Maigret's Doubts (Inspector Maigret)

by Georges Simenon

  He didn’t finish his thought, which was no clearer for having been expressed in words.

  ‘Perhaps I was wrong to tell him his wife had come here. I hesitated. Then I said to myself …’

  He shrugged with exasperation and opened the cupboard where he kept his overcoat and hat, grumbling:

  ‘Well! We’ll see … Goodnight anyway, boys …’

  ‘Goodnight, chief.’

  And Lucas added:

  ‘I’ll be down there in an hour.’

  Outside, the cold had become more acute, and the snowflakes, tiny and hard, barely visible in the halo of the streetlights, prickled the skin as if trying to cling there, settled on the eyelashes, the eyebrows, the lips.

  Maigret couldn’t face waiting for a bus so he took a taxi and huddled on the back seat, well wrapped up in his heavy coat.

  All his previous investigations seemed almost childishly simple in comparison with this one, and he was irritated about it. He had never felt less confident about himself, so much so that he had phoned Pardon, gone to see the chief and the public prosecutor and, just now, sought Lapointe’s approval.

  He felt he was floundering. Then, as the taxi drove around Place de la République, he had a thought which put his mind somewhat at rest.

  If this investigation wasn’t like the others and he didn’t know how to approach it, wasn’t it because this time it wasn’t a crime that had been committed and only had to be reconstructed, but a crime that could be committed at any moment?

  Just as it was quite possible that it wouldn’t be committed at all! How many potential crimes, crimes in waiting, some of them worked out down to the tiniest detail in the criminal’s mind, are never actually perpetrated? How many people plan to get rid of someone, imagine all the possible ways by which they might achieve their ends, before pulling back at the last minute?

  Cases that he had dealt with came back into his mind. Some of them would never have reached their conclusion without a favourable opportunity, sometimes without a fortuitous event. In certain cases, if, at a given moment, the victim hadn’t uttered a particular phrase, adopted a particular attitude, nothing would have happened.

  What he had to do this time was not to reconstruct the actions and gestures of a human being, but to predict his behaviour, which was difficult in a different way.

  None of the textbooks on psychology, psychoanalysis and psychiatry were of any use to him.

  He had known other couples one half of which had, for some reason, wished for the death of the other.

  Those precedents were of no use to him either. Precedents are only useful with professionals, or with certain kinds of maniac. And even then only with maniacs who have killed several times before and who go on to do it again.

  He didn’t notice that the taxi had stopped by the kerb. The driver said:

  ‘We’re here, chief.’

  The door to the flat opened as usual, and Maigret found the light, the familiar smells, the furniture and the objects that had been in place for so many years.

  He also found the face of Madame Maigret, which, as always, and particularly when she knew he was worried, contained a mute question.

  ‘Why don’t we go to the cinema?’ he suggested.

  ‘It’s snowing!’

  ‘Are you scared of getting cold?’

  ‘No. I’d love to go to the cinema.’

  She suspected that he didn’t want to sit in his armchair ruminating on a question going round in his head over and over again as he had done the day before. An hour later they were walking towards Place de la République and Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, and Madame Maigret had linked arms with her husband.

  Xavier Marton’s sister-in-law, Jenny, had done the same thing when he had surprised her by the river. Maigret wondered how much time had passed after their first meeting before his wife had done the same.

  About a hundred metres away from the cinema, where he didn’t even know what film they were showing, he asked her.

  ‘I know,’ she said smiling. ‘I remember exactly. We had known each other for three months. The previous week you had kissed me on the landing, and after that you kissed me every evening in the same place. One Tuesday you took me to the Opéra Comique, where they were performing Carmen, and I was wearing a blue taffeta dress. I could tell you what perfume I had put on. On the way to the taxi you didn’t put your arm around me, you just held out your hand to help me into the car.

  ‘After the theatre you asked me if I was hungry. We went to the Grands Boulevards, where the Taverne Pousset used to be.

  ‘I pretended to stumble because of my high heels and rested my hand on your arm. I was so impressed by my audacity that I was trembling, and you had the good idea of pretending you hadn’t noticed a thing.

  ‘As we left the restaurant I did the same thing again, and since then I’ve done it all the time.’

  In other words Jenny too had the same habit. It meant that she and her brother-in-law often walked along the street together.

  Didn’t that suggest that they weren’t hiding, and Gisèle Marton knew all about it, contrary to what her husband said?

  He leaned towards the ticket kiosk, then made for the entrance with two pink tickets in his hand.

  It was a thriller, with gunshots and fights, and a hardboiled hero jumping out of a window only to land in a convertible and then, in the middle of the city, knocking out the driver, taking the steering wheel and driving at a crazy speed, escaping the police cars with their wailing sirens.

  He smiled in spite of himself. Basically he was having fun. He forgot the Martons and the sister-in-law, Harris whose name was Schwob and the somewhat complicated relationships of the two couples.

  At the interval he bought some sweets for his wife, a tradition that went back almost as long as her taking him by the arm. Another tradition was that while she ate her sweets he smoked half a pipe in the foyer, looking vaguely at the posters of the coming attractions.

  The snow was still falling when they came out, and the flakes were thicker now, trembling on the ground for a moment before dissolving.

  People walked with their heads bowed so that the flakes didn’t get in their eyes. Tomorrow, in all probability, the snow would whiten the roofs and the parked cars.

  ‘Taxi!’

  He was worried that his wife might catch a chill. He thought that she had already lost weight, and even though he knew that this was on the instructions of Pardon it still worried him. He was concerned that she would become frailer and perhaps lose her optimism and her good humour.

  As the car stopped opposite their flat on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, he murmured:

  ‘Would it bother you a lot if I came back in an hour?’

  In any other case he wouldn’t have asked her the question. He would just have announced what he had to do. This evening it was an initiative that wasn’t necessary, for which there was in fact no reason, and he felt the need to apologize for it.

  ‘Shall I wait up for you?’

  ‘No. Go to bed. I may be late.’

  He saw her crossing the pavement, looking in her bag for the key to the flat.

  ‘The church of Saint-Pierre de Montrouge,’ he said to the driver.

  The streets were almost empty, the cobbles slippery, with huge marks left by cars that had zigzagged.

  ‘Not too fast …’

  He thought:

  ‘What if something really does happen …’

  Why did he feel it would happen very soon? Xavier Marton had come to see him the previous day. Not a week sooner, while the situation was the same, but only the previous day. Did that not suggest that the drama was reaching its conclusion?

  Gisèle had come to police headquarters the previous day as well.

  And her husband had returned today.

  He tried to remember what they
had said about this in the psychiatry book that he had skimmed through. Perhaps, after all, he had been wrong not to take a greater interest? There had been several pages on the evolution of acute crises, but he had skipped those.

  And yet, there was something that could hasten the drama, if indeed there was a drama. Xavier Marton had agreed to take a test, the next day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, at the special police infirmary.

  Would he tell his sister-in-law about it? His wife? Would his wife pass on the news to her lover on Rue Saint-Honoré?

  Once he had taken the test, whatever the results, it seemed that it would be too late for any new developments.

  The taxi stopped in front of the church. Maigret paid his fare. Opposite, a bar was still open, with only two or three customers inside. Maigret pushed the door open, ordered a hot rum, not so much to warm himself up as because someone had mentioned hot rum a short time before. As he was heading for the telephone cabin, the waiter called to him:

  ‘Do you want a token?’

  ‘I just want to take a look at the directory.’

  For no precise reason, in fact. Thinking of Monsieur Harris, he had wondered whether the Martons had a telephone and he was going to check.

  They didn’t. Lots of Mortons, Martins, but not a single Marton.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  He stepped outside into Avenue de Châtillon, which was deserted, and where no more than two or three windows were lit. He could see neither Lucas nor Lapointe, and he was starting to get worried when, towards the middle of the avenue, just past Rue Antoine-Chantin, he heard a nearby voice saying:

  ‘Here, chief …’

  It was young Lapointe, huddled in a corner with a scarf pulled up to the middle of his face, his hands plunged deep in his coat pockets.

  ‘I recognized your footsteps as soon as you turned the corner of the avenue.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Maigret asked, nodding towards a yellow brick building with all its windows in darkness.

  ‘Yes. You see that dark hole to the right of the door?’

  It was a kind of blind alley, a passage of the sort one still sees often in Paris, even in the heart of the city. It was in just such a passage on Boulevard Saint-Martin that a murdered man had once been found, at five o’clock in the afternoon, a few metres from the crowd passing along the pavement.

  ‘Does it lead to the courtyard?’

  ‘Yes. They can go in and out without calling the concierge.’

  ‘Did you go and see?’

  ‘I go there every ten minutes. If you go, be careful. There’s a huge ginger cat that comes over silently and rubs itself against your legs. The first time it miaowed, and I was worried that it was going to sound the alarm.’

  ‘Have they gone to bed?’

  ‘They hadn’t just now.’

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘I don’t know. There must be someone on the first floor, but you can’t see anything because of the blinds. I waited in vain to see a silhouette, like a shadow puppet; it looks as if the person or people who are in the room aren’t moving, or else they’re staying on the far side. The ground floor is lit as well. You only realize that after a while, because the mechanical shutters only let out thin chinks of light.’

  Maigret crossed the street, and Lapointe followed him. They were both careful not to make any noise. The passageway, which was arched for about three or four metres, was as cold and damp as a cellar. They found the courtyard in total darkness and, while they stood motionless, a cat did in fact come and rub itself not against Maigret, but Lapointe, whom it seemed already to have adopted.

  ‘They’ve gone to bed,’ Lapointe whispered. ‘The window with the light on was just in front of you.’

  On tiptoes, he approached the shutters on the ground floor, bent down and came back towards Maigret. Just as the two men were preparing to turn around and leave, a light came on, not in the small house, but on the third floor of the block.

  They both froze in the shadow, fearing that they might be heard by a tenant, and expected to see a face pressed against the window.

  It didn’t happen. A shadow passed behind the curtain. They heard the sound of water flushing.

  ‘Somebody having a wee …’ Lapointe sighed, reassured.

  A moment later they were back on the opposite pavement. Curiously, they both felt disappointed. It was Lapointe who murmured:

  ‘They’ve gone to bed.’

  Didn’t that mean that nothing was going to happen, that Maigret had been worried about nothing?

  ‘I wonder …’ Maigret began.

  Two policemen on bicycles appeared, cycling straight towards them. They had spotted them in the distance, and from the kerb one of them called in a loud voice.

  ‘What are you up to, you two?’

  Maigret stepped forwards. The beam from a torch sought his face. The policeman frowned.

  ‘You’re not …? Oh! Forgive me, detective chief inspector … I didn’t recognize you straight away …’

  He added, after glancing at the house opposite:

  ‘Do you need a hand?’

  ‘Not for now.’

  ‘Anyway, we pass by every hour.’

  The two caped men cycled off, sprinkled with snow, and Maigret joined Lapointe, who hadn’t moved.

  ‘What was I saying?’

  ‘You were wondering …’

  ‘Oh yes …! I was wondering if the husband and wife still sleep in the same bed.’

  ‘I don’t know. From what Janvier told me this afternoon, there’s a sofa on the ground floor, which doesn’t mean that anyone sleeps there. Logically, if someone does, it should be the sister-in-law, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘Goodnight, my friend. Perhaps you can …’

  He wondered whether to send Lapointe off to bed. What was the point of keeping watch outside a house where nothing was happening?

  ‘If you’re hesitating on my account …’

  Basically, Lapointe would have been annoyed not to be able to do his stakeout to the end.

  ‘Stay if you like. Goodnight. You don’t want to come for a drink?’

  ‘I admit that I went for one a few minutes before you arrived. I was able to keep an eye on the street from the bar on the corner.’

  By the time Maigret reached Saint-Pierre de Montrouge, the grilles of the Métro were closed, and there was no taxi in sight. He hesitated between making for the Lion de Belfort and taking Avenue du Maine towards Gare Montparnasse. He chose Avenue du Maine because of the station, and in fact soon hailed a taxi that was coming back empty.

  ‘Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.’

  He didn’t have a key to the flat, but he knew there was one under the doormat. As head of the Crime Squad, he had never thought of telling his wife that the hiding place was illusory at best.

  She was asleep, and he was starting to get undressed in the semi-darkness, leaving only the lamp in the corridor lit. A few moments later a voice from the bed asked him:

  ‘Is it late?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe one thirty …’

  ‘You haven’t caught a chill?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t want me to make you a herbal tea?’

  ‘Thank you. I had a hot rum just now.’

  ‘And then you went out again?’

  They were banal little phrases that he had heard hundreds of times, but they struck him tonight because he wondered if Gisèle had ever uttered them.

  Wasn’t it in fact, for want of having heard them, that her husband …

  ‘You can turn the light on.’

  He merely switched on the bedside light on his side of the bed and went and turned out the one in the corridor.

  ‘Have you closed the front door?’

  He wouldn’t have been surprised
, in a few minutes, to hear his wife getting up to go and check.

  That was also part of a whole, a whole that Xavier Marton had probably sought, which he hadn’t found, which …

  He slipped between the warm covers, turned the light out and found in the darkness, without having to look very hard, his wife’s lips.

  He thought he would have trouble getting to sleep but a few moments later he was slumbering. It is true that, if someone had turned on the light abruptly, they would have seen that his face was set in a frown, a concentrated expression, as if he were still in pursuit of a truth that escaped him.

  Usually Madame Maigret got up silently at half past six and went to the kitchen without his noticing. He only became aware of the new day when he caught the smell of coffee.

  It was the time of day when other windows on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, and in all the districts of Paris, were lighting up; it was also the time when one heard the footsteps on the pavement of people who got up early.

  That day he wasn’t pulled from sleep by the familiar smell of coffee, or by the hushed footsteps of his wife. It was the sudden ringing of the telephone that dragged him from the world of the night, and, when he opened his eyes, Madame Maigret, already sitting in the bed, was shaking his shoulder.

  ‘What time is it?’ he stammered.

  She groped around to find the switch of the bedside light, then the light fell on the alarm-clock, and the hands showed 6.10.

  ‘Hello!’ Maigret said in a thick voice. ‘Is that you, Lapointe?’

  ‘Inspector Maigret?’

  He didn’t recognize the voice and frowned.

  ‘Who’s speaking?’

  ‘The Police Emergency Service. Inspector Joffre.’

  Sometimes, in certain particular cases, he would ask the Police Emergency Service to tell him straight away if something particular occurred. But he had done nothing like that the previous day. He hadn’t strung his thoughts together yet. And yet he was hardly surprised.

  ‘What is it, Joffre? Is it Lapointe?’