‘Was there a light in the windows?’
‘There was light coming from under the blinds on the ground floor. So I leaned him up against the wall, hoping he’d stay on his feet long enough. And I rang the bell, then I ran off.’
The whole time she was speaking, the typewriter was clicking away.
‘Has something happened to him?’
‘He’s gone missing.’
‘I hope no one’s going to start thinking I had anything to …’
‘No, no, don’t worry.’
‘Will I have to say my piece in front of the magistrate?’
‘I hope not. But even so, you have nothing to worry about.’
Lapointe had taken the sheet of paper out of the typewriter and held it out to the woman.
‘I’ve got to read it?’
‘And sign it.’
‘This isn’t going to get me in trouble, is it?’
In the end, she wrote her name in big clumsy lettering.
‘So what do I do now?’
‘You’re free to go.’
‘Will there still be buses?’
Maigret took a banknote from his pocket.
‘Here’s some money for a taxi.’
She had hardly left when the telephone rang. It was Janvier: he had called Boulevard Richard-Lenoir and Madame Maigret had told him her husband was at the Quai.
‘Nothing to report, chief. I went all the way down Boulevard Rochechouart to Métro Anvers. I’ve been up about ten sidestreets.’
‘It’s all right, Janvier, you can go to bed.’
‘Did Lapointe find anything?’
‘Yes. Tell you about it in the morning.’
As he went home, Maigret had one overwhelming fear: that he would wake up with a fever in the morning. He felt an unpleasant tickle in his nose and his eyes were very sore. And his pipe didn’t taste as usual.
His wife made him another grog. He lay sweating all night. At nine he was sitting, feeling a little light-headed, in the antechamber of the law courts, where he had to wait a good twenty minutes for the deputy prosecutor to arrive.
Maigret must have been looking serious, since the lawyer asked him:
‘So the man you called in is making difficulties?’
‘No, but something’s come up.’
‘Have you found your house-painter, what’s his name again?’
‘Planchon. No we haven’t found him. We’ve been able to reconstruct his movements during Monday evening. When he got back home, round about eleven, he was so drunk he couldn’t stand up straight, and he fell over several times in the street between Place Blanche, where he had his last drink, and Rue Tholozé.’
‘Was he alone?’
‘No, a street walker, with whom he’d had some dealings, helped him up the road.’
‘And you believe her?’
‘Yes, I’m quite sure she’s telling the truth. She was the one who rang the doorbell before going away, leaving Planchon propped up more or less against the wall. It’s quite impossible the same man could have gone upstairs to the first floor a few minutes later, packed up two big suitcases, and carried them back down before walking out of the house.’
‘Perhaps he took something to sober up. There are drugs, I believe.’
‘If so, his wife and Prou would have said so.’
‘Prou’s the lover? The man you called in? What does he say?’
His head feeling heavy, Maigret patiently explained the story about the three million old francs and the receipts. First, he described the receipt signed by Planchon.
‘Monsieur Pirouet, our handwriting expert, is not entirely sure. According to him, the paper could have been signed by Planchon when he was drunk, but the result would have been similar if his signature had been imitated by someone else.’
‘Why did you mention several receipts?’
‘Because on 24 December, Prou borrowed two million old francs, one million from his father, the other from his brother-in-law. One of my men went round and photographed the receipts. The one signed by the brother says the money’ll be repaid in five years, and Prou will pay six per cent interest. The one agreed with the father, on the other hand, is to be paid back in two years, no interest mentioned.’
‘And you think they’re not genuine?’
‘No, they’re perfectly in order. My colleagues checked everything out. On 23 December, the day before handing them over, the elder Prou took a million old francs in cash out of his savings account, where he had just over two million deposited. The brother-in-law, Mourier, drew the same sum out of his post office account, on the same day.’
‘But you mentioned three million.’
‘The third million was withdrawn by Roger Prou from his own bank account, the Crédit Lyonnais. So that means there genuinely were three million old francs in cash in the house in Rue Tholozé, on that date, 24 December.’
‘What’s the date on the deed of sale?’
‘29 December. It’s as if Prou and his mistress had made all their arrangements before Christmas, and were waiting for a good moment to get her husband to sign the deed.’
‘Well, I don’t see, in that case …’
As if to compound the difficulty, Maigret went on:
‘Monsieur Pirouet analysed the ink on the signature. Without being able to put an exact date on it, he thinks it goes back more than two weeks.’
‘What do you intend to do? Drop the case?’
‘I’ve come to ask you for a search warrant.’
‘After what you just told me?’
Maigret, not feeling very confident, nodded his head.
‘What are you hoping to find in the house? Your man Planchon’s corpse?’
‘That’s hardly likely.’
‘The cash?’
‘That I don’t know.’
‘You’re really set on this?’
‘Planchon was incapable of walking anywhere at eleven p.m. on Monday night.’
‘Wait here for me, will you? I can’t take a decision like this on my own. I’ll have to have a word with the prosecutor.’
Maigret remained alone for about ten minutes.
‘He’s no keener on it than I am, especially just now, when the police is already getting a lot of criticism in the press. Oh, well …’
But it was a yes, and a few moments later, Maigret was carrying off the warrant duly signed. It was ten to ten. He opened the door brusquely to the inspectors’ office, did not see Lapointe, but spotted Janvier.
‘Get a car round to the courtyard, I’ll be right down.’
Then he called the Criminal Records department and gave Moers some instructions.
‘They should get there as fast as they can. And pick your best men.’
He went downstairs in turn and got into the small black car alongside Janvier.
‘Rue Tholozé.’
‘You got the warrant, then?’
‘Blood out of a stone. I’d rather not think what’ll face me if we don’t find anything, and if the wife or her fancy man starts kicking up a fuss.’
He was so deep in thought that he hardly noticed that the sun had appeared for the first time in days. Janvier was speaking, as he wove his way between buses and taxis.
‘Painters wouldn’t normally be at work on a Saturday. I think it’s banned by the unions unless you pay double time. So we ought to find Prou at home.’
But he wasn’t. It was Renée who opened the door, after having peered at them from a window, and she was more suspicious and ill-tempered than ever.
‘What! Again!’ she exclaimed.
‘Prou isn’t in?’
‘He had to go and finish off an urgent job. What do you want this time?’
Maigret took the warrant out of his pocket and gave it to her to read.
‘You’re going to search the house? Oh for God’s sake, that’s the limit!’
A van belonging to Moers’s staff, crammed full of men and equipment, was just driving into the courtyard.
‘My colleagues. I’m sorry, but we shall be some time.’
‘Will you be turning things upside down?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Are you sure you’ve got the right to do this?’
‘The warrant is signed by the deputy prosecutor.’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘As if that means anything! I don’t even know what a deputy prosecutor is.’
But she let them in, eyeing them all darkly.
‘I hope this is going to be over by the time my daughter gets back from school.’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what we find.’
‘If you would only tell me what you’re looking for …’
‘Your husband left on Monday night, did he not, carrying two suitcases?’
‘I already told you!’
‘And I suppose if he did that, he took the three million old francs that Prou paid him on 29 December.’
‘I don’t know. We gave him the money. It was none of our business what he did with it.’
‘He didn’t pay it into his bank account.’
‘Have you checked?’
‘Yes. You told us yourself that he doesn’t really have any friends. So it’s unlikely he would have entrusted the money to anyone else, isn’t it?’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘Since 29 December, he can’t have been going round all day with the cash on him. That would be a big packet, three million in cash.’
‘Well?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Is that what you’re looking for?’
‘I don’t know.’
The experts had already set to work, starting with the kitchen. This was something they were well used to, and they went about it methodically, leaving no corner unexplored, looking inside the tin canisters holding flour, sugar and coffee, as well as in the rubbish bins.
It was done so smoothly, like a kind of ballet, that the woman watched them with astonishment, almost fascinated.
‘Who’s going to tidy everything up after this?’
Maigret didn’t reply.
‘Can I make a phone call?’ she inquired.
She telephoned an apartment in Rue Lamarck, a certain Madame Fajon, and asked if she could speak to the painter who was working there.
‘That you? They’ve come back. Yes, the big chief with a lot of men, and they’re turning the house upside down. There’s one even taking pictures … No. Apparently they’ve got a warrant … They showed me a paper signed by someone called a deputy prosecutor. Yes, I’d like it better if you came home.’
She looked at Maigret with a grim expression containing a hint of defiance.
One of the men was scratching some stains on the parquet in the dining room, collecting the dust in little sachets.
‘What’s he doing? Doesn’t he think my floors are clean?’
Another, using an upholstery hammer, was tapping the walls, while all the photographs and reproductions of pictures were taken down, one after another, then replaced, more or less crookedly.
Two men had gone upstairs, where they could be heard moving about.
‘Are they going to do this to my daughter’s bedroom too?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘What am I going to tell Isabelle when she gets in?’
This was the only time Maigret made a joke.
‘Tell her we’ve been playing Treasure Hunt. You don’t have a television?’
‘No. We were going to buy one next month.’
‘Why do you say “We were going to buy one”?’
‘Were going to, are going to, same thing, isn’t it? If you think I’m in a state to mind my words.’
She had recognized Janvier, of course.
‘When I think that that one came and measured all the rooms in the house on some phoney excuse …’
They heard a motor in the yard, a door slammed, and footsteps approached. Renée must have recognized them, since she headed straight for the door.
‘See what’s happening?’ she said to Roger Prou. ‘They’re going into everything, my saucepans, my underwear! There are people upstairs in the little one’s room.’
Prou’s lips were trembling with anger as he looked the inspector up and down.
‘And you have the right to do this, do you?’ he asked in a voice that shook.
Maigret handed him the warrant.
‘And if I telephone a lawyer?’
‘You have the right to do so. But all he can do is be present at the search.’
At about midday, there was a rattling of the letterbox and through the window Maigret saw Isabelle arriving back from school. Her mother rushed across, hustled her into the kitchen, where the men had finished their search, and shut the door behind them.
By asking the little girl a few questions, they would probably have learned some interesting things, but unless it was absolutely necessary, Maigret disliked questioning children.
The office had been searched without result. Some of the men now went towards the workshop in the courtyard, while another was climbing inside the van.
They were going through everything with a fine-tooth comb, as the highly experienced experts they were.
‘Would you come up here, sir?’
Prou, who had heard it too, followed Maigret up the stairs. A child’s bedroom, with a teddy bear still on the bed, but looking as if it was in the middle of a house move. The mirrored wardrobe had been pushed into a corner. None of the furniture was in the right place, and the men had taken up the red linoleum covering the floorboards.
One of the boards had been prised up.
‘Take a look in here.’
What Maigret saw first was Prou’s expression as he stood framed in the doorway. It looked so thunderous that Maigret called, just in case, ‘Watch out, down there!’
But Prou did not make a move, as one might have expected. Nor did he come right into the room, or feel the need to look into the hole in the floor in which they could see a packet wrapped in newspaper.
They didn’t touch anything until the police photographer came up. Then they dusted the floorboards for fingerprints.
Finally, Maigret was able to bend down, pick up the packet and open it. Bundles of ten-thousand-franc banknotes, three bundles, each of a hundred notes. In one of the bundles, the notes were brand new and crackling.
‘Anything to say, Prou?’
‘I know nothing about this.’
‘It wasn’t you that put the money in this hiding-place?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘And you’re still claiming that on Monday night your ex-boss took off with two suitcases full of his belongings, but that he didn’t take the three million francs?’
‘I’ve got nothing to say.’
‘So it wasn’t you that lifted the lino, forced up the floorboard, and hid the money here?’
‘I don’t know any more than I told you yesterday.’
‘It wasn’t your mistress?’
His eyes showed a slight hesitation.
‘What she might or might not have done is no concern of mine.’
8.
‘What she might or might not have done is no concern of mine.’
That sentence, the tone of voice in which it had been uttered, and the look that had accompanied it remained lodged in Maigret’s memory in the following months.
That Saturday night, the lights were on at Quai des Orfèvres until the small hours. The inspector had taken precautions, advising each of the two lovers to appoint a lawyer. Since they did not know of any, they had been provided with a list of members of the bar and had chosen at random.
So the rules had been strictly observed. One of the lawyers, Renée’s, was young and fair-haired, and as if she could not help it, she immediately started putting on the charm for him. Prou’s, by contrast, was a middle-aged man, with a loosely knotted t
ie, a grubby shirt and black fingernails, who could be seen hunting for clients for days on end in the Palais.
Ten, twenty, a hundred times, Maigret repeated the same questions to Renée Planchon on her own, then to Prou, and sometimes to both of them together.
At first, when they were brought face to face, they seemed to consult each other by looks. But as the questioning proceeded, and they were kept separately for a while before being brought together again, their expressions became more distrustful.
When he had seen them for the first time, Maigret had been reminded, not without a certain admiration, of a couple of wild beasts.
The couple no longer existed. There remained two wild beasts, and the moment could be sensed approaching when they would want to tear one another apart.
‘Who attacked your husband?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know whether he was hit. I went upstairs before he left.’
‘But you told me …’
‘I can’t remember what I said, you’ve confused me with all these questions.’
‘Did you know the three million francs were in your daughter’s bedroom?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t hear your lover move the furniture, take up the lino, and force up one of the floorboards?’
‘I’m not in the house all day long. I tell you I know nothing about this. You can ask me all the questions you want for as long as you like, I’ve nothing else to say.’
‘And you didn’t hear the van drive out of the yard on the night of Monday to Tuesday?’
‘No.’
‘But the neighbours did.’
‘Good for them!’
It wasn’t actually true. Maigret had used a rather crude trick. The concierge in the neighbouring house had heard nothing. It is true that her lodge was on the other side of the courtyard. The other tenants had been questioned without success.
As for Prou, he obstinately repeated what he had said to Maigret the first time he had been questioned at Quai des Orfèvres.
‘I was in bed when he came in. Renée got up and went into the dining room. I heard them talking for quite a while. Then someone went upstairs.’
Maigret and the Saturday Caller Page 11