Maigret at Picratt's

by Georges Simenon

  Lapointe instinctively clung on to his jacket while Janvier tried to grab hold of him.

  They could barely see each other. There was a body lying on the bed, but they didn’t have time to attend to it.

  Janvier was knocked down, and Lapointe was left holding the jacket, as a figure raced off into the corridor. Then a shot rang out. They didn’t know who had fired at first. It was Lapointe, who didn’t dare look in the man’s direction and stared at his gun in a sort of stupor.

  Bonvoisin had gone a few more paces, bent double, then collapsed on the floor in the corridor.

  ‘Watch out, Janvier.’

  He was holding an automatic. They could see the barrel moving. Then, slowly, the fingers opened and the gun rolled on to the ground.

  ‘You think I killed him, chief?’

  Lapointe’s eyes were bulging, his lips trembling. He could not believe that he had done that and he looked at his gun again with amazed respect.

  ‘I killed him!’ he repeated, without daring to look at the body.

  Janvier bent down to it.

  ‘Dead. You got him bang in the middle of the chest.’

  Maigret thought that Lapointe was going to faint for a moment and put his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Is that your first?’ he asked quietly.

  Then, to cheer him up:

  ‘Don’t forget that he killed Arlette.’

  ‘That is true …’

  It was strange to see Lapointe’s childlike expression. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  They heard cautious footsteps on the stairs. A voice asked:

  ‘Is someone hurt?’

  ‘Stop them coming up,’ Maigret told Janvier.

  He had to attend to the figure he had glimpsed on the bed. It was a girl of sixteen or seventeen, the bookseller’s maid. She wasn’t dead, but she had been gagged with a towel to make sure she didn’t scream. Her hands were tied behind her back, and her blouse was hitched up to her armpits.

  ‘Go down and ring the Police Judiciaire,’ Maigret told Lapointe. ‘If there’s a bistro still open, make the most of it and have a drink.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s an order.’

  It was some time before the girl was able to talk. She had got back to her room around ten o’clock at night after going to the cinema. A stranger was waiting for her in the dark. He grabbed her before she had time to switch on the light and jammed the towel in her mouth. Then he tied her hands and threw her on the bed.

  He ignored her at first, listening to the sounds of the building and opening the door to the corridor a crack every now and then.

  He was waiting for Philippe, but he was wary, and took care not to wait in his room. He had probably looked into it before going into the maid’s room, hence the open door.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘He undressed me, and because my hands were tied he had to tear my clothes off.’

  ‘He raped you?’

  She nodded and started crying. Picking up some light-coloured material from the floor, she said, ‘My dress is ruined …’

  She did not realize that she had had a narrow escape. There was every chance that Bonvoisin wouldn’t have let her live. Like Philippe, she had seen him. Probably the only reason he had not strangled her sooner, like the two other women, was because he wanted to keep having his fun with her until the young man got back.

  At three in the morning the body of Oscar Bonvoisin was lying in a metal drawer in the Forensic Institute, not far from the bodies of Arlette and the countess.

  After Philippe had got into a fight with an addict in Chez Francis, which he had finally gone into, he had been taken to the nearest station by a uniformed officer. Torrence had gone to bed. The inspectors who had gone in circles from Place Blanche to Place du Tertre, and from there to Place Constantin-Pecqueur, had gone home too.

  Leaving the Police Judiciaire with Lapointe and Janvier, Maigret hesitated, then suggested:

  ‘What about a drink?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Picratt’s.’

  ‘I’m out,’ said Janvier. ‘My wife’s waiting for me, and the baby’s going to wake us up early.’

  Lapointe didn’t say anything, but he got into the taxi after Maigret.

  They reached Rue Pigalle in time to see the new girl do her act. When they walked in, Fred came over.

  ‘Is it him?’

  Maigret nodded, and, a few moments later, a champagne bucket appeared on their table, which, as chance would have it, was number six. The black dress moved slowly down the milky white body of the girl, who was watching them nervously. She hesitated before exposing her stomach and, as she had done earlier, when she was finally naked, she covered her sex with both hands.

  Did Fred do it on purpose? He should have switched the spotlight off at that moment and left the room in darkness long enough for the dancer to pick up her dress and hold it up in front of her. But the spotlight stayed on, and the poor girl, not knowing which way to turn, finally decided to flee to the kitchen, revealing a round white behind.

  The scattering of customers burst out laughing. Maigret thought Lapointe was laughing too, but then, when he looked, he saw that the inspector was crying as though his heart would break.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I shouldn’t … I know it’s stupid. But I … I loved her, you see!’

  He was even more ashamed when he woke up the next morning, because he couldn’t remember how he had got home.

  His sister, who was very cheery – Maigret had coached her – sang out as she opened the curtains:

  ‘So, this is how you let the detective chief inspector put you to bed, is it?’

  That night Lapointe had buried his first love. And killed his first man. As for Lognon, no one had remembered to relieve him of his watch, and he was still languishing on the steps in Place Constantin-Pecqueur.

  1.

  In which Maigret spent an evening as a bachelor and ended up at Cochin Hospital

  ‘Why don’t you come and have dinner at ours, pot luck?’

  Good old Lucas had probably added:

  ‘I can assure you that my wife would be delighted.’

  Poor Lucas! It wasn’t true, because his wife, who panicked at the drop of a hat, and who found having a guest for dinner complete torture, would undoubtedly have given him an earful.

  They had both left Quai des Orfèvres at about seven o’clock, when the sun was still shining, had made for the Brasserie Dauphine and taken a seat in their regular corner. They had taken a first aperitif staring into space like people who have finished their working day. Then, without realizing that he was doing it, Maigret had tapped his saucer with a coin to call the waiter and ask for the same again.

  There are things that aren’t very important, of course. Things that we exaggerate when expressing them, because in fact they are much more subtle than that. And yet Maigret was convinced that Lucas was thinking:

  ‘It’s because his wife is away that the boss is having a second glass even though he doesn’t have to.’

  Two days previously Madame Maigret had been called to Alsace to be by the bedside of her sister, who was about to have an operation.

  Did Lucas imagine that he was a bit lost? Or unhappy? In any case, he invited him to dinner, perhaps, out of kindness, a little more insistently than he had intended. He also had a certain way of looking at him, as if he was complaining. Or was all that in the detective chief inspector’s imagination?

  As if by some irony of fate, for two days there had been no urgent case to keep him in his office after seven in the evening. He could even have left at six o’clock, when under normal circumstances it was a miracle if he got home in time for a meal.

  ‘No. I’m going to take advantage of the situation to go to the cinema,’ he had replied.

  And he had said ‘take advantage’ without meaning to, since it did not reflect his thoughts.

  He and Lucas had parted at Châtelet. Lucas h
ad raced down the escalator to the Métro, while Maigret stood in the middle of the pavement, unsure what to do. The sky was pink. The streets looked pink. It was one of the first evenings to feel like spring, and all the pavement cafés were full of people.

  What did he fancy eating? Because he was on his own, because he could go anywhere at all, he seriously asked himself that question, thinking about the different restaurants that might be able to tempt him, as if he were about to celebrate. First he took a few steps towards Place de la Concorde, and that made him feel a little guilty, because he was pointlessly going further and further away from home. In the window of a butcher’s shop he saw some prepared snails, swimming in parsley butter that looked as if thay had been painted.

  His wife didn’t like snails. He himself seldom ate them. He decided to have some this evening, to ‘take advantage’, and he turned on his heels to make towards a restaurant near Bastille, where they are a speciality.

  They knew him there.

  ‘Table for one, Monsieur Maigret?’

  The waiter looked at him with a hint of surprise, a hint of reproach. On his own he couldn’t get a good table, and he was put in a kind of corridor, against a pillar.

  The truth is that he hadn’t expected anything extraordinary. He hadn’t even really wanted to go to the cinema. He didn’t know what to do with his big body. And yet he felt vaguely disappointed.

  ‘And what sort of wine would you like?’

  He didn’t dare to order too good a wine, still not wanting to appear to be taking advantage.

  And three-quarters of an hour later, when the street lights had come on in the bluish evening, he found himself standing once again, still on his own, in Place de la Bastille.

  It was too early to go to bed. He had had time, at the office, to read the evening paper. He didn’t want to start a book that would keep him up part of the night.

  He decided to go to the cinema and set off along the Grands Boulevards. Twice he stopped to examine some posters that didn’t hold his attention. A woman looked at him insistently, and he almost blushed, because she seemed to have guessed that he was temporarily a bachelor.

  Did she also expect him to take advantage? She overtook him and turned round, and the more embarrassed he appeared, the more certain she became that he was a timid client. She murmured a few words to him as she passed, and he had to cross pavements to get rid of her.

  As far as the cinema. He felt a little guilty at the thought of going in on his own. Or ridiculous at any rate. He went into a bar and had a calvados. There too, a woman smiled at him invitingly.

  He had leaned against thousands of bars and never had that sensation before.

  To get some peace, he finally chose a small basement cinema showing nothing but newsreels.

  At 10.30 he was still wandering about outside. He stopped at the same bar, had another calvados, as if he was already creating a tradition, and then, stuffing his pipe, he headed slowly towards Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

  All evening, in short, he had had a sense of being in the wrong place and even though he hadn’t done anything reprehensible, he felt something like remorse in a corner of his conscience.

  He took his key from his pocket as he climbed the stairs. There was no light under the door, no smell of cooking to welcome him home. He had to turn on the switches himself. Passing by the sideboard, he decided to pour himself a drink, which he could do today without exchanging a glance with his wife.

  He started to undress without drawing the curtains. He walked to the window and was taking off his braces when the phone rang.

  He was sure at that very moment that an unpleasant event explained his unease during the evening.

  ‘Hello …!’

  His sister-in-law wasn’t dead, because it wasn’t his wife speaking, and the call came from Paris.

  ‘Is that you, chief?’

  So it was the Police Judiciaire. He recognized the loud voice of Torrence, which, on the phone, rang out like a bugle.

  ‘I’m glad you’re home. I’ve rung you four times. I called Lucas, who told me you were at the cinema. But I didn’t know which one …’

  Torrence, overwhelmed, seemed not to know where to start.

  ‘It’s about Janvier …’

  Maigret unconsciously adopted his gruff voice to ask:

  ‘What does Janvier want?’

  ‘He’s just been taken to Cochin hospital. He took a bullet right in the chest.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘He must have gone under the knife by now.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At Quai des Orfèvres. Someone has to stay here. I did what needed to be done on Rue Lhomond. Lucas jumped in a taxi to go to the Cochin. I told Madame Janvier too, so she should have got there by now.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  He was going to hang up, already putting on his braces with one hand, when it occurred to him to ask:

  ‘Was it Paulus?’

  ‘No one knows. Janvier was on his own in the street. He had gone on night duty at seven. Young Lapointe was supposed to take over at seven in the morning.’

  ‘Did you send some men into the house?’

  ‘They’re still there. They’re keeping me up to date on the phone. They haven’t found anything.’

  Maigret had to walk to Boulevard Voltaire to catch a taxi. Rue Saint-Jacques was almost deserted, with only the lights from a few bistros. He hurried through the entrance of the Cochin and received something like a whiff of all the hotels he had ever known in his life.

  Why surround the sick, the injured, people you are trying to keep alive and those who are about to die with such a bleak and lugubrious atmosphere? Why that light, at once weak and cruel, which exists only there and in certain administrative offices? And why, at the door, are you welcomed by people with surly expressions?

  He almost expected someone to ask him for his ID. The ward intern looked like a child, and wore his white cap at an angle out of bravado.

  ‘Building C. We’ll take you there …’

  He was seething with impatience. Furious with everyone, he was now angry with the nurse who was guiding him for having lipstick and wavy hair.

  Some badly lit courtyards, some staircases, a long corridor and, at the end of that corridor, three silhouettes. The way there, between him and those silhouettes, seemed interminable, the parquet smoother than anywhere else.

  Little Lucas took a few steps towards him with the oblique gait of a beaten dog.

  ‘They think he’ll pull through,’ he said immediately, with his head lowered. ‘He’s been in the operating theatre for three-quarters of an hour.’

  Madame Janvier, eyes red and hat plonked awkwardly on her head, looked at him as if pleading, as if he could do something, and suddenly she stuffed the handkerchief to her mouth burst into tears.

  He didn’t know the third person, who had a long moustache and stood discreetly apart.

  ‘He’s a neighbour,’ Lucas explained. Madame Janvier couldn’t leave the children on their own; she called a neighbour, whose husband agreed to come with her.’

  The man, who had heard the conversation, gave a wave of his hand and smiled at Lucas to thank him.

  ‘What does the surgeon say?’

  They were outside the door of the operating theatre and talking in a low voice. At the other end of the corridor nurses, all carrying something, were ceaselessly coming and going, like ants.

  The bullet missed his heart, but it’s lodged in his right lung.’

  ‘Did Janvier say anything?’

  ‘No. By the time the Police Emergency vehicle got to Rue Lhomond, Janvier had lost consciousness.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll save him, detective chief inspector?’ asked Madame Janvier, who was visibly pregnant and had freckles under her eyes.

  ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t pull through.’

  ‘You see, I was right to sleep badly every time he spent the night out of the house!’r />
  They lived in the suburbs, in a detached house that Janvier had had built three years before, because it is hard to bring up children in a Paris apartment. He was very proud of his garden.

  They exchanged a few disjointed phrases, glancing anxiously at the door, which still hadn’t opened. Maigret had taken his pipe from his pocket, then put it back, remembering that smoking was forbidden. He was missing it. He had to go down to the courtyard to take a few puffs.

  He didn’t want to ask Lucas what had happened, in front of Madame Janvier. He couldn’t leave them either. Apart from Lucas – his right-hand man – Janvier had always been his favourite inspector. He had had him with him as a very young man, as Lapointe was now, and he still sometimes called him young Janvier.

  At last the door opened. But it was only a red-haired nurse who hurried towards another door without looking at them and came back in the opposite direction holding an object that they couldn’t identify. They hadn’t been able to stop her as she passed and ask her how the operation was going, but all four had looked at her face and all four had been disappointed to be able to read in it nothing but professional diligence.

  ‘I think that if anything bad were to happen to him I would die too,’ said Madame Janvier who, although she had a chair at her disposal, remained standing as they did, shaking, for fear that she might miss a second by getting up just now, when the door finally opened.

  There was a great deal of noise. The two wings of the door parted. A stretcher could be seen. Maigret look Madame Janvier’s arm to stop her from running forwards. He was scared for a moment because, from his perspective, it had looked as if Janvier’s face was covered by a blanket.

  But when the gurney came level with them, he saw that it wasn’t the case.

  ‘Albert …’ his wife cried, suppressing a sob.

  ‘Shh …,’ said the surgeon who was taking his rubber gloves off as he arrived.

  Janvier’s eyes were open, and he must have recognized them, because he had a vague smile on his lips.

  He was taken towards one of the rooms, and his wife followed with Lucas and the neighbour, while Maigret, in a window niche, talked to the doctor.