Lucas appeared.
‘He’s signed the papers … What shall I do with him? Send him back to Rue Victor-Massé?’
Maigret nodded because he still had to examine Émile’s clothes and the contents of his pockets. This would be repeated more scientifically later in the laboratory.
The belongings were in another room, in a pile on a table. The dark-blue suit wasn’t torn and there was only a little dust on it. No blood. It was barely crumpled. The black shoes were as clean as those of a man just stepping out of his house, with only two fresh scuffs in the leather.
Maigret would have put money on the murder being committed indoors rather than in the street, and on the body only being left on the pavement in Rue des Rondeaux late the previous night.
Where had it been brought from? A car had almost certainly been used. It hadn’t been dragged along the pavement.
The contents of the pockets were something of a disappointment. Had Émile Boulay smoked? Apparently not. No pipe, no cigarettes, no lighter, no matches. None of those strands of tobacco you always find at the bottom of smokers’ pockets.
A gold watch. Five hundred new franc notes and three fifties in the wallet. A few ten-franc notes loose in one of the pockets and some small change in another.
A bunch of keys, a penknife, a couple of handkerchiefs, one crumpled, the other neatly folded in his breast pocket. A small packet of aspirin and some peppermints.
Lucas, who was emptying the wallet, exclaimed:
‘Look, my summons.’
A summons Émile Boulay would have been hard put to answer.
‘I thought he carried an automatic,’ muttered Maigret.
A gun wasn’t among the objects spread out on the table, but there was a chequebook which Maigret leafed through. It was almost new. Only three cheque stubs. The only significant one was for 500,000 new francs made out ‘to myself.’
It was dated 22 May.
‘See that!’ Lucas noticed immediately. ‘That’s when I called him in to Quai des Orfèvres for the second time. I had seen him first on 18 May, the day after Mazotti died.’
‘Will you tell the laboratory to come and get all this and analyse it?’
A few minutes later the two men set off in the black car. Lucas drove slowly and deliberately.
‘Where are we going, chief?’
‘Rue des Rondeaux first. I want to see where he was found.’
Despite the cemetery and the railway track, the place didn’t look sinister in the sunshine. As they drove up, they could see a knot of bystanders being marshalled by a couple of policemen, a few housewives looking out of their windows, some children playing. When the car stopped, Maigret was greeted by Inspector Bornique, who declared with a studied air of modesty:
‘I’ve been expecting you, sir. I thought you’d be coming and I made a point of …’
The policemen stepped aside, revealing the silhouette of a body drawn in chalk on the greyish pavement.
‘Who found him?’
‘A gas worker who starts his shift at five in the morning and lives in this building. That’s his wife you can see at the window on the third floor. I’ve got his statement, of course. I was on night duty, as it happened …’
With the bystanders looking on, now wasn’t the moment to take him to task.
‘Tell me, Bornique, do you get the impression the body was pushed out of a car or left on the pavement?’
‘Left, definitely.’
‘On his back?’
‘On his stomach. At first sight, you might have thought he was a drinker sleeping off a heavy night. Except for the smell … Oh goodness, that smell, I can’t tell you …’
‘I imagine you’ve questioned the neighbours?’
‘All the ones who are at home. Women and old men, mainly, because the rest have gone out to work.’
‘No one saw anything, heard anything?’
‘Except for an old woman up on the fifth floor who apparently suffers from insomnia. It’s true that the concierge thinks she doesn’t really know what she’s saying any more. She claims that around three thirty in the morning she heard a car braking. Not many come this far down the street as it’s a dead end.’
‘Did she hear voices?’
‘No. Just a car door opening, then footsteps, then the door shutting again.’
‘Did she look out of the window?’
‘She’s practically bedridden. At first she thought that someone in the building was ill and that they’d called an ambulance. She was expecting to hear the door open and shut again, but, after turning round, the car drove off almost immediately.’
With the air of a seasoned professional, Inspector Bornique added:
‘I’ll drop by at midday and this evening, when the menfolk will be home from work.’
‘Have the men from the prosecutor’s office been here?’
‘Very early. They were done in no time. It was just a formality.’
Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, Maigret and Lucas got back into their car.
‘Rue Victor-Massé.’
They drove past fruit and vegetable stalls piled high with cherries and peaches, even though it was so early in the year, which housewives were inspecting. Paris was very cheerful that morning, with the shady pavements more crowded than those directly in the sunshine.
Turning into Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, they spotted the yellow front of the Saint-Trop’. There was a metal grille across the door and, to the left of it, a frame containing photographs of nude women.
On Rue Victor-Massé, an almost identical frame hung on the longer façade of the Train Bleu. Lucas stopped a little further down the street in front of a smart building. The block was greyish, relatively prosperous-looking, and a couple of brass plates announced the offices of a doctor and an estate agent respectively.
‘What is it?’ asked an unfriendly concierge, opening her glazed door.
‘Madame Boulay …’
‘Third floor on the left, but …’
She studied the two men, then changed her mind:
‘Are you from the police? Then you can go up … Those poor women must be in an awful state.’
There was an all but silent lift and a red carpet on the stairs, which were better lit than in most of the old buildings in Paris. On the third floor voices could be heard behind a door. Maigret rang the bell, and the voices fell silent. Footsteps came nearer, then Antonio appeared in the doorway. He had taken off his jacket and was holding a sandwich.
‘Come in … Ignore the mess.’
A baby was crying in a bedroom. A little boy clung to the dress of a young woman, who was already quite fat for her age. She hadn’t had time to do her black hair, which spilled over her shoulders.
‘My sister Marina …’
Her eyes were red, unsurprisingly, and she seemed a little lost.
‘Come this way.’
She showed them into a messy living room with an upturned rocking horse on the carpet and some dirty cups and glasses on the table.
An older, much fatter woman dressed in a sky-blue housecoat appeared in another doorway and studied the newcomers warily.
‘My mother,’ introduced Antonio. ‘She barely speaks French. She’ll never get the hang of it.’
The apartment seemed spacious and comfortable, furnished with the sort of rustic furniture you find in the big department stores.
‘Where is your sister?’ asked Maigret, looking round.
‘With the baby … She’s coming.’
‘How do you explain all this, detective chief inspector?’ asked Marina, whose accent was weaker than her brother’s.
She had been eighteen or nineteen when Boulay met her, which meant she was twenty-five or twenty-six now. She was still very beautiful, with an olive complexion, dark eyes. Were her looks still important to her? It wasn’t easy to tell in the circumstances, but Maigret would have bet that she wasn’t interested in her figure and make-up any more, that she was happy living with her
mother, her sister, her children and her husband and didn’t spare a thought for anyone else.
The moment he came in Maigret had sniffed the air, recognizing a rich aroma that reminded him of Italian restaurants.
Antonio had clearly become the head of the family. Hadn’t he already been that to some extent when Émile Boulay was alive? The former cruise-ship waiter would have had to ask him for Marina’s hand, wouldn’t he?
‘Have you found out anything?’ Antonio asked, still holding his sandwich.
‘I’d like to know if he had his automatic on him when he went out on Tuesday evening.’
Antonio looked at his sister, who hesitated for a moment, then hurried into another room. She didn’t shut the door, so Maigret saw her walk through a dining room and into a bedroom. She opened a drawer in a chest of drawers, then came back with a dark object in her hand.
It was the automatic. She held it gingerly, as if she was afraid of guns.
‘It was in its usual place,’ she said.
‘Didn’t he always have it on him?’
‘Not the whole time, no. Not recently.’
‘Since Mazotti died and his gang went back down south,’ Antonio put in, ‘Émile didn’t feel he needed to be armed any more.’
That was significant. When he had left his home on Tuesday evening, therefore, Émile Boulay hadn’t been expecting a dangerous or awkward encounter.
‘What time did he leave here, madame?’
‘A few minutes after nine, as usual. We had dinner at eight. Then he went to kiss the children goodnight, as he always did before leaving.’
‘Did he seem anxious?’
She tried to think. She had very beautiful eyes, which ordinarily must have been smiling and tender.
‘No. I don’t think so. You know, Émile wasn’t an expressive person. People who didn’t know him probably thought he was very reserved.’
Tears welled in her eyes.
‘But really he was very kind, very attentive.’
She turned to her mother, who was listening, her hands clasped on her stomach, and said a few words to her in Italian. Her mother nodded vigorously in agreement.
‘I know what kind of reputation nightclub owners have. People imagine they’re sort of gangsters, and it’s true, some are …’
She wiped her eyes and looked at her brother as if asking his permission to go on.
‘He was timid, if anything … Maybe not in business … He was surrounded by dozens of women he could have done what he liked with, but rather than treat them as most of his colleagues do, he thought of them as employees. He could be firm with them, but he was respectful too. I know that more than anyone because I worked for him before I became his wife.
‘You might find it hard to believe, but he spent weeks hovering around me like a teenager. When he talked to me during the show, he just wanted to ask questions: where was I born, where did my family live, was my mother in Paris, did I have brothers and sisters …
‘He never laid a finger on me all that time. He never offered me a lift home.’
Antonio nodded, as if to say that he wouldn’t have stood for anything else.
‘Of course, he was familiar with Italian women,’ she went on, ‘because there’s always two or three working at the Lotus. One evening he asked if he could meet my brother.’
‘He did the right thing,’ admitted Antonio.
The mother must have understood a little French. She opened her mouth from time to time as if she was about to join in the conversation, but then couldn’t find the right words and ended up remaining silent.
A young girl came in dressed in black, looking fresh-faced with her hair already done. This was Ada, who was barely twenty-two and must have been the spitting image of her sister when she was her age. She studied the visitors curiously before telling Marina, ‘She fell asleep eventually …’
Then she said to Maigret and Lucas:
‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘I understand you were your brother-in-law’s secretary, mademoiselle.’
She had the barest hint of an accent as well, just enough to add another aspect to her charm.
‘That’s a big word. Émile dealt with all his affairs himself … And they’re not the sort that require a lot of paperwork.’
‘Did he have an office?’
‘We call it that, yes … Two little rooms on the mezzanine above the Lotus.’
‘When would he go there?’
‘He’d usually sleep until midday and have lunch with us. Then we’d both go to Place Pigalle around three in the afternoon.’
Maigret studied the two sisters in turn, wondering whether Marina, for instance, might not feel a little jealous of her younger sister. He couldn’t see any hint of it in her expression.
As far as he could tell, until three days ago Marina had been happy with her lot in life, content to lead a fairly sleepy existence with her mother and her children in the apartment on Rue Victor-Massé. If her husband had lived, no doubt she would have gone on to have a big family.
Ada was a very different proposition, brighter, sparkier.
She continued:
‘There’d always be people waiting: performers, musicians, maître d’s or barmen from one club or other, not to mention the wine and champagne salesmen …’
‘What was Émile Boulay working on the day he went missing?’
‘Wait … It was Tuesday, wasn’t it? We went downstairs to audition a Spanish dancer whom he hired. Then he saw someone from an air conditioning company. He was planning to have air conditioning put in in all four clubs. The Lotus in particular had problems with its ventilation.’
Maigret remembered seeing a brochure among the dead man’s papers.
‘Who dealt with the financial side of the business?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Who paid the bills, the staff?’
‘The book-keeper, of course.’
‘Does he have an office above the Lotus too?’
‘A little room looking on to the courtyard, yes … He’s an old fellow who never stops moaning and it pains him every time he has to pay for anything, as if it’s his own money. He’s called Raison – Monsieur Raison, as everybody says, because if you don’t show him some respect …’
‘Is he at Place Pigalle now?’
‘Bound to be. He’s the only one who works mornings, because he has evenings and nights off.’
The mother, who had disappeared for a few minutes, returned with a carafe of Chianti and some glasses.
‘I suppose each of the clubs has its own manager?’
Ada shook her head.
‘No, it doesn’t work like that. Antonio runs the Paris-Strip because it’s in a different neighbourhood, with a different clientele. It’s got a different style, if you see what I mean. Besides, Antonio is family.
‘The other three clubs are almost next door to each other. During the evening performers go from one to another. Émile used to go back and forth too, keeping an eye on everything. Sometimes, around three in the morning, we’ll send cases of champagne or bottles of whisky from the Lotus to the Train Bleu, say, or if one of the clubs is full and need extra staff, we’ll send someone from another where it was less busy.’
‘In other words, Émile Boulay managed the three clubs in Montmartre himself.’
‘Pretty much. Although they each had a maître d’ who was in charge.’
‘Meanwhile Monsieur Raison dealt with the book-keeping and paperwork.’
‘That’s it, more or less.’
‘What about you?’
‘I followed my brother-in-law around and took notes. Order this … Set up a meeting with this supplier or that contractor … Ring a performer who’s appearing somewhere else to see if we can hire her …’
‘Did you follow him around at night too?’
‘Only for part of the evening.’
‘Until when, generally?’
‘Ten or eleven. Setting up around nine is
the most time-consuming. Someone’s always missing, a waiter or a musician or a dancer … Or a delivery of champagne or streamers is late.’
‘I’m beginning to get the picture,’ Maigret said distractedly. ‘Were you with him on Tuesday evening?’
‘Yes, like every evening.’
He looked at Marina again and didn’t see a trace of jealousy on her face.
‘When did you leave your brother-in-law?’
‘At ten thirty.’
‘Where were you at that point?’
‘At the Lotus. It was his headquarters in away. We’d already been to the Train Bleu and the Saint-Trop’.’
‘Did you notice anything in particular?’
‘Nothing. Except that I thought it was going to rain.’
‘Did it?’
‘A few drops as I was leaving the Lotus. Mickey offered to lend me an umbrella, but I waited, and five minutes later it had stopped.’
‘Did you make a note of Boulay’s meetings?’
‘I’d remind him of them if he needed. I hardly ever had to because he thought of everything. He was a calm, methodical person who ran his businesses in a very serious, responsible way.’
‘Was he meeting anyone that night?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Would you have?’
‘I assume so. I don’t want to make myself out to be more important than I was. He never discussed his business or plans with me, for instance. But he did talk about them in front of me. When he met people, I was almost always there. I don’t remember him ever asking me to leave the room.
‘He’d say things like: “The Train Bleu’s wallpaper needs changing.”
‘I’d make a note of it and then I’d remind him the following afternoon.’
‘How did he react when he heard Mazotti had been shot?’
‘I wasn’t there. He must have found out that night, like everyone in Montmartre, because that sort of news travels quickly.’
‘What about the following day, when he got up?’
‘He asked me to get the papers first thing. I went and bought them on the corner …’
‘Didn’t he read them regularly?’
‘He’d have a quick look at a morning paper and an evening one.’
‘Did he bet on the races?’
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