Maigret's Dead Man (3 page)

‘Do you think you'll be gone
long?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Couldn't you send one of your
inspectors instead?'

When he opened the sideboard in the dining room,
she knew he was about to pour himself a tot of calvados. Then he came back for his pipes, which
he had forgotten.

The taxi was waiting for him. The Grands
Boulevards were almost deserted. A huge moon, far brighter than usual, hung over the green dome
of the Opera House.

Place de la Concorde. Two cars were parked one
behind the other along the kerb, near the Tuileries Gardens, and shadowy figures came and
went.

The first thing Maigret noticed as he got out of
the taxi was the smudge made by a beige raincoat on the silvery pavement.

Then, as police officers in capes stepped aside
and an inspector from the
arrondissement
advanced to meet him, he muttered:

‘So it wasn't a hoax. They really did
for him!'

The sound of lapping blew on a cool breeze off
the Seine, which was no distance away. Traffic emerging from Rue Royale moved noiselessly
towards the Champs-Élysées.

The electric sign outside Maxim's was a red
presence in the night.

‘Single wound with a knife, sir,'
said Inspector Lequeux,
whom Maigret knew well. ‘We were waiting for
you before we moved him.'

What was it at that moment that gave Maigret the
feeling that there was something here that was not quite right?

Place de la Concorde was too big, too light, too
airy with, at its centre, the tall, bold white needle of the obelisk. None of this seemed to
belong to the same world as the phone calls he had got that morning from the Caves du
Beaujolais, the Tabac des Vosges and the Quatre Sergents on Boulevard Beaumarchais.

Up to and including that last call and the note
handed in at the post office on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, the man had confined himself to a
part of town known for its narrow, well-populated streets.

Does a man who knows he is being followed, who
senses there is a murderer breathing down his neck and is expecting the fatal blow to fall at
any moment, suddenly switch to wide open spaces like Place de la Concorde?

‘You'll find that he wasn't
killed here …'

Confirmation would come an hour later when
Officer Piedbœuf, who had been on duty outside a nightclub in Rue de Douai, filed his
report.

A car had pulled up at the door of the club. In
it were two men in dinner suits and two women in evening clothes. All four were in high spirits,
slightly the worse for drink, one of the men in particular. As the others went inside, he turned
on his heel and came back.

‘Ah, officer … I don't know if
I'm doing the right thing saying this, because I don't want to ruin our evening. But
it can't be helped. You can make of it what you like. Just
now, as we
were driving across Place de la Concorde, the car in front of us stopped. I was driving and
slowed, thinking that it had broken down. They pulled something out of the car and dumped it on
the pavement. I think it was a body …

‘The car was a yellow Citroën, with a
Paris registration. The last two digits on the number plate were a 3 and an 8.'

At what point did Nine's husband become
Maigret's dead man, as he came to be known to everyone in the Police Judiciaire? Perhaps
it happened with what might be called their first encounter that night in Place de la Concorde.
Perhaps not, but Inspector Lequeux was very struck by the way Maigret had behaved. It was
difficult to put a finger on why his reaction was not entirely normal. The police are used to
dealing with violent death and unexpected corpses and handle them with professional detachment
– or sometimes with black humour, in the manner of off-duty junior doctors. But then
again, Maigret did not seem to be exactly grieving in the true sense of the word.

But why, for example, did he not begin by doing
what seemed natural and bend over the corpse? Before doing so, he took several pulls on his pipe
and stood in the middle of the group of uniformed police officers, chatting with Lequeux and
glancing casually at a young woman wearing a lamé dress under a mink coat who had just got
out of a car along with two men. She waited, her hand clutching the arm of one of the two men,
as if something else was about to happen.

It was only after some time had gone by that he
slowly headed towards the prone form of the beige smudge of the raincoat and leaned over it,
still unhurriedly, as he
would have done, as Inspector Lequeux would later
say, if the body had been a relative or a friend.

And when he straightened up again, his eyebrows
came together in a fierce scowl that made his anger abundantly clear. He asked questions with
such venom that he seemed to be holding everyone present responsible.

‘Who did this?'

Had it been done with fists or boots? There was
no telling which. However it was obvious that before or after killing the man with a knife,
someone had struck him repeatedly with such violence that his features were swollen, one lip had
been split and the whole of one side of his face had been knocked out of shape.

‘I'm waiting for the mortuary
van,' said Lequeux.

Without the injuries, the man's face would
have been unremarkable, fairly young and probably quite cheerful. Even in death, there were
traces of something open and honest in his expression.

Why did the woman in mink seem so shaken by the
sight of a foot wearing only a mauve sock? That shoeless foot looked incongruous lying on the
pavement next to another foot encased in a shoe made of black kid leather. It was naked,
private. It did not really seem dead. It was Maigret who retrieved the other shoe, which lay by
the kerb six or seven metres away.

After that, he did not speak again. While he
waited, he smoked. Curious bystanders mingled with the whispering group. Then the mortuary van
pulled up at the kerb, and two attendants lifted the body. Underneath it the paving stones were
bare, with no trace of blood.

‘Just write up your
report, Lequeux, and let me have it.'

Or was it now, as Maigret climbed into the front
seat of the van and left the others to themselves, that he really took possession of the dead
man?

That was how it was all night. That was how it
still was the next morning. It was as if the body belonged to him, that this dead man was his
dead man.

He had given instructions for Moers, one of the
experts from Criminal Records, to wait for him in the Forensic Institute. Moers was young, thin
and tall, with a face that never smiled and thick lenses which made his shy eyes look small.

‘To work, Moers …'

He had also summoned Dr Paul, who was due to
arrive at any moment. In addition to the two of them, there was only one attendant and, in their
refrigerated cabinets, the anonymous dead of Paris collected during the past few days.

The light was raw, little was said and the
movements of hands precise. They looked for all the world like conscientious workmen crouching
over some delicate night-time task.

They found virtually nothing in the pockets. A
packet of black tobacco and a tray of cigarette papers, a box of matches, a nondescript
penknife, a key of a not-very-recent design, a pencil and a handkerchief with an initial on it.
Some loose change in a trouser pocket but no wallet or any means of identification.

Moers removed the man's suit carefully
piece by piece and put each one in a bag made of waxed paper, which he
then
closed securely. He then proceeded to do the same with the shirt, shoes and socks. All items
were of average quality. The jacket bore the label of an outfitter's on Boulevard
Sébastopol which sold ready-made clothes. The colour of the trousers, which were newer, was
not a good match.

The dead man was naked when Dr Paul arrived,
beard neatly trimmed and clear eyed, despite being called out in the middle of the night.

‘Now, then, Maigret, what does this poor
man have to say for himself?'

Because it was now all about making the dead man
talk. It was routine. Normally, Maigret would have gone home to bed and would have found the
various reports on his desk the next morning.

But this time he insisted on being there for
everything, pipe in mouth, hands in pockets, bleary-eyed and half-asleep.

Before he could proceed, the doctor had to wait
for the photographers, who were late. Moers made the most of the delay to clean the
corpse's nails, hands and feet thoroughly, collect the smallest fragments and put them
into small bags, on which he wrote cabbalistic signs.

‘It won't be easy to make him look
chirpy,' observed the photographer after inspecting the dead man's face.

It was all still routine work. First, photos of
the body and the wound. Then, for publication in the newspapers for identification purposes, a
photo of the face, which had to be made to look as lifelike as possible. That is why the
mortician was busily applying make-up to the dead man,
who, in the ice-cold
light, looked even more deathly pale than ever, but with rosy cheeks and a mouth painted like a
street-walker's.

‘All yours, doc …'

‘Are you staying, Maigret?'

He stayed to the end. It was 6.30 in the morning
when Dr Paul and he went for a coffee in a little bar which had just opened its shutters.

‘I take it you do not want to wait for my
report … Tell me, is this an important case?'

‘I don't know.'

All round them, workmen, their eyes still full of
sleep, ate their croissants, and the early-morning fog pinned pearls of moisture on all their
overcoats. It was chilly. In the street, pedestrians were preceded by thin clouds of steam.
Lights went on in windows one after the other on the various floors of the houses.

‘First, I can tell you that he was a man
from an ordinary background …

‘He probably had a poor childhood and was
not particularly well looked after, if the evidence of bone and teeth formation is anything to
go by. His hands do not indicate what kind of work he did. They are strong but relatively well
cared for. He was probably not a manual labourer. Nor a clerk either, because his hands show no
traces, however slight, of the deformities which reveal that a person has spent much time
writing, either with a pen or a typewriter. On the other hand, his feet are sensitive, with low
arches, which points to someone who spent most of his life standing up.'

Maigret did not take notes;
the details were etched in his memory.

‘We now turn to a crucial question: when
the crime was committed. I can say without fear of contradiction that it took place between
eight and ten last night.'

Maigret had already been informed by phone of the
statements made by the late-night revellers and of the sighting of the yellow Citroën in
Place de la Concorde shortly after one in the morning.

‘Tell me, doctor, did you notice anything
unusual?'

‘What do you mean?'

The doctor with the almost legendary beard had
been a pathologist for thirty-five years and he was more familiar with criminal investigations
than most police officers.

‘The crime was not committed in Place de la
Concorde.'

‘That's obvious.'

‘It was probably committed in some
out-of-the-way place.'

‘Probably.'

‘Usually, when people take the risk of
moving a body, especially in a city like Paris, they are trying to hide it, to make it disappear
or at least to delay the time when it is found.'

‘You're right, Maigret. I
hadn't thought of that.'

‘But in this case, on the contrary, we have
people prepared to risk being caught or at the very least giving us a lead, by dumping a corpse
in the middle of Paris, in the most highly visible spot where, even in the middle of the night,
it could not remain ten minutes without being found.'

‘In other words, the
murderers wanted it to be found. That's what you're thinking, am I right?'

‘Not exactly. But it doesn't
matter.'

‘Even so, they took some steps to ensure
the body could not easily be identified. The damage to the face was not done by bare fists but
with a heavy instrument the nature of which I am not unfortunately able to determine.'

‘Was it done before death?'

‘After … A few minutes
after.'

‘Are you sure it was only minutes
after?'

‘Less than half an hour, I'd swear to
it. But now, Maigret, there is another detail which I will probably not include in my report
because I am not sure of my ground and have no wish to be challenged by lawyers when this
business comes to court. I spent some time examining the wound, as you saw. Now, I've
examined several hundred knife wounds in my time. I'd swear this one was not delivered
unexpectedly.

‘Imagine that there are two men standing,
arguing about something. They are facing each other, and one of them stabs the other man. It
would be impossible for him to make a wound like the one I've just examined. The blow was
not to the victim's back, either.

‘But suppose that a man is seated, or even
standing, but with his mind fully occupied with something else. Someone could creep up quietly
on him from behind, put one arm around him and with the other strike hard with the knife,
choosing his spot exactly.

‘Or to be even more specific, it's as
if the victim had been tied up or held down so that he could not move, as
if
someone had then, literally, “carved” him … Are you with me?'

‘I'm with you.'

But Maigret knew very well that Nine's
husband had not been taken by surprise, for he had been eluding his murderers for twenty-four
hours.

What for the doctor was a problem of a more or
less theoretical nature was in Maigret's eyes a matter of much more immediate human
import.

It so happened that he had heard the man's
voice. He had almost seen him. He had certainly followed him step by step, bar by bar, on his
mad progress through certain parts of Paris, always the same ones, in the area between
Châtelet and Bastille.

The two men were now walking along the bank of
the river, Maigret smoking his pipe and Dr Paul cigarette after cigarette – he smoked
constantly while performing autopsies and would tell anyone who asked that tobacco is the best
antiseptic. Dawn was just appearing in the sky. Strings of barges were beginning to pass down
the Seine. Down-and-outs were seen, numbed by the night cold, climbing stiff-limbed up the steps
from the embankment, where they had slept under a bridge.

‘The man was killed shortly after his last
meal, maybe immediately.'

‘Do you know what he ate?'

‘Pea soup, Provençal creamed salt
cod-and-potato pie and an apple. He had drunk white wine. I also found traces of spirits in his
stomach.'

Oddly enough, they were now passing in front of
the
Caves du Beaujolais. The landlord had only just taken the wooden
shutters inside. They could see the dark interior and caught the smell of stale wine.

‘Are you going home now?' asked the
doctor, who was about to hail a taxi.

‘I'm going up to Criminal
Records.'

The tall building on Quai des Orfèvres was
almost empty. Teams of sweepers were at work in the corridors and on staircases, where the
winter dampness still lingered.

In his office, Maigret found Lucas, who had just
fallen asleep in his armchair.

‘Any developments?'

‘The papers have got the photo. Only a few
will publish it in the morning edition because they didn't receive it early
enough.'

‘Anything on the car?'

‘I'm looking into my third yellow
Citroën, but none fit the bill.'

‘Have you phoned Janvier?'

‘He'll be here at eight to take over
from me.'

‘If anyone asks for me, I'll be
upstairs … Tell the switchboard that all calls are to be put through directly to me
…'