‘I’m trying to explain the effect that she must have on most people. Sometimes you meet a woman like that who immediately makes you think of …’
He couldn’t find the words.
‘Of what?’
‘In spite of yourself you see her nestling against her companion’s arm, you can almost feel her warmth … at the same time you know that she is meant for one man alone, that she is truly in love, a genuine lover … I soon found a seat two tables away from them, and that impression stayed with me throughout the whole meal … There wasn’t the slightest ambiguous gesture … They didn’t hold hands … I don’t think they even looked one another in the eyes … And yet …’
‘You think they love each other?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m sure of it. Even the waitress in the black dress and the white apron, a tall, thin woman with unkempt hair, didn’t serve them the way she served everyone else, and she looked as if she was acting as their accomplice …’
‘And yet you said at the beginning that they were sad.’
‘Let’s say serious … I don’t know, chief … I’m sure they aren’t miserable, because you can’t be truly unhappy when you’re …’
Maigret smiled again as he wondered what sort of report he might have had from Lucas, for example, who certainly wouldn’t have had the same reaction as young Lapointe.
‘Not unhappy, but sad, then, like lovers who aren’t free to show their love …’
‘If you like. At one point he got up to take off her coat, because she had glanced at the fire. It was a black woollen coat with a bit of fur around the collar and the wrists. She was also wearing a black jersey dress, and I was surprised to see that she was almost plump …
‘He consulted his watch several times. Then he asked the waitress to bring him his dessert and coffee, while his companion was still on her joint of veal.
‘He got up while she was still eating, and by way of goodbye he rested his hand on her shoulder, with a gesture that was both simple and tender.
‘He turned around in the doorway and fluttered his eyelashes …
‘I don’t know if I was right to stay. I told myself that he was going back to the shop. I finished my lunch at almost the same time as the woman did. Marton had paid the bill before leaving. I paid mine. I left behind her and, without hurrying, she went and caught the bus to Porte d’Orléans. I imagined that she was going back to Avenue de Châtillon and didn’t follow her. Did I do wrong?’
‘You did well. And then?’
‘I went for a short walk before going back to Rue Saint-Honoré, because few luxury boutiques open before two o’clock, some not before half past two. I didn’t want to get there too early. I should also confess that I was slightly nervous. And I wanted to see the boss, and told myself that he was probably the kind of man who has lunch in posh restaurants and is in no great hurry.’
Maigret looked at Lapointe with slightly paternal benevolence, because he had taken him under his wing two years earlier, when the young man had come to Quai des Orfèvres, and he had made surprising progress.
‘I’m going to confess something to you, chief. I was so scared at the thought of going into a shop like that that I treated myself to a calvados first.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was about to make my first entrance through the glass door when I noticed two old ladies in mink coats sitting opposite the saleswoman, and I didn’t dare. I waited for them to leave. A chauffeur-driven Rolls was waiting for them a little way off.
‘Then, for fear that a new customer might arrive, I hurried up.
‘At first I didn’t look at anything around me, I was so scared.
‘ “I would like a nightdress for a girl …” I recited.
‘I assumed it was Madame Marton who was standing in front of me. Besides, when I observed her a little later I saw that she had certain features in common with the young woman in the Trou Normand. Madame Marton is slightly taller, she has a good figure as well, but her body looks harder, what one might call a sculptural body. Do you see what I mean?
‘ “What kind of nightdress?” she asked me. “Take a seat …”
‘Because it isn’t the kind of shop where you stay standing up. I told you it was like a drawing room. At the back, some curtains hide little compartments that must be changing rooms, and in one of them I saw a big mirror and a wicker stool.
‘ “What size is the young woman?”
‘ “She’s a bit smaller than you, her shoulders are narrower …”
‘I don’t think she suspected anything, she kept giving me a protective look, and I could sense that she was saying to herself that I must have come to the wrong shop.
‘ “We have this, in natural silk, with real lace. I imagine it’s a gift?”
‘I stammered that it was.
‘ “This is the model that we created for the trousseau of Princess Helena of Greece.”
‘I wanted to stay for as long as possible. I said, hesitantly:
‘ “I imagine it’s very expensive?”
‘ “Forty-five thousand … It’s a size 40 … If the girl is a different size, we would have to make the slip to measure because this is all we have in store …”
‘ “You don’t have anything less luxurious? Nylon, for example …?” ’
Maigret observed:
‘Goodness, Lapointe, you seem to know your way around these things. I thought it wasn’t the done thing to buy lingerie for your fiancée …’
‘I had to play the game. At the word “nylon” she assumed a disdainful, pinched expression.
‘ “We don’t have nylon here. Only natural silk and batiste …”
‘The door opened. In the mirror, first of all, I saw a man wearing a camel-hair coat, to whom the saleswoman winked, and I’m sure, chief, that her wink meant that she was dealing with an odd customer.
‘The man took off his overcoat and hat, walked around the counter and, drawing a silk curtain, went into a cramped little office, where he hung his clothes on the clothes stand. He left a trace of scent in his wake. I went on watching him, leaning over his papers, which he glanced at carelessly.
‘Then he came back into the shop, where he looked at his fingernails, then at each of us in turn, like someone in his own home, and seemed to be waiting for me to make my mind up.
‘I asked off the top of my head:
‘ “Do you have it in white? I would like a very simple slip, without lace …”
‘They exchanged another glance, and the woman bent down to take a cardboard box from a drawer.
‘Monsieur Harris, or Schwob, is the kind of man you see a lot around Place Vendôme and the Champs-Élysées, and he could just as easily work in films or exports, paintings or antiques. You know what I mean, don’t you? He must spend every morning at his hairdresser’s and getting a facial massage. His suit is marvellously well cut, without a crease, and I’m sure he doesn’t buy his shoes ready-made.
‘He has black hair, a little silver at the temples, and olive skin. He’s close-shaven, and looks at you in a haughty, ironic way.
‘ “This is the cheapest thing we have …”
‘A slip that looked like nothing at all, with only a couple of bits of embroidery.
‘ “How much?”
‘ “Eighteen thousand.”
‘Another glance between the two of them.
‘ “I don’t suppose this is what you were looking for?”
‘And already she was opening the box to put the slip back in.
‘ “I need to think … I’ll come back …”
‘ “Of course …”
‘I almost forgot my hat on the counter and had to go back. Once I was outside and the door was closed, I turned around and saw them both laughing.
‘I walked about a hundred metres, then crossed to the opposite pavement. There was no one in the shop. The curtain of the little office was open, the woman was sitting down, and Harris was combing his hair at a mirror …
‘That’s all, chief. I can’t swear that they’re sleeping together. What is certain is that they make a good couple, and they don’t need to speak to understand each other. You can sense that straight away.
‘Madame Marton doesn’t have lunch with her husband, even though they work five hundred metres apart, and it was her sister-in-law who joined Xavier Marton.
‘I suppose, in the end, that those two must be hiding. Marton, in fact, doesn’t get much time for lunch. Very close to the Magasins du Louvre there are a number of cheap restaurants which I’ve seen the sales staff hurrying towards.
‘And yet he takes the trouble to go quite a distance, to a bistro with a different clientele, where no one would think of going to look for them.
‘Does Madame Marton usually have lunch with Monsieur Harris? I don’t know. The fact that he reached the shop after her doesn’t prove anything …’
Maigret got up to adjust the radiator, which, like the previous day, was tending to overheat. All day they had been expecting snow, which was forecast; the north and Normandy were already covered.
Had Maigret not been right to dismiss the psychiatric textbooks and all those things about psychoses and complexes?
He felt, finally, that he was dealing with people of flesh and blood, men and women with passions and interests.
Yesterday there had merely been one couple.
Today there seemed to be two, and that made an enormous difference.
‘Where are you sending me now?’ asked Lapointe, who was excited about the case as well and feared being shut out of it.
‘You can’t go to Rue Saint-Honoré or to Avenue de Châtillon now that the two women have seen you …’
And besides, what would he have gone there to do? The public prosecutor seemed to be right. Nothing had happened. Probably nothing would happen. Unless one of the two couples, in the grip of impatience …
When the phone rang, Maigret was looking at the time on the black marble clock on the mantelpiece, which was always ten minutes fast. It said it was 5.50.
‘Inspector Maigret here …’
Why did he feel a faint shock at the sound of the voice? Was it because, since the previous morning, he had been thinking about nothing else than the man at the other end of the line?
There were noises, voices in the background. Maigret could have sworn that the man was anxiously holding his hand cupped over his mouth. He was speaking in a low voice.
‘I’m sorry about yesterday, but I had to leave. I just want to know if you will still be at your office about a quarter to seven, perhaps ten to seven. We close at six thirty …’
‘Today?’
‘If you would be so kind …’
‘I’ll wait for you.’
Marton hung up straight away, after stammering a thank you, and Maigret looked at Lapointe rather as Madame Marton and Monsieur Harris had looked at each other in the lingerie boutique.
‘Was that him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he on his way?’
‘In an hour and a quarter.’
Maigret wanted to make fun of himself, of all the notions he had cooked up about this matter which, an hour and a quarter from now, would probably turn out to have a perfectly simple explanation.
‘We have time to go and have a beer at the Brasserie Dauphine,’ he growled, opening his cupboard to take out his overcoat and hat.
5. A Woman on the Embankment
It was just as he was about to go downstairs with Lapointe that the idea came to Maigret.
‘I’ll be with you straight away. Wait for me.’
And, still hesitating, he walked towards the inspectors’ office. His idea was that one of his men should follow Xavier Marton when he left the Magasins du Louvre. He didn’t know exactly why. Or rather, there were several things that might happen. First of all, Marton was liable to change at the last moment, as he had done once before, leaving Maigret’s office when the inspector was elsewhere. And his wife, who confessed to having followed him over the previous few days, was capable of spying on him once more.
If she approached him in the street, wouldn’t he follow her to Avenue de Châtillon? There were other possibilities. And even if nothing happened, Maigret was curious to know how the train-set salesman behaved when taking an important step, whether he would hesitate, whether he would stop on the way, for example, to boost his courage with a glass or two.
Janvier risked being recognized. Another inspector acting on his own, Lucas, for example, who was available, but who had never seen Marton, might not be able to spot him, even on the basis of his description, in the crowd of staff leaving the store.
‘Lucas and Janvier! Both of you go to the Magasins du Louvre. When the workers leave, Janvier isn’t to show himself, just point to Marton in passing, and then Lucas is to follow him on his own.’
Lucas, who didn’t really understand what was happening, asked:
‘Do you think it’ll take a long time, that he’ll go far?’
‘Here, probably.’
He nearly added:
‘But no taxis, no expenses!’
Because there are administrative rules that the public doesn’t know but which are sometimes very important for the people in the Police Judiciaire. When a crime or an offence is committed and when the police are delegated by the legal authorities to carry out an investigation the professional expenses of the chief inspectors, inspectors and technicians are in principle the responsibility of the guilty party. If he is not arrested, or if the court finds him not guilty later on, the Ministry of Justice foots the bill.
If, on the other hand, the case is one that the Police Judiciaire has investigated on its own initiative and if, in the end, there is no crime and hence no culprit, any costs become the responsibility of the Préfecture, which is to say the Ministry of the Interior.
And yet, for the police officers, this makes a huge difference. The courts, which always assume that the criminal will pay, are not too fussy, and will generally pay for a taxi. The Préfecture, on the contrary, goes through the expenses forms with a fine-tooth comb and requires accounts for the slightest comings and goings that cost the public purse money.
In this instance, was Maigret not working to ensure that there was neither a crime nor a culprit?
That would therefore mean no expenses, or expenses that were as modest as possible, and he knew that if nothing came of it he would have to justify the use of his men.
‘Let’s go!’
There was no snow, contrary to the forecast on the radio, but a cold, yellowish fog. The two men, in the light and heat of the Brasserie Dauphine, didn’t have beers, which seemed inappropriate to the season, but aperitifs. Leaning on the bar, they didn’t talk about Marton, they chatted a little with the owner, after which, with the collars of their overcoats turned up, they returned to the office.
Maigret had decided to leave the door to the inspectors’ office half open and to put Lapointe, who was quite good at shorthand, behind the door. It was a precaution, just in case.
At 6.50 he was sitting at his desk, waiting for old Joseph to knock on the door. At 6.55 he was still waiting, and Lapointe, clutching a well-sharpened pencil, was also waiting behind the door.
Maigret was beginning to get impatient when, at seven o’clock, he heard some footsteps at last, familiar little taps, and saw the white porcelain handle turning.
It was Joseph. Having been warned in advance, he merely whispered:
‘It’s the gentleman you’re waiting for.’
‘Show him in.’
‘Sorry for being a bit late …’ Marton said. ‘There was no point taking the Métro at this time of day … There were two full buses, and I came on foot, thinking that that would be quicker …’
He was slightly out of breath and seemed to be hot from running.
‘If you would like to take off your coat …’
‘That might be a good idea. I think I’m starting to get a cold …’
; It took some time for him to sort himself out. He didn’t know where to put his overcoat. At first he put it on a chair, then noticed that that was the one he was supposed to sit on if he was to face the inspector, so he carried it to the other end of the room.
At last they were sitting face to face, Maigret smoking his pipe and studying his visitor more intensely than he had the previous day. He was almost disappointed. For twenty-four hours his thoughts had revolved around Marton, who had in the end been transformed into an extraordinary character, and the man in front of him was completely ordinary, like hundreds of others one might bump into on the Métro or in the street.
He was a little put out with him for being so banal, for behaving in such a natural manner.
‘I’m sorry again for leaving your office without warning you. Discipline is strict at the store. I had been given permission to leave for an hour to go to my dentist, who lives on Rue Saint-Roch, a stone’s throw from the Louvre. Once I was here I immediately realized that time was passing, and that I had to be at my post for a delivery of merchandise at eleven o’clock. I planned to give a message to your office boy, the old man who let me in, but he wasn’t in the corridor. I should have phoned you, but we are forbidden to make private calls, and most of the telephones go through the switchboard.’
‘How did you manage to do that this afternoon?’
‘I took advantage of the fact that there was no one in the floor manager’s office, where there is a direct line. You will have noticed that I was in a hurry to say what I had to say and hung up abruptly …’
Nothing extraordinary about any of that.
‘At midday, when you went for lunch …’ Maigret objected.
‘First of all, I told myself that you would be busy having lunch as well. Then it seemed to me that you wouldn’t take my case very seriously …’
‘And is it serious?’
‘Certainly. It was you who sent someone to prowl around my department, wasn’t it?’
Maigret didn’t reply. The other man went on:
‘You don’t want to say so, but I’m sure it was an inspector.’
He must have prepared this conversation just as he had prepared the first one. But there were moments of hesitation, like empty spaces. He hesitated for a long time before asking:
Maigret's Doubts Page 7