Maigret and the Saturday Caller

by Georges Simenon

  ‘You weren’t listening behind the door?’

  ‘If I told you that, that’s the truth.’

  ‘You could hear everything being said next door?’

  ‘Not very well.’

  ‘Could your mistress have knocked Planchon on the head without your knowing it?’

  ‘I went back to bed and went to sleep right away.’

  ‘Before he left the house.’

  ‘That I can’t say.’

  ‘And you didn’t hear the door slam?’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

  The lawyers approved of these replies, each one adopting the same attitude as his client. At five a.m., Prou and his mistress were taken separately to the cells. As for Maigret, he spent only an hour in bed, and drank off five or six cups of black coffee before returning once more to the uncomfortably grandiose offices of the law courts. This time, although it was a Sunday, he was granted an audience with the prosecutor in person, and remained for two hours in tête-à-tête with him.

  ‘They still haven’t found a body?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No traces of blood in the house or the van?’

  ‘Not so far.’

  Without a corpse, it was not possible at this stage to charge the couple with murder. There remained the money, which, as the receipt made clear, belonged to Planchon, and there was no reason for it to have been under the floorboards in Isabelle’s room.

  The little girl had been taken to a children’s home.

  Maigret put in two or three more hours of questioning on the Monday morning, in the lawyers’ presence, after which an examining magistrate was assigned the case. These were the new arrangements, which he had to accept.

  Was the magistrate more successful than he had been? He didn’t know, since nobody took the trouble to keep him informed.

  It was not until a week later that a body was pulled out of the Seine, at the Suresnes weir. A dozen or so people, in particular the owners of bars in Montmartre frequented by Planchon, as well as the prostitute known as Sylvie, identified him.

  As for Prou and Renée, they were brought in separately to view the decomposed corpse, but neither would speak a word.

  According to the pathologist, Planchon had been killed by several blows to the head with a heavy implement, probably wrapped in some kind of cloth.

  He had then been trussed up inside a sack, and there was later quite a dispute between the experts about the sack and the rope used to fasten it. They had found similar sacks in the workshop in the courtyard, as well as ropes used to secure the ladders, which seemed to be of identical composition.

  Maigret heard nothing of all this for several months. Spring had arrived, the chestnuts were in blossom. You could go out without a coat. A young Englishman was identified as the jewel thief from the grand hotels and Interpol traced him as far as Australia, while some of the precious stones were recovered in Italy.

  The Planchon case came to the high court a few days before the start of the legal holidays and Maigret found himself sitting with various persons, known or unknown to him, in the witnesses’ waiting room.

  When it was his turn to take the box, he realized from his first glance at the accused that the passion shared between Renée Planchon and Roger Prou had gradually been transformed into hate.

  Each of them defended his or her own position, letting suspicion fall on the other. With unforgiving and bitter eyes, they were watching one another.

  ‘You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?’

  He held up his hand, as he had done so many times in the same surroundings.

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘Tell the jury what you know about this case.’

  At that moment, both the accused were observing him with resentment. It had been Maigret, after all, who had instigated the investigation, and it was because of him that they had been arrested.

  It was clear that the whole thing had been planned well in advance. Prou had taken the steps of borrowing two million francs from his father and brother-in-law on 24 December.

  Wasn’t it perfectly understandable, though, to buy the business he worked in from an employer who had become an incompetent alcoholic?

  The receipts were authentic, and the money had been delivered, fair and square.

  But Planchon had never known anything about it. He was unaware of what was being plotted in his own house. Although he realized that they wanted to be rid of him, he did not know that the process had been started, nor that on 29 December, or round about then, his wife had typed out a false deed of sale, at the foot of which his signature had been forged. By whom? Renée or her lover?

  The experts had a field day with that as well, and two of them clashed openly.

  ‘One Saturday evening …’ Maigret began.

  ‘Speak up, please.’

  ‘One Saturday evening, when I came home from work at about seven p.m., I found a man waiting for me.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘I didn’t know him, but I guessed who he was because of his hare-lip. For the previous two months, a man answering his description had been asking for me at Quai des Orfèvres on Saturday afternoons, but he would always leave before I had a chance to see him.’

  ‘And you can formally declare that this man was Léonard Planchon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he want to say to you?’

  At this point, the inspector turned to face the jury so that he would not see the faces of the accused.

  They were surely stunned to hear that, contrary to what they were expecting, he was making a statement helpful to the defence.

  In total silence, followed by such an uproar that the judge threatened to clear the court, Maigret pronounced distinctly the following words:

  ‘He had come to tell me about his intention to kill his wife and her lover.’

  Inwardly, he wished he could beg for poor Planchon’s forgiveness. But he had just sworn that he was going to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  Once quiet had been restored, he was able to reply to the judge’s further questions and, having finished his testimony, he had no time to wait in the courtroom, since he had just been told about a crime in a luxury apartment in Rue Lauriston.

  There were no confessions. But the charges were sufficiently serious for the jury to reply in the affirmative to the first question put to them.

  Ironically, it was Maigret’s testimony that saved Roger Prou’s head, as he was granted extenuating circumstances.

  ‘You have heard what Detective Chief Inspector Maigret said,’ Prou’s lawyer pleaded. ‘It was one or the other. Even if my client did kill him, it was more or less a matter of self-defence.’

  Antoinette, the street walker with the long thin legs and large hips who went by the name of Sylvie, was in the courtroom when the foreman of the jury read out the verdict.

  Twenty years for Roger Prou, eight for Renée Planchon, who directed at her former lover a look of such hate that a shiver passed through the courtroom.

  ‘See this, chief?’

  Janvier showed Maigret a newspaper on which the ink was still wet, proclaiming the verdict on the front page.

  The inspector merely glanced at it, muttering:

  ‘Poor fellow!’

  And he was left with a nagging feeling that he had betrayed the man with the hare-lip, whose last words to him on the telephone had been:

  ‘Well, thank you, anyway.’

  1.

  There was a moment, between Quai des Orfèvres and Pont Marie, when Maigret paused, so briefly that Lapointe, who was walking beside him, paid no attention. And yet, for a few seconds, perhaps only a split second, the chief inspector had been taken back to when he was his companion’s age.

  It was doubtless something to do with the quality of the air, its luminosity, its smell, its taste. There had been a morning just like this, mornings just like this, in the days when, as a young inspec
tor newly appointed to the Police Judiciaire, which Parisians still called the Sûreté, Maigret worked the beat, tramping the streets of Paris from morning to night.

  Although it was already March 25, this was the first real day of spring, all the more limpid for the fact that there had been a last shower during the night, accompanied by distant rolls of thunder. It was also the first time in the year that Maigret had left his overcoat in his office cupboard, and from time to time the breeze caused his unbuttoned jacket to billow.

  Because of this whiff of the past, he had, without realizing it, adopted his old pace, neither slow nor fast, not quite the pace of someone out for a stroll and stopping to look at the minor sights of the street, nor quite that of someone with a particular purpose in mind.

  His hands together behind his back, he looked around him, right, left, up in the air, registering images to which he had not paid any attention for a long time.

  For such a short journey, there had been no question of taking one of the black cars lined up in the courtyard of the Police Judiciaire, and the two men were walking by the river. Pigeons flew off as they crossed the square in front of Notre-Dame, where there was already a tourist coach, a big yellow coach from Cologne.

  Crossing the iron footbridge, they reached Ile Saint-Louis. In a window, Maigret noticed a young chambermaid in a uniform and a white lace cap, like something from a boulevard comedy. A little further on, a butcher’s boy, also in uniform, was delivering meat; a postman was just coming out of an apartment building.

  The buds had opened that very morning, dappling the trees with soft green flecks.

  ‘The Seine’s still high,’ Lapointe remarked. It was the first thing he had said.

  It was true. For a month now, it had barely stopped raining, and then only for a few hours. Almost every evening, the television showed swollen rivers and towns and villages with flooded streets. The water of the Seine was yellowish, and carried all kinds of litter, old crates, tree branches along with it.

  The two men followed Quai de Bourbon as far as Pont Marie, which they crossed at the same calm pace. Downstream, they could see a greyish barge with the white and red triangle of the Compagnie Générale on its bow. Its name was the Poitou, and a crane was unloading sand from its hold, with a wheezing and creaking that mingled with the indistinct noises of the city.

  Another barge was moored upstream of the bridge, some fifty metres from the first. It looked cleaner, as if it had been polished that very morning. A Belgian flag fluttered lazily in the stern. Near the white cabin, a baby lay asleep in a hammock-shaped canvas cradle. A very tall man with light-blond hair was looking in the direction of the riverbank, as if waiting for something.

  The name of the boat, in gold letters, was De Zwarte Zwaan, a Flemish name, which neither Maigret nor Lapointe understood.

  It was two or three minutes to ten. The two police officers reached Quai des Célestins. As they descended the ramp to the quayside, a car drew up, and three men got out, slamming the door.

  ‘Ah, we’ve arrived at the same time!’

  They, too, had come from the Palais de Justice, but from the more imposing part reserved for magistrates. There was Deputy Prosecutor Parrain, Examining Magistrate Dantziger and an old clerk of the court whose name Maigret could never remember, even though he had met him hundreds of times.

  It wouldn’t have occurred to the passers-by on their way to work or the children playing on the pavement opposite that this was an official visit by the prosecutor’s office. In the bright morning, there was nothing at all solemn about it. The deputy prosecutor took a gold cigarette case from his pocket and mechanically held it out to Maigret, even though he had his pipe in his mouth.

  ‘Oh, of course, I forgot …’

  He was a tall, thin, fair-haired man, and distinguished-looking; it struck Maigret once again that this was characteristic of the prosecutor’s office. As for Dantziger, who was short and round, he was plainly dressed. Examining magistrates came in all shapes and sizes. So why did those from the prosecutor’s office all look more or less like senior civil servants, with manners, elegance and often arrogance to match?

  ‘Shall we go, gentlemen?’

  They walked down the ramp with its uneven cobbles, and came to the quayside, not far from the barge.

  ‘Is this the one?’

  Maigret knew no more than they did. He had read in the daily reports a brief account of what had happened during the night and had received a telephone call half an hour earlier, asking him to be present when the prosecutor’s men arrived.

  He didn’t mind. He was back in a world, an atmosphere he had experienced on several occasions. All five men advanced towards the motor barge, which was linked to the quayside by a gangplank, and the tall fair-haired bargee took a few steps towards them.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ he said to the deputy prosecutor, who was the first in line. ‘To be on the safe side, right?’

  His Flemish accent was pronounced. His clear-cut features, his pale eyes, his big arms, his way of moving recalled his country’s cyclists being interviewed after a race.

  The noise of the crane unloading the sand was louder here.

  ‘Is your name Joseph Van Houtte?’ Maigret asked, after glancing at a piece of paper.

  ‘Jef Van Houtte, yes, monsieur.’

  ‘Are you the owner of this boat?’

  ‘Of course I’m the owner, monsieur, who else would be?’

  A pleasant smell of cooking rose from the cabin, and at the foot of the staircase, which was covered in flower-patterned linoleum, a very young woman could be seen coming and going.

  Maigret pointed to the baby in its cradle.

  ‘Is that your son?’

  ‘Not my son, monsieur, my daughter. Yolande, her name is. My sister’s name is also Yolande, she’s her godmother.’

  Signalling to the clerk of the court to take notes, Deputy Prosecutor Parrain now decided to intervene.

  ‘Tell us what happened.’

  ‘Well, I fished him out, and the skipper on the other boat helped me.’

  He pointed to the Poitou, in whose stern a man stood leaning against the helm, looking in their direction as if awaiting his turn.

  A tugboat sounded its siren several times and passed slowly upstream with four barges behind it. Each time one of them came level with the Zwarte Zwaan, Jef Van Houtte raised his arm in greeting.

  ‘Did you know the drowning man?’

  ‘I’d never even seen him before.’

  ‘How long have you been moored here?’

  ‘Since last night. I’ve come from Jeumont, with a cargo of slates for Rouen … I was planning to go through Paris and stop for the night at the Suresnes lock … I suddenly noticed that something was wrong with the engine … We don’t especially like spending the night in the middle of Paris, if you know what I mean.’

  In the distance, Maigret saw two or three tramps standing under the bridge, among them a very fat woman he had the feeling he had seen before.

  ‘How did it happen? Did the man jump in the water?’

  ‘I don’t think so, monsieur. If he’d jumped in the water, what would the other two be doing here?’

  ‘What time was it? Where were you? Tell us precisely what happened during the evening. You moored here just before nightfall?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you notice a tramp under the bridge?’

  ‘You don’t notice these things. They’re almost always there.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘We all had dinner, Hubert, Anneke and me.’

  ‘Who’s Hubert?’

  ‘My brother. He works with me. Anneke’s my wife. Her name’s Anna, but we call her Anneke.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘My brother put on his nice suit and went dancing. At his age, why not?’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘He went to buy supplies. He’l
l be back.’

  ‘What did you do after dinner?’

  ‘I went to work on the engine. I saw right away that there was an oil leak, and as I was planning to leave in the morning I did the repairs.’

  He kept darting suspicious glances at each of them in turn, like someone who isn’t used to having dealings with the law.

  ‘When did you complete the work?’

  ‘I didn’t. I only finished it off this morning.’

  ‘Where were you when you heard the shouting?’

  He scratched his head, looking straight ahead at the spacious, gleaming deck.

  ‘First, I came up on deck once to smoke a cigarette and see if Anneke was asleep.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘About ten. I’m not entirely sure.’

  ‘Was she asleep?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur. And the baby was asleep, too. There are nights when she cries, because she’s teething.’

  ‘Did you go back to your engine?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Was the cabin dark?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur, since my wife was asleep.’

  ‘The deck as well?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘A long time afterwards, I heard the noise of a car engine, as if someone had parked not far from the boat.’

  ‘Did you go and see?’

  ‘No, monsieur. Why would I?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A bit later, there was a splash.’

  ‘As if someone had fallen in the river?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I went up the ladder and put my head out through the hatch.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Two men running to the car.’

  ‘So there was a car?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur. A red car. A Peugeot 403.’

  ‘It was bright enough for you to make it out?’

  ‘There’s a street lamp just above the wall.’

  ‘What did the two men look like?’

  ‘The shorter one was broad-shouldered and was wearing a light-coloured raincoat.’

  ‘What about the other one?’

  ‘I didn’t see him very well because he was the first to get in the car. He immediately started the engine.’