Maigret in Montmartre (4 page)

“Do you know Oscar?” he asked point-blank.

She didn’t jump, but he had the impression that she became a little reticent.

“Oscar who?”

“An elderly man—short, square-shouldered, grey-haired.”

“I can’t think of anyone like that. The butcher’s name is Oscar, but he’s tall and dark, with a moustache. Perhaps my husband…”

“Go and fetch him, if you don’t mind.”

Maigret sat still, in the dark red tunnel of a room with the light grey rectangle of the open door at its far end, like a cinema screen with the dim figures of some old news-reel flickering to and fro across it.

On the wall opposite him was a photograph of Arlette, in the inevitable black dress which clung to her body so tightly that she seemed more naked than in the indecent photos he had put in his pocket.

That morning in Lucas’s office he had paid scarcely any attention to her. She was just one of the little night-birds of which Paris held so many. All the same, he had noticed how young she was, and felt that there was something wrong somewhere. He could still hear her weary voice—the voice they all have at daybreak, after drinking and smoking too much. He remembered her anxious eyes; he remembered how he had glanced automatically at her breast; and above all he remembered the smell of human female that emanated from her—almost the smell of a warm bed.

He had seldom met a woman who gave such a strong impression of sensuality: and that was out of keeping with her worried, childish face and still more out of keeping with the rooms he had just left—with the polished floor, the broom-cupboard, and the meat-safe. “ Fred will be down in a minute.”

“Did you tell him what I wanted to know?”

“I asked him if he’d noticed two men. He doesn’t remember them. In fact he feels sure there weren’t two men at that table. It’s N°4. We always refer to the tables by their numbers. At N°5 there was an American who drank almost a whole bottle of whisky, and at N°11 there was a whole party, with women. Désiré, the waiter, will tell you about that, this evening.”

“Where does he live?”

“In the suburbs. I don’t know where exactly. He goes home by train every morning from the Gare St Lazare.”

“What other employees have you?”

“The Grasshopper, who opens car doors, runs errands, and now and then hands out cards. And the musicians and the girls.”

“How many girls?”

“Apart from Arlette there’s Betty Bruce. She’s the one in the left-hand photo. She does acrobatic dances. And Tania, who plays the piano when she’s not dancing. That’s all, at present. Other girls come in, of course, for a drink in the hope of picking up someone; but they don’t belong to the place. We like to keep it small, Fred and me—we’re not ambitious, and when we’ve saved enough money we shall retire and settle down to a quiet life at Bougival. Ah, here he comes…” A man of about fifty—short, sturdy, very well preserved, his hair still black except for a touch of grey at the temples—came out of the kitchen, pulling on a jacket over his collarless shirt. He must have snatched up the first clothes that came to hand, for he was wearing his evening trousers and had bedroom slippers on his bare feet.

He, too, was quite calm—even calmer than his wife. He must have known Maigret by name, but it was the first time he had actually set eyes on him, and he came forward slowly, so as to observe him at leisure.

“I’m Fred Alfonsi,” he announced, extending his hand. “Didn’t my wife ask you to have a drink?”

As though to confirm something of which he was already sure, he went to N°4 table and rubbed the flat of his hand across it.

“You really won’t have anything? Do you mind if Rose gets me a cup of coffee?”

At this, his wife went off to the kitchen and disappeared. The man sat down opposite Maigret, his elbows on the table, and waited.

“You’re sure there were no clients at that table last night?”

“Now see here, Inspector, I know who you are, but you don’t know me. Perhaps before coming here you made inquiries from your colleague in the
brigade mondaine
. His men drop in on me from time to time—it’s their job and they’ve being doing it for years now. They’ll tell you, if they haven’t already done so, that there’s never been any funny business at my place, and that I’m quite a harmless chap.”

Maigret was amused at the contrast between the man’s words and his appearance, for he had the broken nose and cauliflower ears of an ex-boxer.

“So when I say there was nobody at that table, you can be sure it’s true. This is a small place, there are only a few of us to run it, and I keep an eye on everything, the whole time. I could tell you exactly how many people came in last night. I’ve only got to look at the tickets on the cash desk; they’re numbered according to the tables.”

“It was at N°5, wasn’t it, that Arlette sat with her young man?”

“No—at N°6. The even numbers—2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12—are all on the right. The odd numbers are on the left.”

“Who was at the next table?”

“N°8? Two couples came in at about four o’clock—Parisians who’d never been here before, who’d come because they didn’t know where else to go, and who soon decided it wasn’t their kind of place. They had just one bottle of champagne and then left. We closed almost directly afterwards.”

“And you never saw, either at that table or any other, two men by themselves, one of them elderly and, judging by the description rather like you in appearance?”

Fred Alfonsi, who must have heard this sort of talk before, smiled and rejoined.

“If you’d spill the beans I might be able to help you. Don’t you think this cat and mouse game has been going on long enough?”

“Arlette is dead.”

“What?”

The man gave a violent start. He got up agitatedly, and shouted down the room:

“Rose!…Rose?”

“Coming in a minute…”

“Arlette’s dead!”

“
What
did you say?”

She came rushing out at an amazing speed for one so fat.

“Arlette?” she echoed.

“She was strangled this morning, in her bedroom,” went on Maigret, watching them closely.

“Well, I’ll be…Who was the bastard who…”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Rose blew her nose and was obviously on the verge of tears. She was staring hard at the photograph on the wall.

“How did it happen?” asked Fred, going over to the bar.

Carefully selecting a bottle, he filled three glasses and came over to give the first one to his wife. It was old brandy, and he put one of the other glasses, without comment, on the table in front of Maigret, who finally took a sip of it.

“She overheard a conversation here, last night, between two men who were talking about a Countess.”

“What Countess?”

“I don’t know. One of the men seems to have been called Oscar.”

There was no reaction to this.

“When she left here she went to the local police station to report what she’d heard, and they took her to the Quai des Orfèvres.”

“And that’s why she was bumped off?”

“Probably.”

“What about you, Rose—did you notice any two men together?”

She said she had not. Both she and he seemed genuinely amazed and distressed.

“I can assure you, Inspector, that if there had been two men here I should know and I’d tell you. We can speak quite straight to each other. You know how this kind of joint works. People don’t come here to see first-class turns or dance to a good band. And it’s no fancy drawing-room either. You’ve read our announcement. They go first of all to other places, looking for a thrill. If they pick up some girl there, then they don’t get this far. But if they don’t find what they want, they end up here more often than not, and by that time they’ve had about as much as is good for them.

“I’m in with most of the night taxi-drivers and I give them good tips. And the doormen at some of the big night-clubs whisper this address to clients when they show them out.

“We mostly get foreigners, who imagine they’re going to see something sensational.

“The only sensational thing was Arlette undressing herself. For about a quarter of a second, when her dress slipped right down to her feet, they saw her absolutely naked. To avoid trouble, I asked her to shave herself—that’s supposed to look less shocking.

“After that she’d nearly always be asked over to one of the tables.”

“Did she go to bed with clients?” asked Maigret deliberately.

“Not here, in any case. And not in working hours. I don’t let them go out before we close. They keep the men here as long as possible by encouraging them to drink and I suppose they promise to meet them when they come out.”

“And do they?”

“What d’you think?”

“Did Arlette, too?”

“She must have, now and then.”

“With the young man who was here last night?”

“No, not with him, I’m sure. He was there from the purest motives, you might say. He came in one evening by chance, with a friend, and fell in love with Arlette at first sight. He came again several times, but never waited till we closed. He probably had to get up early and go to work.”

“Had she any other regulars?”

“Hardly any of our clients are regulars, you must surely have realized that. They’re birds of passage. They’re all alike, of course, but they’re always different.”

“Hadn’t she any men friends?”

“I know nothing about that,” replied Fred rather stiffly.

Maigret glanced at Rose and said, a little hesitantly:

“I suppose you yourself never…”

“Oh, go ahead—Rose isn’t jealous and she got over that a long time ago. Yes, if you must know, I did.”

“In her flat?”

“I never set foot in the place. Here, in the kitchen.”

“It’s always that way with him,” observed Rose. “You hardly notice he’s gone, before he’s back again. And then the woman comes in, shaking herself like a ruffled hen.”

She laughed at the thought.

“You don’t know anything about the Countess?”

“What Countess?”

“Oh, never mind. Can you give me the Grasshopper’s address? What’s his real name?”

“Thomas…He hasn’t any other. He was a foundling. I can’t tell you where he sleeps, but you’ll find him at the races this afternoon. That’s the only thing he cares about. Some more brandy?”

“No thank you.”

“Do you suppose the journalists will be coming round?”

“Most likely. When they get wind of what’s happened.”

It was difficult to make out whether Fred was delighted or annoyed at the publicity he was liable to receive.

“Anyhow, I’ll do all I can to help you. I suppose I’d better open as usual this evening? If you like to drop in, you can question all the others.”

When Maigret got back to the Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette, the police car was no longer there, and an ambulance was just taking away the girl’s body. A few idlers were hanging round the door, but not as many as he had expected.

Janvier was in the concierge’s lodge, making a telephone call. He rang off just as Maigret came in, and said:

“The report from Moulins has come through already. The Leleu couple—father and mother—are still living there, with their son, who’s a bank clerk. As for Jeanne Leleu, their daughter, she’s small, snub-nosed, dark-haired, left home three years ago, and hasn’t given a sign of life since. Her parents aren’t in the least interested.”

“The description doesn’t fit at a single point, does it?”

“No. She’s two inches shorter than Arlette, and she isn’t likely to have had her nose straightened.”

“No phone calls about the Countess?”

“Nothing at all. I’ve questioned all the tenants in Building B. There are a great many of them. The fat, fair-haired woman who watched us go upstairs is cloak-room attendant in a theatre. She makes out she isn’t interested in what goes on in the house, but she did hear someone go past a few minutes before the girl got home.”

“So she heard the girl go up? How did she know who it was?”

“Says she recognized the footstep. In actual fact she spends her time peering through the crack of her door.”

“Did she see the man?”

“She says she didn’t, but that he came upstairs slowly, as though he were very heavy or had a weak heart.”

“She didn’t hear him go down again?”

“No.”

“She’s quite sure it wasn’t one of the tenants from higher up the house?”

She knows the step of all the tenants. I saw Arlette’s neighbour, too—a waitress: I had to wake her up, and she hadn’t heard a thing.”

“Is that all?”

“Lucas phoned to say he was back in the office, waiting for instructions.”

“Finger-prints?”

“Only ours and Arlette’s. You’ll get the report sometime this evening.”

“You haven’t got an Oscar among your tenants?” Maigret asked “the concierge, on the off chance.

“No, Inspector. But once, a long time ago, I took a telephone message for Arlette. It was a man speaking, with a provincial accent, and he said: ‘Will you tell her Oscar is waiting for her at the usual place’.”

“About how long ago was that?”

“A month or two after she came to live here. It struck me particularly, because it was the only message that ever came for her.”

“Did she get any letters?”

“One from Brussels, now and then.”

“A man’s writing?”

“No, a woman’s. And not an educated one.”

Half an hour later, Maigret and Janvier were on their way upstairs at the Quai des Orfèvres, after stopping for a pint at the Brasserie Dauphine.

Maigret was hardly inside his office when young Lapointe rushed in, red-eyed, and agitated.

“I’ve got to speak to you at once, sir.”

Turning away from the cupboard where he had been hanging up his coat and hat, Maigret looked at the young man and saw that he was biting his lips and clenching his fists, to keep himself from bursting into tears.

H
e spoke between clenched teeth, with his back to Maigret and his face almost pressed against the window-pane.

“When I saw her here this morning, I wondered why she’d been brought in. Sergeant Lucas told me the story while we were on our way to Javel. And now I get back to the office, only to hear that she’s dead.”