Maigret's Pickpocket
Page 3
‘You live here?’
‘Listen, inspector …’
He was paler and more nervous than ever.
‘Have you ever trusted somebody, even when all the evidence was against him?’
‘It has happened.’
‘What do you think of me?’
‘That you’re rather complicated, and that I don’t have enough elements to make a judgement.’
‘Because you will make a judgement?’
‘That wasn’t what I meant. Let’s say, to form an opinion about you.’
‘Do I look like a criminal?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Or a man capable of … no, come inside. Best get it over with.’
He drew Maigret inside the courtyard and towards the left-hand side of the building, where at ground level there was a series of doors.
‘They call these “bachelor flats”,’ the young man muttered.
He took a key from his pocket.
‘You’re going to make me go in first. Well, I’ll do it, whatever it costs. But if I pass out …’
He pushed open a varnished wooden door. It gave on to a tiny entrance hall. Through an open door on the right could be seen a bathroom with a half-size bath. The room was in some disorder: towels were scattered on the tiled floor.
‘Will you open it?’
The young man gestured to Maigret to open the firmly shut door ahead of them, and Maigret did as he was asked.
His companion did not run away. And yet the smell was terrible, despite the open window.
Alongside a sofa-bed, a young woman was lying on the multicoloured Moroccan carpet: over her body buzzed a cloud of bluebottle flies …
2.
‘Do you have a telephone?’
It was a ridiculous question, and Maigret had uttered it without thinking, since he could now see the telephone on the floor in the middle of the room, about a metre away from the body.
‘Oh, please, I beg you …’ the young man was murmuring, as he leaned against the door-jamb.
He was clearly at the end of his tether. Maigret too was not unwilling to leave the room, where the smell of death was unbearable.
He propelled the young man outside, closed the door behind him, and took a moment to regain consciousness of the real world.
Children were coming home from school, swinging their satchels and heading towards other apartments. Most of the windows in the large block were open. The sound of several radios could be heard at once, voices, music, and women calling to their sons or husbands. On the first floor, a canary was hopping about in its cage and elsewhere clothes were drying on a line.
‘Are you going to be sick?’
The other man shook his head, but didn’t yet dare open his mouth. He was pressing both hands to his chest, pale as death, and was about to collapse, to judge by the almost convulsive movements of his fingers and the uncontrolled trembling of his lips.
‘Take your time. Don’t try to speak. Shall we get a drink of something in the café?’
Another shake of the head.
‘She’s your wife, isn’t she?’
His eyes said yes. He opened his mouth to take in a breath of air, managing to do so only after a moment, as if his nerves were completely jangled.
‘And you were there when it happened?’
‘No.’
He had all the same managed to get that syllable out.
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Day before yesterday … Wednesday …’
‘Morning? Evening?’
‘Late that night.’
They were pacing automatically up and down in the large sunlit courtyard, while in all the lodgings around them, people were leading their everyday lives. Most of them were already eating their midday meal, or were about to. Snatches of conversation reached them:
‘Have you washed your hands?’
‘Mind out, it’s hot.’
Through the springtime air wafted cooking smells, leeks in particular.
‘And do you know how she died?’
The young man nodded, without speaking, since he was once more unable to breathe.
‘When I came back …’
‘Wait a minute. You left the flat late on Wednesday night … Keep walking … Standing still won’t help … About what time?’
‘Eleven.’
‘And your wife was alive then? And in her dressing gown?’
‘No, she hadn’t undressed yet.’
‘You work nights?’
‘No, I was going out to look for some money. We were desperate.’
They were both walking round the yard, their eyes roving unseeingly over the open windows around them, from some of which people peered out, no doubt wondering what they were doing there.
‘Where did you think you would get any money?’
‘From friends. Here and there.’
‘But you didn’t find any?’
‘No.’
‘Did some of your friends see you?’
‘In the Vieux-Pressoir, yes. I still had about thirty francs in my pocket. I went round to different places where there was a chance of finding someone.’
‘On foot?’
‘No, in my car. I left it on the corner of Rue François-Ier and Rue Marbeuf when I ran out of petrol.’
‘So what did you do then?’
‘I went on foot.’
The young man in front of Maigret was exhausted, a hyper-sensitive character, ready to twitch at any touch.
‘When did you last eat anything?’
‘I had two hard-boiled eggs in a café yesterday.’
‘Well, come along, then.’
‘I’m not hungry. If you’re trying to take me to lunch, let me tell you right away …’
Maigret took no notice, moving them both towards Boulevard de Grenelle and entering a little restaurant where there were some free tables.
‘Two steak and chips,’ he ordered.
He wasn’t hungry either, but his companion needed to eat.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Ricain, François Ricain. Some people call me Francis. It’s my wife who …’
‘Look here, Ricain, I’m going to have to make a few phone calls.’
‘To your colleagues?’
‘In the first place, I’ll have to inform the local police chief, then the prosecutor’s office. Will you promise not to move from here?’
‘Where would I go?’ Ricain replied bitterly. ‘Whatever happens, you’re going to arrest me and send me to prison. I won’t be able to bear it, I’d rather …’
He didn’t finish the sentence, but the end could be guessed.
‘Waiter! A half-bottle of red.’
Maigret went to the counter to get tokens for the telephone. As he expected, the local police chief had gone for lunch.
‘Should I pass the message on right away?’
‘When will he be back?’
‘About two o’clock.’
‘Tell him I’ll be expecting him at quarter past two in Rue Saint-Charles, outside the street door to a building on the corner of Boulevard de Grenelle.’
At the prosecutor’s office, he only managed to reach a junior official.
‘A crime appears to have been committed in Rue Saint-Charles … Take down the address … When one of the deputies comes back, tell him I’ll be in front of the street door at quarter past two.’
Finally he rang the Police Judiciaire, and Lapointe picked up the call.
‘Can you be here in an hour? Rue Saint-Charles … Contact Police Records and have them get to the same address by about two … Tell them to bring something to disinfect the room, because the smell of decomposition is so strong it’s impossible to go in. And tell the police pathologist … I don’t know who will be on duty today … See you soon.’
He went back to sit down opposite Ricain, who had not budged, and who was gazing round as if he couldn’t believe in the reality of the everyday sight.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ asked the young man, who had automatically picked up his fork. ‘You’ve told everybody? There’s going to be a big fuss?’
‘Not until two o’clock. Until then we can have a few words between ourselves.’
‘I don’t know anything …’
‘People always think they don’t know anything.’
It was best not to push him too far. After a few minutes, as Maigret was about to put a piece of meat in his mouth, François Ricain began, without seeming to think about it, to cut up his steak.
He’d said he wouldn’t be able to eat. Not only did he eat, but he also drank some wine and, a few minutes later, the inspector had to order another half-bottle.
‘But you won’t understand …’
‘Of all the sentences people say, that’s the one I’ve heard most often in the course of my career. And nine times out of ten, I have understood …’
‘I know, you’re going to make me blurt out something incriminating …’
‘Is there something incriminating?’
‘Don’t make a joke of it. You saw, the same as I did.’
‘Except that you had seen that sight already once. Is that right?’
‘Of course.’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday, at about four a.m.’
‘Wait, let me get this straight. The day before yesterday, that is Wednesday, you went out at about eleven at night, leaving your wife inside the apartment …?’
‘Sophie wanted to come with me, she was insisting. I made her stay home, because I don’t like begging for money in her presence. It would be as if I was using her to get it.’
‘Very well. You went off in your car. What kind of car is it?’
‘A Triumph Convertible.’
‘If you needed money as badly as all that, why not sell it?’
‘Because I wouldn’t have got a hundred francs for it. It’s a beat-up old car I bought second-hand, with God knows how many previous owners. It could hardly hold the road.’
‘So you looked for some friends who might be in a position to lend you some money, but you didn’t find them?’
‘The ones I did find were almost as broke as me.’
‘And you came home on foot at four a.m. Did you knock at the door?’
‘No, I opened it with my key.’
‘Had you been drinking?’
‘I’d had a few, yes. In the evening, the kind of people I know are going to be in bars or nightclubs.’
‘Were you drunk?’
‘No, I wasn’t that far gone.’
‘Discouraged?’
‘I was at my wits’ end.’
‘Did your wife have any money?’
‘No more than me. She might have had about twenty or thirty francs in her handbag.’
‘Go on … Waiter! More chips, please.’
‘I found her lying on the floor. When I went closer, I saw that half her face was … blown away. I think I could see grey matter …’
He pushed his plate away and drank thirstily from his fourth glass of wine.
‘I’m sorry … I’d rather not talk about it.’
‘Was there a gun in the flat?’
Ricain sat still, staring at Maigret as if the crucial moment had arrived.
‘A revolver, perhaps? Or an automatic?’
‘Yes.’
‘An automatic?’
‘It was mine. A Browning 6.35, manufactured in Herstal.’
‘How did you come to have this weapon in your possession?’
‘I was waiting for you to ask me that. And you probably won’t believe this …’
‘You didn’t buy it from a gunsmith?’
‘No, I had no reason to go out and buy a pistol. It happened one night, out with friends in a little restaurant at La Villette. We’d drunk a lot. We were pretending to be gangsters.’
He had blushed.
‘Especially me … The others will tell you … It’s an obsession … When I’ve drunk a lot, I think I’m a great guy … Well, some people we didn’t know came over and joined us. You know how it is on a night out. It was in winter two years ago. I was wearing this big sheepskin jacket. Sophie was with me. She’d had a few drinks too, but she never quite loses control.
‘Next day, about twelve, when I went to put my jacket on, I found the automatic in the pocket. My wife said I had bought it the night before, not listening to her protests. Apparently I’d been claiming I was going to shoot someone who was mad at me. I kept saying:
‘“It’s him or me, old man …”’
Maigret, having lit his pipe, looked at his companion, his expression giving nothing away of his reaction.
‘Can you understand that?’
‘Carry on … It’s now Thursday, four in the morning. I presume no one could have seen you go into your apartment?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Nor seen you come out.’
‘No, no one.’
‘What did you do with the gun?’
‘How do you know I got rid of it?’
The inspector shrugged his shoulders.
‘I don’t know why I did it. I realized I would be accused …’
‘Why?’
Ricain looked at the inspector in amazement.
‘Well, it’s natural, isn’t it? I was the only person who had a key. Someone had used a gun that belonged to me, that I kept in a drawer in the chest. Sophie and I had quarrelled in the past. She wanted me to get a steady job.’
‘What do you do?’
‘If you can call it a job, I’m a journalist, but I’m not attached to any particular paper. In other words, I place my copy wherever I can – mostly film reviews. I’m also an assistant director and occasionally I work on screenplays.’
‘So you threw the Browning in the Seine?’
‘Yes, a bit beyond the Pont de Bir-Hakeim. Then I just walked.’
‘Did you go on looking for your friends?’
‘I didn’t dare any more. Someone might have heard the shot and called the police. I don’t know. At a time like that, you aren’t always thinking straight.
‘I was certain to be a wanted man. I’d be accused, and everything would tell against me, even the fact that I’d been wandering about part of the night. I’d been drinking. I kept looking for any bar that was still open. When I found one, in Rue Vaugirard, I drank three glasses of rum on the trot …
‘If I’d been questioned, I was in no state to give answers. I would have muddled things up, for sure. They’d shut me in a cell. But I suffer from claustrophobia, I can’t even take the Métro. And the idea of prison, with big bolts on the door …’
‘Was it the claustrophobia that gave you the idea of escaping somewhere abroad?’
‘See, you don’t believe me!’
‘Perhaps I do.’
‘You’d have to have been in a situation like I was to know what goes through your head. You don’t think logically … I couldn’t tell you where I went altogether. I needed to walk. To get away from Grenelle, because I thought they’d be looking for me there. I remember seeing Gare Montparnasse. I had a white wine on Boulevard Saint-Michel … or was it at Gare Montparnasse?
‘It wasn’t exactly that I wanted to escape. I just needed some time, so as not to be questioned by the police, the state I was in. In Belgium or somewhere, I could have waited a bit. Read the newspapers about the investigation. I’d have learned details I didn’t know, so it would have made it easier to defend myself.’
Maigret could not help smiling at such a mixture of cunning and naivety.
‘So what were you doing on Place de la République?’
‘I don’t know. I just ended up there, could have been anywhere. I had one ten-franc note in my pocket. I let three buses go past.’
‘Be
cause they were the kind that are closed in?’
‘I don’t know. I swear, inspector, I don’t know … I needed money if I was going to get a train. I got up on to the platform of the bus. There were a lot of people, we were squashed together. I could only see you from behind.
‘At one point, you stepped backwards and almost lost your balance. I saw the wallet sticking out of your pocket. I just grabbed it, without thinking, and when I looked up, I saw a woman, staring at me.
‘I’ve no idea why she didn’t raise the alarm at once. I jumped off the bus while it was moving. Luckily it was a crowded area, and the streets around there are narrow and twisting. I ran, then I walked.’
‘Waiter, can you get us two pastries?’
It was half past one. In forty-five minutes, the wheels of justice would begin to turn as usual, and the small flat in Rue Saint-Charles would be invaded by officials, while uniformed police would be keeping curious onlookers away.
‘What are you going to do with me now?’
Maigret didn’t answer at once, for the good reason that he had not made up his mind.
‘Are you going to arrest me? I know you don’t have any choice, but I swear to you again that …’
‘Eat up. Do you want a coffee?’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘What’s so odd about it?’
‘You’re making me eat and drink. You haven’t bullied me, on the contrary, you’ve been listening to me patiently. Is this the kind of questioning they say makes canaries sing?’
Maigret smiled.
‘Not quite, no. I’m just trying to get things clear in my head …’
‘And to get me to talk …’
‘I didn’t put any pressure on you.’
‘Well anyway, for the moment, I feel a bit better.’
He had eaten the pastry as if without noticing and now lit a cigarette. There was more colour in his cheeks.
‘But look, I can’t face going back there, seeing, smelling …’
‘Well, I have to.’
‘It’s your job. And she wasn’t your wife.’
He veered from incoherent muttering to perfectly good common sense, from blind panic to lucid reasoning.
‘You’re a strange young man.’
‘Because I’m sincere?’
‘Look, I don’t want to have you under my feet either when the authorities get here, and still less do I want you to be harassed by journalists. When my inspectors get to Rue Saint-Charles – they’re probably waiting for us already – I’ll have you driven to Quai des Orfèvres.’