Maigret and the Tramp

by Georges Simenon

  ‘I assume you know that the tramp was hit on the head before being thrown in the water?’

  ‘That’s what the doctor said. One of the policemen had gone to fetch a doctor. Then an ambulance came. Once the wounded man had gone, I had to wash the deck, because there was a big pool of blood.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, monsieur.’

  ‘You told the police officers—’

  ‘I said what I thought, right?’

  ‘Could you repeat it?’

  ‘I assume he was sleeping under the bridge.’

  ‘But you hadn’t seen him before?’

  ‘I hadn’t paid attention. There are always people sleeping under the bridges.’

  ‘All right. A car came down the ramp …’

  ‘A red car. That, I’m sure of.’

  ‘And it stopped not far from your barge?’

  He nodded and held out his arm towards a particular point on the quayside.

  ‘Was the engine still running?’

  This time, he shook his head.

  ‘But you heard footsteps?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur.’

  ‘The footsteps of two people?’

  ‘I saw two men going back to the car.’

  ‘You didn’t see them walk to the bridge?’

  ‘I was below, working on the engine.’

  ‘And you think these two individuals, one of whom was wearing a light-coloured raincoat, hit the tramp while he was sleeping and threw him in the Seine?’

  ‘By the time I got up on deck, he was already in the water.’

  ‘The doctor’s report states that he can’t have sustained that injury to the head by falling in the water. Not even during an accidental fall from the bank.’

  Van Houtte was looking at them as if to say that this was none of his business.

  ‘Can we question your wife?’

  ‘I don’t mind you talking to Anneke. But she won’t understand you, she only speaks Flemish.’

  The deputy prosecutor looked at Maigret as if to ask him if he had any questions, and Maigret shook his head. If he did have any, it would be for later, once these gentlemen from the prosecutor’s office had gone.

  ‘When will we be able to leave?’ the bargee asked.

  ‘As soon as you’ve signed your statement. Providing you let us know where you’re going.’

  ‘To Rouen.’

  ‘You’ll need to keep us informed of your movements after that. My clerk will come and get you to sign the documents.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Probably early this afternoon.’

  That obviously upset the bargee.

  ‘By the way, what time did your brother get back?’

  ‘Just after the ambulance left.’

  ‘Many thanks.’

  Jef Van Houtte again helped him across the narrow gangplank, and the little group headed towards the bridge, while the tramps, for their part, moved a few metres back.

  ‘What do you think, Maigret?’

  ‘I think it’s strange. Tramps don’t usually get attacked.’

  Against the stone wall under the arch of Pont Marie, there was something like a den. It was shapeless, it had no name, and yet – for some time now, apparently – it had been the lair of a human being.

  The deputy prosecutor’s astonishment was amusing to see, and Maigret couldn’t help saying to him:

  ‘You find them under all the bridges. There’s even a shelter just like this right opposite Quai des Orfèvres.’

  ‘Don’t the police do anything?’

  ‘If they’re demolished, they reappear a bit further on.’

  It was made up of old crates and pieces of tarpaulin. There was just enough room for a man to be able to huddle there. On the ground were straw, torn blankets and newspapers that gave off a strong smell, in spite of the draught.

  The deputy prosecutor took care not to touch anything, and it was Maigret who bent down to conduct a rapid inventory.

  A cylinder of sheet metal, with holes and a grille, had served as a stove and was still covered in whitish ash. Close by, pieces of charcoal gathered God alone knew where. Shifting the blankets, Maigret exposed what amounted to a kind of treasure: two chunks of stale bread, some ten centimetres of garlic sausage and, in another corner, some books, whose titles he read under his breath.

  ‘Sagesse by Verlaine … Oraisons funèbres by Bossuet …’

  He picked up a booklet that must have been lying for a long time in the rain and had probably been picked out of a dustbin. It was an old issue of the Presse médicale.

  Finally, half a book, the second half only: the Memorial of Saint Helena.

  Dantziger seemed as astonished as the deputy prosecutor.

  ‘Odd reading matter,’ he remarked.

  ‘He may not have chosen it himself.’

  Also under the torn blankets, Maigret discovered clothes: a much patched and paint-stained grey pullover, which had probably belonged to a painter, a pair of yellow drill trousers, felt slippers with holes in the heels and five odd socks. Finally, a pair of scissors with one of its blades broken.

  ‘Is the man dead?’ Deputy Prosecutor Parrain asked, all the while keeping his distance as if afraid of catching fleas.

  ‘He was still alive an hour ago, when I phoned the Hôtel-Dieu.’

  ‘Do they hope to save him?’

  ‘They’re trying. He has a fractured skull, and they’re also afraid he might develop pneumonia.’

  Maigret was fingering a dilapidated pram the tramp must have used when searching through dustbins. Turning to the little group of tramps, who were still watching, he looked at them, one after the other. Some turned away. Others just looked dazed.

  ‘You, come here!’ he said to the woman, pointing a finger at her.

  If this had happened thirty years earlier, when he was working the beat, he would have been able to put a name to every face: in those days, he knew most of the tramps in Paris.

  They hadn’t changed much, as a matter of fact, although there were a lot fewer of them.

  ‘Where do you sleep?’

  The woman smiled, as if to win him over.

  ‘There,’ she said pointing to Pont Louis-Philippe.

  ‘Did you know the man who was fished out of the river last night?’

  Her face was puffy, and her breath smelled of sour wine. Her hands on her belly, she nodded.

  ‘We called him Doc.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was an educated man. They say he really used to be a doctor.’

  ‘Had he been sleeping rough for a long time?’

  ‘Years.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve stopped counting.’

  That made her laugh, and she pushed back a grey strand of hair that was falling over her face. With her mouth closed, she looked about sixty, but when she spoke, she revealed an almost entirely toothless jaw and seemed much older. Her eyes, though, were still lively. From time to time, she would turn to the others, as if calling on them to bear witness.

  ‘Isn’t that so?’ she would ask them.

  They nodded, although ill at ease in the presence of the police and these excessively well-dressed gentlemen.

  ‘Did he live alone?’

  That made her laugh again.

  ‘Who would he have lived with?’

  ‘Has he always lived under this bridge?’

  ‘Not always. When I first met him he was under Pont Neuf. And, before that, Quai de Bercy.’

  ‘Did he do Les Halles?’

  Wasn’t it in Les Halles that most tramps gathered at night?

  ‘No,’ she replied.

  ‘The dustbins?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  So, despite the pram, he didn’t specialize in old papers and cloths, which explained how come he was already asleep so early during the night.

  ‘Mainly, he was a sandwich man.’

  ‘What else do you
know about him?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Didn’t he ever talk to you?’

  ‘Of course he did. I even cut his hair for him every now and again. We have to help each other.’

  ‘Did he drink a lot?’

  Maigret knew that the question was rather meaningless: they pretty much all drank.

  ‘Red wine?’

  ‘Like everyone else.’

  ‘A lot?’

  ‘I never saw him drunk. He’s not like me.’

  And she laughed again.

  ‘I know you, you know, and I know you’re not nasty. You questioned me once, in your office, a long time ago, maybe twenty years ago, when I was still working around Porte Saint-Denis.’

  ‘Did you hear anything last night?’

  She pointed to Pont Louis-Philippe, as if to demonstrate the distance between it and Pont Marie.

  ‘It’s too far.’

  ‘So you didn’t see anything?’

  ‘Only the lights of the ambulance. I went a bit closer, not too close – I was scared they’d haul me in – and I realized that it was an ambulance.’

  ‘What about you three?’ Maigret asked, turning to the male tramps.

  They shook their heads, still nervous.

  ‘Shall we go and see the skipper of the Poitou?’ the deputy prosecutor suggested, ill at ease in these surroundings.

  The man was waiting for them. He was quite different from Van Houtte. He, too, had his wife and children on board, but the barge didn’t belong to him and it almost always made the same journey, from the sandpits of the Haute-Seine to Paris. His name was Justin Goulet, and he was forty-five years old, short-legged, with cunning eyes. An extinguished cigarette hung from his lips.

  Here, they had to speak loudly, because of the noise of the crane, which was still unloading sand very close to them.

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That people should take the trouble to knock out a tramp and throw him in the river.’

  ‘Did you see them?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything at all.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘When they hit the man? In my bed.’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘I heard someone yelling.’

  ‘No car?’

  ‘I may have heard a car, but there are always cars driving by up there, and I didn’t pay attention.’

  ‘Did you go up on deck?’

  ‘Yes, in my pyjamas. I didn’t bother to put on trousers.’

  ‘What about your wife?’

  ‘She was half asleep. She asked me where I was going.’

  ‘Once you were up on deck, what did you see?’

  ‘Nothing. The Seine was swirling about, as always. I called out, “Ahoy there!” hoping he’d answer so I could know which side he was.’

  ‘Where was Jef Van Houtte at this time?’

  ‘The Flemish fellow? I eventually saw him on the deck of his barge. He started untying his lifeboat. When he came level with me, thanks to the current, I jumped in. The other man was still in the water. He’d come to the surface from time to time then disappear again. The Flemish fellow tried to grab him with my gaff.’

  ‘A pole ending in a big iron hook?’

  ‘Like all gaffs.’

  ‘Could he have been hit on the head when you were trying to hook him?’

  ‘Definitely not. We actually caught him by the hem of his trousers. I immediately leaned over and grabbed his leg.’

  ‘Was he unconscious?’

  ‘His eyes were open.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘He was throwing up water. Once we got him on the Flemish barge, we noticed he was bleeding.’

  ‘That’s everything, I think, isn’t it?’ asked the deputy prosecutor, who didn’t seem especially interested in this story.

  ‘I’ll take care of the rest,’ Maigret replied.

  ‘Are you going to the hospital?’

  ‘I’ll go later. According to the doctors, it’ll be hours before he’s able to talk.’

  ‘Keep me informed.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to.’

  As they again passed under Pont Marie, Maigret said to Lapointe:

  ‘Phone the local police station and ask them to send me an officer.’

  ‘Where shall I find you, chief?’

  ‘Here.’

  He solemnly shook hands with the people from the prosecutor’s office.

  2.

  ‘Are they judges?’ the fat woman asked, watching the three men walk away.

  ‘Magistrates,’ Maigret corrected her.

  ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’ She gave a short whistle. ‘They’re making as much fuss as if he’s someone important! Does that mean he was a real doctor?’

  Maigret had no idea. He didn’t seem in any great hurry to find out. He was living in the present, still with the sense of things he had lived through a long time before. Lapointe had disappeared at the top of the ramp. The deputy prosecutor, flanked by the examining magistrate and the clerk of the court, was looking where he was walking, for fear of dirtying his shoes.

  Black and white in the sun, the Zwarte Zwaan was as clean on the outside as its kitchen must be. Van Houtte was standing near the helm, looking in Maigret’s direction. A slight, childlike woman with blonde hair that was almost white was bending over the baby’s cradle, changing her nappy.

  There was the constant noise of cars passing along Quai des Célestins, as well as the noise of the crane unloading sand from the Poitou. Neither drowned out the singing of birds or the lapping of the water.

  The three tramps continued to keep their distance, and only the fat woman followed Maigret under the bridge. Her blouse, which must once have been red, had turned candy-pink.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Léa. They call me Fat Léa.’

  That made her laugh and shook her huge breasts.

  ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘Was there anyone with you?’

  ‘Only Dédé, the shortest one over there, the one with his back to us.’

  ‘Is he your friend?’

  ‘They’re all my friends.’

  ‘Do you always sleep under the same bridge?’

  ‘I move sometimes … What are you looking for?’

  Maigret had again bent over the disparate objects that constituted Doc’s belongings. He felt more at ease now that the magistrates had left. He was taking his time, discovering, beneath the rags, a frying pan, a mess tin, a spoon and a fork.

  Then he tried on a pair of steel-rimmed glasses with one cracked lens, and everything became blurred in front of his eyes.

  ‘He only used them for reading,’ Fat Léa said.

  ‘What surprises me,’ he began, looking at her insistently, ‘is not finding …’

  Not letting him finish, she moved some two metres away and produced a still half-full litre bottle of purplish-blue wine from behind a large stone.

  ‘Have you been drinking it?’

  ‘Yes. I was planning to have the rest. It’ll have gone off anyway by the time Doc comes back.’

  ‘When did you take it?’

  ‘Last night, after the ambulance took him away.’

  ‘Have you touched anything else?’

  With a serious expression on her face, she spat on the ground.

  ‘No, I swear!’

  He believed her. He knew from experience that tramps don’t steal from each other. In fact, they rarely steal anything at all, not only because they would immediately be caught, but because of a kind of indifference.

  Opposite, on Ile Saint-Louis, the windows of cosy apartments stood open. A woman could be seen brushing her hair at her dressing table.

  ‘Do you know where he bought his wine?’

  ‘I saw him coming out of a bistro in Rue de l’Ave-Maria a few times. It’s quite near here, on the corner of Rue des Jardins.’<
br />
  ‘How was Doc with the others?’

  Trying to please him, she thought this over.

  ‘I don’t know. He wasn’t all that different.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about his life?’

  ‘Nobody does. Unless they’re very drunk.’

  ‘Was he ever drunk?’

  ‘Not really.’

  From the pile of old newspapers the tramp had used to keep warm, Maigret had just taken out a little painted wooden horse with one leg broken. He wasn’t surprised. Nor was Fat Léa.

  Someone in espadrilles had just come down the ramp, silently and with a spring in his step, and was approaching the Belgian barge, holding in each hand a string bag full of provisions from which two big loaves of bread and a few leeks stuck out.

  It was the brother, there was no doubt about it, because he looked like Jef Van Houtte, only younger, with less pronounced features. He was wearing blue cotton trousers and a sweater with white stripes. Once on the boat, he spoke to Jef, then looked in Maigret’s direction.

  ‘Don’t touch anything. I may need you again. If you find out anything …’

  ‘Can you see me coming to your office, looking like this?’

  That made her laugh once again. Pointing to the bottle, she asked:

  ‘Can I finish it?’

  He nodded and went to meet Lapointe, who was just returning, accompanied by a uniformed officer. He gave the latter instructions to guard the pile of things that constituted Doc’s entire fortune until a technician from Criminal Records arrived.

  After which, with Lapointe by his side, he walked over to the Zwarte Zwaan.

  ‘Are you Hubert Van Houtte?’

  More taciturn or more suspicious than his brother, Hubert merely nodded.

  ‘Did you go dancing last night?’

  ‘Is there anything wrong with that?’

  He didn’t have such a strong accent. Maigret and Lapointe, still standing on the quayside, had to look up at him.

  ‘Which dance hall did you go to?’

  ‘It was near Place de la Bastille, in a narrow street where there are half a dozen of them. This one’s called Léon’s.’

  ‘Did you already know it?’

  ‘I’ve been several times.’

  ‘So you don’t know what happened?’

  ‘Only what my brother told me.’

  Smoke was emerging from a copper chimney on deck. The woman and the child had gone down into the cabin, and from where they stood Maigret and Lapointe could smell cooking.