Maigret's Failure

by Georges Simenon

  She realized she was revealing too much.

  ‘I’ve had some, it’s true. And Ferdinand knew. And he made me pay for it my whole life. You had to pay for everything with him, everything. Do you understand? But my brother has never done anything to him apart from being my father’s son and my brother.’

  ‘Your brother slept in the room at the back, did he?’

  ‘Yes. He often sleeps there. A few times a week, maybe. Whenever he makes it this far.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  She looked him hard in the eye with a sort of suppressed fury.

  ‘He drinks!’ she cried. ‘Like me! There’s nothing else left for him to do. He had money, a wife, children …’

  ‘Did your husband ruin him?’

  ‘He took his last centime. But if you’re thinking it was my brother who killed him, you’re wrong. He’s not physically up to anything like that any more. Nor am I.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Somewhere where there’s a bar. He’s not young any more. He’s fifty-two and looks at least sixty-five. His children, who are married, refuse to see him. His wife works in Limoges.’

  Her hand groped for the bottle.

  ‘Did Victor let him into the house?’

  ‘If Victor had known, he would have gone and told my husband.’

  ‘Did your brother have a key?’

  ‘Noémi had one made for him.’

  ‘What is your brother’s name?’

  ‘Émile … Émile Lentin … I can’t tell you where you’ll find him. When he finds out from the papers that Fumal is dead, he probably won’t dare come here. In that case you’ll end up picking him up by the river or at the Salvation Army.’

  She gave him another defiant look and, with a bitter set to her mouth, started drinking from the bottle.

  5. The Woman Who Likes the Fireside and the Girl Who Likes a Good Meal

  He didn’t need to say who he was or show his badge. A glass peephole at head height in the middle of the door allowed the person inside to see who was ringing. The door opened immediately, and a voice cried in raptures:

  ‘Monsieur Maigret!’

  The recognition was mutual as the woman opened the door for him and showed him into a sweltering room with a gas radiator on full blast. She must have been at least sixty but she had hardly changed since the time Maigret had rescued her from a tricky situation when she was running a discreet brothel in Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.

  He didn’t expect to find her presiding over this short-stay hotel on Rue de l’Étoile, with its sign saying, ‘Luxury studios by the month and week’.

  Not that it was a hotel, strictly speaking. The office wasn’t much of an office either, more of a boudoir with comfy armchairs and silk cushions on which two or three Persian cats sat purring. Rose’s hair was sparser, although still peroxide blonde, her face and body plumper, her skin slightly waxy.

  ‘Who are you here for?’ she asked, rushing excitedly to clear one of the chairs. She’d always had a soft spot for Maigret, whom she’d go and see at Quai des Orfèvres in the old days whenever she had a problem.

  ‘Do you have a Martine Gilloux here?’

  It was midday. The newspapers hadn’t reported Fumal’s death yet. In what he thought was a slightly cowardly way, Maigret had again left his colleagues working in the depressing atmosphere of Boulevard de Courcelles and made his second getaway of the morning.

  ‘I don’t suppose she’s done anything wrong, has she?’ she said, adding hurriedly, ‘She’s a good girl, completely harmless.’

  ‘Is she upstairs at the moment?’

  ‘She went out maybe quarter of an hour ago. She doesn’t like going to bed late, that one. At this time of the morning she goes and takes a little turn round the neighbourhood before having lunch at Gino’s or some other restaurant on Place des Ternes.’

  The little sitting room looked like the one at Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, minus the erotic engravings on the walls that had been part of the tools of the trade there, and it was just as hot. Rose had always felt the cold, or rather had always liked heat for heat’s sake, overheating her rooms and swathing herself in quilted dressing gowns. Sometimes she’d go weeks in winter without poking her nose outdoors.

  ‘Has she lived here for a long time?’

  ‘Over a year.’

  ‘What sort of girl is she?’

  They spoke the same language and understood one another.

  ‘A good kid who hasn’t had any luck for years. She’s from a very poor family. She was born somewhere in the suburbs, I can’t remember where, but she told me she went hungry a lot, and I could tell she wasn’t making it up.’

  She asked again:

  ‘Is it something bad?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t. She’s not really very bright and tries to be nice to everybody. Men take advantage of her. She’s had her ups and downs, especially downs. For a long time, she was at the beck and call of a thug who put her through hell and luckily for her ended up getting sent down. She told me all this herself, because she wasn’t living here at the time but somewhere over by Barbès. She happened to find someone who got her a studio here with me and since then she’s been fine.’

  ‘Fumal?’

  ‘That’s his name, yes. A big-shot butcher, who has several cars and a chauffeur.’

  ‘Does he visit regularly?’

  ‘He sometimes goes two or three days without coming, then we see him every afternoon or evening.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I can’t think of anything. You know the deal. He gives her a nice allowance without going crazy. She has a few pretty dresses, a fur coat, two or three pieces of jewellery.’

  ‘Does he go out with her?’

  ‘Sometimes, especially when he’s having dinner in town with friends who have partners.’

  ‘Does Martine have another boyfriend?’

  ‘I wondered that myself at the start. It’s rare that those girls don’t feel the need to have someone. I asked her some sly questions – I always find out what’s happening round here in the end – and believe you me, she hasn’t got anybody. She finds it more relaxing that way. At heart, she’s not very keen on men.’

  ‘No drugs?’

  ‘That’s not her style.’

  ‘How does she spend her time?’

  ‘She stays in, reading or listening to the radio. She sleeps. She goes out to eat, goes for a little walk and comes back.’

  ‘Do you know Fumal?’

  ‘I’ve seen him go past in the corridor. The car and the chauffeur often wait outside while he’s up there.’

  ‘Did you say that I’ll find her at Gino’s?’

  ‘Do you know it? A little Italian restaurant …’

  Maigret knew it. The restaurant wasn’t large or showy but it was famous for its pasta, especially its ravioli, and had a select clientele.

  When he got there, he stopped at the bar first.

  ‘Is Martine Gilloux here?’

  There were already a dozen male and female customers. The barman winked in the direction of a young woman who was having lunch alone in a corner.

  Leaving his overcoat and hat at the cloakroom, Maigret went over to her, rested his hand on the unoccupied chair on the other side of the table and asked:

  ‘May I?’

  She looked at him uncomprehendingly, so he said:

  ‘I need to talk to you. I’m from the police.’

  There were a dozen small hors-d’oeuvres dishes in front of her, he noticed.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s just a few questions.’

  ‘About who?’

  ‘About Fumal. And you.’

  He turned towards the head waiter, who had come over.

  ‘Give me some hors-d’oeuvres too, then a spaghetti Milanese.’

  Finally he told the young woman, who was looking stunned as well as anxious now:

  ‘I’
ve come from Rue de l’Étoile. Rose told me that I would find you here. Fumal is dead.’

  She must have been between twenty-five and twenty-eight, but there was something older in the look in her eyes: tiredness and indifference, maybe a lack of curiosity about life. She was fairly tall, rather large, with a gentle, timid expression which reminded you of a child who’s been beaten.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’

  She shook her head, still looking at him without knowing what to think.

  ‘Did you see him yesterday?’

  ‘Wait … Yesterday … Yes … He came to see me around five …’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘The same as usual.’

  Something had just struck Maigret. Until now, although they kept it pretty well hidden, everyone he talked to had been amazed and delighted when they heard about Fumal’s death. At the very least, you sensed they were relieved.

  But Martine Gilloux received the news gravely, possibly with a hint of sadness, definitely anxiously.

  Was she thinking that her fate hung in the balance again, that her peace and comfort were over, perhaps for good? Was she afraid of going back to the streets, where she had spent so much of her life?

  ‘Go on eating,’ he said to her, as his order was brought.

  She did so mechanically and he realized that eating was the most important thing in life for her, her principal source of reassurance. She had probably been eating intently for the last year to erase the memory of all the years she had gone hungry, or avenge it.

  ‘What do you know about him?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Are you sure you’re from the police?’

  She was on the verge of asking the barman or head waiter, who were watching them, for advice. He held out his badge.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve seen your name in the papers before. Is that you? I thought you’d be fatter.’

  ‘Tell me about Fumal. Start at the beginning. Where did you meet him, when, how?’

  ‘Just over a year ago.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a little club in Montmartre, Le Désir. I was at the bar. He came in with some friends who had drunk more than him.’

  ‘Didn’t he drink?’

  ‘I never saw him drunk.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘There were other girls there. One of his friends called one over. Then another guy, a butcher, I think, from Lille or somewhere in the north, came and got my friend Nina. He was the only one left at their table on his own. So, he waved to me across the room to come over. You know how it goes. I could see he wasn’t really that keen, that he just wanted to be like the others. I remember that he looked at me and said, “You’re thin. You must be hungry.”

  ‘It’s true, I was thin at that point. Without asking me, he called the maitre d’ and ordered me a full dinner.

  ‘ “Eat! Drink! It’s not every night you’ll get the chance to meet Fumal.”

  ‘That’s pretty much how it started. His friends left before him with the two other girls. He asked me questions about my parents, my childhood, what I was doing. You often get ones like that. He didn’t even feel me up.’

  ‘In the end, he decided:

  ‘ “Come on! I’m going to take you to a decent hotel.” ’

  ‘Did he spend the night there?’ asked Maigret.

  ‘No. It was near Place Clichy, I remember. He paid a week in advance, and that night he didn’t even come up to the room. He came back the next day.’

  ‘Did he come up that time?’

  ‘Yes. He stayed for a while. But not so much for what you think. He wasn’t very good at that. He mainly talked to me about himself, what he was doing, his wife.’

  ‘What did he say about her?’

  ‘I think he was unhappy.’

  Maigret could hardly believe his ears.

  ‘Go on,’ he muttered, automatically assuming a more familiar tone.

  ‘It’s hard, you understand? He talked to me about all that so often …’

  ‘So, he really came to see you to talk about her.’

  ‘Not only that …’

  ‘But mainly?’

  ‘Maybe. Apparently, he’d worked a lot, more than anyone in the whole world, and he’d become a very powerful man. Is that true?’

  ‘It was true, yes.’

  ‘He’d say things to me like:

  ‘ “What good is it to me? People have no idea who I am and think I’m a lout. My wife’s crazy. All my staff and employees think about is how to steal from me. And when I go into a fashionable restaurant I can tell people are muttering: ‘Look, there’s the butcher!’ ” ’

  The waiter brought spaghetti for Maigret and ravioli for Martine Gilloux, who had a flask of Chianti on the table in front of her.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  Her worries did not prevent her eating heartily.

  ‘He said that his wife was crazy?’

  ‘And that she loathed him. He bought the chateau in the village where he was born. Is that true too?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You know, I didn’t take any of it that seriously. I thought that some of it was probably boasting. The locals still call him The Butcher. He bought a townhouse on Boulevard de Courcelles and he used to say that it felt like a railway station rather than a home.’

  ‘Did you go there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have a key?’

  ‘No. I only went there twice. The first time because he wanted to show me where he lived. It was one night. We went up to the first floor. I saw the big drawing room, his office, his bedroom, the dining room, then some other rooms, which were almost empty. It’s true, it didn’t feel like a real home.

  ‘ “The madwoman’s up there,” he said. “She’ll be on the landing spying on us.”

  ‘I asked him if she was jealous and he said that she wasn’t, that she spied on him just for the hell of it, that it was her obsession. Is it true that she drinks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that case, you see, almost everything he told me is true. Does that include him being able to walk into ministers’ offices unannounced?’

  ‘That’s hardly an exaggeration.’

  Wasn’t there something ironic about Fumal and Martine’s relationship? For over a year, she had been his mistress. He’d hardly slept with her, really, and only kept her on as an audience before whom he could show off and complain.

  Some men, when they have too much weighing on their hearts, pick up a prostitute in the street just so they can confide in her.

  Fumal went one further, buying an exclusive personal confidante and setting her up in style in Rue de l’Étoile so that her only job was to wait on his pleasure.

  At heart, though, she had never really believed him. Not only that but she’d never even wondered if what he told her was true or false.

  She didn’t care!

  Now that he was dead she was overawed to learn that he had genuinely been the heavyweight he wanted people to think he was.

  ‘He wasn’t worried lately, was he?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Was he afraid for his life? Did he talk about his enemies?’

  ‘He often told me that you can’t become powerful without making a lot of enemies. He used to say:

  ‘ “They can lick my hands like dogs all they want but deep down they all loathe me, and the day I die will be the happiest day of their lives.”

  ‘Then he’d add:

  ‘ “It will be yours too, come to that. Or it would be if I left you something. But I’m not going to leave you anything. Maybe I’ll die or maybe I’ll drop you, but either way you’ll go back to the gutter.” ’

  She wasn’t shocked. She had been through too much before she met him. He had bought her a few months of security, and that was enough for her.

  ‘What happened to him?’ it was her turn to ask. ‘Was it his heart?’

  ‘Did he have a bad
heart?’

  ‘I don’t know. When people die suddenly, they usually say …’

  ‘He was murdered.’

  She stopped eating, so stunned that her mouth hung open. It was a while before she could ask:

  ‘Where? When?’

  ‘Yesterday evening. At his house.’

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

  ‘How did they do it?’

  ‘A revolver bullet.’

  She had lost her appetite, probably for the first time in her life. She pushed her plate away and reached for her glass, draining it in one.

  ‘Just my luck,’ he heard her mutter.

  ‘Did he ever talk about a Monsieur Joseph?’

  ‘A little old man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He called him The Thief. Apparently, he really was one. Ferdinand could have had him put in jail, but he preferred to keep him on his payroll, saying that crooks do a better job than upright citizens. He even moved him into the attic so he always had him to hand.’

  ‘And his secretary?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Louise?’

  So Fumal really had confided in his mistress in detail.

  ‘What did he think of her?’

  ‘That she was cold, ambitious, greedy, and that she was only working for him for the money.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. Something happened with her. Has she told you?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘What’s the harm! He’s dead now …’

  She looked around and lowered her voice so the head waiter wouldn’t hear.

  ‘One day at the office he pretended to be making a pass at her, started groping her, then ordered:

  ‘ “Take your clothes off.” ’

  ‘Did she obey?’ Maigret asked, surprised.

  ‘He said she did. He didn’t even take her to his bedroom. He stayed standing by the window as she stripped, watching her with an ironic expression. When she was naked, he asked her:

  ‘ “Are you a virgin?” ’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing. She blushed. After a while he muttered:

  ‘ “You’re not a virgin. That’ll do. Put your clothes back on.”

  ‘I didn’t believe that story at the time. People have abused me too. But I never had any teaching or education. Men know they can take any liberty they like with me. But a girl like her …