‘Did you see the registration number?’
‘The what?’
‘The number on the licence plate?’
‘I only know there were two 9s and it ended in 75.’
‘When did you hear the yelling?’
‘When the car got going.’
‘In other words, a certain amount of time passed between the moment the man was thrown in the water and the moment he started yelling? Otherwise, you would have heard him earlier?’
‘I suppose so, monsieur. It’s quieter at night than it is now.’
‘What time was this?’
‘After midnight.’
‘Was there anyone walking on the bridge?’
‘I didn’t look up.’
Above the wall, where the street ran, a few pedestrians had stopped, intrigued by these men having a discussion on the deck of a barge. It seemed to Maigret that the tramps had moved forwards a few metres. As for the crane, it was still drawing sand from the hold of the Poitou and emptying it into the lorries waiting their turn.
‘Did he shout loudly?’
‘Yes, monsieur.’
‘What kind of shout? Was he calling for help?
‘He was yelling. Then there was silence. Then …’
‘What did you do?’
‘I jumped in the lifeboat and untied it.’
‘Could you see the drowning man?’
‘No, monsieur, not right away. The skipper of the Poitou must have heard him, too, because he was running along the deck of his barge trying to grab hold of something with his hook.’
‘Carry on.’
Van Houtte was clearly doing the best he could, but it was hard for him, and you could see the sweat form on his forehead.
‘ “There! There!” he was saying.’
‘Who?’
‘The skipper of the Poitou.’
‘And you saw him?’
‘At times I could see him, at other times not.’
‘Because the body was sinking?’
‘Yes, monsieur. And being dragged away by the current.’
‘Your lifeboat, too, I suppose?’
‘Yes, monsieur. My colleague jumped in.’
‘The skipper of the Poitou?’
Jef sighed, probably thinking that the people he was talking to were not very clever. As far as he was concerned, it was quite simple, and he must have experienced similar scenes several times in his life.
‘The two of you fished him out?’
‘Yes.’
‘How was he?’
‘He still had his eyes open. When we got him in the lifeboat he threw up.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘No, monsieur.’
‘Did he seem scared?’
‘No, monsieur.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘He didn’t seem anything. In the end, he stopped moving, and the water kept coming out of his mouth.’
‘Did he still have his eyes open?’
‘Yes, monsieur. I thought he was dead.’
‘Did you go to fetch help?’
‘No, monsieur. Not me.’
‘Your colleague from the Poitou?’
‘No. Someone called to us from the bridge.’
‘So there was someone on Pont Marie?
‘At that point, yes. He asked us if someone had been in the water. I said yes. He called out that he was going to inform the police.’
‘Did he do that?’
‘I suppose so, because a bit later two officers arrived on bicycles.’
‘Was it already raining?’
‘It started raining and thundering when the man was hoisted on to the deck.’
‘The deck of your barge?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did your wife wake up?’
‘There was light in the cabin. Anneke had put a coat on and was looking at us.’
‘When did you see the blood?’
‘When the man was laid out next to the helm. It was coming out through a crack he had in his head.’
‘A crack?’
‘A hole. I don’t know what you call it.’
‘Did the police arrive immediately?’
‘Almost immediately.’
‘And what about the passer-by who informed them?’
‘I didn’t see him again.’
‘Do you know who he is?’
‘No, monsieur.’
In the morning light, it took something of an effort to imagine that nocturnal scene, which Jef Van Houtte was recounting as best he could, searching for his words as if having to translate them one by one from Flemish.
‘I assume you know that the tramp was hit on the head before being thrown in the water?’
‘That’s what the doctor said. One of the policemen had gone to fetch a doctor. Then an ambulance came. Once the wounded man had gone, I had to wash the deck, because there was a big pool of blood.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘I don’t know, monsieur.’
‘You told the police officers—’
‘I said what I thought, right?’
‘Could you repeat it?’
‘I assume he was sleeping under the bridge.’
‘But you hadn’t seen him before?’
‘I hadn’t paid attention. There are always people sleeping under the bridges.’
‘All right. A car came down the ramp …’
‘A red car. That, I’m sure of.’
‘And it stopped not far from your barge?’
He nodded and held out his arm towards a particular point on the quayside.
‘Was the engine still running?’
This time, he shook his head.
‘But you heard footsteps?’
‘Yes, monsieur.’
‘The footsteps of two people?’
‘I saw two men going back to the car.’
‘You didn’t see them walk to the bridge?’
‘I was below, working on the engine.’
‘And you think these two individuals, one of whom was wearing a light-coloured raincoat, hit the tramp while he was sleeping and threw him in the Seine?’
‘By the time I got up on deck, he was already in the water.’
‘The doctor’s report states that he can’t have sustained that injury to the head by falling in the water. Not even during an accidental fall from the bank.’
Van Houtte was looking at them as if to say that this was none of his business.
‘Can we question your wife?’
‘I don’t mind you talking to Anneke. But she won’t understand you, she only speaks Flemish.’
The deputy prosecutor looked at Maigret as if to ask him if he had any questions, and Maigret shook his head. If he did have any, it would be for later, once these gentlemen from the prosecutor’s office had gone.
‘When will we be able to leave?’ the bargee asked.
‘As soon as you’ve signed your statement. Providing you let us know where you’re going.’
‘To Rouen.’
‘You’ll need to keep us informed of your movements after that. My clerk will come and get you to sign the documents.’
‘When?’
‘Probably early this afternoon.’
That obviously upset the bargee.
‘By the way, what time did your brother get back?’
‘Just after the ambulance left.’
‘Many thanks.’
Jef Van Houtte again helped him across the narrow gangplank, and the little group headed towards the bridge, while the tramps, for their part, moved a few metres back.
‘What do you think, Maigret?’
‘I think it’s strange. Tramps don’t usually get attacked.’
Against the stone wall under the arch of Pont Marie, there was something like a den. It was shapeless, it had no name, and yet – for some time now, apparently – it had been the lair of a human being.
The deputy prosecutor’s astonishment was amusing to see, and
Maigret couldn’t help saying to him:
‘You find them under all the bridges. There’s even a shelter just like this right opposite Quai des Orfèvres.’
‘Don’t the police do anything?’
‘If they’re demolished, they reappear a bit further on.’ It was made up of old crates and pieces of tarpaulin. There was just enough room for a man to be able to huddle there. On the ground were straw, torn blankets and newspapers that gave off a strong smell, in spite of the draught.
The deputy prosecutor took care not to touch anything, and it was Maigret who bent down to conduct a rapid inventory.
A cylinder of sheet metal, with holes and a grille, had served as a stove and was still covered in whitish ash. Close by, pieces of charcoal gathered God alone knew where. Shifting the blankets, Maigret exposed what amounted to a kind of treasure: two chunks of stale bread, some ten centimetres of garlic sausage and, in another corner, some books, whose titles he read under his breath.
‘Sagesse by Verlaine … Oraisons funèbres by Bossuet …’
He picked up a booklet that must have been lying for a long time in the rain and had probably been picked out of a dustbin. It was an old issue of the Presse médicale.
Finally, half a book, the second half only: the Memorial of Saint Helena.
Dantziger seemed as astonished as the deputy prosecutor.
‘Odd reading matter,’ he remarked.
‘He may not have chosen it himself.’
Also under the torn blankets, Maigret discovered clothes: a much patched and paint-stained grey pullover, which had probably belonged to a painter, a pair of yellow drill trousers, felt slippers with holes in the heels and five odd socks. Finally, a pair of scissors with one of its blades broken.
‘Is the man dead?’ Deputy Prosecutor Parrain asked, all the while keeping his distance as if afraid of catching fleas.
‘He was still alive an hour ago, when I phoned the Hôtel-Dieu.’
‘Do they hope to save him?’
‘They’re trying. He has a fractured skull, and they’re also afraid he might develop pneumonia.’
Maigret was fingering a dilapidated pram the tramp must have used when searching through dustbins. Turning to the little group of tramps, who were still watching, he looked at them, one after the other. Some turned away. Others just looked dazed.
‘You come here!’ he said to the woman, pointing a finger at her.
If this had happened thirty years earlier, when he was working the beat, he would have been able to put a name to every face: in those days, he knew most of the tramps in Paris.
They hadn’t changed much, as a matter of fact, although there were a lot fewer of them.
‘Where do you sleep?’
The woman smiled, as if to win him over.
‘There,’ she said pointing to Pont Louis-Philippe.
‘Did you know the man who was fished out of the river last night?’
Her face was puffy, and her breath smelled of sour wine. Her hands on her belly, she nodded.
‘We called him Doc.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was an educated man. They say he really used to be a doctor.’
‘Had he been sleeping rough for a long time?’
‘Years.’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve stopped counting.’
That made her laugh, and she pushed back a grey strand of hair that was falling over her face. With her mouth closed, she looked about sixty, but when she spoke, she revealed an almost entirely toothless jaw and seemed much older. Her eyes, though, were still lively. From time to time, she would turn to the others, as if calling on them to bear witness.
‘Isn’t that so?’ she would ask them.
They nodded, although ill at ease in the presence of the police and these excessively well-dressed gentlemen.
‘Did he live alone?’
That made her laugh again.
‘Who would he have lived with?’
‘Has he always lived under this bridge?’
‘Not always. When I first met him he was under Pont-Neuf. And, before that, Quai de Bercy.’
‘Did he do Les Halles?’
Wasn’t it in Les Halles that most tramps gathered at night?
‘No,’ she replied.
‘The dustbins?’
‘Sometimes.’
So, despite the pram, he didn’t specialize in old papers and cloths, which explained how come he was already asleep so early during the night.
‘Mainly, he was a sandwich man.’
‘What else do you know about him?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Didn’t he ever talk to you?’
‘Of course he did. I even cut his hair for him every now and again. We have to help each other.’
‘Did he drink a lot?’
Maigret knew that the question was rather meaningless: they pretty much all drank.
‘Red wine?’
‘Like everyone else.’
‘A lot?’
‘I never saw him drunk. He’s not like me.’
And she laughed again.
‘I know you, you know, and I know you’re not nasty. You questioned me once, in your office, a long time ago, maybe twenty years ago, when I was still working around Porte Saint-Denis.’
‘Did you hear anything last night?’
She pointed to Pont Louis-Philippe, as if to demonstrate the distance between it and Pont Marie.
‘It’s too far.’
‘So you didn’t see anything?’
‘Only the lights of the ambulance. I went a bit closer, not too close – I was scared they’d haul me in – and I realized that it was an ambulance.’
‘What about you three?’ Maigret asked, turning to the male tramps.
They shook their heads, still nervous.
‘Shall we go and see the skipper of the Poitou?’ the deputy prosecutor suggested, ill at ease in these surroundings.
The man was waiting for them. He was quite different from Van Houtte. He, too, had his wife and children on board, but the barge didn’t belong to him and it almost always made the same journey, from the sandpits of the Haute-Seine to Paris. His name was Justin Goulet, and he was forty-five years old, short-legged, with cunning eyes. An extinguished cigarette hung from his lips.
Here, they had to speak loudly, because of the noise of the crane, which was still unloading sand very close to them.
‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘That people should take the trouble to knock out a tramp and throw him in the river.’
‘Did you see them?’
‘I didn’t see anything at all.’
‘Where were you?’
‘When they hit the man? In my bed.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘I heard someone yelling.’
‘No car?’
‘I may have heard a car, but there are always cars driving by up there, and I didn’t pay attention.’
‘Did you go up on deck?’
‘Yes, in my pyjamas. I didn’t bother to put on trousers.’
‘What about your wife?’
‘She was half asleep. She asked me where I was going.’
‘Once you were up on deck, what did you see?’
‘Nothing. The Seine was swirling about, as always. I called out, “Ahoy there!” hoping he’d answer so I could know which side he was.’
‘Where was Jef Van Houtte at this time?’
‘The Flemish fellow? I eventually saw him on the deck of his barge. He started untying his lifeboat. When he came level with me, thanks to the current, I jumped in. The other man was still in the water. He’d come to the surface from time to time then disappear again. The Flemish fellow tried to grab him with my gaff.’
‘A pole ending in a big iron hook?’
‘Like all gaffs.’
‘Could he have been hit on the head when you were trying to hook him?’
>
‘Definitely not. We actually caught him by the hem of his trousers. I immediately leaned over and grabbed his leg.’
‘Was he unconscious?’
‘His eyes were open.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘He was throwing up water. Once we got him on the Flemish barge, we noticed he was bleeding.’
‘That’s everything, I think, isn’t it?’ asked the deputy prosecutor, who didn’t seem especially interested in this story.
‘I’ll take care of the rest,’ Maigret replied.
‘Are you going to the hospital?’
‘I’ll go later. According to the doctors, it’ll be hours before he’s able to talk.’
‘Keep me informed.’
‘I’ll be sure to.’
As they again passed under Pont Marie, Maigret said to Lapointe:
‘Phone the local police station and ask them to send me an officer.’
‘Where shall I find you, chief?’
‘Here.’
He solemnly shook hands with the people from the prosecutor’s office.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published in French as Maigret et le client du samedi by Presses de la Cité 1962
This translation first published 2018
Copyright © Georges Simenon Limited, 1962
Translation copyright © Siân Reynolds, 2018
GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm
MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert /Magnum Photos
Front cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes
ISBN: 978-0-241-30396-2
Maigret and the Saturday Caller Page 13