Maigret sighed, then signalled to the waitress to fill their glasses as he had been dying to do for a while.
‘I wanted to bring you up to date, chief,’ Lucas explained, ‘and I thought you’d be interested in hearing what Antonio had to say.’
‘Everything I said was true.’
‘I’d called Émile in for questioning this morning,’ Lucas went on. ‘I admit it bothers me that he then went missing last night.’
‘What did you want to ask him?’
‘It was just routine. I was going to ask him the same questions one last time, to check his answers against those he gave me the first time round and the other witness statements.’
‘Did he seem scared either of the times he was in your office?’
‘No. Annoyed, more like … He couldn’t stand the thought of his name being in the papers. He kept saying that it would cause his business tremendous harm, that his clubs were quiet places, nothing ever went on in them, and that if he was associated with a settling of underworld scores, he’d never live it down.’
‘That’s true,’ Antonio agreed, making as if to stand up. ‘Do you need anything else from me? I should be getting back to my sisters and my mother. They’re in a terrible state …’
Moments later they heard the roar of the red car as it sped offin the direction of Pont-Neuf. Maigret slowly took a sip of his aperitif, glanced sidelong at Lucas and sighed:
‘Are you expected somewhere?’
‘No. I was planning to …’
‘Eat here?’
He nodded, making up Maigret’s mind for him:
‘In that case we’ll eat together. I’ll give my wife a call. You can order.’
‘Are you going to have the mackerel?’
‘And the veal liver en papillotes.’
The veal liver particularly caught his fancy, as well as the atmosphere of the bistro, which he hadn’t been into for weeks.
The case wasn’t particularly important, and Lucas hadn’t needed any help on it before this. No one outside the underworld cared about Mazotti’s death. Everyone knew that score-settlings like this always ended up resolving themselves, even if just in more of the same.
The advantage about these cases was that the prosecutor’s office and examining magistrates didn’t hound the police. As one magistrate used to say:
‘That’s one less prison bill to pay …’
The two men had lunch and chatted. Maigret learned some more about Émile Boulay and ended up becoming interested in this strange little man.
The son of a Norman fisherman, Émile had got a job as a waiter with the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique – ‘Transat,’ for short – when he turned sixteen. This had been before the war. He sailed on the Normandie and found himself in New York when the fighting started in France.
It was hard to fathom how such a puny little man been admitted into the American marines. Nonetheless, he had fought the whole war in that branch of the forces before taking up a job on the Ile-de-France, this time as a head waiter.
‘You know, chief, almost all of them dream of going into business for themselves one day. Two years after he got married, Boulay bought a bar in Le Havre and wasted no time turning it into a dance club. Striptease was just starting to become popular in those days, and he seems to have immediately made a pretty serious pile.
‘By the time of the accident and his wife’s death, he was already planning to expand to Paris.’
‘Did he keep the club in Le Havre?’
‘He appointed a manager. One of his old shipmates from the Ile-de-France runs it for him. In Paris he bought the Lotus, which wasn’t as successful then as it is now. It was a bit of a dive, a tourist trap like all the others round Place Pigalle.’
‘Where did he meet Antonio’s sister?’
‘At the Lotus. She was working in the cloakroom. She was only eighteen.’
‘What was Antonio doing in those days?’
‘Working at the Renault factory in the body shop. He had come to France first, then sent for his mother and two sisters. They lived in Javel.’
‘So Émile basically seems to have married the whole family … Have you been to his place?’
‘No. I had a look around the Lotus and his other clubs but I didn’t think I needed to go to his apartment.’
‘Are you convinced he didn’t kill Mazotti?’
‘Why would he have? He was winning.’
‘He might have been afraid.’
‘No one in Montmartre thinks he did it.’
They had coffee in silence, and Maigret refused the calvados the owner offered him in his usual way. He had started with a couple of aperitifs but then only drunk a glass of Pouilly so felt pretty pleased with himself as he headed back to the Police Judiciaire with Lucas.
In his office he took off his jacket, loosened his tie and set about the administrative files. Nothing less than a complete reorganization of the police services was on the agenda, and he was expected to produce a report. He applied himself like a good student.
At times during the afternoon he found himself thinking about Émile Boulay and the little Montmartre empire the former Transat employee had built up, about the young Italian with the red sports car and the apartment on Rue Victor-Massé where the three women lived with the children.
Meanwhile Lucas rang round the hospitals, the police stations. He circulated Boulay’s description as well, but by six thirty nothing had come of his inquiries.
It was almost as hot that evening as it had been during the day. Maigret went for a walk with his wife and sat outside a café in Place de la République, nursing a glass of beer for almost an hour.
They talked mainly about their holidays. Many of the men passing by had their jackets over the arms; most of the women were wearing cotton print dresses.
The next day was a Thursday. Another glorious day. The daily reports made no mention of Émile Boulay; Lucas had no news either.
There was a violent but short-lived thunderstorm around eleven, after which steam seemed to be rising from the cobblestones. He went home for lunch, then returned to the office and the stack of files.
When it was time to leave Quai des Orfèvres there was still no news of the little man from Le Havre, and Lucas had spent a fruitless afternoon in Montmartre.
‘Boubée, or Mickey, as he’s known, who’s been a doorman at the Lotus for years, does seem to be the last person to have seen him alive, chief. He thinks he remembers Émile turning the corner of Rue Pigalle and Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette as if he was going to the Saint-Trop’, but he didn’t really take any notice … I’ll go back to Montmartre this evening when they’ll all be at work.’
Lucas drew another blank on Thursday evening. At nine o’clock the following morning Maigret paused as he was going through the last of the daily reports, then called him into his office.
‘He’s been found,’ he said, relighting his pipe.
‘Alive?’
‘Dead.’
‘In Montmartre? In the Seine?’
Maigret handed him a report from the twentieth arrondissement. It stated that a man’s dead body had been found at daybreak in Rue des Rondeaux, next to Père-Lachaise. The man was lying across the pavement, not far from the railway cutting. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, and his wallet contained a sum of money and an identity card in the name of Émile Boulay.
Lucas looked up, frowning.
‘I wonder …’ he began.
‘Go on reading.’
The inspector was even more surprised by what followed. The report specified that the body, which had been taken to the Forensic Institute, was in an advanced state of decomposition.
It was true that Rue des Rondeaux was a cul-de-sac and not very busy, but still, a body couldn’t have lain on the pavement there for two days, or even two hours, without being discovered.
‘What do you reckon?’
‘It’s strange …’
‘Have you read the whole thing?’
>
‘Not the end.’
Émile Boulay had disappeared on Tuesday night. Given the state of the body, it was likely that he had been killed that same night.
Two full days had elapsed since then, two swelteringly hot days.
It was hard to think why the murderer, or murderers, would have kept hold of the body all that time.
‘That’s even stranger!’ Lucas exclaimed, putting the report on the desk.
The strangest thing of all was the fact that, according to initial findings, the murder hadn’t been committed with a gun or a knife.
As far as could be discerned pending the autopsy, Émile Boulay had been strangled.
Despite their many years on the force, neither Maigret nor Lucas could remember a single underworld strangling.
Every neighbourhood of Paris, every social class, has its way of killing, so to speak, as it does its preferred method of committing suicide. There are streets where people throw themselves out of the window, others where they put their heads in charcoal or gas ovens, others where they take barbiturates.
Police know the knifing neighbourhoods, the ones where coshes are used, the ones like Montmartre, say, where firearms predominate.
Not only had the little nightclub owner been strangled, but his murderer had then waited two days and three nights before disposing of his body.
Maigret was already opening the cupboard to get his jacket and hat.
‘Let’s go!’ he muttered.
At last he had an excuse to put aside his administrative chore for a moment.
On a beautiful June morning, cooled by a light breeze, the two men headed off to the Forensic Institute.
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin …
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published in French as Maigret et le Clochard by Presses de la Cité, 1963
This translation first published 2018
Copyright © Georges Simenon Limited, 1963
Translation copyright © Howard Curtis, 2018
GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm
MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
Cover Credit: @Harry Gruyaert / Magnum Photos
ISBN: 978-0-241-30400-6
Maigret and the Tramp Page 13