86 - Maigret and the Black Sheep, page 1
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Unnamed
MAIGRET AND THE BLACK SHEEP
MAIGRET ET LES BRAVES GENS
THE 86TH EPISODE OF THE MAIGRET SAGA
Georges Simenon
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MKM XHTML edition 1.0
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CONTENTS
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Copyright ©1962 by Georges Simenon
English translation copyright©1976 by Georges Simenon
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Simenon, Georges, 1903-Maigret and the black sheep.
Translation of Maigret et les braves gens. “A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”
PZ3.S5892Maegb [PQ2637.I53] 843'.9'12 75-20384
ISBN 0-15-155146-4
First American edition
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1
Instead of groaning as he usually did when the telephone rang in the middle of the night and he groped for the receiver in the dark, Maigret heaved a sigh of relief.
He could no longer remember clearly what he had been dreaming about when the telephone rang, but he knew that it had been an unpleasant dream: he had been trying to explain to somebody important, whose face he couldn’t make out and who was extremely displeased with him, that it wasn’t his fault, that he had to be patient with him, patient for a few days only, because he was out of practice and felt restless and uncomfortable. Rely on him and it wouldn’t take long. Above all, don’t eye him reproachfully, ironically…
“Hello … ”
As he drew the receiver to his ear, Madame Maigret, propping herself up on her elbow, switched on the bedside light.
“Maigret?” asked the caller.
“Yes.”
He did not recognize the voice although it sounded familiar.
“It’s Saint-Hubert … ”
A police superintendent about his own age, whom he had known from the start of his career. They called each other by their last names, but did not use the familiar “tu.” Saint-Hubert was tall and thin, a redhead, rather slow and formal and anxious to score points.
“Did I wake you up?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so sorry. Anyway, any minute now I think you’ll get a call from the Quai des Orfèvres to tell you about it, as I’ve alerted the District Attorney and Police Headquarters.”
Maigret, sitting on his bed, took from the bedside table a pipe which he had allowed to go out when he went to sleep. He looked around for some matches. Madame Maigret got some for him from the mantelpiece. The window was open: Paris was still warm, dotted with lights, and one could hear taxis passing in the distance.
This was the first time they had been awakened like this since their return from vacation five days ago, and for Maigret it was something of a renewed contact with reality, with routine.
“I’m listening,” he murmured as he puffed at his pipe while his wife held the burning match above the bowl.
“I’m in the apartment of Monsieur René Josselin, 37B Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, just next door to the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor … A crime has just been discovered which I don’t know much about as I only arrived some twenty minutes ago … Can you hear me?”
“Yes … ”
Madame Maigret went into the kitchen to make some coffee and Maigret winked at her in approval.
“It seems a confusing case, and very likely a tricky one … That’s why I have taken the liberty of calling you. I was afraid they would just send one of the officers on duty.”
He was choosing his words and it was obvious that he was not alone in the room.
“I knew that you had been on vacation recently.”
“I came back last week.”
It was Wednesday. Or rather Thursday, since the hands of the alarm clock on Madame Maigret’s bedside table showed that it was ten minutes past two in the morning. They had both gone to the movies, not so much to see the film, which was run-of-the-mill, as to get back into their routine.
“Are you going to come?”
“As soon as I put some clothes on.”
“I would appreciate it. I know the Josselin family slightly. One wouldn’t expect a tragedy like this to happen in the home of such people … ”
Even the smell of tobacco was a professional smell: that of a pipe, put out the previous evening and relit in the middle of the night after being awakened by an emergency call. The coffee too had a different aroma to morning coffee. And the smell of gasoline that came through the open window.
For the past week Maigret had felt as if he were floundering. For once they had stayed for three whole weeks at Meung-sur-Loire, without any contact at all with Police Headquarters, without being called back to Paris on an urgent case, as had happened in previous years.
They had continued to fix up the house and garden. Maigret had gone fishing, had played belote with the locals, and ever since his return he hadn’t managed to get back into his daily routine.
And neither had Paris, so it seemed. It had not rained or become cooler, as was usual after the holiday season. Large sightseeing cars were still touring the streets thronged with foreigners in multi-colored shirts, and although many Parisians had returned, many were still leaving by the trainful.
Police Headquarters, the office, seemed rather unreal to Maigret who sometimes wondered what he was doing there, as if his real life was far away on the banks of the Loire.
This unsettled feeling had doubtless given rise to his dream, the details of which he tried to remember without success. Madame Maigret came out of the kitchen with a hot cup of coffee and realized immediately that her husband, far from being annoyed by this rude awakening, was relieved.
“Where did it happen?”
“In Montparnasse … Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs … ”
He had put on his shirt, his trousers, he was lacing his shoes when the telephone rang again. This time it was Police Headquarters.
“This is Torrence, Chief … We’ve just been informed that … ”
“That a man has been killed on Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs … ”
“You already know? Will you be going?”
“Who is in the office?”
“There’s Dupeu, who’s interrogating a suspect in the jewel theft case, then there’s Vacher … Wait … Lapointe is just coming back now … ”
“Tell him to go and wait for me there … ”
Janvier was on vacation. Lucas, who had come back the day before, had not yet returned to work at the Quai.
“Shall I call a taxi?” asked Madame Maigret a little later.
Downstairs, he found a driver who recognized him and for once this pleased him.
“Where do I take you, Chief?”
He gave the address, filled a new pipe. On the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs he saw a small black car belonging to Police Headquarters and Lapointe standing on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette as he chatted to a policeman.
“Third floor on the left,” announced the latter.
Maigret and Lapointe went through the door of a well-kept, middle-class apartment house and saw a light on in the concierge’s apartment; through the net curtain the Superintendent thought he recognized an inspector from the 6th arrondissement who was questioning the concierge.
The elevator had only just stopped when a door opened and Saint-Hubert came forward to greet them.
“The District Attorney’s men won’t be here for another half-hour … Come in … You’ll understand why I was anxious to telephone you.”
They went into a large hall, then Saint-Hubert pushed open a door which was ajar and they came into a quiet living room, empty except for the body of a man slumped in a leather armchair. Fairly tall and rather fat, the body was crumpled up and the head, with the eyes open, was hanging to one side.
“I asked the family to go into another room … Madame Josselin is in the hands of the family doctor, Dr. Larue, who happens to be a friend of mine.”
“Has she been wounded?”
“No. She wasn’t here when the accident occurred. I will tell you briefly what I have been able to find out so far.”
“Who lives in the apartment? How many people?”
“Two … ”
“You spoke of a family … ”
“You’ll see … Monsieur and Madame Josselin have been living alone since their daughter got married. She married a young doctor, Dr. Fabre, a pediatrician who is assistant to Professor Baron at the Children’s Hospital.”
Lapointe was taking notes.
“This evening Madame Josselin and her daughter went to the Madeleine theater … ”
“And the husbands?”
“René Josselin stayed by himself for awhile.”
“Didn’t he like the theater?”
“I don’t know. I tend to think he didn’t really like going out in the evenings.”
“What did he do?”
“For the last two years, nothing. Before that he owned a cardboard factory on Rue du Saint-Gothard. He manufactured cardboard boxes, in particular fancy boxes for perfume dealers, for example … He gave up the business because of his health.”
“How old was he?”
“Sixty-five or sixty-six. So last night he was alone. Then his son-in-law joined him, I don’t know exactly when, and the two men played chess.”
Indeed, on a small table they could see a chessboard on which the pieces remained set out as if the game had been interrupted.
Saint-Hubert spoke in a low voice and they heard movements in other rooms whose doors were not completely closed.
“When the two women came back from the theater … ”
“At what time?”
“At a quarter past twelve … As I was saying, when they came back, they found René Josselin in the state that you see him … ”
“How many bullets?”
“Two … Two near the heart.”
“Didn’t the other tenants hear anything?”
“Their next-door neighbors are still on vacation.”
“Were you notified right away?”
“No. They first called Dr. Larue who lives close by on Rue d’Assas and who was treating Josselin. That took some time and it was not until ten past one that I had a telephone call from my police station to say they had just been notified. I jumped into my clothes, rushed here … I only asked a few questions since it was difficult to do otherwise with Madame Josselin in the condition I found her … ”
“And the son-in-law?”
“He arrived shortly before you did.”
“What does he say?”
“We had difficulty getting hold of him and ended up finding him at the hospital where he had gone to see a small boy suffering from encephalitis, if I understood correctly … ”
“Where is he now?”
“In there … ”
Saint-Hubert pointed to one of the doors. They could hear people whispering.
“From the little I’ve learned, there has been no theft and no signs of breaking-and-entering … The Josselins have no enemies … They’re good people who lived quietly.”
There was a knock at the door. It was Ledent, a young police surgeon whom Maigret knew and who shook his hand warmly before putting his case on a chest of drawers and opening it.
“The District Attorney telephoned me,” he said. “Their representative is on the way.”
“I would like to ask the young woman a few questions,” murmured Maigret, whose eyes had scanned the room several times.
He understood Saint-Hubert’s feeling. The room was not only elegant and comfortable, but gave a sense of peacefulness, of family life. It was not a formal living room; it was a room in which people enjoyed living; one felt that each item of furniture had its own function and history.
The huge tan-colored leather armchair, for instance, was obviously the chair in which René Josselin used to sit every evening. And directly across the room, the television set stood right in his field of vision.
The grand piano had been used for years by a little girl whose portrait hung on the wall and, near another armchair, not as deep as the one belonging to the head of the family, was an attractive Louis XV work table.
“Shall I call her?”
“I would prefer to see her in another room.”
Saint-Hubert knocked at a door, disappeared for a moment, and came back to get Maigret who caught a glimpse of a bedroom and a man leaning over a woman lying on a bed.
Another woman, considerably younger, came up to him and said in a low voice:
“Would you come with me to my old room?”
A room which had remained a young girl’s room, still filled with mementos, knick-knacks, photographs, just as if someone had wanted her to remember her younger days in her parents’ home, even after her marriage.
“You’re Superintendent Maigret, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“You may smoke your pipe … My husband smokes cigarettes from morning till night, except at the bedside of his young patients, of course.”
She was wearing a rather smart dress and before going to the theater she had gone to the hairdresser. She was fiddling with a handkerchief.
“Do you prefer to stand?”
“Yes. And you would too, wouldn’t you?”
She did not stay where she was, but paced up and down, not knowing where to look.
“I don’t know if you can imagine the effect this has had … Every day you hear about crimes in the newspapers, on the radio, but you never think it can happen to you. Poor Daddy!”
“Were you very close to your father?”
“He was an exceptionally kind man. I was everything to him … I am his only child. Superintendent Maigret, you must try to find out what has happened, so that you can tell us … I can’t stop thinking that it’s all a terrible mistake … ”
“Do you think the murderer could have got the wrong floor?”
She looked at him as if she were clinging to a life preserver, but suddenly shook her head.
“It’s impossible … The lock hasn’t been forced … My father must have opened the door … ”
Maigret called out:
“Lapointe! You can come in.”
Maigret introduced him and Lapointe blushed at finding himself in a young girl’s bedroom.
“Allow me to ask you a few questions. Was it you or your mother who thought of going to the theater this night?”
“It’s difficult to say. I think it was Mother. She is always the one who insists that I go out. I have two children, the oldest is three and the other is ten months old. When my husband isn’t in his office, where I don’t see him, he is away, either at the hospital or making house calls. He is totally dedicated to his profession. So, occasionally, two or three times a month, Mother phones and suggests I go out with her. There was a play on tonight that I wanted to see … ”
“Wasn’t your husband free?”
“Not until half past nine. That was too late. And besides, he doesn’t like the theater … ”
“When did you get here?”
“About half past eight.”
“Where do you live?”
“On Boulevard Brune, near the Cité Universitaire … ”
“Did you come by taxi?”
“No. My husband took me in his car. He had some time between two of his appointments.”
“Did he come up?”
“He left me on the sidewalk.”
“Was he planning to come back for you afterward?”
“That’s usually the way we do it when my mother and I go out. Paul—that’s my husband’s name—used to join my father as soon as he had finished his rounds and they would play chess or watch television while they waited for us.”
“Is that what happened last night?”
“According to what he has just told me, yes. He arrived shortly after half past nine. They began a game of chess. My husband then received a telephone call … ”
“At what time?”
“He hasn’t had time to tell me exactly when it was. He left, and when Mother and I came back later we found what you see … ”
“Where was your husband at that time?”
“I telephoned home immediately and Germaine, our maid, told me he hadn’t come back.”
“Didn’t it occur to you to call the police?”
“I don’t know … Mother and I were stunned … We couldn’t grasp it … We needed someone to advise us and it was I who thought of calling Dr. Larue … He is a friend, besides being Daddy’s doctor … ”
“Didn’t your husband’s absence surprise you?”
“At first I assumed he had been detained by an emergency … Then when Dr. Larue arrived I telephoned the hospital … I managed to reach him there . . ”
“What was his reaction?”
“He told me he would come right away … Dr. Larue had already called the police. I’m not sure if I am telling you all this in the right order … at the same time I was looking after Mother, who seemed completely dazed … ”
“How old is she?”
“Fifty-one. She is much younger than Daddy who married late, at the age of thirty-five … ”
“Would you send your husband in?”
With the door to the living room opened, Maigret could hear the voices of Mercier, the delegate from the D.A.’s office, and Etienne Gossard, a young coroner who, like the others, had been hauled out of bed. The men from Forensics would soon be taking over the living room.
