‘Was it you who came to my office earlier?’
‘That was my sister. Are you Detective Chief Inspector Maigret? Come in. Don’t mind the mess. We were just finishing dinner.’
She led them into a very large studio with a sloping ceiling, part of it of glass, through which the stars could be seen. On a long white wooden table were what remained of a dish of cold meats and a started litre bottle of wine. Another young girl, who looked like the twin of the one who had opened the door, was arranging her hair with a furtive gesture, while a man in a velvet jacket advanced towards the visitors with exaggerated solemnity.
‘Welcome to my modest abode, Monsieur Maigret. I hope you’ll do me the honour of having a drink with me.’
Since he had left the Quai des Orfèvres, the old sculptor must have found a way to drink something else apart from the wine he’d had with his meal, because his speech was slurred and his walk unsteady.
‘Don’t take any notice,’ one of the girls broke in. ‘He’s got himself in a state again.’
She said this without any bitterness in her voice, throwing her father an affectionate, almost maternal look.
In the darkest corners of the large room, sculptures could be made out, and it was clear they had been there for a long time.
More recent, part of their present life, were the wooden toys cluttering the furniture and spreading a nice smell of fresh wood through the room.
‘When art is no longer enough to support a man and his family,’ Grossot declaimed, ‘there’s no shame in turning to commerce for one’s daily bread, is there?’
Madame Grossot appeared now: she had probably gone to tidy herself up when she heard knocking at the door. She was a thin, sad-looking woman, her eyes constantly on the alert, who must always be expecting misfortune.
‘Aren’t you going to give these gentlemen chairs, Hélène?’
‘The inspector knows perfectly well he can make himself at home, Mother. Isn’t that right, Monsieur Maigret?’
‘Haven’t you offered him anything?’
‘Would you like a glass of wine? There’s nothing else in the house, because of Daddy.’
It was she who seemed to be in charge of the family, she in any case who took over the conversation.
‘We went to the local cinema last night, and we recognized the man you’re looking for. He didn’t call himself Moss, but Peeters. The only reason we didn’t come to see you earlier was that Daddy was reluctant to betray him, objecting that he was our guest and had often eaten at our table.’
‘Had he been living here long?’
‘About a year. The apartment covers the whole floor. My parents have been living here for more than thirty years and I was born here, as was my sister. Apart from the studio and the kitchen, there are three bedrooms. Last year, because of the financial crisis, we didn’t earn much from the toys, so we decided to take a lodger. We put an ad in the newspaper.
‘That’s how we met Monsieur Peeters.’
‘What did he say his profession was?’
‘He told us he represented a big English company, and that he had his regular customers, which meant that he didn’t need to travel around much. He sometimes spent all day here. He’d come and give us a hand in his shirt-sleeves. We all work on the toys together, after my father makes the models. Last Christmas, we got an order from Printemps, and we worked round the clock.’
Grossot was squinting so pitifully at the half-empty litre bottle that Maigret said, ‘Go on, then, I’ll join you in a drink. Pour me half a glass.’
In return, he received a look of gratitude.
‘He usually went out late in the afternoon and sometimes came back quite late at night,’ the girl continued, her eyes on her father to make sure he didn’t pour himself too large a glass. ‘Sometimes he took his sample case with him.’
‘Did he leave his luggage here?’
‘He left his big trunk.’
‘Not his suitcase?’
‘No. Actually, Olga, did he have his suitcase with him when he left?’
‘No. He didn’t bring it back with him the last time he went out with it.’
‘What kind of man was he?’
‘He was quiet, mild-mannered, maybe a little sad. Sometimes he’d shut himself up in his room for hours and we’d end up going and asking him if he was ill. At other times, he had breakfast with us and helped us all day.
‘He was sometimes away for several days, but he always warned us in advance.’
‘What did you call him?’
‘Monsieur Jean. He’d call us by our first names, except my mother, of course. He sometimes brought us chocolates or little gifts.’
‘Never anything valuable?’
‘We wouldn’t have accepted it.’
‘Did he have visitors?’
‘No, nobody ever came to see him. He didn’t get any mail either. I was surprised that a travelling salesman shouldn’t receive any letters, but he told me he had an associate in town, with an office, and that was where his correspondence was sent.’
‘Did he ever strike you as strange?’
She looked around her and said, without insisting, ‘In a place like this?’
‘Your health, Monsieur Maigret. To your investigation! As you can see, I’m nobody these days, not only in the field of art, but in my own home. I don’t protest. I don’t say anything. They’re nice girls, but, for a man who—’
‘Let him speak, Daddy.’
‘You see what I mean?’
‘Do you know when your lodger last went out with his suitcase?’
It was Olga, the elder daughter, who replied, ‘The last Saturday before …’
She hesitated, unsure whether she should continue.
‘Before what?’
The younger girl resumed control of the conversation. ‘Don’t blush, Olga. We were always teasing my sister, who had a bit of a crush on Monsieur Jean. He was too old for her, and he wasn’t handsome, but …’
‘What about you?’
‘Never mind that. One Saturday, about six o’clock, he left with his suitcase, which surprised us, because it was usually Monday when he took it with him.’
‘Monday afternoon?’
‘Yes. We didn’t expect him back, thinking he’d be spending the weekend somewhere, and we teased Olga because she had such a long face.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘What time he came back, we don’t know. Usually, we heard him open the door. On Sunday morning, we thought the apartment was empty and we were just talking about him when he came out of his room, looking ill, and asked my father to go and get him a bottle of brandy. He claimed he’d caught a cold. He stayed in bed part of the day. When Olga did his room, she noticed that the suitcase wasn’t there. She noticed something else, at any rate she claims she did.’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘It’s possible. You always looked at him more closely than we did.’
‘I’m sure his suit wasn’t the same. It was a blue suit, like the other one, but not his, and when he put it on I noticed it was a bit too wide in the shoulders.’
‘Did he say anything about it?’
‘No. We didn’t mention it either. That was when he complained that he had the flu and didn’t go out for a whole week.’
‘Did he read the newspapers?’
‘The morning paper and the evening paper, just like us.’
‘You didn’t notice anything else unusual
?’
‘No. Except that he went and locked himself in his room as soon as anybody knocked at the door.’
‘When did he start going out again?’
‘About a week later. The last time he slept here was the night of March 11th. I’m sure of that because of the calendar in his room. The pages haven’t been torn off since then.’
‘What should we do, inspector?’ the mother asked anxiously. ‘Do you really think he committed a crime?’
‘I don’t know, madame.’
‘But if the police are looking for him …’
‘Do you mind if we have a look at his room?’
It was at the end of a corridor. Spacious, not luxurious, but clean, with old polished furniture, and reproductions of Michelangelo on the walls. A huge black trunk, of the most common kind, stood in the right-hand corner, with a rope around it.
‘Will you open it, Janvier?’
‘Should I leave the room?’ the girl asked.
He didn’t see the need. Janvier had more difficulty with the rope than with the lock, which was an ordinary one. A strong smell of mothballs invaded the room. They started piling suits, shoes and underwear on the bed.
It was like an actor’s wardrobe, so varied were the clothes in quality and origin. A suit and a dinner-jacket both bore labels from a major London tailor, and another suit had been made in Milan.
There were also white linen suits of the kind worn mainly in hot countries, some quite garish suits, and others, on the contrary, which wouldn’t have looked out of place on a bank teller. For all of them, they found matching shoes, made in Paris, Nice, Brussels, Rotterdam and Berlin.
Finally, right at the bottom, separated from the rest by a sheet of brown paper, they dug up a clown’s costume, which surprised the girl even more than all the rest.
‘Is he an actor?’
‘A kind of actor.’
There was nothing else revealing in the room. The blue suit they had been talking about wasn’t there, because Peeters-Moss had been wearing it when he left. Perhaps he was still wearing it.
In the drawers, there were all kinds of objects – cigarette cases, wallets, buttons for sleeves and false collars, keys, a broken pipe – but not a single paper, and no address book either.
‘I’m very grateful, mademoiselle. You did well to inform us, and I’m convinced you’ll have no problems. I don’t suppose you have a telephone?’
‘We had one several years ago, but …’ And then, in a low voice: ‘Daddy wasn’t always like this. That’s why we can’t be angry with him. He never used to drink at all. Then he met some friends from the Beaux-Arts who are all more or less in the same boat as him, and he started getting together with them in a little café in Saint-Germain. It doesn’t do them any good.’
On a workbench in the studio there were a number of precision machines for sawing, filing and planing the sometimes tiny pieces of wood from which they made elegant toys.
‘Put a little sawdust in a piece of paper, Janvier. We’ll take it with us.’
That would please Moers. It was amusing to think that Moers’ tests would probably have led them here anyway, to this apartment perched high in a building on Boulevard Pasteur. It would have taken weeks, perhaps months, but they would have got here in the end.
It was ten o’clock. The bottle of wine was empty and Grossot suggested going downstairs with ‘these gentlemen’, but wasn’t allowed.
‘I’ll probably be back.’
‘What about him?’
‘I’d be surprised. In any case, I don’t think you have anything to fear from him.’
‘Where can I take you, chief?’ Janvier asked as they got back in the car.
‘Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Drop me a little distance from the Chope du Nègre and wait for me.’
It was one of those big brasseries that served choucroute and sausages and where, on Saturday and Sunday evenings, four scrawny musicians played on a little stage. Maigret immediately spotted the two couples, sitting at a table near the window, and noticed that the women had ordered crème de menthes.
Alfonsi was the first to stand, not all that confidently, like a man who expects a kick up his backside, while Liotard smiled and held out his well-groomed hand, very much in control.
‘May I introduce our lady friends?’
He did so, condescendingly.
‘Will you sit with us for a moment, or would you prefer to move to another table immediately?’
‘Provided Alfonsi keeps these ladies company and waits for me, I prefer to talk to you in private for the moment.’
A table was free near the cash register. Most of the customers were local shopkeepers, treating themselves to a family meal out, as Maigret had done the evening before. There were also the regular customers, bachelors or unhappily married men playing cards or chess.
‘What will you have? A beer? A beer and a fine à l’eau, waiter.’
Soon, Liotard would probably be frequenting the bars of the Opéra and the Champs-Élysées, but for now he still felt more at home in this neighbourhood, where he could look at people with a grand air of superiority.
‘Did your appeal yield any results?’
‘Did you ask for me to come and see you so that you could question me, Maître Liotard?’
‘To make peace, perhaps. How would you feel about that? It’s possible I’ve been a bit abrupt with you. Don’t forget we’re on different sides. Your job is to condemn my client, mine to save him.’
‘By becoming his accomplice?’
The blow hit home. Liotard blinked two or three times and pinched his long nostrils. ‘I don’t know what you mean. But since that’s the way you like it, I’ll get straight to the point. The thing is, detective chief inspector, you’re in a position to do me a great deal of harm. You could slow down a career that everyone agrees might well turn out brilliant. You could even put a stop to it altogether.’
‘I don’t doubt that.’
‘Thank you. The Bar Council is quite strict about certain rules, and I admit that, in my haste to get on, I haven’t always followed them.’
Maigret was drinking his beer with the most innocent air in the world, all the while watching the cashier, who probably thought he was the local hatter.
‘I’m waiting, Monsieur Liotard.’
‘I was hoping you’d help me, because you know perfectly well what I’m referring to.’
Maigret still did not react.
‘You see, detective chief inspector, I belong to a very poor family …”
‘The Comtes de Liotard?’
‘I said very poor, not common. I had a lot of difficulty paying for my studies and I was forced to do all kinds of jobs when I was a student. I was even a uniformed usher in a cinema on the Grands Boulevards.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Even a month ago, I wasn’t eating every day. Like all my colleagues of my age, and even some who are older, I was waiting for a case that would get me noticed.’
‘You found it.’
‘I found it. That’s what I’m getting at. On Friday, in Judge Dossin’s office, you said certain things that made me think you knew a lot and that you wouldn’t hesitate to use it against me.’
‘Against you?’
‘Against my client, if you prefer.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Maigret ordered another beer: he had seldom drunk such good beer, especially as it made a nice contrast with the sculptor’s warm wine. He was still looking
at the cashier, as if delighted that she was so much like the cashiers he’d seen in cafés in the old days, with her powerful chest lifted by her corset, her black silk blouse adorned with a cameo, her hair swept up into the shape of a wedding cake.
‘You were saying?’
‘I see you’re determined to make me talk. Well, you’re absolutely right: I committed a professional error by offering my services to Frans Steuvels.’
‘Only one?’
‘I found out about the case in the most banal way possible, and I hope nobody will get into trouble because of me. I’m quite good friends with a man named Antoine Bizard, we live in the same building. We’ve both had difficulty making ends meet, and we’ve sometimes shared a tin of sardines or a camembert. Lately, Bizard has had a regular job on a newspaper. He has a girlfriend.’
‘The sister of one of my inspectors.’
‘You see? You know.’
‘I’d like to hear you say it.’
‘Through his work on the newspaper, where he does the fillers, Bizard is in a position to know about certain things before the public.’
‘Crimes, for example.’
‘For example. He’s got into the habit of phoning me.’
‘So that you can then go and offer your services?’
‘You’re a cruel victor, Monsieur Maigret.’
‘Carry on.’
He was still watching the cashier, while also checking that Alfonsi was keeping the two women company.
‘I was informed that the police were taking an interest in a bookbinder in Rue de Turenne.’
‘On February 21st, early in the afternoon.’
‘That’s correct. I went over there and really did talk about an ex-libris before bringing up a more burning subject.’
‘The stove.’
‘That’s all. I told Steuvels that, if he was in any trouble, I’d be happy to defend him. All that, you know. It wasn’t so much for me that I wanted to have this conversation with you tonight – and I hope it remains strictly confidential – it was more for my client. Anything that harmed me right now would harm him indirectly. There you are, Monsieur Maigret. It’s for you to decide. Tomorrow morning, I could be disbarred. You just have to see the president of the bar and tell him what you know.’
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