Maigret Takes a Room

by Georges Simenon

  Kridelka was waiting for his naturalization papers, even though he spoke terrible French. Saft had his already.

  He had questioned them all already, some of them several times. He had gone into their rooms, seen their beds, their toothbrushes above the washstand and the little alcohol or paraffin stoves on which they prepared most of their meals.

  He had found out the most intimate details of their lives, looking at them with those big eyes of his, which assumed a bleak expression at such times.

  And after that? Nowhere, of course, not in the cupboards, on top of the furniture or under mattresses, had he found the Colt revolver with which Janvier had been shot.

  Poor Janvier! Maigret wasn’t even going to see him in hospital any more, he just called the nurse twice a day, and sometimes the phone was passed to the wounded man, who said hello to him in an unrecognizable voice. For how long would he go on making that unpleasant whistling sound as he spoke?

  Faces he had never seen three days before had become so familiar to him that afterwards he would probably find himself greeting simple passers-by, mistaking them for friends.

  The woman with the duster, for example, looked at his window almost as often as he looked at hers, with a reproachful air, as if giving him to understand that a big, strong man should have been doing more serious work.

  She was a widow, Madame Boulard, whose husband had been in the Highways Department, and who lived on a small pension.

  In a block of six houses, he had already counted five widows. He saw them in the morning, shopping bags on their arms, on their way to the market on Rue Mouffetard. He saw them coming back with leeks or lettuces poking out.

  He could almost have said what everyone ate, at what time, when and how they went to bed, at what time their alarm-clocks went off on their bedside tables.

  On the first floor, opposite, the bed had been moved slightly, bringing it closer to the window. It was the room which a man had left one morning with a suitcase, to be driven by taxi to Gare Montparnasse.

  Often, at night, at irregular hours, the light came on, but he saw no shadow on the blind.

  The woman was ill. She spent whole days in bed. The concierge went up at about ten o’clock in the morning, opened the window and started doing the housework.

  As to the attic window, the maid of an old woman of private means – another widow – slept there and received men every night.

  He had resumed Vauquelin’s work again, had gone to question them all, all the neighbours, everyone who might have seen or heard something. To do that, he was forced to knock on their doors at meal times, or in the evening after dinner. He had interviewed some of them twice.

  ‘I’ve already told the inspector what I knew,’ they told him.

  He sat down anyway, whether he was invited to or not. It was an old trick. When people see you sitting down, they lose all hope of getting rid of you in a few minutes and try to give you satisfaction.

  ‘What were you doing last Monday at ten o’clock in the evening?’

  He added:

  ‘On the evening when a shot was fired in the street.’

  They were impressed by his fat notebook. Most of them scoured their memories.

  ‘I was getting ready to go to bed.’

  ‘Were your windows shut?’

  ‘I think so … Wait …’

  ‘The weather was very mild.’

  ‘If I remember, one of the windows was half open.’

  It was a task that called for patience. He brought Vauquelin’s notes with him. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.

  Three times he had started drawing up a kind of timetable, to which he constantly added corrections.

  Then he went and had a glass of white wine or a bite to eat at the Auvergnat’s bistro, and in the end he got to know the locals. He was now treated like a regular customer. In the morning he was told what would be on the menu, and the owner’s wife, with her hair in a bun on the top of her head, added:

  ‘Unless you want a special little dish …’

  Most of the time he didn’t take the trouble to put on his overcoat. He turned up the collar of his jacket, lowered the brim of his hat and crossed the street, his back bent. When he went to question certain women like that, they stared insistently at his feet to remind him of the doormat.

  ‘You’re certain you didn’t hear any footsteps?’

  His last summary, on Friday at four o’clock in the afternoon, when he was coming back from having a glass at the Auvergnat’s bistro, was more or less as follows. He had reread it so many times, pencil in hand, that he had drawn squiggles, like the ones in the margin of a schoolboy’s exercise book.

  Clément house. Twenty past ten (a few moments after the shot).

  Mademoiselle Clément is in her room, having her evening wash, and Paulus is under the bed.

  On the ground floor, on the left, M. Valentin is making himself a hot rum in his kitchen as he does almost every evening.

  On the first floor, the Lotards have gone to bed. Madame Lotard hasn’t gone to sleep, because the baby has just groaned and she’s waiting to find out whether she will have to get up again.

  Blanche Dubut is reading in her bed.

  Fachin absent (studying with a friend; will not return until the morning).

  M. Mège, accountant, whose window overlooks the courtyard like Fachin’s, is sitting on his bed, cutting his toenails.

  Second floor. No one in Paulus’ room. Kridelka absent. Will come back a quarter of an hour later. He has gone to a public meeting. (Checked by Inspector Vacher.)

  Mademoiselle Isabelle, absent. (Cinema, impossible to check. Tells the story, without hesitation, of the film that she is supposed to have gone to see.)

  M. and Mme Saft. She, in bed. He, in an armchair, busy reading the newspaper.

  Other pages like that summed up the timetables of the tenants of the neighbouring houses.

  Then, at last, on a different sheet, there was a reconstruction, as precise as possible, of people’s movements at the time of the gunshot and immediately afterwards.

  This in particular was noticeably different from Vauquelin’s report, probably because the people in question had had time to remember.

  One fact seemed certain: no one had heard any noises before the shot.

  ‘You didn’t hear the inspector’s footsteps?’

  ‘No. I had seen him a little earlier when I was closing my window. I didn’t know he was an inspector. He was young, and I thought he was waiting for his girlfriend.’

  That was the lady with the duster.

  Monsieur Valentin had also noticed Janvier as he was closing his window, before moving to the kitchen, but that was at about ten o’clock. He hadn’t wondered what he was doing there.

  So the shot rang out in the silence of the deserted street.

  Blanche Dubut, it seemed, had been the first to run to her window, which was half open with the curtains closed. She had parted them.

  ‘Did you see light at other windows?’

  ‘I wonder if there were any at the window opposite. There are almost always lights at that time of day. First of all I looked into the street.’

  The window opposite was that of the flat of the man who had left with a suitcase, where a sick or invalid woman lived.

  ‘Did other windows open?’

  ‘Yes. All over the place.’

  ‘Were any of them open before you opened yours?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think I was the first person to see the body on the pavement and scream.’

  That was true. At least four people had heard her cry, including Monsieur Saft, who had run to the landing, thinking that she was calling for help.

  ‘Who was first into the street?’

  In all likelihood it was Monsieur Valentin, who was wearing a black velvet smoking jacket. The concierge of the house next door had come out at almost the same time.

  Maigret had asked the same question a hundred times:

  ‘Which wi
ndows were lit at that moment?’

  But things immediately became confused. Most of the windows, in short, had opened one after the other. Mademoiselle Clément hadn’t even come out of her front door. She had asked:

  ‘Is he wounded?’

  And, without wasting a moment, she had rushed to the telephone to call the police.

  ‘How much time passed between the shot and the moment when Monsieur Valentin left the house?’

  ‘Less than half a minute. A few seconds.’

  The kitchen was beside his bedroom, and it was the only room he had had to cross. He had even forgotten to turn off the gas and had come back in a few moments later to do it.

  And yet neither Valentin nor the others had heard footsteps. The murderer hadn’t had time to get out of sight. He would have had to pass beneath at least one streetlight, and no one had seen anything.

  They didn’t look like much, but these few certainties were the result of a considerable number of interrogations.

  The concierge of the house opposite, Madame Keller, did everything she could to help Maigret, but she was the kind of lively little woman who speaks very quickly and who, by trying to be precise, gets everything muddled.

  ‘Did you leave your house?’

  ‘I went and stood in the doorway, but I didn’t cross the street. I thought he was dead, and I don’t like seeing dead people.’

  ‘Did any of your tenants go outside?’

  ‘Monsieur Piedboeuf, from the second floor, the one who has a beard and works at Bon Marché, came down in his dressing gown, and he went and glanced at the pavement opposite. I even told him he would catch a cold.’

  ‘Did you see the police car arrive?’

  ‘Yes … No … That is, just as it turned the corner I was in my bedroom, where I went to get my coat …’

  Maigret had phoned the station of the Fifth Ar-rondissement four or five times to ask questions of the policemen who had come to the scene.

  According to them, there were about twenty people on the pavement in a circle around Janvier when they had arrived. They had only taken a few names, at random. Monsieur Valentin had given his without being asked. They had all noticed fat Mademoiselle Clément.

  ‘You didn’t notice which windows were lit?’

  No one had paid any attention.

  ‘And you didn’t notice whether anyone was running off in the direction of either of the two ends of the street?’

  It was confused. Some neighbours had come over to the initial group, had mingled with it, sometimes giving their advice, while others headed home. Two or three passers-by had also stopped.

  It didn’t seem to be leading anywhere. It was bleak, like the rain that fell constantly and which filled the house with damp. There was a fire only in the sitting room, and Maigret went and sat there from time to time, responding with grunts to Mademoiselle Clément’s overtures.

  They had had no trouble finding van Damme in Brussels because, as Paulus had told them, his first concern on getting there had been to go to the United States consulate, to the information service.

  He had initially denied any involvement in the Stork case, then, with his back to the wall, he had shifted all responsibility to Paulus. One established fact was that he was in Brussels on the night when Janvier had been shot in Rue Lhomond. They had found the woman he had taken to the cinema that evening. Then he had been seen with her in a working men’s restaurant on Rue des Bouchers.

  ‘You’re wanted on the phone, Monsieur Maigret.’

  It had become a game. She climbed the two storeys every time, as if for fun, and glanced with amusement at the pages he was scribbling on.

  It was the Police Judiciaire again, asking for information about a current case. Lucas had taken his place there in his absence. Once or twice a day he came to Rue Lhomond to ask him to sign papers.

  He didn’t ask any questions and avoided giving Maigret his superior questioning looks.

  Maigret crossed the street once again, and first went to have a glass of white wine before going into the house opposite.

  ‘Tell me, Madame Keller …’

  ‘I’m listening …’

  Her little lodge was very clean, but dark. A big stove roared, and Maigret automatically presented his back to it.

  ‘The first-floor tenant …’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur Boursicault … We always call him Monsieur Désiré … That’s his first name …’

  ‘You told me he worked for Les Chargeurs Réunis, a shipping company.’

  ‘For over twenty years. He’s a steward on one of their boats.’

  ‘Do you know which one?’

  ‘He changes from time to time. For a year, it’s been the Asie.’

  ‘When I saw him leaving with his suitcase in the morning, I suppose he was going back on board?’

  ‘Right now he’s en route for Pointe-Noire, in Equatorial Africa. He’s hardly ever in France. They take more than a month to get there, and the same to come back.’

  ‘So that he comes back about every two months?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For a long time?’

  ‘It depends. It’s quite complicated. He explained the rotation system to me, but I didn’t understand.’

  ‘I suppose that when he’s in Paris it’s for a few weeks?’

  ‘No. That’s just it. Only one time in two. Then he has almost a month off. Other times, he just has time to come and kiss his wife, collect his things and set off again.’

  ‘Was his last stay a month-long stay?’

  ‘No. He stayed for two nights.’

  Maigret didn’t get excited. Ten times, when questioning someone, he had thought he was about to reach a result, and then a very simple answer dashed his hopes.

  ‘You say two nights? Wait. He would have arrived on the evening when the inspector was wounded?’

  ‘That’s right, yes. It didn’t occur to me to mention it.’

  ‘A bit before the shot was fired?’

  ‘No. He hadn’t yet arrived home when the gun went off.’

  ‘A little after?’

  ‘A long time after. His train got into Gare Montparnasse at about midnight. When I opened the door to him, it was almost one o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘I suppose he came back in a taxi?’

  ‘He couldn’t have carried his suitcase.’

  ‘Was his wife waiting for him?’

  ‘Definitely. She always knows where he is. A boat is like a train. There’s a timetable. She sends him airmail letters to all his stopping points. I know better than anyone, because I’m the one who posts them.’

  ‘So she was waiting for him?’

  ‘Impatiently.’

  ‘They run a tidy household?’

  ‘It’s the best I’ve ever seen, even though they aren’t together often, because of Monsieur Désiré’s job.’

  ‘What kind of man is he?’

  ‘A good man, very gentle. He’s very patient. He retires in a year, and they’re going to live in the country.’

  ‘Is his wife ill?’

  ‘She’s barely left her bed for five years. She shouldn’t leave it at all, but when I’m not up there, sometimes she moves around the flat.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. It’s something to do with her legs. She’s half paralysed. Sometimes it looks as if she’s completely paralysed and she can’t move.’

  ‘Do you know if she has any family in Paris?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘And no one ever comes to see her?’

  ‘Only me. I do her housework, as I’ve told you already. I go up several times a day to bring her meals to her and check that she doesn’t need anything.’

  ‘Why doesn’t her husband move to the country, or to Bordeaux, since he disembarks in Bordeaux?’

  ‘He’s suggested that. I think she’s used to me. There was also talk of putting her in a sanatorium, but she refused.’

  ‘You say she h
as no relatives?’

  ‘Désiré’s mother, who is very old and almost an invalid herself, comes to see her every month and brings her a box of chocolates every time. The poor woman doesn’t dare to admit that she doesn’t like chocolates and gives them to me for my daughter.’

  ‘Do you have anything else to tell me?’

  ‘What would there be to say? They’re good people, sorely tested. It isn’t easy for a man to have a wife who’s ill, and it isn’t easy for a woman …’

  ‘Tell me, Madame Keller, on the evening of the gunshot, didn’t you go up to your tenant’s flat?’

  ‘That’s right. I’d completely forgotten.’

  ‘When, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, a long time later. The young man had already been taken away in an ambulance. I crossed the street to see the place where he had fallen and hear what people were saying. There was blood on the pavement. I noticed light in Madame Boursicault’s window and I thought immediately that the poor creature must be in a trance.’

  ‘How long was it after the inspector was attacked?’

  ‘At least half an hour. I don’t remember exactly. I went upstairs. She wasn’t asleep. I think she was waiting for me. She knew I would come to reassure her.’

  ‘What did she say to you?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m the one who told her what had happened.’

  ‘She didn’t get up?’

  ‘I think she had gone to look out the window. The doctor tells her not to walk, but I’ve already said that she doesn’t always obey.’

  ‘Was she nervous?’

  ‘No. She had bags under her eyes, as usual, because she barely sleeps, in spite of the drugs. I try to make her read, I bring her books, but she isn’t interested. She spends hours thinking, all on her own.’

  A quarter of an hour later Maigret, clutching the receiver, staring at the little poster above the spyhole, was in touch with Chargeurs Réunis.

  Everything the concierge had told him about Boursicault was true. He was an excellent man who was highly regarded by the company. The Asie had reached Bordeaux just in time to take the train to Gare Montparnasse arriving a few minutes after midnight.

  So he couldn’t have shot Janvier.

  Maigret had only just hung up when a voice announced above his head: