Maigret's Failure

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Be there by seven thirty. Go with him wherever he goes. He’ll take you in his car. He’ll probably try to needle you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Don’t rise to the bait.’

  As for him, he had to attend to the old Englishwoman, who reports were now claiming had travelled to Maubeuge. It could easily not be her. They’d given up counting the false leads they’d investigated, the number of old Englishwomen sighted all over France.

  Vacher rang to ask for instructions.

  ‘What shall I do? Keep watch inside or outside the house?’

  ‘Whichever you like.’

  ‘Even with the rain, I’d rather be outside.’

  Someone else who didn’t like the atmosphere in the Boulevard de Courcelles mansion.

  ‘I’ll have you relieved around midnight.’

  ‘OK, chief. Thanks.’

  Maigret had supper at home. That night his wife wasn’t in pain, and he slept straight through to 7.30. As always she brought him a cup of coffee in bed, and his eyes turned immediately to the window. The sky was as leaden as ever.

  He had just gone into the bathroom when the telephone rang. He heard his wife answering:

  ‘Yes … yes … One moment, Monsieur Lapointe.’

  That was bad. At 7.30, Lapointe would be starting his shift at Boulevard de Courcelles. If he was ringing …

  ‘Hello … It’s me …’

  ‘Listen, chief … Something’s happened …’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We don’t know. Maybe poisoned. There’s no visible wound. I didn’t really take time to look. The doctor hasn’t arrived yet.’

  ‘I’m on my way!’

  Had he been so wrong in thinking that Fumal was going to be a pain in the … trouble through and through?

  3. The Manservant’s Past and the Tenant on the Third Floor

  Maigret felt a pang of guilt as he shaved – perhaps because he’d had a grudge against Fumal. It made him wonder if he had done his job thoroughly. The meat wholesaler had come to him to ask for his protection. He had done so aggressively, admittedly, getting the minister to pull strings and using barely veiled threats. But Maigret still had to do his duty. Had he done so as fully as possible? He had gone to Boulevard de Courcelles in person, but he hadn’t taken the trouble to check all the doors and exits. He had put off that chore until the next day, along with the task of interviewing all the staff in turn.

  He had posted an inspector in front of the house. From 7.30 this morning, if Fumal hadn’t been killed, Lapointe would have been guarding him while Lucas pursued his investigations in Rue Rambuteau and elsewhere.

  Would he have acted differently if he hadn’t disliked the man, if he hadn’t had an old score to settle with him, if it had just been any big businessman in Paris?

  Before he had breakfast, he telephoned the prosecutor, then Quai des Orfèvres.

  ‘Aren’t they sending a car?’ asked Madame Maigret, who took up as little space as possible at moments like this.

  ‘I’ll take a taxi.’

  The boulevards were almost empty, with just a few dark silhouettes emerging from the Métro and hurrying towards the townhouses. A car – a doctor’s – was parked opposite 58a, Boulevard de Courcelles, and when Maigret rang the bell, the door opened immediately.

  The manservant from the previous day hadn’t had time to shave, but he was already wearing his yellow and black striped waistcoat. He had very bushy eyebrows, and Maigret studied him for a moment as if he was trying to remember something.

  ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  ‘First floor, the office.’

  As he climbed the stairs, he resolved to look into this Victor later; he intrigued him. Lapointe came to meet him on the landing, which was doubling as a waiting room.

  ‘I made a mistake, chief, sorry. The way he was lying when I saw him, you couldn’t see the wound.’

  ‘He wasn’t poisoned?’

  ‘No. When he turned him over, the doctor found a massive wound in his back, level with the heart. The shot was fired point-blank.’

  ‘Where’s his wife?’

  ‘I don’t know. She hasn’t come downstairs.’

  ‘The secretary?’

  ‘She must be through there. Come with me. I’m only just getting the hang of this place.’

  At the front of the house, overlooking the railings of Parc Monceau, there was an enormous drawing room that gave the impression of never being used. It was damp despite the central heating.

  Along a red-carpeted corridor they found a first, relatively small office on the right, looking on to the courtyard. Louise Bourges was in there, standing by the window, and a maid was with her. Neither of them said anything. Louise Bourges looked at Maigret anxiously, no doubt wondering how he was going to treat her after her visit the previous day to Quai des Orfèvres.

  ‘Where is he?’ he simply asked.

  She pointed to a door.

  ‘In there.’

  It was another office, more spacious, also red-carpeted and with Empire-style furniture. A human form was stretched out on the floor by an armchair, with a doctor whom Maigret didn’t know on his knees by it.

  ‘I’m told it was a gunshot fired at point-blank range, is that right?’

  The doctor nodded. Maigret had already noticed that the dead man hadn’t changed for bed and was still wearing the same clothes as the day before.

  ‘What time did it happen?’

  ‘As far as I can tell at first sight, towards the end of the evening, between eleven and midnight, say.’

  Involuntarily Maigret thought of the village of Saint-Fiacre, the school yard, the fat boy no one liked whom they called Boom-Boom or Gumdrop.

  Turning him over, the doctor had put him into a strange pose. An outstretched arm seemed to be pointing to a corner of the room, which was empty except for a yellow marble nymph on a plinth.

  ‘I suppose death was instantaneous?’

  This was a pointless question – the wound was almost big enough to fit a fist in – but Maigret wasn’t his usual self. This didn’t feel like an ordinary case.

  ‘Does his wife know?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He went into the next room, repeated the question to the secretary:

  ‘Does his wife know?’

  ‘Yes. Noémi went up to tell her.’

  ‘Hasn’t she come down?’

  He was starting to realize that nothing happened here as it would in a normal household.

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Yesterday evening, around nine o’clock.’

  ‘Did he send for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To dictate some letters. The shorthand is on my pad. I haven’t typed them up yet.’

  ‘Important letters?’

  ‘Not especially. He often made me take dictation in the evening.’

  Maigret understood what the young woman was thinking: her employer made a point of calling her back after a day’s work to needle her. Ferdinand Fumal had spent his whole life needling people?

  ‘Did he have any visitors?’

  ‘Not while I was there.’

  ‘Was he expecting any?’

  ‘I think so. He received a telephone call and told me to go to bed.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Nine thirty.’

  ‘Did you go to bed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is your bedroom?’

  ‘With the other staff bedrooms, above the old stables which are now garages.’

  ‘Were Monsieur Fumal and his wife the only people who slept in the house?’

  ‘No. Victor sleeps on the ground floor.’

  ‘Is that the manservant?’

  ‘He’s also the concierge and the caretaker and he does the shopping.’

  ‘
Isn’t he married?’

  ‘No. At least not that I know of. He has a little room with an ox-eye window under the archway.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Wait. When the post arrives, bring it to me. I wonder if there’ll be another anonymous letter.’

  He sensed she was blushing but wasn’t sure. Footsteps could be heard on the stairs. The deputy public prosecutor was accompanied by a young examining magistrate called Planche, with whom Maigret hadn’t had the chance to work yet. The court clerk who followed them had a cold. Almost immediately after they arrived, the carriage entrance opened again to admit the people from Criminal Records.

  Louise Bourges was still standing by the window in her office, awaiting instructions. After a moment Maigret spoke to her again.

  ‘Who told Madame Fumal?’

  ‘Noémi.’

  ‘Is that her personal maid?’

  ‘She does the second floor. Monsieur Fumal’s bedroom is on that floor, next to his office.’

  ‘Go and see what’s happening up there.’

  She hesitated, and he asked:

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  It was odd, to say the least, that the dead man’s wife hadn’t come downstairs yet and that there wasn’t a sound to be heard on her floor.

  Since Maigret had got there, Lapointe had been silently rummaging about all over the house looking for a gun. He had opened the door of the vast master bedroom, which was also decorated in Empire style, with a pair of pyjamas and a dressing gown laid out on the turned-down bed.

  Even with its tall windows, the mansion was murky and grey, and only a few lights had been switched on. Here and there police photographers were setting up their equipment, while the prosecutor’s people whispered in a corner as they waited for the forensics doctor to arrive.

  ‘Any ideas, Maigret?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘I knew him at my village school and he came to see me yesterday. He went to the minister of the interior to ask for our protection.’

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘He had been receiving anonymous threats for a time.’

  ‘Didn’t you do anything?’

  ‘One of my men spent the night on his doorstep and another was going to take over during the day.’

  ‘Well, anyway, it looks as if the killer took his gun with him.’

  Lapointe hadn’t found anything. Nor had anyone else. Maigret set off downstairs with his hands in his pockets. Reaching the ground floor, he pressed his face to the ox-eye window he had been told about.

  There was a room in there that looked like a concierge’s lodge, with a messy bed, a mirrored wardrobe, a gas stove, a table, some books on a shelf. The manservant was sitting astride a chair, his elbows propped on the back of it, staring blankly into space.

  Maigret rapped on the window a few times before the man started and looked at him, blinking, then stood up and came to the door.

  ‘Recognized me yet?’ he asked, a fearful, wary look on his face.

  Maigret had had a sense the day before that he’d seen him somewhere, but he still hadn’t worked out where.

  ‘I recognized you immediately.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You didn’t know me back then because I’m a good bit younger than you. You’d already left when I was born.’

  ‘Left where?’

  ‘Saint-Fiacre, of course! Don’t you remember Nicolas?’

  Maigret remembered him all too well. He was an old drunk who did the odd day’s agricultural labour, worked on the threshing machine in the summer and rang the bells in church on a Sunday. He lived in a hut on the edge of the woods and was known to eat crows and polecats.

  ‘He was my father.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Has been for a long time.’

  ‘What about you – how long have you been in Paris?’

  ‘Didn’t you see anything about it in the papers? They even used my picture. I had some trouble back there. In the end, they realized I hadn’t done it on purpose.’

  He had bushy hair and a low forehead.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I was out poaching – no two ways about it, I’ve never tried to deny it.’

  ‘And you killed a gamekeeper?’

  ‘Did you read about it?’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘A young one, you didn’t know him. He was always after me. I swear, I didn’t do it on purpose. I was watching for a deer and when I heard a noise in the undergrowth …’

  ‘What gave you the idea of coming here after that?’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea.’

  ‘Fumal came and got you?’

  ‘Yes. He needed someone he could trust. You’ve never been back to the village, have you – not that you’ve been forgotten there; they’re proud of you, I can tell you – but as soon as he had the money, he bought Saint-Fiacre chateau …’

  Maigret felt sick at heart. He had been born there. Only on the estate, it’s true, but it was still his birthplace, and for a long time the countess of Saint-Fiacre had been his ideal of womanhood.

  ‘I get the picture,’ he muttered.

  Fumal surrounded himself with people he had a hold over – that was it, wasn’t it? He needed some sort of bodyguard, or bulldog, more than a manservant so he brought a strapping lad back to Paris who had escaped hard labour by the skin of his teeth.

  ‘Did he pay for your lawyer?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Tell me what happened yesterday evening.’

  ‘Nothing happened. Monsieur didn’t go out.’

  ‘What time did he get back?’

  ‘Just before eight, for dinner.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘With Mademoiselle Louise.’

  ‘Was the car put away in the garage?’

  ‘Yes. It’s still there. All three are.’

  ‘Does the secretary eat with the servants?’

  ‘She likes to, because of Félix.’

  ‘Does everyone know about her relationship with Félix?’

  ‘It’s pretty obvious.’

  ‘Did your boss know too?’

  Victor was silent. Maigret said:

  ‘You told him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I understand correctly, you told him everything that was happening in the servants’ quarters?’

  ‘He paid me to.’

  ‘Let’s get back to yesterday evening. Did you leave your lodge?’

  ‘No. Germaine brought me my dinner here.’

  ‘Did that happen every evening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which one is Germaine?’

  ‘The oldest.’

  ‘Did anyone come to the door?’

  ‘Monsieur Joseph got back around nine thirty.’

  ‘You mean he lives in the house?’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’

  Maigret hadn’t suspected it for a moment.

  ‘Give me details. Where’s his bedroom?’

  ‘It isn’t a bedroom, it’s a whole apartment on the third floor. They’re attic rooms with sloping ceilings, but they’re bigger than the ones over the garage. They were the maids’ rooms before.’

  ‘How long has he lived in the house?’

  ‘I don’t know. Before my time.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘Where does Monsieur Joseph have his meals?’

  ‘Mostly at a brasserie on Boulevard des Batignolles.’

  ‘Is he a bachelor?’

  ‘A widower, from what I’ve heard.’

  ‘Is he ever gone for the night?’

  ‘No, except when he’s travelling, of course.’

  ‘Does he travel a lot?’

  ‘He goes to the country branches to check the books.’

  ‘What time d
id you say he got back?’

  ‘About nine thirty.’

  ‘Did he go out again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did anyone else come to the house?’

  ‘Monsieur Gaillardin.’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘I’ve let him in lots of times. He used to be a good friend of the boss. Then they fell out, and yesterday was the first time in a long while that …’

  ‘Did you send him upstairs?’

  ‘Monsieur rang telling me to show him up. There’s an internal telephone from the office to my lodge.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Around ten o’clock. You know, I always used to tell the time by the sun, so it doesn’t often occur to me to look at the clock. Especially because the one in here is always at least ten minutes fast.’

  ‘How long was he upstairs?’

  ‘Maybe a quarter of an hour.’

  ‘How did you open the door for him when he left?’

  ‘By pressing the switch here, same as in any concierge’s lodge.’

  ‘Did you see him go past?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did you have a look at him?’

  ‘Well …’

  He hesitated, his anxiety returning.

  ‘That depends on what you call have a look. There isn’t much light under the archway. I didn’t press my face to the window. I just saw him, you know. I recognized him. I’m sure it was him.’

  ‘But you don’t know what mood he was in?’

  ‘No clue.’

  ‘Did your boss call you after that?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Answer the question.’

  ‘No … I don’t think so … Wait … No … I went to bed. I read some of the paper in bed, then I turned out the light.’

  ‘Which means that no one came into the house after Gaillardin left?’

  Victor started to speak, then changed his mind.

  ‘Isn’t that correct?’ insisted Maigret.

  ‘It’s correct, yes, of course … But it might also not be … It’s not easy summing up people’s lives just like that, in a few minutes … I don’t even know what you know …’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What did they tell you upstairs?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, well, Mademoiselle Louise or Noémi or Germaine …’

  ‘Could someone have come in last night without you knowing?’

  ‘Definitely!’