MAIGRET AND THE SURLY INSPECTOR

1

The young man lifted the headphones from his ears.

‘What was I telling you, uncle?… Oh yes… When the kid came back from school and my wife saw the red patches on her body, she felt sure at first that it was scarlet fever…’

It was impossible to complete a sentence of any length; invariably one of the little lights came on in the huge map of Paris that stretched over half a wall. It was in the thirteenth arrondissement this time, and Daniel, Maigret’s nephew, thrusting his plug into one of the holes in the switchboard, muttered: ‘What’s up?’

He listened without interest, repeating for the benefit of the Superintendent, who was perched on the edge of the table:

‘A fight between two Arabs in a bistro in the Place d’Italie…’

He was about to resume his story about his daughter, when another of the white bulbs embedded in the wall-map lit up.

‘Hello!… What is it?… A motor accident in the Boulevard de la Chapelle?’

Through the tall uncurtained windows they could see the rain falling in torrents, a fine persistent summer rain that patterned the darkness with long hatchings. It was pleasant but somewhat close in the big Emergencies room, where Maigret had come to take refuge.

A little while before he had been in his office in the Quai des Orfèvres. He was expecting a phone call from London about an international crook whom one of his detectives had run to earth in a grand hotel in the Champs-Elysées. The call might come through at midnight or at 1 a.m., and Maigret had nothing to do while he waited; he was bored, all alone in his office.

So he had ordered the switchboard to put all calls for him through to Emergencies, on the other side of the street, and he had come over for a chat with his nephew, who was on duty that night.

Maigret had always liked this huge room, as quiet and bare as a laboratory, unknown to most Parisians although it is the very core of the city.

At every crossroads in Paris there is a telephone apparatus painted red. One simply has to break the glass to be connected automatically with the local police station and at the same time with the central emergency post.

Whenever somebody appeals for help for one reason or another, one of the lights goes on on the huge map. And the man on duty hears the call at the same time as the sergeant in the nearest police station.

Down below, in the dark quiet courtyard of the Préfecture, there are two vans full of policemen ready to dash out in serious emergencies. In sixty police stations, other vans are waiting, as well as policemen with bicycles.

Another light.

‘Attempted suicide by barbiturate poisoning, in a block of flats in the Rue Blanche, ’ Daniel echoed.

All day and all night the dramatic life of the capital is thus reflected in little lights on a wall; whenever a van or a patrol goes out from a police station the reason for its movement is reported to the central office.

Maigret always argued that young detectives should be obliged to spend a year at least in this room so as to learn the geography of crime in the capital, and he himself, when he had time to spare, liked to spend an hour or two there.

One of the men on duty was eating bread and sausage. Daniel resumed his story:

‘She immediately sent for Dr Lambert, and when he arrived, half an hour later, the red blotches had disappeared… It was only nettle-rash… Hello!…’

A light had just gone on in the eighteenth arrondissement. It was a direct call. Somebody had that instant broken the glass of the alarm box at the corner of the Rue Caulaincourt and the Rue Lamarck.

For a beginner, this is a tense moment… One imagines the street-crossing, deserted in the rain-streaked darkness, the wet pavement, the patches of lamplight, lighted cafés in the distance, and a man or a woman hurrying, staggering perhaps, or being pursued, somebody in terror or in need of help, wrapping a handkerchief round their hand to break the pane of glass…

Maigret, automatically glancing at his nephew, saw the young man frown; his face assumed an expression of bewilderment and then of alarm.

‘Good Lord!…’ he stammered.

He listened for a moment longer, then shifted his plug.

‘Hello!… Is that the Rue Damrémont station?… That you, Dambois?… Did you hear the call?… It was a shot, wasn’t it?… Yes, I thought so too… What did you say?… Your van’s already left?’

That meant that in less than three minutes policemen would be on the spot, for the Rue Damrémont is quite close to the Rue Caulaincourt.

‘Sorry, uncle… But it was so unexpected!… First I heard a voice shouting into the telephone “Merde to the cops!”

‘Then, immediately afterwards, the sound of a shot…’

‘Will you tell the sergeant on duty at the Rue Damrémont station that I’m coming along and that nothing is to be touched in the meantime.’

Maigret had already set off through the empty passages, gone down into the courtyard and jumped into the small fast car that was kept for police officers.

It was only a quarter past ten.

‘Rue Caulaincourt… top speed!’

Strictly speaking, it was not his job. The local police were on the spot, and not until their report had been received would it be decided whether this was a matter for the Police Judiciaire. Maigret was impelled by curiosity. Moreover he had remembered something while Daniel was speaking.

At the beginning of the previous winter — it had been in October, a rainy night like tonight – he had been in his office at about eleven o’clock when the telephone rang.

‘Superintendent Maigret?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that Superintendent Maigret himself speaking?’

‘It is…’

‘In that case, merde to you!’

‘What?’

‘I say merde to you! I’ve just shot down, through the window, the two cops you posted on the pavement… You needn’t send any more… You won’t get me!…’

A shot rang out.

The Polish accent had already told Maigret what he needed to know. The incident had inevitably occurred in a small hotel at the corner of the Rue de Birague and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where a dangerous Polish criminal, who had attacked a number of farms in the north of France, had taken refuge.

Two policemen had in fact been set to watch the hotel, for Maigret had decided to arrest the man himself at dawn.

One of the detectives had been killed outright; the other recovered after five weeks in hospital. As for the Pole, he really had blown his brains out after speaking to the Superintendent.

It was this coincidence which had just struck Maigret, in the big Emergencies room; in the course of over twenty years on the job he had only encountered one case of this kind – a suicide over the telephone, accompanied by abuse.

It was strange indeed that six months later almost the same incident was repeated!

The small car sped through Paris and reached the Boulevard Rochechouart, with its brilliantly lit cinemas and dance-halls. Then, from the corner of the steeply sloping Rue Caulaincourt, all was quiet and practically deserted; here and there a bus raced down the street, and a few pedestrians hurried along the rain-drenched pavements.

A small group of dark figures stood at the corner of the Rue Lamarck. The police van had stopped a few yards down the street. People were looking out of their windows and concierges were standing in doorways, but the pouring rain discouraged onlookers.

‘Evening, Dambois…’

‘Evening, Superintendent…’

And Dambois pointed to a body lying on the pavement, less than a yard from the emergency call-box. A man was kneeling beside the corpse, a local doctor whom they had managed to contact, even though barely twelve minutes had elapsed since the firing of the shot.

The doctor looked up and recognized Maigret’s well-known figure.

‘Death was instantaneous,’ he said, wiping his wet knees and then his rain-splashed spectacles. ‘The shot was fired point-blank into the right ear.’

Maigret automatically raised his hand as though to shoot himself through the ear.

‘Suicide?’

‘Looks like it…’

And Sergeant Dambois pointed to a revolver which none of them had yet touched, and which was lying half a yard from the dead man’s hand.

‘Do you know the man, Dambois?’

‘No, Superintendent… And yet I can’t think why, he looks to me like a local chap.’

‘Will you look carefully to see if he’s got a wallet?’

Water was dripping on to Maigret’s hat. The sergeant handed him a well-worn wallet which he had just taken out of the dead man’s jacket pocket. One compartment contained six hundred-franc notes and a woman’s photograph; in another there was an identity card made out in the name of Michel Goldfinger, thirty-eight years old, diamond broker, 66 bis Rue Lamarck.

The photograph on the identity card was indeed that of the man lying there on the pavement, with his legs strangely twisted.

In the innermost compartment of the wallet, which fastened with a tab, Maigret found a tightly-folded scrap of tissue paper.

‘Will you shine your torch on this, Dambois?’

Carefully, he undid the packet, and a dozen tiny brilliant stones, unmounted diamonds, glittered in the light.

‘Nobody can say that robbery was the motive for the crime, or that poverty was the motive for suicide,’ the sergeant said gruffly. ‘What d’you think, Chief?’

‘Have you had the neighbours questioned?’

‘Inspector Lognon is seeing to that…’

Every three minutes a bus clattered down the slope. Every three minutes another bus climbed up it, changing gear. Twice or thrice Maigret glanced up, because an engine had backfired.

‘It’s odd…’ he muttered to himself.

‘What’s odd?’

‘In any other street we’d surely have had some evidence of the shot… You’ll see that Lognon will get nothing from the neighbours, because the steep incline of the street causes the cars to backfire.’

He was not mistaken. Lognon, whom his colleagues called the Grouser because he was always in a sour temper, came to speak to the sergeant.

‘I questioned about twenty people. Either they heard nothing – most of them, at this time of night, are listening to the radio, particularly as there’s a gala programme being broadcast on Poste Parisien – or else they tell me that sort of noise goes on all the time… They’re used to it… There was only one old woman, on the sixth floor of the second house on the right, who declared that she had heard two reports… Only I had to repeat my question several times, for she’s as deaf as a post… Her concierge confirms that…’

Maigret slipped the wallet into his pocket.

‘Get the body photographed,’ he told Dambois. ‘When the photographers have finished with it, take it to the Forensic Institute and ask Dr. Paul to do a post-mortem… As for the revolver, as soon as it’s been checked for fingerprints, send it to the expert Gastinne-Renette.’

Inspector Lognon, who had possibly seen the case as a chance to make his mark, was staring savagely at the pavement, his hands in his pockets and his sullen face wet with rain.

‘Will you come with me, Lognon? Seeing that it’s happened on your beat…’

And they went off together. They took the right-hand pavement of the Rue Lamarck, which was deserted; only a couple of small cafés were lit up along the whole length of the street.

‘I apologize, old fellow, for interfering with a case which doesn’t concern me, but there’s something that bothers me… I’m not quite sure as yet what it is… Something that doesn’t fit, d’you understand?… Needless to say you’re officially in charge of the investigation.’

But Lognon, true to his reputation for surliness, made no response to Maigret’s advances.

‘I don’t know if you understand… A fellow like Stan the Killer, who knew that he’d be arrested before the night was out, and who moreover had realized for a month or more that I was on the heels…’

It was quite in character for Stan to defend himself to the end, like the wild beast that he was, and to put a bullet through his own head rather than face the guillotine. He had not wanted to die alone and in a final act of bravado, a last spasm of hatred against society, he had shot down the two detectives who were watching him.

All that was to be expected. Even the phone call to Maigret, who had become his personal enemy, as a final insult, a supreme act of defiance…

But the words shouted tonight into the emergency call-box did not fit the little that was known as yet about the diamond broker.

As far as a rapid examination allowed one to judge, he had been an insignificant person, earning a mere pittance, and indeed, Maigret could have sworn, an unlucky man in poor health. For the diamond trade, like any other, has its princes and its paupers.

Maigret knew the centre of that trade, a big café in the Rue Lafayette where the important brokers sat at a special table to receive the humble middlemen to whom they entrusted a few stones.

‘This is the place, ’ said Lognon, stopping in front of a house just like all the other houses in the street, a six-storey building, no longer new, where a few windows showed lights.

They rang. The door was opened, and they saw that the light was still on in the concierge’s lodge. Music from the radio issued from the room where, through the glazed door, they could see a bed, an elderly woman knitting and a man in carpet slippers and no collar, his shirt open on a hairy chest, reading his paper.

‘Excuse me, Madame… Is Monsieur Goldfinger in?’

‘Have you seen him come in, Désiré?… No… Besides, it’s scarcely half an hour since he went out…’

‘By himself?’

‘Yes… I supposed he was going on some errand in the neighbourhood, possibly to buy cigarettes…’

‘Does he often go out in the evenings?’

‘Hardly ever… Only to go to the pictures with his wife and sister-in-law.’

‘Are they upstairs?’

‘Yes… They haven’t gone out tonight… Do you want to see them? Third floor, right.’

The building had no lift. A dark carpet covered the stairs; the landing of each floor was lit by a single electric light bulb, with brown doors to right and left. The house was clean and comfortable, but not luxurious. The walls, painted to imitate marble, needed a good coat of fresh paint, for they were turning a dingy brown.

The radio again… The same tune that was being heard everywhere that night, the famous gala programme of Poste Parisien … It was audible once more on the third floor landing.

‘Shall I ring?’ asked Lognon.

They heard a bell ringing on the other side of the door and a chair being pushed back as somebody got up ; a young voice called out:

‘Coming…’

A swift, light step. The door knob turned, the door opened and the voice began:

‘You haven’t…’

Presumably the remark was going to be:

‘You haven’t been long.’

But the person who opened the door stopped short on seeing two unknown men, and she stammered:

‘I’m sorry… I thought it was…’

She was young and pretty, dressed in black as though in mourning, with bright eyes and fair-hair.

‘Madame Goldfinger?’

‘No, Monsieur… Monsieur Goldfinger is my brother-in-law…’

She stood there disconcerted, and it did not occur to her to invite the visitors in. There was anxiety in her gaze.

‘May we?…’ saidMaigret,stepping forward.

And another voice, an older, somewhat weary voice called out from the depths of the flat:

‘What is it, Eva?’

‘I don’t know…’

The two men were now standing in a tiny entrance-hall. To the left, through a glazed door, could be seen in the semi-darkness a small drawing-room which must seldom have been used, to judge by its impeccable tidiness and the upright piano covered with photographs and knick-knacks.

The second room was lit up, and this was where low music was coming from the radio.

Before the Superintendent and the inspector could reach it the girl darted forward, saying:

‘Do you mind if I close the bedroom door? My sister was unwell this evening and she’s gone to bed already…’

Presumably the door between the living-room and the bedroom was wide open. There was some whispering. Madame Goldfinger was probably asking:

‘Who is it?’

And Eva answering in a low voice:

‘I don’t know…They’ve told me nothing…’

‘Leave the door ajar so that I can hear…’

Quiet prevailed here, as in most of the flats in the neighbourhood, behind all those lighted windows that the two men had seen, a heavy, somewhat sickly quietness, that of homes where nothing happens, where one cannot imagine anything ever happening.

‘I’m sorry… Please come in…’

The dining-room furniture was of the mass-produced, pseudo-rustic sort; the inevitable brass flower-bowl stood on the sideboard, the usual decorated plates were ranged on the dresser against a background of red-checked cretonne.

‘Please sit down…Just a minute…’

Pieces of dress material lay on three chairs, with dress patterns of coarse brown paper, while on the table there were a pair of scissors, a fashion magazine and another piece of material which she had obviously been cutting out when the bell rang.

The girl turned the knob of the radio, and then complete silence fell.

Lognon, sulkier than ever, stared at the tips of his wet shoes, while Maigret fiddled with his pipe, which had gone out.

‘Has your brother-in-law been gone long?’

There was a chiming clock on the wall, and the girl glanced at it automatically.

‘He went out shortly before ten… Perhaps ten minutes to ten…? He had an appointment in the neighbourhood at ten o’clock.’

‘You don’t know where?’

Someone was moving about in the next room, which was in total darkness and the door of which had been left ajar.

‘In a café, probably, but I don’t know which…Quite close by, I’m sure, for he said he’d be back before eleven.’

‘A business appointment?’

‘Of course…What other sort could he have made?’

And it seemed to Maigret that a slight flush rose to the girl’s cheeks. Moreover, for the last few minutes, while she watched the two men, she seemed overtaken by a growing unease. There was a mute question in her eyes. At the same time, she seemed to be frightened of what she might learn.

‘Do you know my brother-in-law?’

‘Well… a little… Did he often make appointments in the evening?’

‘No…Very seldom… You might say never…’

‘Did somebody ring him up?’

For Maigret had just noticed the telephone standing on a small table.

‘No… It was while we were having dinner that he told us he had an appointment to keep at ten o’clock.’

Her voice was growing anxious. And a slight sound in the bedroom indicated that Madame Goldfinger had got out of bed and was standing barefoot behind the door to listen.

‘Was your brother-in-law in good health?’

‘Yes… That’s to say he’s never been very strong… Above all, he was a worrier… He had a stomach ulcer and the doctor was sure he could cure it ; but my brother-in-law was convinced it was cancer.’

There was a noise, or rather a rustling; and Maigret looked up, certain that Madame Goldfinger was about to appear. He saw her standing in the doorway, wearing a blue flannel wrapper and looking at him with a cold, hostile stare.

‘What has happened to my husband?’ she asked. ‘Who are you?’

The two men rose to their feet simultaneously.

‘I apologize, Madame, for intruding in this way. Your sister tells me you are unwell this evening…’

‘That doesn’t matter…’

‘Unfortunately I have bad news for you…’

‘My husband?’ she asked; her concern was unconvincing.

Maigret’s eyes, however, were on the girl, and he saw her open her mouth for a cry that never came. She stood there, staring wild-eyed.

‘Your husband, yes…He’s met with an accident.’

‘An accident?’ the wife queried, hard and suspicious.

‘Madame, I am very sorry to have to tell you that Monsieur Goldfinger is dead…’

She did not move. She stood there with her dark eyes fixed upon them. For whereas her sister was a blue-eyed blonde, Mathilde Goldfinger was a plump brunette with eyes so dark as to be almost black, and strongly marked eyebrows.

‘How did he die?’

The girl, who had flung herself against the wall with her hands outstretched and her head buried in her arms, was sobbing silently.

‘Before replying, it is my duty to ask you a question. Had your husband, to your knowledge, any reason to take his own life? Were his business affairs, for instance…’

Madame Goldfinger wiped her damp lips with a handkerchief, then passed her hands over her forehead, pushing back her hair with a mechanical gesture:

‘I don’t know… I don’t understand… What you’re telling me is so…’

Then the girl, unexpectedly, turned round abruptly, disclosing a flushed face smeared with tears, eyes in which there was anger, perhaps even fury, and cried out with surprising energy:

‘Michel would never have committed suicide, if that’s what you mean!’

‘Keep calm, Eva…Will you allow me, gentlemen?’

And Madame Goldfinger sat down, leaning one elbow on the rustic table.

‘Where is he?…Tell me… How did it happen?’

‘Your husband died from a bullet in the head at exactly 10.15 p.m. in front of the emergency call-box at the corner of the Rue Caulaincourt.’

There was a hoarse anguished sob from Eva. As for Madame Goldfinger, she was ashy pale, her features rigid, and she kept her unseeing gaze fixed on the Superintendent:

‘Where is he now?’

‘His body has been taken to the Forensic Institute, where you will be able to see it tomorrow morning.’

‘Do you hear, Mathilde?’ shrieked the girl.

The words called up a picture to her. Had she grasped the fact that an autopsy was about to be performed, after which the body would be put into one of the many compartments of that huge corpse-refrigerator, the Forensic Institute?

‘And you don’t say anything?…You don’t protest?’

The widow gave an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders, and repeated in a weary voice:

‘I don’t understand…’

‘I must point out, Madame, that I do not assert that your husband took his own life…’

This time it was Lognon who gave a sudden start and looked at the Superintendent in astonishment. Madame Goldfinger merely murmured with a puzzled frown:

‘I don’t understand…Just now you said…’

‘That it looked like suicide. But there are sometimes crimes that look like suicides… Had your husband any enemies?’

‘No!’

An energetic denial. Why did the two women subsequently exchange a quick glance?

‘Had he any reason to attempt suicide?’

‘I don’t know… I can’t say… You must forgive me, gentlemen… I’m unwell myself today… My husband was a sick man, my sister will tell you. He thought himself more ill than he really was… He suffered great discomfort… The very strict diet he had to follow weakened him… Moreover he had been worried recently…’

‘About his business?’

‘You probably know that for almost two years now there has been a crisis in the diamond trade… Big business men can stand up to it… Those who have no capital and who live, so to speak, from hand to mouth…’

‘Was your husband carrying diamonds on his person this evening?’

‘Probably… He always had some…’

‘In his wallet?’

‘That’s where he usually put them… They don’t take up much room, you know.’

‘Did these diamonds belong to him?’

‘Probably not… He seldom bought them on his own account, especially recently… He had them given him on commission…’

That was likely. Maigret was pretty familiar with the little world centred in the neighbourhood of the Rue Lafayette and which, like the underworld, has its own laws. Here you see stones each worth a fortune being passed from hand to hand round a table, without any receipt being asked for or given. These people all know one another; they know that within the fraternity no one would dare break his word.

‘Were his diamonds stolen?’

‘No, Madame… Here they are… Here is his wallet. I should like to ask you one further question. Did your husband keep you informed of all his business affairs?’

‘All of them…’

Eva gave a start; did that mean that her sister was not telling the truth?

‘Had your husband any big bills due for payment in the near future?’

‘A bill for thirty thousand francs was falling due tomorrow.’

‘Had he the money?’

‘I don’t know… That was why he went out this evening… He had an appointment with a customer from whom he hoped to get that sum…’

‘And if he had not obtained it?’

‘The bill would probably have been protested.’

‘Has that already happened?’

‘No… He always found the money at the last minute…’

Lognon sighed gloomily, as though he felt this was all a waste of time.

‘So that if the person your husband was to meet this evening had not given him the money, Goldfinger would have been faced with a protest tomorrow… Which means that he would automatically have been struck off the list of diamond brokers, wouldn’t he? If I’m not mistaken, these gentlemen deal very harshly with that kind of misfortune.’

‘Good heavens, what am I to say to you?’

Although Maigret was ostensibly looking at her, he had for the past few minutes been casting surreptitious glances at the little sister-in-law in her black dress.

She had stopped weeping. She had recovered her self-control. And the Superintendent was surprised at the keenness of her gaze, the strength and decision of her features. This was no longer a tearful little girl but, for all her youth, a woman listening, watching, and suspecting.

For there could be no mistake. Some detail must have struck her in the conversation and she was listening attentively, missing nothing of what was being said around her.

‘You are in mourning?’ he asked.

He had addressed Eva, but it was Mathilde who replied:

‘We are both in mourning for my mother, who died six months ago. That was when my sister came to live with us.’

‘Have you a job?’ Maigret was speaking to Eva again, and again it was her sister who replied:

‘She’s a typist in an insurance agency in the Boulevard Haussmann.’

‘One last question…I’m very sorry, believe me… Did your husband own a revolver?’

‘Yes, he had one… But he hardly ever carried it… It must still be in the drawer of his bedside table.’

‘Will you be good enough to make sure?’

She rose and went into the bedroom, where she switched on the light. They heard her opening a drawer and moving things about. When she came back she wore an anxious look.

‘It isn’t there,’ she said, without sitting down.

‘Is it a long time since you saw it?’

‘Only a few days… I couldn’t say exactly… Perhaps the day before yesterday, when I cleaned the flat thoroughly…’

Eva opened her mouth, but in spite of an encouraging glance from the Superintendent she said nothing.

‘Yes. It must have been the day before yesterday…’

‘Were you lying down when your husband came back for dinner this evening?’

‘I went to bed at two in the afternoon, because I was feeling very tired.’

‘If he had opened the drawer to take out the revolver, would you have noticed?’

‘I think so…’

‘Are there articles in that drawer which he might have needed?’

‘No… A medicine which he only took at night, when he was in pain, some old pill boxes and a pair of glasses with one lens broken.’

‘Were you in the bedroom this morning while he was dressing?’

‘Yes, I was making the beds…’

‘So that your husband must have taken the revolver last night or the night before last?’

Another movement of protest from Eva. She opened her lips, then closed them again in silence.

‘Thank you, Madame. I’ve nothing else to add. By the way, do you know the mark of the revolver?’

‘A Browning, 6 mm 38 calibre. You’ll find the number of it in my husband’s wallet, for he had an arms licence.’

This proved to be the case.

‘Tomorrow morning, if it suits you, Inspector Lognon, who’s in charge of the enquiry, will come and pick you up at whatever time you like to arrange to go and identify the body…’

‘Any time, after eight o’clock…’

‘Agreed, Lognon?’

They left the flat and were back on the dimly lit landing, the staircase with its gloomy carpet and brownish walls. The door had closed and no sound came from the flat. The two women kept silent; not a word passed between them.

In the street, Maigret looked up towards the lighted window and muttered:

‘Now that we’re out of hearing I bet the sparks’ll fly!’

A shadow was outlined against the curtain; although distorted, it was recognizable as the figure of the girl, hurrying across the dining-room. Almost immediately the light went on in another window, and Maigret felt convinced that Eva had just locked herself into her bedroom and that her sister was trying in vain to make her open the door.

2

Life was a funny business. Maigret looked cross, but in fact he would not have exchanged his place, at such moments, for the best seat at the Opéra. He felt so perfectly at home in the great buildings of the Police Judiciaire, in the middle of the night, that he had removed his jacket and unbuttoned his collar. He had even, after a moment’s hesitation, unlaced his shoes because they were hurting him a little.

In his absence, Scotland Yard had telephoned and the call had been put through to his nephew Daniel, who had just passed the information on to him.

The crook he was concerned with had not been seen in London for over two years, but according to the latest news he had been in Holland. Maigret had therefore contacted Amsterdam. He was waiting, now, for information from the Netherlands Police. From time to time he communicated by telephone with the detectives who were on the watch for the man at the door of his suite in Claridge’s and in the lounge of the hotel.

Then, his pipe between his teeth and his hair ruffled, he would open the door of his office and look down the long empty passage where a couple of lamps were burning dimly; and at such moments he looked like some worthy suburban householder surveying his bit of garden on a Sunday morning.

At the far end of the corridor the old night watchman Jérôme, who had been in the place for over thirty years and whose hair was as white as snow, was sitting in front of his little table with its green-shaded lamp, reading, through his steel spectacles, the big medical treatise that he had been studying for years. He read as children do, moving his lips and spelling out the syllables.

Then the Superintendent would walk about a little, hands in pockets, paying a visit to the Inspectors’ room where the two men on duty – who were in shirt-sleeves like himself – were playing cards and smoking cigarettes.

He walked to and fro. At the back of his room, in a narrow closet, there was a camp bed on which he lay down two or three times without managing to doze off. It was hot, in spite of the torrential rain, because the sun had been beating down on the rooms all day.

Once Maigret went up to his telephone, but on the point of lifting the receiver his hand stopped short. He walked off again, paid another visit to the inspectors, watched the game of cards for a short while and then went back to the telephone.

He was like a child who cannot bring himself to give up something he longs for. If only Lognon hadn’t been such an unlucky man! But Lognon or no Lognon, Maigret had the right, of course, to take in hand the Rue Lamarck case, as he was dying to do.

Not because he considered it particularly sensational. He would get far more kudos from catching the crook, but he could not work up any enthusiasm for that. Willy nilly, he kept picturing the emergency call-box in the rain, the thin, puny figure of the little diamond broker, and the two sisters in their flat together.

How could it be explained? It was one of those cases the smell of which attracted him; he would have liked to sniff it at his leisure till he was so deeply steeped in it that the truth would stand forth of its own accord.

And he had been landed with poor Lognon, the best of men basically, the most conscientious of detectives, quite unbearably conscientious, Lognon who was harried by such persistent bad luck that he had become as surly as a mangy dog.

Every time Lognon had taken up a case he had been unfortunate. Either, just as he was about to make an arrest it was discovered that the guilty man had friends in high places and must be left alone, or else he himself fell ill and had to pass his files on to a colleague, or else an ambitious examining magistrate took all the credit for a successful outcome.

How could Maigret cheat him of triumph yet again? Particularly as Lognon lived in Goldfinger’s district – in the Place Constantin-Pecqueur, three hundred metres from the dead man’s flat, one hundred and fifty from the call-box beside which he had died.

‘Is that Amsterdam?’

Maigret made a note of information received. Since the crook, on leaving Amsterdam, had taken the plane for Basel, he contacted the Swiss police; but his thoughts were still with the little broker and his women-folk. And every time he lay down on his camp bed and tried to sleep, the three of them came into his mind’s eye with ever greater vividness.

Then he went and drank a glass of beer in his office. On arriving there he had three pints of beer and a pile of sandwiches sent up from the Brasserie Dauphine. Watch out! The light was showing under the door of one of the rooms: that of the Superintendent of the Finance Squad. You couldn’t disturb that gentleman; he was as stiff as a poker, always impeccably groomed, and he never gave his colleagues more than a formal greeting. If he was spending the night at Headquarters, that meant there’d be a rumpus in the Bourse tomorrow.

Come to think of it, there had been a gala performance, followed by a supper, at the Madeleine Theatre that evening, to celebrate the hundredth performance of some play; Dr. Paul, that Parisian to the core, who was friends with all the stars, was sure to have been there; he was not expected home before two o’clock. He’d just have had time to change – although he had been known to turn up at the morgue in evening dress – and he’d have got to the Forensic Institute about a quarter of an hour ago.

Maigret couldn’t stand it any longer. He picked up the receiver.

‘The Forensic Institute, please… Hello! Maigret speaking. Will you ask Dr. Paul to come to the phone?… What did you say?… He’s too busy?… He’s begun the autopsy?… Who’s that, his assistant?… Good evening, Jean… Will you take a message to the doctor for me – ask him if he’ll kindly make an analysis of the dead man’s stomach – yes, carefully… I’d like to know, in particular, if the man swallowed anything, food or drink, after his evening meal, which he must have taken at about 7.30… Thanks… Yes, let him call me back… I shall be here all night…’

He hung up and asked for the switchboard at the telephone exchange.

‘This is Superintendent Maigret… I should like you to note all calls made or received from the residence of a certain Goldfinger, 66 bis Rue Lamarck. Right away, yes…’

Lognon might have thought of it too; that couldn’t be helped. Anyhow, he rang up Lognon too, at home in the Place Constantin-Pecqueur. The inspector answered promptly, which showed that he had not gone to bed.

‘Is that you, Lognon? Maigret here… Sorry to disturb you…’

How typical of the Grouser! Instead of sleeping he was already busy writing up his report. His voice was anxious and sullen:

‘I suppose, sir, you’re going to take me off the case?’

‘No, no, old man!… You began it and you’ll carry it through to the end… I shall only ask you to keep me in the picture, as a purely personal favour…’

‘Am I to send you a copy of the reports?’

Just like Lognon!

‘Don’t bother.’

‘Because I intended to send them to my superior, the local Superintendent.’

‘Yes, yes, of course… By the way, I’ve thought of one or two little things… I’m sure they’ve occurred to you too…For instance, don’t you think it would be useful to have the house watched by two detectives? Then if one of the women went out, or if both of them went out separately, we could keep an eye on their comings and goings.’

‘I’ve already posted one man there… I’ll get a second put on… I suppose, if I get blamed for mobilizing too many men…’

‘Nobody will blame you… Have you heard anything from Records about the prints on the gun?’

The offices and labs of the Records department were immediately above Maigret’s head, in the upper floors of the Palais de Justice, but the Superintendent was anxious to deal as tactfully as possible with the prickly inspector.

‘They’ve just called me… There are a great many prints, but too confused to be of any use to us… It looks as if the gun was wiped, but it’s hard to tell exactly because of the rain.’

‘Have you had the gun sent to Gastinne-Renette?’

‘Yes. He’s promised to be in his lab by eight o’clock and to examine the weapon immediately.’

There were various other pieces of advice that Maigret would have liked to give him. He was longing to be involved in the case up to his neck. It was really agony. But when he heard the Grouser’s miserable voice at the end of the line he felt compassion.

‘Well then… I’ll let you get on with the job.’

‘You really don’t want to take over the case?’

‘No, old fellow…Carry on, and good luck!’

‘Thank you…’

The night passed slowly, in the warm privacy of the great buildings which the darkness seemed to make smaller, and where there were only five of them working or wandering about. The phone rang from time to time: Basel called back, then Claridge’s.

‘Listen, boys, if he’s asleep let him sleep… When he rings for his breakfast, and not before, you go quietly into his room and ask him to pay us a little visit at the Quai des Orfèvres. Above all, no fuss… The manager of Claridge’s would hate that…’

He went home at eight o’clock, and all the way back he kept thinking that at that very moment that blessed Lognon was putting Mathilde and Eva into a taxi to take them to the Forensic Institute.

In the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, the housework had already been done, Madame Maigret was looking spick and span and breakfast was waiting on the table.

‘Dr. Paul has just rung you.’

‘He’s taken his time…’

The stomach of the unfortunate Goldfinger contained only half-digested foodstuffs: vegetable soup, ham and pasta. Since eight o’clock in the evening the diamond broker had had nothing to eat or drink.

‘Not even a glass of mineral water?’ Maigret persisted.

‘At any rate not during the half-hour preceding death.’

‘Did you notice a stomach ulcer?’

‘A duodenal ulcer, to be accurate.’

‘No cancer?’

‘Certainly not…’

‘So that he might have gone on living for a long while?’

‘A very long while. And he might even have been cured.’

‘Thank you, doctor… Be kind enough to send your report to Inspector Lognon… What?… Yes, the Grouser… Have a good day!…’

And Madame Maigret put in, as she saw her husband make his way to the bathroom:

‘You’re going to bed, I hope?’

‘I don’t know yet… I slept a bit last night…’

He had a bath, followed by a cold shower, and ate a substantial breakfast while watching the rain fall as continuously as on a November morning. At nine o ‘clock he had the ballistics expert on the line.

‘Hello!… Tell me, Maigret, there’s one point that worries me in this case…We’re dealing with gangsters, aren’t we?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I’ll tell you…The gun I was sent to examine is the same that fired the bullet found in the dead man’s skull, isn’t it?’

Maigret quoted the registration number of the weapon, which corresponded to the one owned by Goldfinger. The expert was ignorant of the circumstances of the drama; he judged solely by the exhibits.

‘What’s worrying you?’

‘When I examined the barrel of the gun I noticed some small shiny scratches on the outside, at the tip of the barrel. I experimented with other guns of the same calibre… And I got the identical result by fitting an American-type silencer to the barrel.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘I can state categorically that not very long ago, two days at most and probably less, since the scratches would have been dulled, a silencer was fitted to the revolver I examined.’

‘Would you be kind enough to send the written report to Inspector Lognon, who is in charge of the enquiry?’

And Gastinnne-Renette exclaimed, just as Dr. Paul had done:

‘The Grouser?’

Madame Maigret said with a sigh:

‘You’re going off?…Do at least take your umbrella.’

He was going off, yes, but he wasn’t going where he wanted to, because of that wretched inspector and his bad luck. If he’d had his own way he’d have had himself driven in a taxi to the corner of the Rue Caulaincourt and the Rue Lamarck. For what purpose? Nothing very definite: to get back into the atmosphere of the street, to hunt about in corners, to go into local bistros and listen to people who, having bought their morning papers, would have heard the news.

Goldfinger, on leaving home, had said he had an appointment in the neighbourhood. If he had committed suicide, it might have been a fictitious appointment. But then, what was the point of the silencer? How could one reconcile the use of this device, which moreover was not in common use or easily available, with the sound that had resounded in the emergency call-box?

If the broker really had an appointment… Generally, appointments are not made in the street, particularly at 10 p.m. in the pouring rain. More probably in a café or bar. But the diamond broker had swallowed nothing, not even a glass of water, after the moment when he left home. Maigret would have liked to go over the man’s tracks, stopping in front of the emergency call-box.

No! There was something that did not fit, he had been aware of that from the start. It might occur to a man like Stan the Killer to abuse the police, to defy them for one last time before blowing his brains out. Not to a timid little man like Goldfinger!

Maigret had taken the bus and was standing on the platform, vaguely watching the early-morning life of Paris, the dustbins in the slanting rain, the workers streaming like ants towards offices and shops.

… Two men, in the space of six months, couldn’t have had the same inspiration… Particularly a notion as crazy as alerting the police in order to make them witnesses from a distance of one’s own suicide…

In such a case one must assume imitation rather than re-invention… Just as, if for instance a man kills himself by jumping off the third storey of the Eiffel Tower and the newspapers are rash enough to speak of it, an epidemic of similar suicides will ensue: fifteen or twenty people, during the next few months, will throw themselves off the Tower…

Now nobody had ever talked about the last moments of Stan the Killer… except at Police Headquarters… That was what had been worrying Maigret from the start, ever since he had left Daniel to go to the Rue Caulaincourt.

‘You’ve had a call from Claridge’s, Superintendent.’

His two detectives… The crook, known as The Commodore, had just rung for his breakfast.

‘Shall we go up, Chief?’

‘Go up, boys…’

To hell with his international crook, and to hell with Lognon into the bargain.

‘Hello!… Is that you, Superintendent? Lognon speaking.’

Of course! As though he had not recognized the lugubrious voice of the Grouser!

‘I’m just back from the Forensic Institute… Madame Goldfinger couldn’t come with us.’

‘What’s that?’

‘She was in such a state of nervous tension this morning that she asked my permission to stay in bed… Her doctor was there when I arrived… a local doctor, Dr. Langevin… He confirmed that his patient had had a very bad night, in spite of taking a heavy dose of sleeping tablets.’

‘Did the young sister go with you?’

‘Yes… She identified the body…She didn’t say a word the whole way… She’s not quite the same person as she was yesterday… There’s a certain hardness and resolution about her that struck me…’

‘Did she shed any tears?’

‘No… She stood quite still looking at the body…’

‘Where is she now?’

‘I took her home… She had a talk with her sister, then she went out again to Borniol’s to see to the funeral arrangements.’

‘Did you send an officer after her?’

‘Yes… There’s another by the door… Nobody went out during the night… There were no telephone calls…’

‘Have you alerted the switchboard people?’

‘Yes…’

Then Lognon added, with the hesitant gulp of someone who dislikes what he is going to say:

‘A stenographer is taking down the report I am now making, I shall send you and my immediate superior a copy by special messenger before noon, to keep things correct.’

Maigret grumbled to himself:

‘Go to the devil!’

Such administrative formality was typical of Lognon, who was so used to seeing his best efforts turned against him that he had made himself intolerable by dint of his absurd precautions.

‘Where are you, old man?’

‘At Manière’s…’

This was a brasserie in the Rue Caulaincourt, not far from the spot where Goldfinger had been killed.

‘I’ve just done all the bistros in the neighbourhood… I showed the photo of the broker, the one on his identity card… It’s a recent one, for the card was renewed less than a year ago… Nobody saw Goldfinger at about ten o’clock last night… In any case he’s not known, except in one small bar kept by an Auvergnat, about fifty yards from his home, where he often used to go and ring up before he had the telephone installed in his flat two years ago.’

‘They’ve been married how long?’

‘Eight years… Now I’m going to the Rue Lafayette… If there was an appointment that’s where it would almost certainly have taken place… As these diamond brokers all know one another…’

Maigret was sick with vexation at not being able to do all that himself, at not being able to mingle with the people who had known Goldfinger and gradually fill in his picture of the man, touch by touch.

‘Carry on, man… Keep me informed…’

‘You shall receive the report…’

But the fine rain, which was falling as though it never meant to stop, made him long to be outside. And here he was, forced to concern himself with so commonplace a person as an international crook specializing in forging cheques and bearer bonds, a gentleman who was likely to ride his high horse for a certain length of time but who would talk in the end.

Now they were just bringing him in. He was a handsome fellow of about fifty, looking like a member of some very exclusive club and putting on an air of astonishment.

‘Are you going to talk?’

‘Excuse me?’ the man said, fiddling with his monocle. ‘I don’t understand. It must be a case of mistaken identity…’

‘Bosh!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said bosh!… Look here, I’ve not got the patience today to spend hours coddling you with a gentlemanly interview to get you to sing… You see this office, don’t you?… Get it into your head that you won’t leave it until you’ve talked…Janvier! Lucas!… Take off his tie and his shoe laces… Put the bracelets on him… Keep an eye on him and don’t let him stir a limb…See you bye and bye, boys…’

Too bad about Lognon, who at any rate was lucky enough to be taking the air in the Rue Lafayette. He jumped into a taxi.

‘Rue Caulaincourt. I’ll tell you when to stop.’

He felt quite pleased already to be back in the street where Goldfinger had been killed, where he had died at any rate, in front of the red-painted post of the emergency call-box.

He walked up the Rue Lamarck with his jacket collar turned up, since in spite of Madame Maigret’s motherly solicitude he had left his umbrella at Headquarters.

A few steps away from no. 66 bis he recognized a detective whom he had met once before and who, although he knew the famous Superintendent, was tactful enough to pretend not to see him.

‘Come over here… Has nobody gone out?… Nobody gone up to the third floor?’

‘Nobody, Monsieur Maigret… I watched all the people who went up the stairs… there were very few of them, only tradesmen…’

‘Is Madame Goldfinger still in bed?’

‘Probably… As for the young sister, she’s gone out and my colleague Marsac is on her heels.’

‘Did she take a taxi?’

‘She waited for the bus at the street corner.’

Maigret went into the house, passed the concierge’s lodge without stopping, climbed up to the third floor and rang at the door on the right.

The bell sounded. He listened attentively, putting his ear close to the door, but heard no sound. He rang a second time, then a third. He said in a low voice:

‘Police!’

He knew, to be sure, that Madame Goldfinger was in bed, but she was not so ill as not to be able to get up and answer, if only through the door.

He went downstairs quickly to the concierge’s lodge.

‘Madame Goldfinger hasn’t gone out, has she?’

‘No, Monsieur… She isn’t well… The doctor came this morning… Her sister’s gone out, though…’

‘Do you have a telephone?’

‘No… You ’ll find one at the Auvergnat’s café just down the road.’

He hurried there, asked for the number of the flat, and heard the bell ring for a long time in the empty room. Maigret’s face at this moment expressed utter bewilderment. He asked for the switchboard.

‘You’ve had no call for the Goldfinger flat?’

‘Not one… Not a single call since you contacted us this evening… By the way, Inspector Lognon has also…’

‘I know…’

He was furious. This silence did not correspond in any way with what he had imagined. He went back to no. 66 bis.

‘You’re quite sure,’ he asked the detective on duty there, ‘that nobody has gone up to the third floor?’

‘I’ll take my oath on it… I followed everybody who went into the house… I even made a list of them, as Inspector Lognon told me to.’

Pernickety Lognon again!

‘Come along… If necessary you can go and fetch a locksmith… There must be one in the neighbourhood…’

They went up the three floors. Maigret rang again. At first there was silence. Then it seemed to him that he heard someone moving at the far end of the flat. He repeated:

‘Police!’

A faraway voice said:

‘One moment!’

That moment lasted more than three minutes. Did it take three minutes to slip on a wrapper and slippers, or at a pinch to touch up one’s face?

‘Is that you, Superintendent?’

‘It’s me, Maigret…’

There was the click of a bolt being drawn and a key turned in the lock.

‘I do apologize… I made you wait a long time, didn’t I?’

Suspicious and aggressive, he asked:

‘What do you mean?’

Did she notice that she had blundered? She stammered in a drowsy voice – too drowsy for the Superintendent’s liking:

‘I don’t know… I was asleep… I had taken a sleeping pill… I thought I heard a bell ring in my sleep.’

‘What sort of a bell?’

‘I couldn’t tell you… It was mixed up with my dream… Do come in. I wasn’t in a fit state to go with your inspector this morning… My doctor was here…’

‘I know.’

And Maigret, who had closed the door behind him, leaving the young detective on the landing, looked round him with a scowl. Mathilde was wearing the same blue wrapper as the night before. She said:

‘May I go back to bed?’

‘Please do.’

On the dining-room table there was still a cup with a little café au lait in it, and some bread and butter, presumably the remains of Eva’s breakfast. In the untidy bedroom, Madame Goldfinger lay down again with a plaintive sigh.

What was odd about it all? He noticed that the young woman had kept on her wrapper; that might of course be a sign of modesty.

‘Had you been on the landing a long time?’

‘No…’

‘Did you telephone?’

‘No…’

‘That’s odd… In my dream the telephone kept ringing and wouldn’t stop…’

‘Really?’

Good. He realized now what was wrong. The woman he was supposed to have roused from the depths of sleep, and of a drugged sleep at that, who only three hours previously, according to her doctor, had been suffering from nervous depression, had her hair as smoothly dressed as though she were paying a call.

There was something else, a silk stocking showing under the bed. Was it likely to have been there since the previous day? Maigret let his pipe fall and bent down to pick it up, which allowed him to ascertain that there was no pair to it under the bed.

‘Have you brought me any news?’

‘I’ve just come to ask you a few questions… One moment… Where is your powder?’

‘What powder?’

‘Your face powder.’

For her face was freshly powdered, and yet Maigret could see no signs of a powder box in the room.

‘On the shelf in the cabinet de toilette. You say that because I kept you waiting? I automatically went to powder my face when I heard the bell…’

Maigret felt like contradicting her. Out loud, he said:

‘Was your husband’s life insured?’

‘He took out an insurance for 300,000 francs the year we were married… Then later he took out another to make it up to a million.’

‘Was that long ago?’

‘You’ll find the policies in the desk, just behind you… You can open it, it’s not locked…They’re in the left-hand drawer.’

Two policies from the same firm. The first was eight years old. Maigret promptly turned the page, looking for a clause which he was almost certain he would find.

In case of suicide…

Only a few companies cover the risk of suicide. It was the case here, with one restriction however: the premium was only payable, in such a case, if the suicide took place at least a year after the signing of the policy.

The second insurance, for 700,000 francs, included the same clause. Maigret turned to the last page right away, to see the date. The policy had been signed exactly thirteen months previously.

‘And yet your husband’s affairs were not going too well at that time?’

‘I know… I didn’t want him to take out such a large insurance, but he was convinced that he was seriously ill and he wanted to safeguard me…’

‘I see that he was fully paid up, which can’t have been easy…’

There was a ring at the door. Madame Goldfinger made as if to rise, but Maigret went to open the door and found himself face to face with Lognon, who turned white and stammered, taut-lipped like a child on the verge of tears:

‘I’m sorry…’

‘On the contrary; it’s I who must apologize. Come in, old man…’

Maigret had the policies in his hand; the other man had seen them and was pointing to them.

‘It’s not worth while now… That was what I was coming for…’

‘In that case let’s go down together.’

‘I think that since you’re here there’s nothing for me to do and I can just go home. My wife happens to be unwell…’

Because Lognon, to crown his misfortunes, was married to the most shrewish wife in the world, who was ill most of the time, so that the inspector had to do the housework when he got home.

‘We’ll go downstairs together, old man… Just let me get my hat…’

And Maigret was mortified, ready to stammer out excuses. He was vexed with himself for hurting the feelings of a poor well-meaning fellow. Someone was coming up the stairs. It was Eva; she cast a cold glance at the two men and her eye immediately fell on the insurance policies. She went past with a curt nod.

‘Come on, Lognon. I think there’s nothing for us to discover here this afternoon…Tell me, Mademoiselle, when is the funeral to be?’

‘The day after tomorrow… They’re bringing the body back this afternoon…’

‘Thank you…’

A queer girl. She was the one whose nerves were so tense that she should have been put to bed with a good dose of barbiturate.

‘Listen, Lognon old man…’

The two of them went down the stairs, one behind the other, and Lognon was sighing and shaking his head:

‘I’ve understood… From the first moment…’

‘What have you understood?’

‘That this is not a case for me… I’m going to draw up my final report…’

‘No.no, old man…’

They were passing in front of the concierge’s lodge.

‘Half a minute… Let’s ask this good woman a question… Tell me, Madame, does Madame Goldfinger go out much?’

‘In the morning to do her shopping… Sometimes in the afternoon to visit the big stores, but not often…’

‘Have they lived a long time in this house?’

‘Six years…If all tenants were like them…’

And Lognon, sunk in gloom, hanging his head, pretended to ignore a conversation which no longer concerned him, since a big chief from Police Headquarters had cut the ground from under his feet.

‘Was there no time when she went out more frequently?’

‘Well, really… This winter, there was a time when she used to spend almost every afternoon out of the house… She told me that she went to see a friend who was expecting a baby.’

‘Did you ever see this friend?’

‘No. Probably they’ve stopped seeing one another.’

‘Thank you… It was before Mademoiselle Eva came, wasn’t it?’

‘It was about that time that Madame Goldfinger stopped going out, yes…’

‘And nothing struck you?…’

The concierge must have thought of something. For a moment her gaze became more fixed, but almost immediately she shook her head.

‘No… Nothing important…’

‘Thank you…’

The two detectives in the street were pretending not to know each other.

‘Come with me as far as Manière’s, Lognon… I’ve got a phone call to make and then I ’m all yours.’

‘Just as you please, ’ sighed Lognon, gloomier than ever.

They took an apéritif in a corner of the café, and then Maigret went into the call-box to telephone.

‘Hello, Lucas?… How’s our Commodore?’

‘He’s coming on nicely…’

‘Still as proud?’

‘He’s beginning to feel thirsty, his mouth’s watering… I think he’d give a lot for a pint or a cocktail.’

‘He can have a drink after he’s talked…See you.’

And he went back to join Lognon, who, sitting at the marble-topped table, had taken a sheet of the cafe’s headed note-paper and in his best copperplate hand was writing his resignation.

3

The interrogation of the Commodore lasted for eighteen hours, punctuated by telephone calls to Scotland Yard, Amsterdam, Basel and even Vienna. Maigret’s office, by the end, had come to look like a guardroom, with empty glasses and plates of sandwiches on the table, pipe-ash all over the floor and papers everywhere. And the Superintendent, although he had taken off his jacket from the start, had great rings of sweat on his shirt, under his armpits.

He had begun by treating his impressive customer as a gentleman, By the end he was handling him as familiarly as any vulgar pickpocket or member of the underworld.

‘Cut out that nonsense, my lad… You know as well as I do…’

He took no interest whatever in what he was doing. Perhaps that was what finally enabled him to get the better of this toughest of crooks. The fellow was bewildered when he saw the passionate interest with which the Superintendent made and received certain phone calls that did not always concern himself.

During this time it was Lognon who was looking after the case that meant so much to Maigret.

‘You see, dear fellow,’ he had told him at Manière’s, ‘only someone like you who knows the neighbourhood can really find his way about in this business… You know the district and all the people concerned better than anyone…And if I ventured…’

Balm and ointment lavishly applied to soothe the wounded self-respect of the surly inspector.

‘Somebody killed Goldfinger, didn’t they?’

‘If you say so…’

‘You think so, too… And it’s one of the finest crimes I’ve seen in the whole of my career… With the Force itself to witness the suicide… That’s first-class, old man, and I noticed that you were struck by it from the start… Our Emergency service called upon to witness a suicide… Only there were those silencer marks… You thought of that as soon as you got Gastinne-Renette’s report… Only a single bullet was fired from Goldfinger’s revolver, and at the time that revolver had a silencer on it… In other words, what we heard was another shot fired from a second gun… You realize that as well as I do…

‘Goldfinger was a second-rater, doomed sooner or later to insolvency.’

A second-rater indeed. Lognon had had the proof of that in the Rue Lafayette, where they had spoken of the dead man with sympathy but also with a certain contempt.

For in those circles they spare no pity for people who let themselves be taken in. And he had been taken in! He had sold some stones, to be paid for in three months’ time, to a jeweller from Bécon-les-Bruyères with a misleadingly respectable reputation, an elderly pater familias who, belatedly infatuated with a girl who was not even pretty, had fraudulently sold the gems and had eventually fled the country with his mistress.

A deficit of 100,000 francs in Goldfinger’s account, which for the past year he had been struggling in vain to make up.

‘A poor devil, you’ll see, Lognon… A poor devil who did not commit suicide… The business of the silencer proves that… But who was foully murdered, shot down by a swine… That’s your opinion, isn’t it?… And his wife is going to get a million…

‘I’ve no advice to give you, for you’re as shrewd as I am…

‘Suppose Madame Goldfinger was in league with the murderer, to whom somebody must have handed over the gun that was in the drawer… After the thing had been done they’d want to contact one another, wouldn’t they, if only for mutual reassurance?…

‘But she never left the building, and she received no phone calls…

‘You get my meaning?… I’m sure you do, Lognon…Two detectives on the pavement… the switchboard permanently on the alert… It was smart of you to have thought of that…

‘And the insurance policy?… And the fact that the suicide clause had only become operative one month previously?

‘I’ll leave you to cope, old man… I’ve another job on hand, and there’s no one better qualified than yourself to bring this one to a successful conclusion…’

That was how he had won over Lognon.

But Lognon’s reply was still melancholy:

‘I shall go on sending my reports to you as well as to my immediate superior.’

Maigret was, so to speak, a prisoner in his office, almost as much as the Commodore. Only the telephone connected him with the Rue Lamarck case, which alone interested him. From time to time Lognon rang up, using the strictest official language:

‘I have the honour to inform you that…’

There had been a scene between the two sisters, echoes of which had been heard outside their flat. That evening Eva had decided to go and sleep at the Hôtel Alsinia, at the corner of the Place Constantin-Pecqueur.

‘It looks as though they hated one another…’

‘I’ll say they do!’

And Maigret added, keeping an eye on the astonished Commodore:

‘Because the younger sister was the one who loved Goldfinger… You can be sure, Lognon, that she understood the whole thing… What remains to be learnt is how the murderer communicated with Madame Goldfinger… Not by telephone, we’re sure of that, thanks to the switchboard…And she did not see him outside the house…’

Madame Maigret rang up:

‘When are you coming home? You forget that you haven’t slept in a bed for twenty-four hours.’

‘Presently, ’ he replied.

Then he began again, for the twentieth or thirtieth time, questioning the Commodore, who finally weakened out of sheer weariness.

‘Take him away, boys,’ he said to Lucas and Janvier. ‘One minute… Come into the Inspectors’room first.’

There were seven or eight of them there in front of Maigret, who was beginning to drop with fatigue.

‘Listen, boys… You remember Stan’s death in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine?… Well! There’s something I can’t put my finger on… a name I’ve got on the tip of my tongue… a recollection that I could bring back with a little effort…’

They all thought hard, somewhat awestruck, because at such moments, after hours of nervous tension, Maigret was always rather overpowering. Only Janvier raised a finger, schoolboy fashion.

‘There was Mariani…’ hesaid.

‘Was he with us at the time of the Stan the Killer case?’

‘It was the last case he was involved in…’

And Maigret went out, slamming the door. He had solved the problem. Ten months previously he had been landed with a probationary detective who had the backing of some minister or other. The man was a dandy – a pimp, according to Maigret – whose presence in his department he had endured for a few weeks and whom he had been forced to get rid of.

The rest was up to Lognon. And Lognon did what had to be done, patiently, without genius but with his usual meticulousness.

For the space of ten or twelve days the Goldfingers’ house was subjected to the closest surveillance. During the whole time nothing transpired except that the girl Eva was also spying on her sister.

On the thirteenth day the police knocked at the door of the flat where the diamond-broker’s wife was supposed to be, and found it empty.

Madame Goldfinger had not gone out of the house, and she was discovered in the flat immediately above her own, rented in the name of a certain Mariani.

A gentleman who, since his expulsion from the police force, lived chiefly by his wits… A man of gross appetites and with a certain seductive power, at any rate for a woman like Madame Goldfinger, wife of a sick husband…

They had not needed to telephone one another nor to meet outside…

And there was a fine prize of a million francs in view if the wretched broker committed suicide more than a year after signing his insurance policy…

A shot fired with the silencer placed on the dead man’s own revolver, provided by his wife.

Then a second shot with a different gun in front of the emergency call-box, a shot which was to establish the fact of suicide unquestionably and prevent the police from looking for a murderer…

‘You’ve done splendidly, Lognon.’

‘Superintendent…’

‘Which of us was it who caught them in their hideout on the fourth floor?… Wasn’t it you who heard the signals they gave each other through the floor?’

‘My report will say…’

‘I couldn’t care less about your report, Lognon… You’ve scored a victory… and against some damn clever people… Will you come and have dinner with me tonight at Manière’s?’

‘Well, it’s just that…’

‘That what?’

‘My wife’s unwell again and so…’

What can one do for people like that, who are forced to leave you in order to go home and wash the dishes, maybe polish the floor?

And yet it was on this man’s account, it was to spare the sensitive feelings of the surly inspector, that Maigret had denied himself the delight of an enquiry on which he had particularly set his heart!

[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 04, 2007—v1 html proofed and formatted]