The Most Obstinate Customer In The World

1
The ‘Cafe des Ministères’, or Joseph’s Domain

The records of the police knew nothing like it; nobody had ever shown as much obstinacy or vanity in displaying himself from every angle, in posing as it were for hours on end – sixteen succesive hours, to be exact – and in attracting, whether deliberately or not, the attention of dozens of people, to such a degree that Inspector Janvier, who had been called in, had gone up for a closer look. And yet when it came to reconstructing his appearance, the image remembered was an utterly vague and hazy one.

So much so that to some people – who were not particularly fanciful – this self-display seemed like a particularly cunning and original ruse.

However, it is essential to go over that day, 3 May, hour by hour; it was a warm, sunny day with that special thrill in the air that belongs to Paris in the spring; and from morning till night the honeyed scent of the chestnut trees on the Boulevard Saint-Germain drifted into the cool café.

It was at 8 a.m. as usual that Joseph opened the café doors. He was in shirt-sleeves and a waistcoat. The floor was covered with the sawdust he had sprinkled there at closing time on the previous evening, and chairs were piled high on the marble tables.

For the Café des Ministères, at the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Rue des Saints-Pères, is one of the few old-fashioned cafés that still exist in Paris. It has not pandered to the vogue for bars serving quick drinks to casual customers, nor to the contemporary taste for gilt decorations, indirect lighting, pillars covered with looking-glass and little tables of some plastic material.

It is the typical café where regular customers have their own tables, their favourite corners, their games of draughts or chess, and where Joseph the waiter knows everyone by name: mostly head clerks or civil servants from the nearby Government offices.

And Joseph himself is quite a character. He has been a waiter for thirty years, and one cannot imagine him wearing a business suit like other people; one might not recognize him in the street if one met him in the suburb where he has built himself a little house.

Eight in the morning is cleaning-up time; the double door on to the Boulevard Saint-Germain is wide open; part of the pavement is in broad sunlight, but a cool, blue-hazed shadow prevails inside.

Joseph smokes a cigarette. This is the only moment in the day when he allows himself to smoke on the premises. He lights the gas under the percolator, which he then polishes till it gleams like a mirror. There is a whole series of almost ritual acts which are performed in an unchanging order: bottles of spirits and apéritifs to be lined up on the shelf, the sawdust to be swept up, the chairs to be set out round the tables…

At eight ten exactly, the man came in. Joseph was bending over his percolator and did not see him enter, which he subsequently regretted. Did the man hurry in as though he were escaping from somebody? Why did he choose the Café des Ministères, when on the opposite side of the street there is a café with a bar where, at this time of day, you can buy croissants and rolls, and which is swarming with people?

Joseph said, later:

‘I turned round and I saw somebody standing in the middle of the café, a man wearing a grey hat and carrying a small suitcase.’

Actually, although the café door was open, the place itself was not strictly speaking open yet; nobody ever came in so early, the coffee was not ready, the water was barely warm in the percolator and the chairs were still stacked on the tables.

‘I can’t serve you for another half-hour at least,’ Joseph had said.

He thought that would settle it. But the man, still clutching his case, picked up a chair from one of the tables and sat down, quite calmly, like someone who is not going to change his mind, and muttered:

‘Never mind.’

That in itself was enough to put Joseph in a bad temper. He’s like those housewives who detest having someone in their way when they are turning out a room. Cleaning-up time is his own special time. And he grumbled between his teeth:

‘I’m going to keep you waiting for your coffee!’

Until nine o’clock he carried on with his usual jobs, occasionally casting a furtive glance at his customer. A score of times he passed quite close to him, brushed up against him and even jostled him a little as he swept up the sawdust or removed chairs from tables.

Then, at two or three minutes past nine, he resigned himself to serving the man a cup of piping hot coffee with a small jug of milk and two lumps of sugar in a saucer.

‘Have you any croissants?’

‘You can get some across the street.’

‘Never mind.’

Oddly enough, this stubborn customer, who must have been well aware that he was in the way, that this was not the moment to be settling down at the Café des Ministères, displayed a certain humility that was somehow endearing.

There was something else which Joseph was beginning to appreciate, used as he was to the various types of people who come to sit around in his café. Although he had been there for a whole hour, the man had not drawn a newspaper from his pocket nor asked for one, he had not found it necessary to consult the Bottin or the telephone directory, he had made no effort to enter into conversation with the waiter; he did not cross and uncross his legs, and he did not smoke.

It is excessively unusual to find anyone capable of sitting for an hour in a café without moving, without constantly checking the time, without displaying impatience in some way or another. If he was waiting for someone, he was waiting with remarkable placidity.

At ten o’clock, when the cleaning was finished, the man was still there. Another curious detail was that he had not chosen a seat by the windows, but at the far end of the room, close to the mahogany staircase that leads down to the lavatories. Joseph himself went down for a wash and brush-up. He had already turned the handle to let down the orange awning that shed a slight glow through the dark café.

Before going down he jingled some coins in his waistcoat pocket, hoping that his customer would take the hint, and make up his mind to pay and leave.

Nothing of the sort happened, and Joseph went down, changed his dickey and his collar, combed his hair and put on his short alpaca jacket.

When he came back the man was still sitting there in front of his empty cup. The cashier, Mademoiselle Berthe, appeared and settled down at her desk, took a few bits and pieces out of her bag and began to set out the telephone tokens in neat piles.

‘I felt he was somebody very gentle, very respectable, and yet it seemed to me that his moustache was dyed like the Colonel’s.’

For the man had short, upturned moustaches, probably twisted with curling-tongs, and of a bluish black that suggested dye.

Another regular morning ritual is the delivery of ice. A huge fellow with a canvas sack over his shoulder brings in the opalescent blocks from which a few limpid drops are trickling, and sets them in the icebox.

He, too, noticed the solitary customer, and later said of him:

‘He reminded me of a seal.’

Why a seal? That the delivery-man was never able to specify.

As for Joseph, still following a changeless time-table, he took down yesterday’s newspapers from the long handles to which they were attached and replaced them with today’s.

‘Would you mind giving me one?’

The customer had actually spoken, in a low, almost timid voice.

‘Which would you like? Le Temps? Figaro? Les Débats?’

‘I don’t mind.’

This made Joseph think that the man was probably not a native Parisian. He couldn’t have been a foreigner either, for he had no accent. More likely a visitor from the provinces. But there was no station near by. If he had got off a train before eight in the morning, why had he come halfway across Paris with his suitcase to settle down in a café he did not know? For Joseph, who has an excellent memory for faces, was sure he had never seen the man before. Strangers who drop into the Café des Ministères are immediately made aware that they are not at home, and go away again.

Eleven o’clock; the time when the proprietor, Monsieur Monnet, comes down from his flat, newly shaved, fresh-complexioned, his grey hair sleekly brushed, wearing a grey suit and his everlasting patent-leather shoes. He could have retired from business a long time ago. He has set up cafés in the provinces for each of his children. If he stays here, it is because this corner of the Boulevard Saint-Germain is the only place in the world where he can bear to live and because his customers are his friends.

‘Everything all right, Joseph?’

He immediately spotted the customer and his cup of coffee. A questioning look came into his eye. And the waiter whispered, behind the bar:

‘He’s been here since eight o’clock.’

Monsieur Monnet walked to and fro past the stranger, rubbing his hands, which is a kind of invitation to open a conversation. Monsieur Monnet likes to chat with all his customers, to play cards or dominoes with them; he knows all their family problems and office gossip.

The man did not bat an eyelid.

‘He looked to me very tired, like someone who has had a sleepless night on the train,’ Monsieur Monnet was later to declare.

When Maigret asked all three of them – Joseph, Mademoiselle Berthe and Monsieur Monnet – whether the man seemed to be watching for someone in the street, their answers were very different.

‘No,’ said Monsieur Monnet.

‘I got the impression he was expecting a lady,’ said the cashier.

And Joseph declared:

‘Several times I caught him looking across to the bar over the way, but he always dropped his eyes immediately.’

At eleven twenty he ordered a glass of Vichy. Some customers drink mineral waters; one knows them, one knows why: people like Monsieur Blanc from the War Ministry who are on a diet. Joseph noted automatically that this fellow neither smoked nor drank, which is pretty uncommon.

Then, for a couple of hours or so, they paid no more attention to him, because it was apéritif time; regular customers began to flock in, and the waiter knew beforehand what to serve each one of them, and which tables must be provided with cards.

‘Waiter…’

One o’clock. The man was still there, having slipped his suitcase underneath the red velvet seat. Joseph pretended to think he was being asked for the bill, and after reckoning in an undertone, announced:

‘Eight francs fifty.’

‘Can you let me have a sandwich?’

‘I’m sorry, we don’t serve them.’

‘You haven’t any rolls either?’

‘We don’t serve any food.’

It was not strictly true. Occasionally in the evening a party of bridge players who have not had time for dinner are provided with ham sandwiches. This, however, is exceptional.

The man nodded, murmuring:

‘It doesn’t matter.’

This time Joseph was struck by the quivering of his lips, by the sad, resigned expression on his face.

‘Can I bring you something else?’

‘Another coffee, with plenty of milk.’

Because he was hungry, and milk would at any rate provide a little nourishment. He had not asked for any other newspaper. He had had time to read his from the first line to the last, including the small ads.

The Colonel turned up and was annoyed to find the stranger sitting in his place; for the Colonel, who hated the slightest draught and who maintained that spring draughts are always the most treacherous, always liked to sit at the far end of the room.

Jules, the second waiter, who had only been three years in the profession and who would never look like a real café waiter, came on duty at half-past one, while Joseph went through the glazed door to eat the lunch sent down for him from the first floor.

Why did Jules think the stranger looked like one of those men who sell rugs and peanuts?

‘I didn’t think he looked straight. I thought he’d got a shifty look, and something soft and smarmy about his expression. If it had been up to me I’d have sent him off to the nearest crémerie.’

Some customers noticed the man and were to notice him even more when they found him still there in the evening.

All this evidence came from amateur witnesses, so to speak. But it so happened that a professional observer also gave evidence, which proved as inconclusive as everyone else’s.

For about ten years, at the start of his career, Joseph had been a waiter at the Brasserie Dauphine, a stone’s throw from the Quai des Orfèvres, and a favourite haunt of most detectives of the Police Judiciaire. He had become a close friend of one of Maigret’s best colleagues, Inspector Janvier, and he had married Janvier’s sister-in-law, so that they were practically relatives.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, seeing his customer still in the same place, Joseph began to get really cross. He conjectured that if the fellow showed such obstinacy it must be not through love of the atmosphere of the Café des Ministères, but because he had some good reason not to leave it.

When he got off the train, Joseph argued, he must have felt himself being shadowed and come in for safety’s sake to escape the police.

Joseph therefore rang up Police Headquarters and asked to speak to Janvier.

‘I’ve got a queer sort of customer here who’s been sitting in a corner since eight o’clock this morning and seems determined not to budge. He’s had nothing to eat. Don’t you think you’d better come over and have a look at him?’

Janvier, ever conscientious, collected the latest reports with photographs and descriptions of wanted persons, and came along to the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

By a strange chance, the café happened to be empty when he came in.

‘Has he flown?’ he asked Joseph.

But the waiter pointed to the basement. ‘He’s just asked for a telephone token and gone to make a call.’

This was a pity; a few minutes earlier it would have been possible, by contacting the switchboard, to find out to whom and about what he was telephoning. Janvier sat down and ordered a calvados. The man came upstairs again and went back to his place, as calm as ever, somewhat preoccupied but showing no signs of anxiety. It even seemed to Joseph, who was beginning to know him, that he was somewhat relaxed.

For twenty minutes Janvier scrutinized him from head to foot. He had plenty of time to compare that rather plump, flabby face with all the photographs of wanted persons. Finally he shrugged his shoulders.

‘He’s not on our lists,’ he told Joseph. ‘He looks to me like some poor devil who’s been stood up by a woman. He must be an insurance agent or something of the sort.’

Janvier even went on to joke:

‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s a traveller for a firm of undertakers… In any case I’m not entitled to ask him to show his papers. There’s no regulation to prevent him from staying in the café as long as he likes and doing without lunch.’

Janvier stayed a little longer gossiping with Joseph and then went back to Police Headquarters, where he conferred with Maigret about an illegal gambling concern, but did not mention the man in the Café des Ministères.

In spite of the awning over the windows, rays of sunlight were now slanting into the café. By five o’clock, three tables were occupied by people playing belote. The proprietor himself was playing at one of them, just opposite the stranger, at whom he cast a glance from time to time.

By six o’clock the place was full. Joseph and Jules went from one table to another with their trays loaded with bottles and glasses, and the sharp odour of pernod conflicted with the over-sweet scent of the boulevard chestnut-trees.

At this point, each of the two waiters had his own sector. It so happened that the man’s table was in Jules’s sector, and Jules was less observant than his colleague. Moreover, he liked to slip behind the bar from time to time for a glass of white wine, so that from quite early on in the evening he tended to confuse things. All that he could say was that a woman had come.

‘She was dark, nicely dressed, respectable-looking, not one of those women who come into a café in order to start a conversation with customers.’

On the whole, in Jules’s view, the sort of woman who only goes into a public place because she has arranged to meet her husband there. There were three or four tables still unoccupied. She had sat down at the one next to the stranger’s.

‘I’m sure they didn’t speak to one another. She ordered a port. I think I recollect that besides her handbag – it was a brown or black leather bag – she was carrying a little parcel. I saw it on the table to begin with. When I brought her drink it wasn’t there; she’d probably, laid it down on the seat.’

A pity! Joseph would have liked to have seen her. Mademoiselle Berthe, from the height of her pay-desk, had noticed the woman too.

‘She looked quite a lady, hardly any make-up, in a blue suit with a white blouse, but I don’t know why, I thought she wasn’t a married woman.’

Until dinner time, around eight o’clock, there was a constant coming and going. Then the room began to empty. By nine o’clock only six tables were occupied, four of them by chess players, two by bridge players who came regularly every evening for a game.

‘What’s certain,’ Joseph was later to assert, ‘is that the chap knows how to play bridge and chess. I’d even bet he’s a good player. I could see that from the way he watched his neighbours and followed the games.’

Had he been relatively carefree then, or was Joseph mistaken?

At ten o’clock, only three tables were occupied. Men from Ministries tend to go to bed early. At half-past ten Jules went home, for his wife was expecting a baby, and he had arranged with his colleague to get off early.

The man was still there. Since eight ten in the morning he had drunk three coffees, a bottle of Vichy and one lemonade. He had not smoked. He had drunk no spirits. In the morning he had read Le Temps. In the afternoon he had bought an evening paper from a newsboy who had come into the café.

At 11 p.m. as usual, although two card games were still going on, Joseph began stacking the chairs on the tables and spreading sawdust on the floor.

Shortly afterwards, having finished his game, Monsieur Monnet shook hands with his companions – including the Colonel – and went up to bed, carrying the day’s takings in a canvas bag in which Mademoiselle Berthe had put away banknotes and change.

As he left he glanced at the persistent customer about whom most of the regulars had been talking during the evening, and he said to Joseph:

‘If he’s a nuisance, don’t hesitate to ring…’

For behind the counter there is an electric bell connected with his private rooms.

That, in short, was all. When Maigret began his enquiry next day he could elicit no further information.

Mademoiselle Berthe left at ten minutes to eleven to catch the last bus to Epinay, where she lived. She, too, had cast a final curious glance at the man.

‘I can’t say he struck me as being nervous. But he wasn’t calm, either. If I’d met him in the street, for instance, I’d have been afraid of him, if you see what I mean? And if he’d got off the bus at Epinay at the same time as me I shouldn’t have dared go home alone.’

‘Why?’

‘He had a sort of inward look…’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘He seemed to be indifferent to everything that was going on around him.’

‘Were the shutters closed?’

‘No, Joseph only closes them at the last minute.’

‘From where you sit you could see the corner of the street and the café-bar over the way… Did you notice any suspicious comings and goings? Did anybody seem to be keeping a look-out for your customer?’

‘I shouldn’t have noticed… Although things are quiet enough on the Boulevard Saint-Germain side, people are on the go all the time along the Rue des Saints-Pères… And in the café-bar they’re constantly going in and out.’

‘Did you see nobody as you left?’

‘Nobody… Yes, though; there was a policeman at the corner of the street.’

This was confirmed by the local police station. Unfortunately the officer on duty had been relieved shortly after.

Only two tables still occupied… A couple had come in for a drink after the pictures, regular customers, a doctor and his wife who lived three doors further down and who often dropped in at the Café des Ministères on their way home. They quickly paid and left.

The doctor commented later:

‘We were sitting just in front of him, and I noticed that he looked ill.’

‘What sort of illness, in your opinion?’

‘Liver trouble, undoubtedly.’

‘How old do you think he was?’

‘It’s hard to say, for I didn’t pay as much attention as I now wish I had. To my mind, he was one of those men who look older than they are… You might say forty-five or more, because of those dyed moustaches.’

‘They were dyed, then?’

‘I suppose so… But I’ve had patients of thirty-five who already had the same flabby colourless flesh, that lifeless air…’

‘Couldn’t he have looked lifeless because he hadn’t eaten all day?’

‘Maybe… But I stick to my diagnosis: a bad digestion, a bad liver, and I’d add bad bowels…’

The game at the last table was interminable. Three times it looked like ending, and three times the declarer failed to fulfil his contract. A five of clubs doubled and unexpectedly successful, owing to the nervousness of a player who set free dummy’s long suit, finally brought the game to a close at ten minutes to twelve.

‘Closing time, gentlemen,’ Joseph said politely, piling the last chairs on to the tables.

The card-players paid their bills, and the man still did not move. At that point, the waiter felt frightened, as he subsequently admitted. He almost asked the regulars to stay a few minutes longer, until he had got rid of the stranger.

He dared not do so, for the four card-players left together still discussing the game, and lingered for a moment’s chat at the corner of the boulevard before finally separating.

‘Eighteen francs seventy-five.’

The two of them were alone together in the café, where Joseph had already switched off half the lights.

As he later confessed to Maigret:

‘I’d noticed a siphon at the corner of the bar and if he’d made a move, I’d have broken it over his head…’

‘You’d put the siphon there on purpose, hadn’t you?’

That was obvious. Sixteen hours in the company of this enigmatic customer had reduced Joseph’s nerves to shreds. He had come to think of the man as a sort of personal enemy, who was only there to do him an injury, who was waiting till they were alone to attack him and rob him.

And yet Joseph had made a mistake. As the customer, without rising from his seat, hunted deliberately in his pockets for money, the waiter, afraid of missing his bus, went to turn the handle that lowered the shutters. It is true that the door was still wide open, letting in the cool night air, and that there were still a number of people passing on the pavement of the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

‘Here you are, waiter…’

Twenty-one francs. A two franc twenty-five tip after a whole day! The waiter nearly flung the money down on the table in a fury, and only his well-trained professional conscience prevented him.

‘Perhaps you were a bit afraid of him, too,’ Maigret suggested.

‘I don’t know about that… At any rate I was in a hurry to get rid of him… Never in all my life has a customer made me as mad as that one did… If I could have foreseen, in the morning, that he was going to stay there all day!’

‘Where were you, exactly, when he went out?’

‘Let’s see… For one thing, I had to remind him that he had a suitcase under the seat, for he was on the point of forgetting it.’

‘Did he seem annoyed at being reminded?’

‘No…’

‘Relieved?’

‘Not that either… Indifferent… Talk about keeping calm! I’ve had customers of all sorts, but fancy sitting still for sixteen hours in front of a marble table without getting pins and needles in your legs!’

‘So where were you?’

‘Beside the cash-desk. I was paying the eighteen francs seventy-five into the till… You’ll have noticed that there are two doors, one big double door opening on to the boulevard, and a smaller one opening on to the Rue des Saints-Pères. I nearly told him he was making a mistake when I saw him going out by the little door, then I shrugged my shoulders because, after all, I didn’t care… Now I could get changed and shut up the place.’

‘In which hand was he holding his case?’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘And did you notice whether he had one hand in his pocket?’

‘I don’t know… He wasn’t wearing an overcoat… I couldn’t see because the tables stacked with chairs hid him from me… He went out…’

‘You were still in the same place?’

‘Yes… Here, exactly… I was taking the check out of the till… With my other hand I was pulling the last counters out of my pocket… I heard a bang… Not much louder than what goes on all day, when cars backfire… But I understood all the same that it was not a car… I said to myself: “Well, so he’s got himself bumped off after all.”

‘One thinks very fast on such occasions… I’ve often had to witness some rather nasty fights; it’s part of my job… I’ve always been amazed how fast one’s mind works…

‘I blamed myself for it… For after all he was just a poor fellow who’d taken refuge here because he knew he’d get bumped off as soon as he stuck his nose outside the door…

‘I felt guilty… He’d eaten nothing… Perhaps he hadn’t any money to get a taxi and jump into it before being shot at by the chap who was waiting for him…’

‘Did you rush out?’

‘Well, to tell you the truth…’ Joseph looked embarrassed. ‘I think I waited a few minutes to think it over… I’ve a wife and three kids, you understand?… First I pressed the electric bell that rings in the boss’s room… Outside I heard people hurrying, voices… one woman was saying: “Don’t you get mixed up in it, Gaston…” Then a policeman’s whistle.

‘I went out. There were three people standing there in the Rue des Saints-Pères, a little way from the door.’

‘Eight metres away,’ Maigret specified after consulting the report.

‘It’s possible… I didn’t measure… A man was crouching beside a figure lying on the ground… I only learnt later that it was a doctor on his way back from the theatre, who happens to be one of our customers…A good many doctors are customers of ours…

‘He got up saying: “He’s had it… The bullet went in at the back of his neck and came out through the left eye.”

‘The policeman arrived. I knew I was going to be questioned.

‘Believe it or not, I dared not look on the ground… The thought of that left eye made me feel particularly sick… I didn’t want to see my customer again in that state, with his eye out of his head…

‘I kept thinking that it was somehow my fault, that I ought to have… But what exactly could I have done?

‘I can still hear the voice of the policeman asking, with his notebook in his hand: “Does anyone know him?”

‘And I said automatically: “I do… At least I believe I…”

‘At last I did bend over him to have a look, and I swear to you, Monsieur Maigret, you who’ve known me such a long time, seeing how many thousands of glasses of beer and calvados I’ve served you with at the Brasserie Dauphine, I swear to you that I never had such a shock in my life.

‘It wasn’t him!’

‘It was a fellow I didn’t know, that I’d never seen before, a tall thin chap, and on a lovely day like yesterday, on a night so mild you could sleep outside, he was wearing a fawn raincoat…

‘It was a relief… Silly of me maybe, but I was glad not to have made that mistake… If my customer had been the victim instead of the murderer I’d have blamed myself for it all my life long…

‘Since first thing that morning, you see, I’d felt there was something fishy about that fellow… I’d have sworn to it… That was why I rang up Janvier… Only Janvier, although he’s practically my brother-in-law, he’s a stickler for regulations… Suppose when I sent for him he’d asked to see the customer’s papers… They surely weren’t in order.

‘An ordinary decent person doesn’t spend a whole day in a café and end up shooting somebody on the pavement at midnight…

‘He didn’t take long to disappear, you’ll notice. Nobody saw him after that shot.

‘If it wasn’t him who fired, he’d have stayed there… He’d not had time to go ten metres when I heard the shot…

‘What I’m wondering is what the woman was up to, the one Jules served with a glass of port. For I’ve no doubt she came in on account of that fellow… We don’t get many women on their own… We’re not that sort of place.’

‘I understood they hadn’t spoken to one another,’ Maigret objected.

‘They wouldn’t have needed to talk!… She had a small parcel when she came in; Jules noticed it, and Jules isn’t a liar… He saw it on the table, then he didn’t see it, and he assumed she’d laid it down on the seat… And Mademoiselle Berthe watched the lady going out, because she liked the look of her handbag and wished she had one like it. And Mademoiselle Berthe did not notice her carrying any parcel. That’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t escape a woman’s eye, you’ll admit.

‘You can say what you like, I can’t help feeling that I spent a whole day with a murderer and that I’ve probably had a narrow escape…’

2
The Man Who Drank White Wine and the Lady Who Ate Snails

Paris was blessed, next day, with one of those days such as spring brings only three or four times each year, when it deigns to make an effort; one of those days which one ought to enjoy without doing anything else, as one savours a sorbet; the sort of day one remembers from one’s childhood. Everything was pleasant, light, heady, having a very special quality: the blue of the sky, the floating softness of the few clouds, the caressing breeze that met one suddenly at a street corner and that set the chestnuts quivering just enough to make one raise one’s head and look at their clusters of honeyed flowers. A cat on a window-sill, a dog lying on the pavement, a cobbler in his leather apron standing in his doorway, an ordinary green and yellow bus sailing past, everything was precious that day, everything made one’s heart rejoice, and that was no doubt why Maigret retained all his life a delightful memory of the crossroads of the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Rue des Saints-Pères, and why, later on, he would often pause at a certain café to sit in the shade and drink a glass of beer which, unfortunately, seemed to have lost its flavour.

As for the case, it had quite unexpectedly become famous, less on account of the inexplicable obstinacy of the man who sat in the Café des Ministères or the shot fired at midnight than because of the motive for the crime.

At eight o’clock next morning, the Superintendent was in his office with all its windows wide open on to the blue and golden panorama of the Seine, and he was studying reports while smoking his pipe in greedy little puffs. It was thus that he made his first contact with the man from the Café des Ministères and with the one who had been killed in the Rue des Saints-Pères.

The local police had done a good job during the night. The police surgeon, Dr. Paul, had performed a post mortem at six that morning. The bullet, which had been recovered on the pavement – the case had also been found, almost at the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, close to the wall – had already been submitted to the ballistics expert, Gastinne-Renette.

And now on Maigret’s desk there lay the dead man’s clothes, the contents of his pockets and a number of photographs taken on the spot by the representatives of the Records Department.

‘Come into my office, will you, Janvier? I see from the report that you’re somewhat involved in the case.’

And so Maigret and Janvier were to be inseparable that day, as so often before.

The victim’s clothes, in the first place: they were of good quality, less worn than appeared at first sight, but shockingly uncared for. The clothes of a man living alone, always wearing the same suit, which was never brushed and was even occasionally slept in. The shirt, which was new and had never been laundered, had been worn for a week at least, and the socks were as bad.

There were no identity papers in the pockets, no letters or documents making it possible to identify the stranger, but a collection of peculiar objects: a penknife with many blades, a corkscrew, a dirty handkerchief, a button off the man’s coat, a key, an old pipe and a tobacco pouch; a wallet containing 2,350 francs and a photograph of a native hut in Africa, with half a dozen bare-bosomed black women staring at the camera; bits of string and a third class railway ticket from Juvisy to Paris, dated the previous day.

Finally, a child’s printing set with an ink pad and rubber letters making up the words: i’ll get you.

The pathologist’s report included some interesting details. First, as regards the crime: the shot had been fired from behind, barely three metres away, and death had been instantaneous.

Secondly, the body bore a number of scars, including on the feet the marks left by ‘jiggers’, those ticks peculiar to Central Africa which burrow into a man’s toes and have to be dug out with a knife.

The liver was in a deplorble state, a real alcoholic’s liver, and furthermore it was established that the man suffered from malaria.

‘So there we are!’ said Maigret, looking for his hat. ‘Off we go, Janvier old man.’

They walked together to the scene of the crime; through the windows of the café, they saw Joseph doing his morning clean-up.

The Superintendent’s first visit, however, was to the café across the street. The two establishments which faced one another at the corner of the Rue des Saints-Pères could not have been more different. Whereas Joseph’s domain was old-fashioned and quiet, the other, which bore the name Chez Léon, was aggressively and vulgarly modern.

Needless to say, it included a long bar where two waiters in shirtsleeves were kept busy serving cups of coffee and glasses of white wine, to be followed later by draughts of red and aniseed-flavoured apéritifs.

There were pyramids of croissants, sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs… The patron and his wife took it in turns to preside over the tobacco-stall at the end of the counter; the room itself had pillars of red and gold mosaic, tables of some indeterminate substance with garish shimmering colours, and seats covered with embossed velvet of the crudest red.

Here, all doors open on to the street, there was a coming and going from morning till night. People came in and out, building workers in dusty overalls, deliverymen who left their carrier-tricycles by the curb for a moment, clerks and typists, people who were thirsty and others who wanted to use the telephone.

‘One coffee!… Two beaujolais!… Three beers!’

The till never stopped working, and the waiters mopped their sweating brows with the cloths they used to wipe the counter. Glasses were plunged for an instant into the turbid water in the pewter bowls, then filled anew, without even being wiped dry, with red or white wine.

‘Two dry white wines,’ ordered Maigret, who enjoyed all this morning hubbub.

And the white wine had that particular coarse tang only to be savoured in bistros of this kind.

‘Tell me, waiter… Do you remember this man’s face?’

The Records Office had done a good job; a sordid task, but a necessary and extremely tricky one. The photograph of a dead man is always difficult to recognize, particularly if the face has suffered some injury. So the gentlemen from the Identité Judiciaire make up the corpse’s face and touch up the print so that it looks like the portrait of a living man.

‘That’s him, isn’t it, Louis?’

And the other waiter, dishcloth in hand, came to have a look over the shoulder of his mate.

‘That’s him!… He was such a bloody nuisance all day yesterday that we can’t fail to recognize him.’

‘Do you know what time he first came in here?’

‘That’s harder to say…You don’t notice casual customers…But I remember that by ten o’clock in the morning this chap was all worked up… He couldn’t keep still… He would come up to the bar, order a glass of the white, toss it off and pay… then he’d go outside. You thought you were rid of him and ten minutes later there he was again, sitting in the café and calling for another glass of white.’

‘Did he spend the whole day like that?’

‘I really believe he did… At any rate, I saw him at least ten or fifteen times… Getting more and more edgy, looking at you in a funny way, and his fingers shaking like an old woman’s when he held out the money…Didn’t he break one of your glasses, Louis?’

‘Yes… And he insisted on picking up all the bits out of the sawdust, saying: “It was white wine… That’s lucky, old man! And you see I need something to bring me luck today… Have you ever been to Gabon, young man?” ’

‘He talked about Gabon to me too,’ the other waiter broke in, ‘I can’t remember in what connection… Oh yes, it was when he began eating hard-boiled eggs. He ate twelve or thirteen, one after the other… I was afraid he’d choke, particularly as he’d already had a lot to drink…

‘ “Don’t you worry kid,” he said. “Once in Gabon I bet I’d eat thirty-six of them with as many glasses of beer, and I won the bet…” ’

‘Did he seem anxious?’

‘Depends on what you mean by that. He kept going out and coming back. I thought at first he must be waiting for someone. He kept sniggering to himself as though he were telling himself funny stories. He got hold of an old chap who comes every afternoon for a couple of drinks, and he held him by his lapel for God knows how long…’

‘Did you know he was armed?’

‘How could I have guessed?’

‘Because a man of that sort is quite capable of showing off his gun to everybody!’

He’d had one, in fact, a big revolver from which no shots had been fired and which had been found lying beside his body on the pavement.

‘Another two glasses of white wine.’

And Maigret was in such a cheerful humour that he could not resist the pleas of a little barefoot flower seller, a thin grimy little girl with the loveliest eyes in the world. He bought a bunch of violets from her and then, not knowing what to do with it, stuck it into his jacket pocket.

A good deal of drinking went on that day, it must be confessed. For Maigret and Janvier now had to cross the street and enter the Café des Ministères, with its dim light and its special flavour, and Joseph hurried up to greet them.

Here they were concerned to establish the appearance of the man with the little suitcase and the dyed moustache; a picture increasingly hazy, or rather one which gave the impression of a blurred photograph, or one on which several snapshots have been superimposed.

None of their witnesses agreed. Everyone had a different picture of the customer, and now there was even a fresh witness, the Colonel, who swore that the man had looked like somebody who was up to no good.

To some people he had seemed excited, to others amazingly calm. Maigret listened, nodded, filled his pipe with a meticulous forefinger, and lit it with little puffs, screwing up his eyes with delight at the lovely day that heaven had graciously granted to mankind.

‘The woman…’

‘You mean the young lady?’

For to Joseph, who had scarcely seen her, she had been a pretty young girl from a comfortable background.

‘I’m sure she’s not a working girl.’

He could visualize her, rather, preparing dainty sweets and pastries in a bourgeois household. Mademoiselle Berthe, the cashier, on the other hand, expressed some doubts, saying:

‘I shouldn’t bank on her being an angel… But she’s certainly worth two of him.’

There were moments when Maigret felt a longing to stretch, such as one feels in the country when one’s whole being is soaked in sunshine, and everything delighted him about the Boulevard Saint-Germain that morning: the buses stopping and starting, the ritual gesture of the conductor reaching for his bell as soon as the passengers were all on, the grating sound of brakes and gears, the waving shadow of chestnut-tree branches on the asphalt pavement.

‘I bet she didn’t go very far!’ he muttered to Janvier, who was annoyed at not being able to give a more specific description of the man in spite of having looked so closely at him.

And they stood waiting for a while on the edge of the pavement. The two cafés, each at one corner of the street… A man in one of them, a man in the other… It seemed as though chance had set each of them in the appropriate atmosphere. Here, the little fellow with the moustache, who had not stirred all day except to make one telephone call, who had touched nothing but coffee, Vichy water and lemonade, and who had not even protested when Joseph had told him there was nothing to eat.

Across the street, amid the noisy throng of workmen, delivery-men, clerks, busy humble people, was a crazy fellow swilling white wine and devouring hardboiled eggs, restlessly coming and going, buttonholing all and sundry to talk to them about Gabon.

‘I bet there’s a third café,’ said Maigret, looking across the boulevard.

He was wrong there. On the opposite pavement, just across from the Rue des Saints-Pères, at a place from which both corners of the street were visible, there was neither a café nor a bar but a restaurant with a narrow window and a long, low dining-room two steps below street level.

It was called À l’Escargot, and it was a typical homely restaurant with a light wooden rack against the wall in which regular customers kept their table napkins. There was a good smell of garlicky cooking and, this being a slack time, the patronne herself came out of her kitchen to welcome Maigret and Janvier.

‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’

The Superintendent introduced himself.

‘I would like to know whether yesterday evening you had a lady customer who stayed an unusually long time in the restaurant.’

The dining-room was empty. The tables were already laid, and tiny carafes of red or white wine stood on each of them.

‘My husband looks after the cash-desk, and he’s gone out to buy fruit. As for Jean, our waiter, he’ll be here in a few minutes, for he comes on duty at eleven o’clock. Can I get you something meanwhile? We’ve got a nice little Corsican wine that my husband gets sent over specially.’

Everybody was delightful that day. So was the little Corsican wine. And so was the low dining-room where the two men waited for Jean, while watching the people pass on the pavement outside and keeping an eye on the two cafés across the boulevard.

‘Have you got an idea, Chief?’

‘I’ve got several. But only one of them can be right, can it?’

Jean appeared. He was an elderly white-haired fellow who could have been recognized anywhere as a restaurant waiter. He dived into a cupboard for a change of clothes.

‘Tell me, do you remember having a lady customer yesterday evening who behaved in a rather unusual way?… A girl with dark hair.’

‘A married lady,’ Jean corrected him. ‘At any rate I’m sure she was wearing a wedding ring; I noticed it because it was made of gold and copper alloy, and my wife and I have rings like that too…’

‘Was she young?’

‘I’d say about thirty… A very respectable person, hardly made up at all, and she spoke to one very politely…’

‘What time did she come in?’

‘That’s just it! She came in about a quarter past six, while I was finishing laying the tables for dinner. Our customers, who are nearly all regulars’ (he glanced towards the rack that held their napkins) ‘seldom come before seven o’clock… She seemed surprised when she came into the empty room and she seemed to draw back.

‘ “Is it for dinner?” I asked her. Because sometimes people make a mistake and think we’re a café.

‘ “Come in,” I said. “I can serve you in a quarter of an hour or so… Would you take something while you’re waiting?”

‘She ordered a glass of port…’

Maigret and Janvier exchanged a glance of satisfaction.

‘She sat down beside the window. I had to ask her to move, because she had taken the table where the gentlemen from the Registry Office usually sit; they’ve been coming here for the past ten years.

‘Actually she had to wait almost half an hour, because the snails weren’t ready… She didn’t seem impatient. I brought her a paper, but she didn’t read it; she just sat peacefully looking out of the window.’

Just like the gentleman with the dyed moustache! A quiet man, a quiet lady, and, at the other street corner, a crazy fellow in a state of nervous tension. Up till now, it was the crazy fellow who had been armed; it was he who had in his pocket a rubber stamp with the threatening words: I’ll get you.

And it was he who had died, without having used his gun.

‘She was a very nice lady. I thought she must be someone from the neighbourhood who had forgotten her key and was waiting for her husband to come so as to go home. That happens oftener than you’d think, you know.’

‘Did she eat a good dinner?’

‘Let’s see… A dozen snails… Then sweetbreads, cheese, strawberries and cream… I remember because there’s an extra charge… She drank a small carafe of white wine and a coffee…

‘She stayed very late. That’s what made me think she must be expecting somebody. She wasn’t quite the last to leave, but there were only two people left when she asked for the bill… It must have been soon after ten o’clock. We usually close at half-past ten…’

‘You don’t know in which direction she went off?’

‘I hope she’s not in any trouble?’ asked old Jean, who seemed to have taken a fancy to his unusual customer. ‘Then I may as well tell you that when I left at a quarter to eleven and crossed the pavement, I was surprised to see her standing under one of the trees… It was the second tree on the left of the lamp-post.’

‘Did she still seem to be waiting for somebody?’

‘I imagine so… She wasn’t the sort of woman you might be thinking of… When she caught sight of me she looked away as if she was embarrassed.’

‘Tell me, was she carrying a handbag?’

‘Why yes, of course…’

‘Was it large or small? Did she open it in your presence?’

‘Let’s see… No, she didn’t open it in my presence… She had put it on the window ledge, because her table was close to the window… It was a fairly large rectangular bag, of dark leather… There was an initial on it, made of silver or some other metal… I think it was an M.’

‘Well, Janvier old man?’

‘Well, Chief?’

If they went on having little drinks here, there and everywhere, they would end up by behaving like schoolboys on holiday, this wonderful spring day.

‘Do you believe it was she who killed the chap?’

‘We know that he was shot from behind, about three metres away.’

‘But the fellow from the Café des Ministères might have…’

‘One minute, Janvier… Which of the two men, as far as we know, was on the look-out for the other?’

‘The dead man…’

‘Who wasn’t yet dead… He was the one who was keeping watch… who was certainly armed… who was threatening the other. In the circumstances, unless he was dead drunk by midnight, it’s hardly likely that the other man, coming out of the Café des Ministères, could have taken him unawares and shot him from behind, particularly at such close range. Whereas the woman…’

‘What shall we do?’

To tell the truth, if Maigret had followed his instincts he would have lingered a little longer in the neighbourhood, he had taken such a sudden fancy to the atmosphere of the crossroads. He would have liked to go back to Joseph’s, then to the bar over the way; to sniff around, have a few more drinks, study the same subject from different angles: the man with the waxed moustache, the other, riddled with drink and disease, and the woman, so respectable that she had won the heart of old Jean, dining off snails, sweetbreads and strawberries.

‘I bet she’s used to very simple, homely food and that she seldom eats out in restaurants.’

‘How can you tell that?’

‘Because people who often eat out don’t choose three dishes for which there’s an extra charge, two of which one seldom cooks at home: snails and sweetbreads… Two dishes that don’t go well together, and that suggest greediness.’

‘And do you think that a woman who’s going to kill somebody is likely to bother about what she eats?’

‘For one thing, Janvier my boy, nothing proves that she knew she was going to kill somebody that evening…’

‘If she was the one who fired, she must have been armed… I saw what you meant by your questions about the handbag… I was expecting you to ask the waiter if it looked heavy.’

‘For another thing,’ went on Maigret imperturbably, ‘the most shocking dramas don’t usually prevent people from minding what they eat… You must have noticed that as I have… There’s been a death in a family, the house is topsy-turvy, everyone’s weeping and groaning; you’d think life would never resume its normal course… All the same, a neighbour, or an aunt, or an old servant prepares a meal…

‘ “I couldn’t eat a thing,” the widow declares.

‘The others encourage her, they force her to sit down to dinner. Eventually the whole family gets down to it, abandoning the deceased; very soon the whole family is enjoying the meal; and the widow is the one who demands salt and pepper because she finds the stew rather tasteless…

‘Off we go, Janvier…’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To Juvisy…’

They really should have gone to the Gare de Lyon and taken the train. But to face that crowd, to wait at the booking office and then on the platform, to travel standing, maybe, or in a non-smokers’ compartment, would have spoilt such a beautiful day.

The cash clerk at Police Headquarters could grumble if he liked; Maigret picked an open taxi and settled down in comfort.

‘Take us to Juvisy and stop in front of the station.’

And he spent the journey dozing luxuriously, with his eyes half closed and a thin thread of smoke issuing from the lips that held the stem of his pipe.

3
The Uncertain Identity of a Dead Woman

Many a time, when he was asked to talk about one of his cases, Maigret might have taken the opportunity to describe some enquiry in which he had played a brilliant role, literally forcing truth to emerge by dint of his obstinacy, his intuition and his understanding of human nature.

But the story that, in after time, he most enjoyed telling was that of the two cafés in the Boulevard Saint-Germain; true, it was not one of the cases that had earned him the most glory, but he could not help recalling it with a smile of pleasure.

And even so, when he was asked where the truth lay, he would add:

‘It’s up to you to choose which truth you prefer…’

For on one point at least, neither he nor anybody else ever discovered the whole truth.

It was half-past twelve when the taxi deposited Maigret and Janvier opposite Juvisy station, on the outskirts of Paris, and they first went into the Restaurant du Triage, a very ordinary sort of restaurant with a terrace surrounded by bay trees in green tubs.

One cannot enter a café without drinking something. They exchanged a glance; well, since they had been drinking white wine all morning, like the dead man in the Rue des Saints-Pères, they might as well go on.

‘Tell me, patron, do you happen to know this fellow?’

The bruiser in shirt-sleeves who was officiating behind the zinc counter examined the faked photograph of the dead man, held it out at some distance from his short-sighted eyes, and called out:

‘Julie!… Come here a minute… It’s the chap from next door, isn’t it?’

His wife, wiping her hands on her blue linen apron, carefully picked up the photograph.

‘Sure, it’s him!… But he’s got a funny sort of look on this photo…’

Turning to the Superintendent, she went on:

‘Only yesterday he kept us up till eleven o’clock while he put away one glass after another.’

‘Yesterday?’ Maigret had a nasty shock.

‘Wait, though… No, I mean the day before yesterday… Yesterday I was doing the washing and in the evening I went to the pictures.’

‘Can we eat here?’

‘Of course you can eat… What would you like? Fricandeau of veal? Roast pork with lentils?…There’s some nice pâté de campagne to start off with.’

They lunched on the terrace, side by side with the taxi driver, whom they had kept. From time to time the patron came to have a chat with them.

‘They’ll tell you more at the place next door, where they take lodgers. We don’t have rooms… It must be a month or two since your man came to stay there… When it comes to drinking, though, you’ll find him all over the place… Only yesterday morning…’

‘You’re sure it was yesterday?’

‘Positive… He came in at half-past six, just as I was opening the shutters, and he treated himself to two or three glasses of white wine for a pick-me-up… Then suddenly, as the Paris train was about to leave, he rushed off to the station.’

The patron knew nothing about him except that he drank from morning till night, that he was always talking about Gabon, that he had the utmost contempt for anyone who had not lived in Africa and that he bore a grudge against somebody.

‘Some people think themselves clever,’ he used to say. ‘But I’m going to get them in the end. Sure, there are plenty of swine about. Only some of them go too far.’

Half an hour later, Maigret, still accompanied by Janvier, entered the Hôtel du Chemin de Fer, which boasted a restaurant exactly like the one they had just left except that the terrace was not surrounded by bay trees and the iron chairs were painted red instead of green.

The proprietor, at his bar, was reading a newspaper article aloud to his wife and the waiter. Maigret understood at once, when he saw the picture of the dead man splashed on the front page: the mid-morning papers had just reached Juvisy, and it was he himself who had sent the photographs to the press.

‘Is that your lodger?’

A suspicious glance. ‘Yes… And what about it?’

‘Nothing… I just wanted to know if it was your lodger.’

‘Good riddance, in any case!’

They had to order something, yet again, and you couldn’t go on drinking white wine after lunch.

‘Two calvados.’

‘You’re from the police?’

‘Yes…’

‘I thought as much… I seem to know your face…Well?’

‘I’d like to know your opinion.’

‘My opinion is that he’s more likely to have bumped off someone else… Or to have got himself knocked out in a fight… Because when he was tight, and he was tight every evening, there was no holding him.’

‘Have you his registration?’

With great dignity, to show that he had nothing to conceal, the proprietor went to fetch his register and held it out to the Superintendent with a slightly disdainful air.

‘He stayed six weeks with you?’

‘Six weeks too many!’

‘Did he not pay?’

‘He paid regularly, every week… But he was crazy… He’d stay two or three days in bed with fever, sending up for rum by way of medicine and drinking whole bottles of it, then he’d come down and for several days he’d do the round of all the bistros in the neighbourhood, sometimes forgetting to come home or else waking us up at three in the morning… Sometimes we had to undress him… He used to be sick on the stair carpet or on his rug.’

‘Had he any relatives in the district?’

The proprietor and his wife glanced at one another.

‘He must have known somebody, but he would never tell us who. If it was a member of his family I can assure you he didn’t love them, for he often used to say:

‘ “One day you’ll hear tell of me and of a swine whom everyone thinks is a decent fellow, a phony who’s the meanest thief in the world…” ’

‘Did you never find out whom he was talking about?’

‘All that I know is that he was intolerable and that when he was drunk he used to pull out a big revolver from his pocket, aim at an imaginary target and shout: “Bang, bang!” And then he’d burst out laughing and ask for another drink.’

‘You’ll take a glass with us?… One more question… Do you know, somewhere in Juvisy, a gentleman of average height, stoutish without being fat, with a fine black moustache, who sometimes goes about carrying a little suitcase?’

‘Does that say anything to you, love?’ the patron asked his wife.

She searched her memory.

‘No… Unless… But he’s rather below average height and I don’t call him stout…’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘About Monsieur Auger, who lives in one of the new houses on the estate.’

‘Is he married?’

‘Sure… Madame Auger is a pretty woman, very respectable and quiet, who practically never leaves Juvisy… I say! That reminds me…’

The three men watched her expectantly.

‘That reminds me that yesterday, as I was doing my washing in the yard, I saw her going towards the station… I guessed she was taking the 4.37 train.’

‘She’s dark, isn’t she? And carries a black leather handbag?’

‘I don’t know what colour her handbag was, but she was wearing a blue suit and a white blouse.’

‘What is Monsieur Auger by profession?’

This time the patronne let her husband answer.

‘He sells stamps… You’ll see his name in the papers, in the small ads… Stamps for collectors… Packets of a thousand stamps for ten francs… packets of five hundred stamps… All sent by post, COD.’

‘Does he travel much?’

‘He goes to Paris from time to time, about his stamps I suppose, and he always takes his little suitcase… He’s stopped here two or three times, when the train’s been delayed… He drinks café-crème or Vichy water.’

It was too easy. It was not an investigation but an outing, enlivened by the cheerful sunlight and by their ever-increasing consumption of white wine. And yet there was a glint in Maigret’s eyes, as though he had guessed that behind this commonplace affair there lay one of the most extraordinary human mysteries that he had encountered in the whole of his career.

He had been given the Augers’ address. It was a fair way off, in the plain, where alongside the river Seine some hundreds and thousands of little houses stood surrounded by little gardens, some of them of stone, some of red brick, some dressed with blue or yellow concrete.

He had been told that the Augers’ house was called Mon Repos. They had to drive for a long way through streets that were too new, with rudimentary pavements along which someone had recently planted anaemic trees, as thin as skeletons, and where patches of waste ground lay between the houses.

They asked their way, and were frequently misdirected. Finally they reached their objective, and a curtain was twitched at the corner window of a small pink house with a bright red roof.

Next they had to find the bell.

‘Shall I stay outside, Chief?’

‘Perhaps it would be wiser… Yet I think it’s going to be plain sailing… Since there’s somebody at home…’

He was not mistaken. Eventually he found a tiny electric bell-push in the brand-new front door. He rang. He heard sounds, whispers. The door opened, and there stood before him, wearing probably the same blouse and skirt as on the previous evening, the young woman from the Café des Ministères and the Escargot.

‘Superintendent Maigret from the Police Judiciaire,’ he introduced himself.

‘I guessed it was the police… Come in.’

They went up a few steps. The staircase seemed to be just out of the carpenter’s hands, and so did all the woodwork; the plaster on the walls was barely dry.

‘Will you be so kind… ’ She turned to a half-open door and made a sign to somebody whom Maigret could not see.

The corner room into which she ushered the Superintendent was a living-room with a divan, books, ornaments and brightly coloured silk cushions. On a small table there was the midday paper with the photograph of the dead man.

‘Do sit down… I don’t know if I may offer you anything?’

‘Thank you, no.’

‘I should have known it’s not allowed… My husband will be here directly… You needn’t worry; he won’t try to run away, and in any case he’s done nothing wrong… Only he was unwell this morning… We came home by the first train… His heart’s not too good… He had an attack when we got home… He’s just shaving and dressing now.’

And the sound of running water could be heard from the bathroom, for the walls of the rooms were very thin.

The young woman was almost calm. She was rather pretty, with the quiet prettiness of a middle-class housewife.

‘As you must have guessed, it was I who killed my brother-in-law. It was only just in time, for if I had not done so he would have killed my husband, and Raymond’s life is surely worth more than his…’

‘Raymond is your husband?’

‘We’ve been married eight years… We’ve nothing to hide, Superintendent. Perhaps we should have gone last night to tell the police everything… Raymond wanted to do so, but knowing his weak heart I preferred to give him time to recover… I knew you’d be coming.’

‘You spoke, just now, of your brother-in-law?’

‘Combarieu was my sister Marthe’s husband… I think he used to be a decent fellow, but a bit crazy…’

‘One minute… Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘Please do. My husband doesn’t smoke because of his heart, but I don’t mind tobacco smoke.’

‘Where were you born?’

‘At Melun… We were twin sisters, Marthe and I… My name’s Isabelle… We were so much alike that when we were little our parents – they’re dead now – used to give us different coloured hair-ribbons to tell us apart… And sometimes, for fun, we used to exchange ribbons…’

‘Which of you was married first?’

‘We were married on the same day… Combarieu was a clerk at the Préfecture offices at Melun… Auger was an insurance broker… They were acquaintances because, both being bachelors, they used to eat at the same restaurant… We met them together, my sister and I… After we were married we lived at Melun for several years, in the same street…’

‘Combarieu still working at the Préfecture and your husband as an insurance broker?’

‘Yes… But Auger was already thinking of the stamp business… He’d begun collecting himself, as a hobby… He realized there was money to be made from it.’

‘And Combarieu?’

‘He was ambitious and restless… He was always short of money… He got to know a man who was just back from the Colonies and who gave him the idea of going there… At first he wanted my sister to go with him, but she refused, because of what she’d heard about the climate and its effect on a woman’s health…’

‘So he went out there alone?’

‘Yes… He stayed away two years, and came back with his pockets full of money… He spent it faster than he’d made it…He’d already begun to drink… He claimed that my husband was a weakling, that a man could do something better with his life than sell insurance policies and postage stamps.’

‘Did he go back?’

‘Yes, and he was less successful this time. We could sense that from his letters, although he was always inclined to boast… My sister Marthe, two winters ago, caught pneumonia and died of it… We wrote to tell her husband… Apparently he started drinking more heavily than ever… As for us, we came to settle here, for we’d been wanting for a long time to build something for ourselves and live nearer Paris. My husband had given up insurance, and the stamp business was doing well…’

She spoke slowly and calmly, weighing her words and listening to the sounds that issued from the bathroom.

‘Five months ago my brother-in-law turned up without warning… He rang at our door one evening when he was drunk…He looked at me in a funny way and the first words he uttered, with a sneer, were: “I guessed as much!”

‘I didn’t yet realize what he was thinking of. He was in a much worse state than the first time he’d come home… His health was poor, he was drinking far more and although he still had some money he was no longer a rich man.

‘He started saying the queerest things to us. He would look at my husband and suddenly burst out: “Admit that you’re a rotten bastard!”

‘He went off again… We don’t know where to. Then he reappeared, drunk as usual. He greeted me with the remark: “Well, Marthe my dear…”

‘ “You know I’m not Marthe but Isabelle…”

‘He laughed more wildly than ever. “We’ll see about that some day, won’t we? As for your swine of a husband who sells stamps…”

‘I don’t know if you can understand what had happened… He wasn’t exactly out of his mind… He drank too heavily… He had an obsession which we didn’t guess for some while… We couldn’t understand at first what he meant by his threatening manner, his sneering insinuations, or the notes that were now coming through the post for my husband saying: “I’ll get you.” ’

‘In a word,’ Maigret put in calmly, ‘your brother-in-law Combarieu had got it into his head, for one reason or another, that the woman who had died was not his own wife but Auger’s.’

It was an astonishing situation. Twin sisters so alike that their parents had to dress them differently to tell them apart. Combarieu, abroad, learning of his wife’s death… And imagining, on his return, rightly or wrongly, that there had been a substitution, that the dead woman was Isabelle and that it was his own wife Marthe who, in his absence, had replaced her as Auger’s.

Maigret’s gaze darkened, and he drew more slowly on his pipe.

‘For months now our life has been impossible… Threatening letters have come one after the other… Sometimes Combarieu bursts in at any hour of day or night, draws out his revolver, levels it at my husband and then says with a sneer: “No, not yet, that would be too good!”

‘He settled in the neighbourhood to torment us. He’s as clever as a monkey. Even when he’s drunk he knows perfectly well what he’s doing…’

‘He used to know,’ Maigret corrected her.

‘I’m sorry.’ She blushed slightly. ‘He used to know, you’re quite right… And I don’t imagine he wanted to get caught… That was why we weren’t too frightened here, because if he had killed Auger at Juvisy everyone would have pointed to him as the murderer…

‘My husband dared not leave the place… Yesterday he simply had to go to Paris on business. I wanted to go with him, but he refused. He took the earliest train on purpose, hoping that Combarieu would still be sleeping off his drink and would not notice his departure.

‘He was mistaken, and he rang me up in the afternoon to ask me to come to a café in the Boulevard Saint-Germain and bring him a revolver.

‘I realized that he was at the end of his tether, and wanted to have done with it… I took him his Browning… He’d told me over the phone that he would stay in the café until it closed.

‘I bought a second gun for myself… You must try and understand, Superintendent.’

‘In a word, you’d made up your mind to fire before he could shoot your husband…’

‘I swear to you that when I pressed the trigger Combarieu had already raised his gun. That’s all I have to say. I’ll answer any questions you like to ask me.’

‘How does it happen that your handbag still bears the letter M?’

‘Because it belonged to my sister… If Combarieu had been right, if we had practised the deception that he talked so much about, I suppose I’d have taken care to change the initial.’

‘So, it seems, you love a man enough to…’

‘I love my husband…’

‘I said: you love a man, whether or not he’s your husband…’

‘He is my husband.’

‘You love this man, Auger, enough to bring yourself to kill in order to save him or to prevent him from killing another man himself…’

She replied simply:

‘Yes.’

There was a sound outside the door.

‘Come in,’ she said.

At long last Maigret saw the man of whom he had been given such varying descriptions, the café customer with the blue-black moustache, who, seen in his own home, and particularly after the declaration of love which the young woman had just made, appeared hopelessly commonplace, utterly mediocre.

He was looking round him anxiously. She smiled at him, saying:

‘Sit down. I’ve told the Superintendent everything… Your heart?’

He felt his chest vaguely and murmured:

‘It’s all right.

The jury of the Seine department acquitted Madame Auger as having acted in legitimate self-defence.

And each time Maigret told the story, he concluded with an ironical:

‘Is that everything?’

‘Does that imply you’ve got a mental reservation?’

‘It implies nothing… Except that a man of the utmost banality can inspire a great love, a heroic passion… Even if he sells postage-stamps and has a weak heart…’

‘But Combarieu?’

‘What about him?’

‘Was he mad when he imagined that his wife was not the woman who’d died but the one who gave herself out to be Isabelle?’

Maigret would shrug his shoulders and repeat, on a note of parody:

‘A great love! … A grand passion!…’

And sometimes, when he was in a good humour and had been drinking a glass of old calvados, warmed in the hollow of his hand, he would add:

‘A great love!… A grand passion!… It’s not always the husband who inspires it, is it?… And sisters, in most families, have a tiresome habit of falling for the same man… Combarieu was a long way off…’

He would add, drawing deeply on his pipe:

‘How can one distinguish between twins whom their own parents can’t tell apart, parents whom we’ve not been able to question because they are dead… All the same, there never was such a fine day as that…And I can’t remember ever drinking so much…Janvier, if he were to be indiscreet, might tell you how we found ourselves singing in chorus in the taxi that took us back to Paris, and when I got home Madame Maigret wondered how I came to have a bunch of violets in my pocket… That blessed Marthe!… Sorry, I mean: that blessed Isabelle!’

[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[collected in Maigret’s Christmas: Nine Stories]

[for a complete bibliography of all 103 episodes of The Maigret Saga, check out Steve Trussel’s amazing fan site at http://www.trussel.com/f_maig.htm ]

[April 06, 2007 – v1 html proofed and formatted]