Maigret and the Tall Woman

by Georges Simenon

  ‘These things happen. He was wrong to call the police in. She won’t forgive him.’

  Maigret decided not to insist. On his way back to the house, he made a detour past the garage; there was no one posted there any more. The building opposite was an apartment block. The concierge was on the doorstep, polishing the brass knob on her door.

  ‘Does your lodge look out on to the street?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s that to you?’

  ‘I’m with the police. Could you tell me if you know the person who parks his car in the garage opposite, the first on the right?’

  ‘That’s the dentist.’

  ‘Do you see him from time to time?’

  ‘I see him when he comes to collect his car.’

  ‘Have you seen him this week?’

  ‘Hey, tell me, what was going on in his garage last night? Was it burglars? I said to my husband—’

  ‘It wasn’t burglars.’

  ‘Was it you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Have you seen him use his car this week?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Can you remember what day? What time?’

  ‘It was in the evening, quite late. Hold on. I’d just got up. Don’t look at me like that. It’ll come back to me.’

  She seemed to be doing some mental calculation.

  ‘I got up, in fact, because my husband had a toothache, and I gave him an aspirin. If he was here, he’d be able to tell you straight away which day it was. I even noticed Monsieur Serre’s car coming out of his garage and said what a coincidence it was.’

  ‘Because your husband had a toothache?’

  ‘Yes. And at the same time there was a dentist outside the house. It was after midnight. Mademoiselle Germaine came home. So it must have been Tuesday, since she only goes out on a Tuesday evening, to play cards with some friends.’

  ‘Was the car leaving the garage? Not going in?’

  ‘Leaving.’

  ‘Which direction did it drive off in?’

  ‘Towards the Seine.’

  ‘Did you hear the car stop further down the street, for example outside the Serre house?’

  ‘I didn’t pay any more attention. I was barefoot, and the floor was cold – we sleep with the window open. What’s he done?’

  What could Maigret say in response to that? He thanked her and walked off. He crossed the small garden and rang the bell. Eugénie answered the door and gave him a dark, reproachful look.

  ‘The gentlemen are upstairs!’ she said in a clipped tone.

  So they had checked the ground floor. From the first floor came the sound of heavy footsteps and furniture being shunted around on the floorboards.

  Maigret went up and found old Madame Serre sat on a chair in the middle of the landing.

  ‘I don’t know where to put myself,’ she said. ‘It’s like having the removal men in. What are they looking for, Monsieur Maigret?’

  Guillaume Serre was standing in a sun-filled room, lighting a fresh cigar.

  ‘Why in God’s name did we let her go?’ the old woman sighed. ‘If I’d known, I would have . . .’

  But she didn’t specify what she would have done if she had known the troubles that the disappearance of her daughter-in-law was to bring on their heads.

  6.

  In which Maigret makes a decision that amazes his colleagues and where his office takes on the aspect of a boxing ring

  It was 3.40 when Maigret decided; 4.25 when the interrogation began. But the solemn moment, almost a moment of high drama, was when he made the decision.

  Maigret’s attitude came as a surprise to those who were working alongside him in Rue de la Ferme. Ever since the morning there had been something unusual in the way that the inspector had been directing operations. It wasn’t the first search of this type in which he had participated, but as it went on it began to take on a character all of its own. It was hard to define. Janvier, perhaps because he knew the chief so well, noticed it first.

  When he had set them to work, Maigret had had a merry, almost fierce glint in his eye. He had let them loose on the house like a pack of hounds on the trail of a scent, encouraging them not verbally, but by his whole attitude.

  Had it become a personal matter between him and Guillaume Serre? More precisely, would events have played out in the same manner, would Maigret have come to the same decision, at that same moment, if the man from Rue de la Ferme hadn’t been a heavyweight like him, both physically and psychologically?

  From the start he seemed intent to test himself against him.

  At other points, different motives might have been attributed to him: was he perhaps taking some perverse pleasure in turning the house upside down?

  They rarely got to work in a home like this, where everything was peaceful and harmonious – a muted harmony in a minor key – where the most old-fashioned objects didn’t look ridiculous and out of place, and where, after hours of careful searching, not a single piece of incriminating evidence had been unearthed.

  When he spoke, at 3.40, they still hadn’t found anything. The investigators were starting to feel a bit awkward and were waiting for the inspector to make his excuses and leave.

  What was it that made Maigret’s mind up? Did he even know himself? Janvier went as far as to think that he had had one drink too many when, around one o’clock, he had gone to get a bite to eat at the terrace of the bistro across the road. Indeed, when he got back, there was a distinct smell of Pernod on his breath.

  Eugénie had not laid the table for her employers. Several times she had come to whisper in the ear of either the old woman or the dentist. Later they saw the old woman eating in the kitchen standing up, as you do when in the mess of moving house, and later still, as Guillaume refused to come downstairs, the cleaning lady had taken him up a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

  They were searching the attic now, the most private part of the house, more private even than the bedrooms and the linen closets.

  It was huge, illuminated by a pair of dormer windows, which cast two wide rectangles of light on the greyish floor. Janvier had opened two leather rifle cases, and the forensics men had examined the guns.

  ‘Do they belong to you?’

  ‘They belonged to my father-in-law. I have never been hunting.’

  An hour later, in Guillaume’s room, they had found a revolver, which they examined, and which Maigret had added to the pile of objects to take away for further testing.

  There were all sorts in this pile, including the dentist’s professional records and, from a writing desk in the old lady’s bedroom, the death certificates of her husband and her first daughter-in-law.

  They also found a suit with a small tear in the sleeve, which Guillaume Serre claimed not to have worn for more than ten days. They ferreted among the trunks, the chests, the rickety old bits of furniture that had been put up in the attic because they were no longer of use. In the corner there was an old-fashioned child’s high chair, with coloured balls in either side of the tray, and a rocking horse which had lost its tail and mane.

  The work hadn’t stopped at lunchtime. The men had taken it in turns to go to get something to eat, and Moers had made do with a sandwich that the photographer brought back for him.

  Around two o’clock the office called Maigret to tell him that a thick envelope had been delivered by air mail from Holland. He had them open it. It was Maria’s letters, written in Dutch.

  ‘Find a translator and set him to work.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t let him leave until I get back.’

  Guillaume Serre’s attitude hadn’t changed. He followed them, observed their every move, but never seemed the slightest bit perturbed.

  He had a particular way of looking at Maigret, and it was clear that, for him, the others didn’t matter. This was between the two of them. The other officers were just bit-part players. Even the Police Judiciaire didn’t exist. The struggle was more personal than that. There was something
in the dentist’s eyes that was difficult to pin down: something reproachful or contemptuous.

  In any case, he wasn’t at all impressed by this show of force. He made no protest, submitting to the invasion of his home and his privacy with a lofty resignation, but without displaying the slightest trace of anxiety.

  Was he a weakling or a tough nut? Both hypotheses were equally plausible. He had the physique of a wrestler and the air of a man who was completely sure of himself, yet Maria’s description of him as an overgrown child did not seem incongruous. His flesh was pale and unhealthy-looking. In a drawer they had found a pile of doctor’s prescriptions, stapled together in several batches, some of them dating back twenty years. You could reconstitute the whole family medical history from those prescriptions, some of which had turned yellow. There was also, in the bathroom on the first floor, a small white-painted cabinet that contained medicine bottles and boxes of pills both recent and old. In this house they never threw anything away, not even old brooms: there was a stack of them in the corner of the attic next to a pile of worn-out shoes on which the leather had grown hard and which would never be of use again.

  Each time they moved from one room to start on another, Janvier gave Maigret a look as if to say: ‘Still nothing!’

  Janvier, it seemed, was still expecting to discover something. Was Maigret, on the other hand, expecting to find nothing? He never appeared surprised, he just watched them work, taking lazy puffs on his pipe, sometimes forgetting to pay the dentist any attention for a quarter of an hour at a time.

  They found out about his decision indirectly, which made it all the more striking.

  Everyone came down from the attic, where Guillaume Serre had closed the two dormer windows. The mother had come out of her room to see them off. They were standing on the landing among all the mess.

  Maigret had turned to Serre and said to him, as if it were the most natural thing in the world:

  ‘Would you care to put on a tie and some shoes?’

  Since the morning the man had been wearing slippers.

  Serre had got the message, had looked at him, surprised no doubt, not that he let that show in his face. His mother had opened her mouth to speak, to protest or to demand an explanation, and Guillaume had grabbed her by the arm and led her into her room.

  Janvier had whispered:

  ‘Are you arresting him?’

  Maigret hadn’t answered. He didn’t know. In truth, he had only just made the decision at that precise moment, standing there on the landing.

  ‘Come in, Monsieur Serre. Please take a seat.’

  The clock on the mantelpiece showed 4.25. It was a Saturday. This had only occurred to Maigret when he saw how busy the streets were as they drove across town.

  Maigret closed the door. The windows were open, and the papers on the desk fluttered beneath the various objects used to pin them down.

  ‘I asked you to take a seat.’

  He then went into the closet to hang up his hat and jacket and to rinse his hands in the enamel basin.

  He didn’t say a word to the dentist for ten minutes but occupied himself with signing the papers that had been awaiting his attention in his office. He rang for Joseph, gave him the dossier, then, with slow, meticulous movements, filled the half-dozen pipes arranged in a row in front of him.

  It was highly unusual for a man in Serre’s position to sit there so long without asking what was going on, without losing his nerve, without crossing and uncrossing his legs.

  Eventually there was a knock at the door. It was the photographer who had worked with them all day, to whom Maigret had entrusted a mission. He handed Maigret a still damp print of a document.

  ‘Thank you, Dambois. Hang around upstairs, will you? Don’t leave without letting me know.’

  He waited for the door to close again, lit one of his pipes.

  ‘Would you care to pull up your chair, Monsieur Serre?’

  They found themselves face to face across the width of the desk. Maigret showed him the print he held in his hand.

  He didn’t make any comment. The dentist took the photograph, removed his glasses from his pocket, examined it closely, then put it down on the desk.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I have nothing to say.’

  The photograph was of a page from the hardware shop’s ledger which recorded the purchase of the second pane of glass and the second half-pound of putty.

  ‘Do you see what this means?’

  ‘Am I to understand that I am being charged?’

  Maigret thought for a moment.

  ‘No,’ he decided. ‘Officially you have been called in as a witness. If you prefer, however, I can charge you, or more precisely ask the public prosecutor to charge you, which would allow you to have a lawyer present.’

  ‘I’ve already told you that I don’t need a lawyer.’

  These were nothing more than the opening parries. Two heavyweights sizing each other up, taking each other’s measure, probing. The office was like a boxing ring, and outside, in the inspectors’ room, where Janvier had just filled in his colleagues, there was total silence.

  ‘I think this is going to be a long one!’ he had told them.

  ‘The chief is in it for the long haul.’

  ‘He looks like he means business.’

  They all knew what that meant, and Janvier was the first to telephone his wife to tell her not to be surprised if he got home late that night.

  ‘Do you have a heart problem, Monsieur Serre?’

  ‘Enlargement of the heart – like you, no doubt.’

  ‘Your father died of heart disease when you were seventeen, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Seventeen and a half.’

  ‘Your first wife died of heart disease. Your second wife also had heart problems.’

  ‘According to official figures, around thirty per cent of people die of heart failure.’

  ‘Do you have life insurance, Monsieur Serre?’

  ‘Since I was a child.’

  ‘Yes, I saw your policy earlier. Your mother, if I recall, is not insured?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘But your father was.’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘And your first wife?’

  ‘I saw you take away the relevant documents.’

  ‘What about your second wife?’

  ‘There’s nothing unusual in that.’

  ‘What is unusual is to keep a sum amounting to several million, in currency and gold, locked in a safe.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Can you tell me why you keep this large sum at home, where it isn’t accruing any interest?’

  ‘I would say that thousands of people these days are doing the same. You seem to be forgetting we’ve undergone financial crises, which have led to crashes, excessive taxes and constant devaluations . . .’

  ‘I see. So you admit that your intention was to conceal your capital to defraud the tax authorities?’

  Serre didn’t speak.

  ‘Your wife – I mean your second wife, Maria – did she know that you had this money locked away in your safe?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘You told her?’

  ‘She had her own money in there until a few days ago.’

  He talked slowly, weighing his words before launching them one by one, keeping a serious eye on the inspector.

  ‘I didn’t find a pre-marital contract among your papers. Should I conclude from that that you were married under the laws of common property?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Surprising, given your ages?’

  ‘It was for the reason I have already mentioned. A contract would have forced us to draw up an inventory of our respective assets.’

  ‘Therefore there was no actual joint ownership?’

  ‘We each preserved control of our own affairs.’

  Nothing unusual in that, was there?

  ‘Was your wife rich?’

&n
bsp; ‘She was.’

  ‘About the same as you, or richer?’

  ‘About the same.’

  ‘Was her fortune based entirely in France?’

  ‘Only some of it. She had inherited a part share in a cheese-making business from her father.’

  ‘And in what form were the rest of her holdings?’

  ‘Mainly in gold.’

  ‘Even before she met you?’

  ‘I can see where you’re going with this. Nevertheless, I will tell you the truth. I was the one who advised her to sell her shares and buy gold.’

  ‘And this gold was kept alongside yours in your safe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Tuesday. Early in the afternoon, when she had more or less finished packing, she came downstairs, and I gave her what was hers.’

  ‘So this sum was, by the time of departure, stashed in one of the two suitcases or the trunk?’

  ‘I suppose it must have been.’

  ‘Did she go out before dinner?’

  ‘I didn’t hear her go out.’

  ‘So, as far as you know, she didn’t go out?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Did she make a telephone call?’

  ‘The only telephone in the house is in the study, and she didn’t use it.’

  ‘How can I be sure, Monsieur Serre, that the money I found in the safe is your money alone, and not money belonging to both you and your wife?’

  Showing no emotion, with the same air of either lassitude or contempt, the dentist took a green notebook from his pocket, which he handed to the inspector. The pages were covered in tiny figures. The column on the left was headed by the letter U, that on the right by the letter M.

  ‘What does “U” signify?’

  ‘“Us”. It means Mother and me. We have always shared everything, not distinguishing between what belongs to me and what belongs to her.’

  ‘And the “M” no doubt stands for Maria?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘I see a certain figure that crops up at regular intervals.’

  ‘That’s her contribution to the housekeeping.’

  ‘She paid you every month for bed and board?’

  ‘If you wish to put it that way. In reality, she didn’t hand over any cash, as her money was already in the safe, I merely debited her account.’