‘When will we be able to leave?’
‘Probably this afternoon. As soon as the magistrate has got your brother to sign his statement.’
Hubert Van Houtte was clean and well groomed, with the same pink complexion and very fair hair.
Soon afterwards, Maigret and Lapointe crossed Quai des Célestins and found a bistro called the Petit Turin on the corner of Rue de l’Ave-Maria. The owner was standing in the doorway in his shirtsleeves. There was nobody inside.
‘Can we come in?’
He stood aside, surprised to see people like them enter his establishment, which was tiny and had only three tables for customers, in addition to the counter. The walls were painted apple green. From the ceiling hung sausages, cured meats and strange yellow cheeses shaped like overfilled goatskins.
‘What can I get you?’
‘Wine.’
‘Chianti?’
Straw-covered bottles filled one shelf, but it was from a bottle taken from under the counter that the owner filled the glasses, watching the two men curiously.
‘Do you know a tramp nicknamed Doc?’
‘How is he? I hope he’s not dead?’
They had gone from a Flemish accent to an Italian one, from the calm demeanour of Jef Van Houtte and his brother Hubert to the bar owner’s demonstrative gestures.
‘So you know about it?’ Maigret asked.
‘I know something happened last night.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Another tramp, this morning.’
‘What exactly did he tell you?’
‘That there was a commotion near Pont Marie, and that an ambulance came for Doc.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Apparently some bargees took him out of the water.’
‘Is this where Doc bought his wine?’
‘Yes, quite often.’
‘Did he drink a lot?’
‘About two litres a day. When he had money.’
‘How did he earn money?’
‘The way they all do. By helping out at Les Halles or in other places. Or else walking with sandwich boards in the street. I was happy to give him credit.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he wasn’t like the other tramps. He saved my wife.’
They could see her in the kitchen, almost as fat as Léa, but very alert.
‘Are you talking about me?’
‘I’m telling them how Doc …’
She came into the bistro, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘Is it true they tried to kill him? Are you from the police? Do you think he’ll pull through?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ Maigret replied evasively. ‘In what way did he save you?’
‘Well, if you’d seen me only two years ago, you wouldn’t recognize me now. I was covered in eczema, and my face was as red as a piece of meat on a butcher’s slab. It had been going on for months and months. At the clinic, they suggested all kinds of treatments, they gave me ointments that smelled so bad I couldn’t stand myself. Nothing worked … I was pretty much forbidden to eat, not that I had any appetite. They also gave me injections.’
The owner was listening and nodding.
‘One day, when Doc was sitting right over there, in the corner, near the door, and I was complaining to the vegetable seller, I could feel him looking at me in a funny way. A bit later, he told me in the same voice as he would have ordered a glass of wine, “I think I can cure you.” I asked him if he really was a doctor, and he smiled and said, “They haven’t taken away my right to practise.” ’
‘Did he give you a prescription?’
‘No. He asked me for a bit of money, two hundred francs, if I remember correctly, and went himself to the pharmacy to get some little powder tablets. “Take one in warm water before every meal,” he said, “and wash with very salty water, morning and evening.” Believe it or not, two months later my skin was back to the way it is now.’
‘Did he treat anyone else apart from you?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t talk a lot.’
‘Did he come here every day?’
‘Almost every day, to buy his two litres.’
‘Was he always alone? Did you ever see him with anyone you didn’t know?’
‘No.’
‘Did he ever tell you his real name, or where he used to live?’
‘I know only that he had a daughter. We have one ourselves, she’s at school right now. Once, when he was looking at her in an odd kind of way, he said, “Don’t worry. I had a little girl, too.” ’
Was Lapointe surprised to see Maigret attach so much importance to this story of a tramp? In the newspapers, it would be a minor item of just a few lines at most.
What Lapointe didn’t know, because he was too young, was that this was the first time in Maigret’s career that a crime had been committed against a tramp.
‘How much do I owe you?’
‘Won’t you have another? To the health of poor Doc?’
They drank the second glass, which the Italian refused to let them pay for. Then they crossed Pont Marie. A few minutes later, they entered Hôtel-Dieu hospital through the grey archway. There, they had to negotiate for a long time with a surly woman barricaded behind a counter.
‘Don’t you know his name?’
‘All I know is that on the riverbank he’s known as Doc and he was brought here last night.’
‘I wasn’t here last night. Which department did they take him to?’
‘I have no idea. I spoke to an intern earlier on the phone. He didn’t mention an operation …’
‘Do you know the name of the intern?’
‘No.’
She kept turning the pages of a register and made a few telephone calls.
‘What’s your name again?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’
That meant nothing to this woman, who repeated into the phone:
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’
At last, after some ten minutes, she sighed, as if doing them a favour:
‘Take staircase C to the third floor. You’ll find the head nurse of the department.’
They passed male nurses, younger doctors and patients in hospital garb and glimpsed rows of beds through open doors.
On the third floor, they had to wait some more because the head nurse was having an animated conversation with two men and seemed to be refusing what they were asking of her.
‘I can’t do anything about it,’ she finally said. ‘Talk to the management. I don’t make the rules.’
They walked away, muttering angrily to themselves, and she turned to Maigret.
‘Are you the ones here for the tramp?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret,’ he repeated.
She searched in her memory. The name didn’t mean anything to her either. They were in another world, a world of numbered rooms, compartmentalized departments, vast wards lined with beds, with a sheet of paper covered in mysterious signs hanging at the foot of each one.
‘How is he?’
‘I think Professor Magnin is dealing with him at the moment.’
‘Has he been operated on?’
‘Who mentioned an operation?’
‘I don’t know. I thought …’
Maigret felt out of place here and became hesitant.
‘What name did you admit him under?’
‘The name that was on his identity card.’
‘Do you have the card?’
‘I can show it to you.’
She went into a little glass-walled office at the end of the corridor and immediately found a grimy identity card still damp with water from the Seine.
Surname: Keller.
Christian names: François Marie Florentin.
Profession: Ragman.
Born: Mulhouse, Bas-Rhin.
According to this document, the man was sixty-three, and his address in Paris was a rooming house on Place Maubert, which Maigret knew well and whi
ch was used as an official abode by a number of tramps.
‘Has he regained consciousness?’
She tried to take back the identity card, but Maigret slipped it into his pocket.
‘That’s not allowed,’ she grumbled. ‘The regulations—’
‘Is Keller in a private room?’
‘What now?’
‘Take me to him.’
She hesitated and finally gave in.
‘All right, you can sort it out with the professor.’
Preceding them, she opened the third door, behind which were two rows of beds, all occupied. Most of the patients lay there, their eyes open; two or three at the far end, in hospital garb, stood chatting in low voices.
Near one of the beds, towards the middle of the ward, some ten young men and women in white coats, with caps on their heads, stood around a smaller, stocky man with crew-cut hair, also dressed in white, who was apparently giving them a lesson.
‘You can’t disturb him for the moment. You can see he’s busy.’
All the same, she went and whispered a few words in the professor’s ear, and the professor threw a distant glance at Maigret and resumed the course of his explanations.
‘He’ll be finished in a few minutes. He asks you to wait in his office.’
She took them there. It wasn’t a large room, and there were only two chairs. On the desk, in a silver frame, a photograph of a woman and three children, their heads touching.
After some hesitation, Maigret emptied his pipe in the ashtray, which was full of cigarette ends, and filled another.
‘Sorry to have kept you waiting, inspector. When my nurse told me who you were, I was a little surprised. After all …’
Was he about to say that after all they were only dealing with a tramp? No.
‘… this is quite a trivial case, is it not?’
‘I know almost nothing about it yet. I’m counting on you to enlighten me.’
‘A fracture of the skull, quite clean, fortunately, as my assistant must have told you on the phone this morning.’
‘He hadn’t yet been X-rayed …’
‘That’s been done now … He has a good chance of pulling through, because the brain doesn’t seem to be affected.’
‘Could the fracture have been caused by a fall from the riverbank?’
‘Definitely not … The man received a violent blow with a heavy instrument, a hammer, a spanner, perhaps a tyre lever.’
‘And that made him lose consciousness?’
‘Yes, to the extent that he’s now in a coma and may stay in it for several days … Just as he may come round any hour now.’
Maigret remembered the riverbank, Doc’s shelter, the muddy water flowing by a few metres away and Jef Van Houtte’s words.
‘I’m sorry to insist … You say he received a blow on the head … Just one?’
‘Why do you ask me that?’
‘It may be important.’
‘At first glance, I thought he might have received several blows.’
‘Why?’
‘Because one ear is torn, and there are several wounds, shallow ones, on the face … But now that he’s been shaved, I’ve been able to examine him closely …’
‘And your conclusion is …?’
‘Where did it happen?’
‘Under Pont Marie.’
‘In a fight?’
‘Apparently not. It seems the man was lying there asleep when he was attacked … According to your observations, is that plausible?’
‘Perfectly plausible.’
‘And you think he immediately lost consciousness?’
‘I’m pretty much certain of it. And from what you’ve just told me, I understand the torn ear and the scratches on the face. He was found in the Seine, wasn’t he? Those secondary wounds indicate that instead of being carried he was dragged to the river across the cobbles. Is there sand on the riverbank?’
‘A sand barge is being unloaded a few metres away.’
‘I found some in the wounds.’
‘So in your opinion, this man, this Doc—’
‘I beg your pardon?’ the professor said in surprise.
‘That’s his nickname on the riverbank. He may really have been a doctor once.’
Which would also make him the first doctor in thirty years whom Maigret had encountered sleeping rough by the Seine, although he had once come across a former chemistry teacher from a provincial high school and, a few years later, a woman who had had her hour of fame as a bareback rider in a circus.
‘I’m convinced he was lying down, probably asleep, when his assailant or assailants hit him.’
‘Just one, since there was only one blow.’
‘Precisely. He lost consciousness, so they may have thought he was dead.’
‘Perfectly plausible.’
‘Instead of carrying him, they dragged him to the edge of the riverbank and tipped him into the water.’
The professor was listening gravely, thoughtfully.
‘Does that hold up?’ Maigret insisted.
‘Totally.’
‘Is it medically possible that, once in the river, while the current was sweeping him away, he started crying out?’
The professor scratched his head.
‘You’re asking a lot of me, and I wouldn’t like to answer you too categorically … Let’s say it’s not impossible. It could have been the shock of the cold water.’
‘You mean he might have regained consciousness?’
‘Not necessarily. Patients in a coma speak and move. It’s a possibility.’
‘Did he say anything while you were examining him?’
‘He moaned several times.’
‘Apparently when he was taken out of the water, his eyes were open.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything … I assume you’d like to see him? Come with me.’
He led them to the third floor. The head nurse watched them with some astonishment and doubtless also a hint of disapproval.
The patients in the beds followed the little group with their eyes until it stopped beside one of them.
‘You can’t see much.’
Indeed, the tramp’s head and face were wrapped in bandages, leaving only the eyes, nostrils and mouth uncovered.
‘What’s the likelihood he’ll pull through?
‘Seventy per cent. Let’s say eighty, given how strong the heart still is.’
‘Many thanks.’
‘You’ll be informed as soon as he regains consciousness. Leave your telephone number with the head nurse.’
It felt good to be outside again, to see the sun, the passers-by, a yellow and red coach disgorging its tourists on to the square in front of Notre-Dame.
Maigret again walked without saying anything, his hands behind his back, and Lapointe, sensing that he was preoccupied, avoided speaking.
They went in through the entrance of the Police Judiciaire, climbed the grand staircase, made to seem all the dustier by the sunlight, and at last entered Maigret’s office.
Maigret began by flinging the window wide open and watching a line of barges travelling downstream.
‘We have to send someone from upstairs to examine his things.’
‘Upstairs’ meant Criminal Records, with its technicians and specialists.
‘The best thing would be to take the van and move everything.’
He wasn’t afraid the other tramps would grab the various objects belonging to Doc, he was more afraid of scavenging children.
‘As for you, I’d like you to go to the Highways Department. There can’t be all that many red Peugeot 403s in Paris. Make a note of the numbers with two 9s. Get help from as many men as it’ll take to check with the owners.’
‘Got it, chief.’
Once alone, Maigret arranged his pipes and went through the memos piled up on his desk. Because of the fine weather, he considered having lunch at the Brasserie Dauphine, but decided in the end to go home.
At this hour, th
e dining room was filled with sunlight. Madame Maigret was wearing a flowery pink dress that reminded him of Fat Léa’s blouse, which was almost the same pink.
He was eating his calves’ liver en papillotes, lost in thought, when his wife asked him:
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘My tramp.’
‘What tramp?’
‘A fellow who may once have been a doctor.’
‘What has he done?’
‘Nothing as far as I know. He got his head cracked open as he was sleeping under Pont Marie, after which he was thrown in the river.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Some bargees fished him out in time.’
‘Why would anyone have wanted to harm him?’
‘That’s what I’m wondering. By the way, he’s from your brother-in-law’s neck of the woods.’
Madame Maigret’s sister lived in Mulhouse with her husband, who was an engineer for the Highways Department. The Maigrets had often been to visit them.
‘What’s his name?
‘Keller. François Keller.’
‘It’s odd, but the name sounds familiar.’
‘It’s quite a common name in that area.’
‘How about if I phoned my sister?’
He shrugged. Why not? He didn’t believe it would lead anywhere, but it would please his wife.
As soon as she had served the coffee, she called Mulhouse and only had to wait a few minutes to be put through, during which time she kept repeating softly, like someone trying to summon a memory:
‘Keller … François Keller …’
The phone rang.
‘Hello? … Yes, mademoiselle, I’m the one asking for Mulhouse … Is that you, Florence? … What? … It’s me, yes … No, nothing’s wrong … From Paris. I’m at home … He’s right here, drinking his coffee … He’s fine. Everything’s fine … Here, too. It’s spring at last. How are the children? … The flu? I had it last week … No, it wasn’t serious … Listen, that’s not why I’m calling. Do you by any chance remember a man named Keller? … François Keller … What? … I’ll ask him …’
Turning to Maigret, she asked:
‘How old is he?’
‘Sixty-four.’
‘Sixty-four … Yes … Did you know him personally? … What’s that? … Don’t cut us off, mademoiselle … Hello? … Yes, he was a doctor … For the last half hour, I’ve been trying to remember who I heard it from … Do you think it was your husband? … Yes … Wait, I’ll tell mine what you told me, he looks as if he’s getting impatient … He married a Merville girl. Who are the Mervilles? … A court counsellor? … He married the daughter of a court counsellor? … Right … He died … A long time ago … Right … Don’t be surprised if I repeat it all, otherwise I’d be afraid of forgetting something … An old Mulhouse family … The grandfather was a mayor and … I can’t hear well … His statue … No, I don’t think it’s important. It doesn’t matter if you’re not sure … Hello? … Keller married her … The only daughter … Rue du Sauvage? … The couple lived in Rue du Sauvage … An eccentic? … Why? … You’re not exactly sure … Oh, yes, I understand! Uncivilized, you mean, a savage, like the street.’
Maigret and the Tramp Page 3