Signed, Picpus

by Georges Simenon

  Maigret directs a bitter smile at the examining magistrate. Madame Le Cloaguen remains perfectly composed.

  ‘You must know where he is better than I do, because a watch is kept on our house from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn!’

  The inspector crosses to the window and sees Janvier on the pavement opposite, picking his teeth as he stares up at the house.

  The patience of the two psychiatric specialists begins to wear thin, and, since there is no patient for them to examine, they ask if they might leave and get back to their work.

  The magistrate is baffled. He asks:

  ‘Are you quite sure, madame, that he is not in the apartment?’

  As loftily as her diminutive stature permits she replies:

  ‘If you’re in a muddle, there’s nothing preventing you from searching the premises …’

  An hour later, the fact has to be faced: Octave Le Cloaguen, his greenish overcoat and his hat have disappeared.

  7. The Inspector Says Nothing

  No, sir, you, the examining magistrate, must not think for one moment that Maigret is trying to get even. Surly he isn’t, furious he is not: Maigret is worried. Maigret has a weight on his shoulders and yet he also feels that he is beginning to understand. That is why he says nothing!

  As examining magistrate, you keep talking, talking, to hide your discomfiture, to ensure that eventually someone will tell you that you’re in the right or at the very least that you weren’t exactly wrong.

  Maigret does not resent the over-confidence you showed this morning nor the faintly ironic self-satisfaction with which you told him of the steps you had taken.

  ‘You don’t run a police force by employing choirboys …’

  Nor do you hand over the investigation of a crime to a little girl. And, in terms of character, a little girl is what you are next to Maigret. Books have taught you a great many things about human nature. You could reel them off by heart, but none of that counts, and what proves it is that only a short while ago you turned bright red and even now you are still shaking.

  ‘Look here, Maigret, it’s simply impossible that the man living in that room isn’t mad … Admit it …’

  Why? Why mad? In the course of his thirty years in the job, Maigret has seen all kinds of everything. He has sniffed the air and smelled the odour of human passions, vices, crimes and manias, the entire ferment of massed humanity.

  ‘A man in possession of his faculties who owns a comfortable, I’d go so far as to say luxurious, apartment and has had a fulfilling career, who then allows himself to be …’

  Maigret says nothing.

  Ever since the mental specialists left, after the last hand had been shaken, the examining magistrate has been busying around, while Madame Le Cloaguen and her daughter have remained in the drawing room, putting themselves entirely at his disposal.

  It was the judge who sent for Inspector Janvier, who was on duty in Boulevard des Batignolles. He questioned Janvier himself.

  ‘Tell me, officer, are you sure you never took your eyes off the front door of this building?’

  ‘All except for about a quarter of an hour. A little after twelve thirty. I had to go and phone the Police Judiciaire with my report …’

  ‘Well, my friend, that was a serious mistake. You should have found some other way of reporting in. I have no idea how, that’s for you to work out, but keeping watch means watching all the time and …’

  Maigret does not even raise a smile. All this is so irrelevant!

  ‘I assume you’ve been sufficiently curious to ask the concierge if there’s another way out of the building?’

  ‘There isn’t one, sir.’

  ‘Tell me, Maigret, I’ve just had an idea. Not that I have any doubt that Le Cloaguen, sensing that we were on to him, slipped away while your officer was away phoning. But in so serious a case as this, we cannot afford to overlook the smallest lead. Your inspector might consider talking to all the tenants in the building and asking if they would allow him, not to search their premises, but to have a quick look round … Keep it friendly, mind …’

  Maigret remains silent. Having his hands in his pockets, he has let his pipe go out, something which happens rarely, and while the magistrate continues to fuss, he stares at the greyish floor.

  At this point Janvier returns from doing the rounds through the building unsurprisingly empty-handed. The magistrate becomes increasingly flustered.

  ‘It is vital we get our hands on this man! … Do you realize, Maigret, that a madman, a madman who has already killed once, is on the loose in the streets of Paris!’

  He summons Madame Le Cloaguen.

  ‘Tell me, madame, does your husband have any money with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘Hear that, Maigret? He hasn’t any money on him! Well, he’ll have to eat. By this evening, he’ll be hungry. He’ll have to sleep somewhere! Where will he get the money for that from? Do you follow my drift? Madame, could you let me have a photo of your husband?’

  Maigret says nothing, and there is something ominous in his silence. The examining magistrate thinks only in terms of dramatic methods such as publishing the photo in all the newspapers with circulations in the thousands, which can then be given to all uniformed police in towns and country as well as to passport officers at frontier control points …

  ‘I know of no photograph of my husband …’

  ‘But surely … We wouldn’t necessarily need a large portrait or even a recent likeness … You must have … That’s it! His passport, for example …’

  ‘My husband has not left France for thirty years. His passport has not been renewed. It has probably been lost. If you cannot find it in his room, then it no longer exists.’

  The magistrate glances at Maigret and sees a flicker of something in the inspector’s eyes, but he does not understand its significance, and if he did he would immediately put a stop to all this pointless activity.

  ‘Maigret, I want you to phone through a description of Octave Le Cloaguen to Records and tell them to …’

  Of course he will do it! Maigret will do whatever he’s asked. Without giving it a second thought. But he has a real sense of dramas which are being acted out in places which are not the streets of Paris or frontier control points.

  On his way to the phone, which is fixed to a wall in the hallway, he feels the eyes of Madame Le Cloaguen on him and as he passes a door he catches a glimpse of the figure of Gisèle Le Cloaguen and he remembers …

  He remembers the taxi and the drop of sweat which fell on to the old man’s hand from the perspiration beading his forehead …

  Exactly when had that happened? It happened when, and only when, the taxi was nearing the house in Boulevard des Batignolles!

  While the old man was near the body in Rue Coulaincourt, in the flat where the splashes of blood were still fresh, he hadn’t been afraid. He’d looked crushed but not afraid.

  And last evening, in Maigret’s office on Quai des Orfèvres, he seemed to welcome with some relief the prospect of being arrested!

  ‘Hello? … Records? … Is that you, Maniu … Will you take down this description and put it out through all the usual channels? … The man must be approached with caution and apprehended on sight … Yes, the examining magistrate insists he should be described as extremely dangerous.’

  At the other end of the line, Maniu relishes to the full the irony of those words, for he knows exactly what Maigret thinks of examining magistrates who interfere in criminal investigations.

  ‘Did you let him get away?’

  ‘Seems we did …’

  The wife is standing behind him. He turns and glares so coldly that she is unable to repress a shiver of fear.

  Outside, the magistrate is emphatic:

  ‘I am literally terrified by the thought that this man is out there somewhere, probably armed, and determined to save his skin at any price. You must admit, Ma
igret, that it is most unfortunate that your officer should have sloped off to phone in! We had him! We had the murderer! The very fact that he escaped proves that he’s guilty. But now … Are you going back to Quai des Orfèvres? …’

  ‘I’m not sure …’

  ‘What are you thinking of doing?’

  ‘I don’t know yet …’

  ‘This has been one in the eye for you, hasn’t it …’

  What would be the point of undeceiving him? Maigret holds his tongue! He also says nothing when a crestfallen Janvier joins him on the pavement, or more accurately, later, when they are sitting in front of a beer apiece on the terrace of the little café-restaurant opposite. Then he murmurs:

  ‘Mustn’t take it to heart, Janvier …’

  ‘All the same, sir, when there’s going to be fireworks …’

  ‘If there was going to be a row, it’s already happened …’

  ‘Got an idea?’

  Silence from Maigret. He fills his pipe, lights it and watches the match burn out.

  ‘I’m wondering if I’ve got time …’ he sighs eventually, stretching his legs out like a man exhausted.

  ‘Time for what?’

  ‘To go down to Saint-Raphaël.’

  ‘Can’t you send someone?’

  But that is exactly what is just not possible. Of course, a junior officer can be entrusted with a specific task. But how can he be told that he … How can he be ordered to go there and search around like a dog grubbing through refuse and do whatever it takes to sniff out the bone, or rather the secret which …

  Maigret is warming to this theme. A curtain twitches in a window in the house opposite. Two eyes stare at the inspector across the boulevard, the eyes of a woman, and they too are full of fear.

  What thought has just entered his mind out of the blue? He was staring at the face at the window. The face has now vanished, and suddenly Maigret relaxes.

  ‘Right, I want you to go across the road … Park yourself on the stairs, just outside the door, and don’t move from there for any reason. It doesn’t matter if you’re seen … Got that?’

  ‘What if one of the women comes out?’

  ‘Let her … Don’t stir from there!’

  After ensuring his order has been carried out, he goes inside the café.

  ‘Do you have a phone?’

  The phone is in the bar itself, which explains why, when the place was full of customers, Inspector Janvier preferred to use a more private phone booth, in a café on Place Clichy.

  ‘Lucas? … Say again … Absolutely not! It doesn’t matter, my friend … As long as it keeps the public prosecutor’s people happy … Jump into a car … Yes … Boulevard des Batignolles … The café-restaurant across the road … I’ll wait for you there …’

  The owner of the café gives him a curious look, wondering what has brought the police to his neck of the woods, because he has no doubt who these men are.

  ‘Hello, operator, get me Saint-Raphaël … I don’t know the number … The name is Larignan, a lawyer … That’s all I know … This is a police priority …’

  It’s definitely a day for beer. There are already four markers on the table out on the terrace by the time there’s a reply from Saint-Raphaël.

  ‘Hello? … I’m the maid … No, sir … Yes, sir … No, sir … Monsieur Larignan, is out … What? … Yes, sir, he’s probably gone down to the pier, to paint … Who wishes to speak to him? … The police? … Very good, sir … I’ll go at once …’

  In his mind’s eye he sees her leaving the gleaming white, well-to-do villa, braving the sun of the Côte d’Azur, which picks out the chalky flecks of sails in the bay, in search of the lawyer who has erected his easel on the jetty and is surrounded by curious onlookers.

  ‘What will you drink, Lucas? … Landlord, could we have a couple of beers here?’

  Lucas sees immediately that this is not the moment for questions. An hour goes by while poor Janvier twiddles his thumbs on the step of a staircase and leaps to his feet each time a tenant passes.

  The phone rings.

  ‘Monsieur Larignan? … What? … No, Monsieur Larignan, your wife hasn’t been involved in an accident … I don’t even know where your wife is! … In Vichy, taking the waters? … It’s very good for the health … But tell me … When exactly did Monsieur Le Cloaguen … Yes, your client, Monsieur Le Cloaguen, when precisely, I repeat, did he stop signing a receipt for the money which you paid to him? … Yes, yes, as you can see I know all about it … No need to worry … Why am I phoning you from a restaurant since I’m from the police? … Because I don’t have time to go back to Quai des Orfèvres … You are very suspicious, Monsieur Larignan … Yes, I’m listening … About ten years ago? … Yes … After his accident? … And am I correct in thinking that it was then that the family left Saint-Raphaël? …’

  He dabs at his forehead. The man on the other end of the phone in the Midi plays his cards close to his chest. The words have to be dug out of him one by one, not an easy thing to do on the phone.

  ‘How was this income of 200,000 francs paid? … I see … You yourself came to Paris each year? … In cash? … Don’t cut us off, operator … Listen, do that if you like but don’t cut us off, for the love of God just don’t cut us off! … Are you still there, Monsieur Larignan? … Did you give the money to Monsieur Le Cloaguen himself? … What was that? … I understand … It was laid down in the terms of the deed of gift? … Obviously … Yes … Yes …’

  The lawyer in Saint-Raphaël is even more suspicious than seems possible! As he says, or rather bellows, into the phone, because he is one of those men who believe that they can be heard more clearly if they shout into the receiver, it was his duty to make sure that his client was still alive on the payment date.

  ‘And you saw him each time? … Yes, I understand … Was he in bed? … No? … Ill, but not in bed? … That’s it exactly … Mainly he had lost weight … Yes … Speak freely, you can be frank … Yes … Obviously it’s odd … Odd … A crank, yes … At his age … Of course … One more thing … The house they lived in … Sold? … It’s not occupied at present? … An American woman who comes to France every two or three years? … And you have the keys? … I would be most grateful if you would let the person I shall send to you have them … No need to worry … You’d be covered by an order from the public prosecutor’s department, which will be wired through … I am most grateful, Monsieur Larignan … I’d rather not … Better stay at home, I might need to phone you again …

  ‘Bring me a beer! …’

  His expression is already more open that it was. He even manages a faint smile as he sits down and says to Lucas, who is waiting patiently:

  ‘Now there’s a funny thing … Guess what Le Cloaguen was doing one day when Monsieur Larignan brought him his 200,000 francs? … He was studying French grammar! … In the drawing room, just he and his wife, who seemed to be teaching him and looked very put out.’

  ‘I don’t see what …’

  ‘Wait! … It wouldn’t surprise me that before this evening … But now I must phone our excellent examining magistrate, who will tell me to go to blazes …’

  The small lorry-drivers’ café-restaurant has turned into a kind of general headquarters. It is as if Maigret is reluctant to lose eye contact with the tall, grey building with the carriage entrance where a curtain twitches from time to time.

  ‘Hello? … I’m sorry to bother you, sir … No, nothing significant as yet … I’d like you to wire a telegraphic order to Saint-Raphaël … Authorization to receive from a lawyer, Monsieur Larignan, the keys of a certain property … And preferably a recommendation to send along a mason and a couple of workmen … Dangerous? … Yes … I know … Of course, when she gets back, the owner will kick up a fuss, as you say … But I think it’s necessary … Yes … Cellars, everything … The grounds, if there are grounds … The grotto, if there is one … The well … Everything, absolutely everything! … I’d like the response phoned throu
gh to me here … Thank you, sir …’

  Is this his fifth or sixth beer? Imperceptibly, Maigret is becoming a different man. It is as if he is getting ready for action, that all his faculties have become sharper, that he is proceeding straight ahead with quiet, disciplined power.

  ‘What am I to do now, sir?’ asks Lucas.

  ‘Go and buy a paper …’

  The newspaper has already published the description of Octave Le Cloaguen.

  A dangerous lunatic who was probably responsible for the murder of the clairvoyant in Rue Coulaincourt, is at large in the capital …

  Maigret shrugs his shoulders. As long as it amuses the examining magistrate, the papers and the public! …

  ‘Do you think he’s got away?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘But if that’s so …’

  ‘Yes, my friend … Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t …’

  ‘What about the two women?’

  ‘No idea … Come on … Landlord, what do I owe you? If there’s a phone call for me from Saint-Raphaël or Quai des Orfèvres, come and get me at the double. I’ll be in the house across the road …’

  He has tried not to act so precipitately, to hold back, to wait for as long as it takes, but if Le Cloaguen is not dead …

  To the concierge he says:

  ‘Good morning, madame. It’s me again. Tell me, I imagine each of your tenants has a cellar? Would you show us the way? A torch? You’re very kind. Yes, bring a torch …’

  They go down one behind the other. In a huge vaulted cellar all the tenants have their own space enclosed by an iron railing through which coal and old packing cases are visible.

  ‘No … No need to bother the ladies … The lock’s child’s play, as you’ll see …’

  And so it is. He opens it in a matter of minutes. Empty sacks which had contained potatoes. A load of logs recently delivered. A little coal left over from last winter.

  ‘Do you have a shovel, madame?’

  ‘You’ll get dirty …’

  So what? Maigret digs into the pile of coal, just in case. Then, with the same patience, he inspects all the bunkers belonging to the other tenants.