Cécile is Dead

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Who’s he?’ asked Maigret, turning to the concierge.

  Indignant at Nouchi’s presence, she replied, ‘I’ve no idea what she’s thinking of telling you, but with all due respect these girls tell lies as easy as breathing … Monsieur Dandurand is a retired lawyer, a very nice gentleman, very serious, quiet and all. He occupies the whole fourth floor; he’s been there for years. He goes out for his meals, he doesn’t have visitors. I’m sure he won’t be late coming home.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nouchi with composure, ‘Monsieur Dandurand is an old pig. Every time I go downstairs he’s watching for me behind his door. He’s followed me out into the street several times. And last month, when I was passing his door on the landing, he tried beckoning me in.’

  Madame With-All-Due-Respect threw up her arms, as if to ask whether anyone had ever heard of such horrors.

  ‘So on Monday I went in, just out of curiosity, and he wanted to show me his collection of photographs … there wasn’t anything disgusting, I promise you. He told me that if I went to see him now and then he’d give me …’

  ‘Don’t believe a word she says, inspector!’

  ‘I tell you it’s true. So I told Potsi at once, and she went to look at the photographs as well. And he made her a proposition as well …’

  ‘What did he offer her?’

  ‘The same as me, a wristwatch. He must have quite a stock of them. And now I can add something else. One night when I couldn’t get to sleep, I heard sounds on the landing. I got up and went over to his door and I looked through the keyhole and I saw …’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Maigret. ‘Was the light on in the stairwell, then?’

  He sensed her hesitation, as she was momentarily disconcerted.

  ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘But there was moonlight.’

  ‘How could the moon be shining on the stairwell?’

  ‘Through the skylight. There’s a skylight just above the landing.’

  It was true. Maigret remembered the skylight. But why had she hesitated when she mentioned light?

  ‘Thank you, mademoiselle. You can go home now. Your parents must be worried about you.’

  ‘They’re at the cinema with my sister.’

  She looked put out. Anyone might think she had hoped that Maigret would go upstairs with her!

  ‘Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?’ she suggested.

  ‘No, that’s all. Good evening.’

  ‘Is it true that Cécile is dead?’

  He did not reply to that, but closed the door behind her.

  ‘It’s a crying shame, with all due respect,’ sighed the concierge. ‘Another glass of wine, inspector? She’s all but inviting men into her bedroom while her parents are out. Did you see the way she looked at you? I blushed for my sex!’

  The cars and trucks were still going along the road. Maigret sat down again in the wicker armchair, which creaked under his weight. The concierge put more fuel in the stove, and when she sat down once more the cat jumped on her lap. It was warm in her lodge. They seemed far from anywhere. The cars and trucks were in another world, as if they were on a different planet and nothing outside the lodge was alive, except for the apartment building and the families in it. Above the bed, Maigret saw the pear-shaped rubber device that opened the front door.

  ‘No one can get into the building without your knowledge, can they?’

  ‘It would be difficult, because there isn’t a key.’

  ‘Could anyone get in through the shops?’

  ‘The inside doors that communicate with the shops have been bricked up. Madame Boynet was frightened of thieves.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me that she hadn’t left the house for several months?’

  ‘You must remember that she wasn’t entirely powerless. She got about the apartment, leaning on a stick. Sometimes she dragged herself out on the landing to keep an eye on the tenants or see if I was doing the cleaning properly. You didn’t hear her coming; she had her own way of creeping up on you in her slippers, and she’d put a rubber end on her walking-stick.’

  ‘Did she have many visitors?’

  ‘No one except for her nephew, Monsieur Gérard. He sometimes came. His younger sister Berthe never set foot in her aunt’s place. With all due respect, inspector, I think Berthe has a man friend. One Sunday when I went to the cemetery I met him, a very good-looking gentleman about thirty years old, and I thought he was married, but I couldn’t see whether he was wearing a wedding ring …’

  ‘To sum up, Madame Boynet lived entirely alone with Cécile?’

  ‘Poor girl! So gentle, so devoted! Her aunt treated her like a servant, and she never complained. Now there was one who didn’t go chasing men! Not strong, either. She had a weak constitution and a delicate stomach, but that didn’t prevent her from going down five floors with the rubbish bucket and to bring up coal.’

  ‘So I suppose it was Cécile who took the money to the bank?’

  ‘What bank?’

  ‘I assume that when Madame Boynet got the rent money …’

  ‘Oh, she wouldn’t for the world have put her money in a bank. She was too distrustful. That reminds me that at first Monsieur Bourniquel wanted to pay by cheque. “What’s all this,” she said indignantly. “You just tell the gentleman that I want proper money.” Monsieur Bourniquel stuck to his guns, and that went on for two weeks, but in the end he had to do as she wanted. Another glass of wine, inspector? I don’t often drink, but when there’s a good reason to …’

  The bell rang above the bed. She rose, leaned over the eiderdown and pressed the rubber pear, telling Maigret, ‘That’s Monsieur Deséglise the tenant on the second floor left. He’s a bus conductor. He works different hours every week.’

  Sure enough, Maigret saw a man wearing the uniform cap of the Paris bus company passing along the corridor.

  ‘There’s a piano teacher on the same floor, Mademoiselle Paucot, she’s an old maid. She has a pupil every hour, and when it’s raining the stairs get terribly dirty. The third floor is empty. You probably saw on the door that it’s to let. The last tenants were thrown out because they missed paying the rent twice running. All the same, they gave me a tip when they moved in, and they were very polite … It’s not always the rich who are most polite, is it? I’m surprised that Monsieur Dandurand isn’t in yet. When I think what that girl dared to insinuate … Girls like those two, a vicious pair they are, they’d see a man sent to prison just to make themselves seem interesting. Did you notice the way she was looking at you? A man of your age, married, in public service. I know what that’s like, my husband was in public service too, he was on the railways. Ah, here’s Monsieur Dandurand.’

  She rose and leaned over to press the rubber pear again. Light showed both in the corridor and on the stairs. Maigret heard the soft sound of an umbrella folding, and the faint crunch of shoes being conscientiously wiped on a doormat.

  ‘Monsieur Dandurand isn’t one to get the stairs dirty.’

  A dry cough. Slow, measured footsteps. The door of the concierge’s lodge opened.

  ‘Any post for me, Madame Benoit?’

  ‘Not this evening, with all due respect to you, Monsieur Dandurand.’

  He was a man of fifty with a grey complexion, grey hair, dressed entirely in black, his umbrella wet with rain. He had raised his eyes to the inspector, who in turn had frowned, because he thought he had seen that face somewhere before.

  At the moment the name of Dandurand meant nothing to him, yet he was sure he knew the man. He racked his brains for the memory. Where had he seen him?

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, if I’m not mistaken?’ asked the tenant quietly, still in the doorway. ‘As it happens, inspector, I have just come from your office. I know this is not a good time, but I also know what has happened.’

  A name rose to Maigret’s lips. Monsieur Charles … he suddenly felt sure that there was some connection between that name and the man before him. What did they recall to his min
d, for goodness’ sake? A little bar and café, its regular customers …

  ‘Is there something urgent you want to tell me?’

  ‘Well … That’s to say I thought … If you’d take the trouble of coming up to my apartment for a moment? May I, Madame Benoit? Forgive me for asking you to climb up four floors, inspector. I have just been to Quai des Orfèvres, where I learned about that poor girl Cécile … I admit it came as a shock.’

  Maigret rose to his feet and followed Monsieur Dandurand to the stairs.

  ‘I could see that you recognized me without remembering who I was … We’d better hurry; the light will soon go out.’

  He looked for a key in his pocket and put it into the lock. Looking up, Maigret saw the shadowy outline of Nouchi leaning over the banisters. Next moment a gob of spit fell to the landing with a dull splosh.

  Monsieur Dandurand must be a chilly soul. He wore an overcoat thicker and heavier than Maigret’s, and a woollen scarf wrapped round his neck. His appearance was lacklustre and not particularly attractive, in the manner of old bachelors of a certain age, and his apartment itself seemed the right setting for a man on his own who was getting on in years, with a pipe that had gone cold and bed linen that was less than spotless.

  ‘Let me have a minute and I’ll put on the light.’

  His study could have belonged to a lawyer or a businessman. Dark furniture, black wooden bookshelves full of legal tomes, green filing cabinets, with periodicals and files lying on the tables.

  ‘I think you smoke, don’t you?’ he asked Maigret.

  Dandurand himself had a dozen pipes carefully arranged on his desk, and he filled one of them after pulling down the blind over the window.

  ‘Don’t you remember me yet? It’s true that we met only twice, once at Albert’s in Rue Blanche …’

  ‘Yes, now I do remember, Monsieur Charles …’

  ‘And the second time …’

  ‘In my office at Quai des Orfèvres, eight years ago, when I had to ask you to explain certain things. I must admit that you had answers to all my questions.’

  A cold, icy smile on an icy face, where only the rather prominent nose was slightly pink.

  ‘Please sit down. I wasn’t here this morning.’

  ‘May I ask where you were?’

  ‘I realize, now that I know what has happened, that telling you that may be held against me. However, I am in the habit of spending some time at the Palais de Justice. A lawyer’s old habits die hard, and after …’

  ‘After you were struck off the list of practising advocates at Fontenay-le-Comte.’

  A vague gesture, as if the man were agreeing that he was right, but the matter was of little importance. The former provincial lawyer went on, ‘Since then I have been spending most of my time at the Palais. Today there was a strange case in Court Thirteen, a case of extortion among members of the same family. Maître Boniface, representing the son-in-law …’

  Monsieur Dandurand, formerly Maître Dandurand, who had lived in one of the oldest town-houses in Fontenay, had a habit of cracking his fingers, which seemed to need oiling.

  ‘Would you mind leaving your finger joints alone and telling me why you went to my office?’ sighed Maigret, lighting his pipe.

  ‘Excuse me … when I left home at about eight this morning I had no idea of what had happened on the fifth floor. It wasn’t until I was in the Palais at four in the afternoon that a friend of mine …’

  ‘Told you about the murder of Madame Juliette Boynet, née Cazenove, and like you a native of Fontenay-le-Comte.’

  ‘Exactly, inspector. I came back, but I failed to find you here, and I preferred not to talk to the officer whom you had left in charge. I caught a tram, hoping to find you at Quai des Orfèvres. Our paths ought to have crossed. Inspector Cassieux, who knows me …’

  ‘Yes, the head of the Drug Squad, also heading up Vice, certainly ought to know the name of Monsieur Charles.’

  The other man went on, as if he had failed to hear that. ‘Inspector Cassieux told me about Cécile, and …’

  Maigret had risen to his feet and had tiptoed across the front hall, to which the study door still stood open. When he suddenly opened the front door of the apartment Nouchi, whose eye was glued to the keyhole, almost fell over backwards. She straightened up and, slippery as an eel, rushed to the stairs.

  ‘You were saying?’

  ‘And then I thought I had time to dine. I waited in Place Saint-Michel quite a long time for the tram, and here I am. I knew I’d find you here. I wanted to be the one to tell you that last night, between midnight and one in the morning, I was in the apartment of Madame Boynet, who was my friend and in a way my client.’ He cracked his fingers again, without thinking, and made haste to say, ‘Sorry. It’s an old habit of mine.’

  4.

  It was a little after ten in the evening. In front of the wardrobe mirror, beside the large bed that she had just turned down, Madame Maigret was putting her hair in curlers, sometimes holding them in place with one of the hairpins that she held between her lips. Boulevard Richard-Lenoir was deserted. Beyond Porte d’Orléans the road was also deserted, shining in the rain, but a few seconds later three, four, then six cars came driving fast along it, preceded by a huge beam of pale light.

  As the car headlights passed they hardly touched Madame Boynet’s house, which was too tall for its width and looked even more unattractive for having no other buildings directly beside it, so that it had a rough, unfinished appearance.

  There was still a light on in Madame Piéchaud’s grocery shop, where the grocer herself was sitting in front of the fire so as to save heating another room. On the other side of the front door of the apartment building the bicycle shop was in the dark, but its back door stood ajar, and light could be seen in the room behind the shop, which contained a bed and a young man polishing his shoes.

  The Siveschis were at the cinema. The concierge didn’t want to go to bed before Maigret had left, and to prime herself for the wait ahead of her was finishing the bottle of red wine, while explaining the situation to her cat.

  On the other side of Paris, two bodies lay in refrigerated drawers in the Forensic Institute.

  Monsieur Dandurand’s apartment never seemed to be aired, since it was full of a mixture of odours, which in combination gave off a musty, unpleasant smell that clung to your clothes when you had left, and stayed with you for some time. Maigret, puffing thick smoke from his pipe, avoided looking the other man in the face as much as he could.

  ‘Remind me, Monsieur Dandurand … if I am not mistaken, it was over a case of indecent assault that you left Fontenay, wasn’t it? Let’s see – it’s ancient history now, but someone was mentioning you at the Police Judiciaire a few weeks ago. I think you got two years.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said the lawyer coldly.

  Maigret huddled even deeper into his heavy overcoat, as if to protect himself from all contact. He had not taken off his hat. In spite of the impression of gruffness that he gave, he viewed most human weaknesses with considerable indulgence, but there were certain people who made him bristle and feel physically uneasy in their vicinity. Monsieur Dandurand was one of them.

  This revulsion went so far that Maigret was never entirely at ease in the presence of his colleague Cassieux, who, as head of the Drug Squad, also had the Vice Squad as part of his remit.

  It was Cassieux who had mentioned to him the man generally known as Monsieur Charles, a provincial lawyer involved in a nasty case involving minors. He had served a two-year prison sentence before ending up in Paris.

  The case had some remarkable features and cast a strange light on human destiny. Struck off the professional register, and now living under a false name in the capital, where he was previously unknown, Dandurand still had a large enough income to indulge his tastes as he pleased. He cut a lacklustre and repellent figure as he walked around the streets for much of the day, an evasive expression in his eyes, showing a little liveliness and alac
rity only when he was in pursuit of a potential victim in the crowd.

  There were reports of the former lawyer being seen in the areas around Porte Saint-Martin, Boulevard Sébastopol and the Bastille. He was one of those who wait in the shadows for workshops and department stores to close, and then, with their shoulders hunched, often enter the dimly lit corridor of an establishment catering for special tastes.

  He soon knew all those establishments, and in return all the madams who ran them soon knew him and would ask, ‘Good evening, Monsieur Charles, and what can I offer you today?’

  He made himself at home; he liked the atmosphere of such places and came to need it daily. Soon word went round that he had been a lawyer, and now and then he was asked for advice. Finally he was allowed behind the scenes, not as a client but as a friend.

  ‘Did you know that the house in Rue d’Antin is for sale? Dédé’s been in difficulties and is off to South America next week. With five hundred thousand francs in cash.’

  To look at Maigret, you might have thought he was dreaming. Head lowered, eyes fixed on the faded red carpet on the floor, he suddenly jumped. He thought he had heard a noise above his head. For a moment he thought it was in Madame Boynet’s apartment, and the idea of Cécile …

  ‘That was Nouchi,’ said Monsieur Dandurand, with his peculiarly joyless smile.

  Of course, since Cécile was dead.

  Cécile was dead! At this very moment the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire, out at an evening bridge party with friends, had been describing, in a few words, the broom cupboard, the body slumped against the wall and the tall shape of Maigret observing the scene.

  ‘And what did he have to say?’

  ‘Nothing. He just dug his hands into his pockets, but I think it was one of the hardest blows of his career. He went straight off, and I’d be surprised if he gets any sleep tonight. Poor old Maigret.’

  Maigret himself knocked out his pipe against the heel of his shoe and let the ash fall to the floor.

  ‘You’ve been looking after Madame Boynet’s affairs, have you?’ he asked slowly, grimacing as if the words tasted bitter.