardon gallantly replied:
‘In the case of girls, it sorts itself out. And they are often the prettiest ones in the end. We used to call François Lagrange ‘Baby Cadum’, and there must have been thousands like him all over France nicknamed that at the time, because of the advertisements for Cadum Baby Soap, with that huge pink baby on them!’
‘And he hasn’t changed?’
‘The proportions have changed, of course. But he’s still a big softie. Never mind, let’s start eating.’
‘Why not telephone him?’
‘Because he doesn’t have a phone.’
‘Does he live nearby?’
‘Not far away, Rue Popincourt. I wonder what it is he wants exactly. The other day, in my waiting room, there happened to be a newspaper with your photo on the front page.’
Pardon was looking at Maigret.
‘Forgive me, my friend. I don’t quite know how it happened, but I mentioned that I knew you. I may even have added that you were a friend of mine.
‘“And is he really like they say?” Lagrange asked me.
‘I said yes, you were a man who . . .’
‘Who what?’
‘Oh nothing, I just said what I thought while I was examining him. He has diabetes. And some glandular problems. He comes in a couple of times a week, because he’s very anxious about his health. The next time he was there, he talked about you again, wanted to know if I saw you often, and I said we had dinner together once a month. And that’s when he pressed me to invite him, which surprised me, since we hadn’t seen each other since Henri-IV, and my only contact with him was at the surgery. Let’s eat.’
The brandade of cod was delicious and Pardon had managed to track down a dry white wine from the Nice region that made a perfect accompaniment. After the mention of overweight people, the conversation turned to redheads.
‘Yes, there’s always one redhead in every class at school!’
This led to the topic of genetic theory. They usually ended up talking about medicine, and Madame Maigret knew that her husband enjoyed that.
‘Married, is he?’
With their coffee, they had returned to the subject of Lagrange, for some reason. The blue of the evening, a deep velvety blue, had gradually taken over from the crimson sunset; but they had not yet lit the lamps, and through the French windows they could see the wrought-iron curlicues of the balcony balustrade outlined in black. From the corner of a nearby street came the strains of an accordion, and on a neighbouring balcony, the low voices of a couple in conversation.
‘He was, he told me, but his wife died some time ago.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s in business, rather vague business, probably. His visiting card says ‘Financial administrator’, and gives an address in Rue Tronchet. I rang the number one day to cancel an appointment, and I was told that those offices had not existed for many years.’
‘Children?’
‘Two or three. A daughter notably, if I remember correctly, and a boy for whom he was hoping to find a steady job.’
The talk returned to medicine. Jussieu, who had also worked at the Sainte-Anne Institute recalled memories of the celebrated Doctor Charcot. Madame Pardon was knitting and explaining some tricky stitch to Madame Maigret. They lit the lamps. There were a few mosquitoes, and it was eleven o’clock when Maigret rose to leave.
They left Jussieu at the corner of the boulevard, since he was taking the Métro from Place Voltaire. Maigret was feeling a little full, because of the brandade, or perhaps because of the southern wine.
His wife had taken his arm, something she hardly ever did unless they were walking home and she wanted to say something. How could he tell? She hadn’t opened her mouth, but he was nevertheless waiting for her to.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he finally grunted.
‘You won’t be angry?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’m thinking about that young man this morning. I was wondering whether, when we get home, you might telephone to check in case anything has happened.’
She was expressing herself obliquely, but he understood. She meant ‘to check he hasn’t killed himself’.
Curiously enough, that was not what Maigret thought might have occurred. It was just a feeling, without any firm basis, but he had not been imagining a suicide. He was vaguely anxious, but reluctant to let it show.
‘What was he wearing?’
‘I didn’t pay attention to his clothes. But I think he was wearing something dark, navy blue perhaps.’
‘His hair?’
‘Fairish. Well, blonde.’
‘Thin?�
��
‘Yes.
‘Nice-looking boy?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
He would have sworn that she was blushing.
‘Oh, I didn’t look closely at him, you know. But I remember his hands most of all, because he was so nervous, fiddling with the brim of his hat. He didn’t dare sit down. I had to push a chair forward for him. He seemed to expect me to throw him out any minute.’
Once they were back home, Maigret telephoned the night desk of the city police, where all emergency calls were logged.
‘Maigret here. Anything to report?’
‘Just the usual at Bercy, chief.’
Which meant the drunks outside the Wine Depot at Bercy.
‘Nothing else?’
‘Bit of a fight on Quai de Charenton. Wait a bit. Yes. In the late afternoon, a woman’s corpse was pulled out of the Saint-Martin Canal.’
‘Identified?’
‘Yes. Local prostitute.’
‘And no suicides?’
This was to reassure his wife, who was listening, hat in hand, in the bedroom doorway.
‘No, nothing like that yet. Should I call you if there’s anything new?’
He hesitated. It troubled him to seem interested in this business, even – or perhaps especially – in front of his wife.
‘If you like.’
There were no calls that night. Madame Maigret woke him in the morning with his coffee, and the bedroom windows were already open: they could hear workmen loading crates on to a truck in front of the warehouse opposite.
‘You see, he hasn’t killed himself!’ he said, as if taking his revenge.
‘Perhaps they don’t know about it yet.’
He arrived at Quai des Orfèvres at nine, and met up with colleagues for the daily report in the commissioner’s office. Routine matters only. Paris was quiet. They had a description of the man who had killed the woman pulled out of the canal. His arrest was only a matter of time. They would no doubt find him dead drunk in some bar before the day was out.
At about eleven, there was a call for Maigret.
‘Who is it?’
‘Doctor Pardon.’
At the other end of the line, the doctor seemed hesitant.
‘Forgive me for troubling you at the office. Last night, I was telling you about Lagrange, who had asked to come to dine with us. Well, this morning, on my rounds, I was going past the place he lives, on Rue Popincourt. So I went in, thinking that he had perhaps been taken ill. Hello? Are you there?’
Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters Page 15