“Hello! Maigret speaking.”
It was Inspector Neveu, calling from a bistro. Maigret could hear music in the background, coming from a radio, no doubt.
“There’s still nothing very positive to go on, chief. I’ve found three more people, one of them an old woman, who spend a great deal of their time sitting on benches in the boulevards. They all remember him, and they all say the same thing: he was very likeable, always polite, and never slow to enter into conversation. According to the old woman, when he left her he always made towards the Place de la République, but she would soon lose sight of him in the crowd.”
“Was he never with anyone else when she saw him?”
“No. But one of the others, a tramp, said to me:
“‘He was always waiting for someone. As soon as the man turned up, they would go off together.’
“But he couldn’t give me a description of the other man. All he could say was:
“‘There was nothing special about him. One sees thousands like him every day.’”
“Keep up the good work!” said Maigret, with a sigh.
He telephoned his wife to say that he would be late home, then went down into the forecourt, got into the car, and told the driver to take him to Madame Thouret’s address in Juvisy. There was a strong wind blowing. Dense clouds made the sky appear low overhead. They swirled about, as they do on the coast when a storm is brewing. The driver had difficulty in finding the Rue des Peupliers. When they finally got there, not only were the kitchen lights on, but also those in the bedroom on the floor above.
The bell wasn’t working. It had been disconnected as a sign of mourning. But someone had heard him arrive. The door was opened by a woman whom he had not seen before. She bore a family resemblance to Madame Thouret, but was four or five years older.
“Chief Superintendent Maigret…” he said.
She looked towards the kitchen, and called out:
“Emilie!”
“I heard. Bring him in.”
He was shown into the kitchen, the dining room having been transformed into a memorial chapel. The narrow entrance was filled with the scent of flowers and candles. A cold supper was laid out, and several people were seated at the table.
“I’m sorry to have to disturb you…”
“Allow me to introduce my brother-in-law, Monsieur Magnin, who is a railway inspector.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
Magnin was both humorless and stupid. He had a ginger moustache, and an Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down.
“You’ve already met my sister Jeanne. This is my elder sister Céline.”
There was barely room for all of them in the cramped little kitchen. Monique alone had not risen to greet him. She was subjecting the chief superintendent to an unwavering stare. She must have been thinking that he had come for her, to question her on the subject of Albert Jorisse, and she was frozen with terror.
“My brother-in-law Landin, Céline’s husband, will be coming home on the Blue Train tonight. He’ll just be in time for the funeral. Won’t you sit down?”
He shook his head.
“Would you like to see him?”
She wanted him to know that they had done things in style. He followed her into the adjoining room, where Louis Thouret was laid out in his coffin. The lid had not yet been screwed down. Very softly, she whispered:
“He looks as if he was asleep.”
He went through all the proper motions, dipping a sprig of rosemary into a bowl of holy water, crossing himself, moving his lips as though in prayer, and then crossing himself again.
“He never thought about dying…” she said, and added:
“He did so love life!”
They tiptoed out, and she shut the door behind her. The others were waiting for Maigret to leave, before returning to their meal.
“Will you be attending the funeral, chief superintendent?”
“I’ll be there. As a matter of fact, that was what I came to see you about.”
Monique still did not stir, but she was obviously relieved to hear this. Maigret did not seem to have noticed her, so she kept very still, almost as if, in that way, she could ward off what fate had in store for her.
“I take it you and your sisters know most of the people who will be attending the funeral? I don’t, of course.”
“I understand!” said Magnin, the brother-in-law, implying that great minds think alike.
And he turned to the others, as if to say:
“This is going to be good!”
“All I’m asking is that, if you should spot anyone there whose presence strikes you as odd, you should simply point them out to me.”
“You mean you think the murderer might be there?”
“Not necessarily the murderer. I can’t afford to ignore any possibility, however remote. You must remember that much of your husband’s life during the past three years is still shrouded in mystery.”
“Are you insinuating that he was mixed up with another woman?”
It was not only her face that had assumed a hard expression, but those of her two sisters as well.
“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m just feeling my way. If you notice anything out of the way tomorrow, just give me a sign. I shall understand.”
“Do you mean we should be on the lookout for any stranger?”
He nodded, and then apologized again for disturbing them. It was Magnin who saw him to the door.
“Have you anything to go on yet?” he asked, man to man, in the tone of voice one adopts with the doctor just after he has seen the patient.
“No.”
“Not even the tiniest glimmer of an idea?”
“None at all. Goodnight.”
His purpose in visiting the Rue des Peupliers had not been to alleviate the feeling of oppression which had weighed upon him ever since he had sat waiting to be called as witness in the Lecœur trial. In the car, on the way back to Paris, he was occupied with random and seemingly irrelevant thoughts. He was remembering that when, at the age of twenty, he had first arrived in the capital, what had most disturbed him about it was the unremitting ferment of the great city, in which hundreds of thousands of people were all milling about, apparently on some quest of their own.
In some places, one might almost call them strategic points, such as Les Halles, the Place Clichy, the Bastille and the Boulevard Saint-Martin, where Monsieur Louis had met his death, the ferment was even more intense than elsewhere.
In the old days he had been particularly struck, even one might say romantically stirred, by the sight of those who, discouraged and defeated, had given up the struggle, being swept along willy-nilly by the great, surging tide of humanity.
Since then, he had come to know many such people, and it was no longer them whom he most admired, but rather those just one step above them on the ladder, who were clean and decent and not in the least picturesque, and who fought day in and day out to keep their heads above water, or to nurture the illusion, or perhaps the faith, that they were alive and that life was worth living.
For twenty-five long years, Monsieur Louis had caught the same train every morning, sharing a compartment with the same people, his oilcloth packet of sandwiches tucked under his arm, and, in the evening, he had returned to what Maigret could not help thinking of as the House of the Three Sisters, since, although Céline and Jeanne had homes of their own several streets away, all three were ever-present, shutting off the wider horizon like a stone wall.
“Back to Headquarters, chief?”
“No. Drive me home.”
That evening, as he so often did, he took Madame Maigret to a cinema in the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. On the way there and back, with his arm through his wife’s, he walked past the cul-de-sac off the Boulevard Saint-Martin.
“Is there something upsetting you?”
“No.”
“You haven’t said a word all evening.”
“I wasn’t aware of it.”
The rain began to fall at about three or four in the morning, and, in his sleep, he could hear the water gurgling in the gutters. By breakfast time it was coming down in buckets, accompanied by squally winds, and the people in the streets were clutching on to their umbrellas for fear they should be blown inside out.
“Proper All Saints’ Day weather,” remarked Madame Maigret.
But in his recollection, All Saints’ Day had always been overcast, windy and cold, but not wet. Why this should be, he had no idea.
“Have you a lot to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You’d better wear your galoshes.”
He did as he was told. By the time he found a taxi, his shoulders were already wet through, and, when he got in, the rain dripped off his hat-brim on to the floor.
“Quai des Orfèvres.”
The funeral was at ten. He looked in at the chief commissioner’s office, but did not stay for the daily briefing. He was waiting for Neveu, who would be driving him to the cemetery. He was taking him on the off-chance that he might recognize someone. After all, the inspector knew an enormous number of people in the Saint-Martin district, and Maigret had high hopes of this particular line of inquiry.
“Still no news of Jorisse?” he asked Lucas.
Although he couldn’t explain why, Maigret was convinced that the young man was still somewhere in Paris.
“Better make a list of all his friends, all the people he went about with, during the last few years.”
“I’ve made a start on it already.”
“Good. Keep at it!”
Neveu appeared in the doorway. He too was sopping wet. Maigret and he went off together.
“What a day for a funeral!” grumbled the inspector. “I hope they’ve laid on cars.”
“I very much doubt it.”
It was ten minutes to ten when they arrived at the house of mourning. Black curtains embroidered in silver had been hung over the door. People, sheltering under their umbrellas, were standing about on the unmade pavement, where the rain was soaking into the yellowish clay soil and running in rivulets.
Some of the bystanders went into the house to pay their respects to the dead, and came out looking solemn and pompous, conscious of having done their duty. There must have been about fifty people clustered round the house, and more sheltering in the neighboring doorways. There were also the neighbors, watching from their windows, determined to remain indoors until the last possible moment.
“Aren’t you going in, chief?”
“I was here yesterday.”
“Not very cheerful in there, is it?”
Neveu, needless to say, was not referring to the funereal atmosphere of the occasion, but to the house itself. And yet there were thousands and thousands of people whose dream it was to own just such a house.
“Whatever possessed them to come and live here?”
“She wanted to be near her sisters and brothers-in-law.”
They noticed several men in railwaymen’s uniform. The house was not far from the marshaling yard. Most of the houses on the estate were occupied by people connected in one way or another with the railways.
The hearse arrived, followed at a brisk pace by a priest under an umbrella. He, in turn, was followed by a choirboy carrying his cross.
The wind whistled unimpeded down the street, flattening wet clothes against shivering bodies. The rain beat down on the coffin. Madame Thouret and her sisters, who were waiting in the entrance lobby, conferred together in whispers. Maybe they should have seen to it that there were more umbrellas?
All three were dressed in deep mourning, as were the two brothers-in-law. Behind them came the girls, Monique and her three cousins.
Which made seven women in all. As far as Maigret could see, the girls, like their mothers, closely resembled one another. It was a family of women, in which the men seemed uneasily aware that they were in a minority.
The horses whinnied. The family closed ranks behind the hearse, followed by such neighbors and friends as considered themselves entitled to precede the others in the procession.
The remainder straggled behind in a ragged line, some sheltering as best they could from the squally showers by hugging the inside of the pavement.
“Do you see anyone you recognize?”
There was no one of the sort they were looking for. None of the women, for example, could have been the woman with the ring. True, one of them was wearing a fox fur, but the chief superintendent had himself seen her come out of one of the houses in the street, locking the door behind her. As for the men, it was impossible to imagine any one of them sitting on a bench in the Boulevard Saint-Martin.
Nevertheless, Maigret and Neveu stayed right to the end. Fortunately, there was no Mass, just a prayer so short that it was not thought worthwhile to shut the church doors, with the result that the tiled floor was soon wet all over.
Twice, the chief superintendent found himself looking straight into Monique’s eyes, and each time he could sense the fear clutching at the girl’s heart.
“Are we going on to the cemetery?”
“It’s not far. We might as well.”
They found themselves up to their ankles in mud, because the grave was in a new part of the cemetery, where the paths were nothing more than slimy tracks. Every time Madame Thouret caught Maigret’s eye, she looked about her ostentatiously, to show that she had not forgotten his request. When he went forward, like all the others, to offer his condolences to the family as they stood at the graveside, she murmured:
“I don’t see anyone who shouldn’t be here.”
Her nose was red because of the cold, and the rain had washed off her face powder. The four cousins also had shiny noses and cheeks.
Maigret and Neveu hung around for a little while outside the gate, then they went into the dingy little bar opposite, and Maigret ordered two glasses of hot toddy. They were not the only ones. A few minutes later, half the people who had attended the funeral poured into the little bar, stamping their feet on the tiled floor to get their circulation going.
There was a great deal of chatter, but Maigret was struck by one remark only:
“Will she get a pension?”
Her sisters certainly would, because their husbands worked on the railways. In short, Monsieur Louis had always been the poor relation. Not only had he been a lowly storekeeper, he had also had no pension rights.
“How will they manage?”
“The daughter has a job. They’ll take in a lodger, I daresay.”
“Coming, Neveu?”
The rain dogged them all the way to Paris, where it was lashing the pavements. There were thick mustaches of muddy water on the windscreens of all the cars.
“Where do you want to be dropped, Neveu?”
“There’s no point in going home to change. I’ll still have to wear the same wet coat. Drop me at the Quai. I’ll take a taxi on from there.”
The corridors of Police Headquarters were covered in wet footprints, like the tiled floor of the church. Here, too, it was damp and cold. A man wearing handcuffs was sitting on a bench outside the office of the chief superintendent of the Gaming Squad.
“Anything new, Lucas?”
“Lapointe telephoned from the Brasserie de la République. He’s found the room.”
“The room rented by Louis?”
“So he says, although apparently the landlady is being anything but cooperative.”
“Does he want me to call him back?”
“Either that, or that you should meet him there.”
Maigret preferred the second alternative. There was nothing he disliked more than sitting in his office in wet clothes.
“Any other news?”
“Only a false alarm about the young man. They thought they’d picked him up in the waiting room of the Gare Montparnasse. It wasn’t him, just some other fellow who fitted the description.”
Maigret returned to the little black car, and within a few minutes was going
through the door of the brasserie in the Place de la République, where he found Lapointe sitting beside the stove, having a cup of coffee. Maigret ordered another hot toddy for himself. He felt as if a good deal of the icy rain that had been falling had poured into his nostrils. He felt sure he was going to get a cold. Maybe he was just going along with the old superstition that one always catches cold at a funeral.
“Where is this place?”
“Only a few yards from here. I came upon it quite by chance, because it isn’t registered as a lodging house with furnished rooms to let.”
“Are you sure it’s the right place?”
“You can ask the landlady yourself. I was going along the Rue d’Angoulême, cutting across from one boulevard to another, when I saw a Room to Let sign in a window. It was a small house. There was no concierge. I rang the bell and asked to see the room. It was the landlady herself who opened the door to me. She’s an elderly woman. She must have been a red-head in her youth, and possibly a beauty. But her hair is thin and faded now, and her body looked flabby under the sky-blue dressing gown she was wearing.
“‘Is it for yourself?’ she asked, with the door still on the chain. ‘Are you on your own?’
“I heard a door open on the floor above, and then I caught a glimpse of a very pretty girl leaning over the banister. She was in a dressing gown too.”
“A brothel?”
“I wouldn’t go as far as that, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the landlady had worked in a brothel at some time, perhaps as an assistant to the madame.
“‘Are you thinking of renting it by the month? Whereabouts do you work?’
“I persuaded her in the end to show me the room, which was on the second floor. It overlooks the courtyard, and the furniture isn’t too bad. A bit overstuffed for my taste, with lots of cheap velvet and silk about it, and a doll on the divan bed. There were still lingering traces of a woman’s scent.
“‘Who gave you my address?’
“I nearly let out that I had read the sign in the window. All the time we were talking, I could see a flabby breast seemingly about to escape from her dressing gown at any minute, and it bothered me.
“‘You were recommended to me by a friend,’ I said at last.
Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard Page 7