Maigret and the Pickpocket, page 5
“You’ve called at just the right moment, Inspector. I was going to call you. Have you been able to find out when exactly the young woman had her last meal, and what it consisted of?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment. How about the wound?”
“As far as I can judge the shot was fired at a distance of, say, between a yard and a yard and a half.”
“From the front?”
“From the side. The victim was standing up. She must have staggered back a step or two before falling on the carpet. The laboratory, which found patches of blood, will confirm this. And another thing. The woman had had a pregnancy which had been terminated toward the third or fourth month by the crudest possible methods. She smoked a lot, but was in quite good health.”
“Do you mind holding on a moment?”
He went back to his office.
“Did you have dinner with your wife on Wednesday evening?”
“Around half past eight, at the Old Wine Press.”
“Do you remember what she ate?”
“Wait… I wasn’t hungry. I just had some cold meat. Sophie ordered a fish soup which Rose recommended, then some beef…”
“No dessert?”
“No. We drank a carafe of Beaujolais… I had some coffee. Sophie didn’t want any.”
Maigret went into the next room and repeated the menu to Delaplanque.
“If she ate at half past eight, I can put the death at somewhere around eleven o’clock in the evening, because the food was almost completely digested. I’ll tell you more after the chemical analysis, but it’ll take a few days.”
“Did you do the paraffin test?”
“Yes. I saw to that. There wasn’t any trace of powder on the hands. You’ll get my preliminary report in the morning.”
Maigret went back again to his office and arranged the five or six pipes he kept there in order of size.
“I’ve got some more questions to put to you, Ricain, but I hesitate to do so today. You’re worn out and you’re only keeping going on your nerves.”
“I’d rather get it over with now…”
“As you wish. So, if I’ve understood you correctly, you’ve never, up till now, had any steady job or regular income?”
“There are tens of thousands of us in the same boat, I should think…”
“Whom did you owe money?”
“All the shopkeepers… Some of them won’t let us have anything any more… I owe another five hundred francs to Maki.”
“Who’s he?”
“A sculptor, who lives in the same block. He’s abstract, but to make a bit of money he does portrait busts every now and then. This had happened a fortnight ago. He made four or five thousand francs and bought us dinner. Over the dessert I asked him to make me a small loan.”
“Who else?”
“There’s a stack of them!”
“Did you plan to pay them back?”
“I’m sure one day I’ll make a lot of money. Most directors and well-known writers began like me.”
“Let’s turn to something else. Were you jealous?”
“Of whom?”
“I’m referring to your wife. I presume that sometimes some of your friends used to try to make up to her?”
Ricain fell silent, embarrassed, and shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to understand. You belong to a different generation… We young people don’t attach so much importance to these things.”
“Do you mean you allowed her to have intimate relations with other people?”
“It’s difficult to reply to such a crude question.”
“Even so, try.”
“She posed in the nude for Maki…”
“And nothing happened?”
“I never asked them.”
“And Monsieur Carus?”
“Carus has as many girls as he wants, all the ones who want to get into the movies or television.”
“Does he exploit the situation?”
“I believe so…”
“Didn’t your wife try to get into the movies?”
“She had a small speaking part three months ago.”
“And you weren’t jealous?”
“Not in the way you mean.”
“You told me Carus had a mistress…”
“Nora.”
“Is she jealous?”
“That’s not the same thing. Nora is an intelligent woman, and ambitious… She looks down on the movies. What she cares about is becoming Madame Carus and having plenty of money at her disposal.”
“Did she get on well with your wife?”
“As well as with anyone. She was condescending to all of us, men and women alike… What are you driving at?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you planning to interrogate everybody I was in touch with?”
“Possibly. Someone killed your wife. You say that it wasn’t you, and until I have proof to the contrary I’m inclined to believe you.
“An unknown person got into your home on Wednesday evening, when you had just left. This person had no key, which leads one to suppose that your wife let him into the studio without being suspicious.”
Maigret was keeping a close eye on the young man, who was becoming visibly impatient, trying to get a word in.
“One moment! Who, among your friends, knew of the existence of the gun?”
“Nearly all of them. In fact, all…”
“Did you occasionally carry it on you?”
“No. But sometimes, when I was in funds, I would ask my friends around… I would buy some cold cuts and salmon and things like that, and everybody brought a bottle of wine or whisky.”
“What time did these little parties finish?”
“Late. We drank a great deal… Sometimes people fell asleep and stayed till morning. Occasionally I would play with the gun, as a joke…”
“Was it loaded?”
Ricain didn’t answer at once, and at these moments it was difficult not to have suspicions about him.
“I don’t know.”
“Listen. You speak of parties when everyone was more or less drunk. You would grab a gun, just for fun, and now you tell me you didn’t even know whether it was loaded. Earlier you told me you didn’t know where the safety catch was. You could have killed any one of your friends without meaning to.”
“It’s possible. When one is drunk…”
“Were you often drunk, Ricain?”
“Quite often. Not so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing, but I take my liquor neat, like most of my friends. When we meet, especially in clubs and cafés…”
“Where did you lock up the gun?”
“It wasn’t locked up. It was kept in the top of the chest with old bits of string, nails, thumbtacks, bills, all the things we couldn’t find a place for anywhere else.”
“So that any one of the people who used to spend the evening with you could have taken the weapon and used it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any suspicions?”
A moment’s hesitation, once again, a sidelong glance.
“No…”
“Nobody was deeply in love with your wife?”
“I was…”
Why did he say it with a note of sarcasm in his voice?
“In love but not jealous?”
“I’ve already explained…”
“And Carus?”
“I told you…”
“Maki?”
“He’s a big brute to look at, but he’s as gentle as a lamb and women frighten him…”
“Tell me about the others, the people you saw, the ones you met up with in the Old Wine Press and who used to round off their evenings with you, when you were solvent…”
“Gérard Dramin. He’s an assistant director. He was the one I worked with on a script, when I was third assistant on the picture.”
“Married?”
“At the moment he’s living apart from his wife. It isn’t the first time… After a few months they always go back to each other again.”
“Where does he live?”
“All over the place, always in hotels. He boasts openly of owning nothing except a suitcase and its contents…”
“Are you taking this down, Janvier?”
“I’m with you, Chief.”
“Who else, Ricain?”
“A photographer, Jacques Huguet, who lives in the same block as I, in the center building.”
“How old?”
“Thirty.”
“Married?”
“Twice. Divorced both times. He has one child by his first wife, two by the second. She lives on the same floor.”
“Does he live by himself?”
“With Jocelyne, a nice girl, seven or eight months pregnant…”
“That makes three women in his life. Does he still see the first two?”
“The girls get on well together.”
“Go on.”
“Go on with what?”
“The list of your friends, the regulars at the Old Wine Press.”
“They keep changing, as I told you before. There’s Pierre Louchard…”
“What does he do?”
“He’s over forty, he’s a queer, and he runs an antique shop in Rue de Sèvres.”
“What does he have in common with your group?”
“I don’t know. He’s a regular customer at the Old Wine Press. He follows us about… He doesn’t talk much, and seems to feel at home with us.”
“Do you owe him money?”
“Not much… Three hundred and fifty francs.”
The telephone rang. Maigret picked up the receiver.
“Hello, Chief. Lapointe would like a word with you. Shall I put him through to your office?”
“No, I’ll come around.”
He went back into the Inspectors’ room.
“You asked me to call you when we were through, Chief. Lourtie and I have questioned all the neighbors who could have heard anything, especially the women, as most of the men are still at work.
“Nobody remembers a shot. They are accustomed to noises coming from the Ricains’ apartment at night. Several of the tenants had complained to the janitor about it and were planning to write to the landlord.
“Once at about two o’clock in the morning an old lady who was suffering from tooth-ache was standing by her window when she saw a naked girl burst out of the studio and run into the courtyard pursued by a man.
“She wasn’t the only one who said that there used to be orgies in the Ricains’ studio.”
“Did Sophie have visitors when her husband was away?”
“Well, the fact is. Chief, the women I spoke to weren’t very precise. The terms that cropped up most often were: savages, people with no manners, or no morals. As for the concierge, she was waiting for their lease to expire to give them notice to quit: they were six months behind with the rent and the landlord had decided to get rid of them if they didn’t pay up. What shall I do?”
“Stay at the studio until I get there. Keep Lourtie with you, as I may need him.”
He went back to his office, where Janvier and Ricain were waiting in silence.
“Listen to me, Ricain. At this stage, I don’t want to ask the Magistrate for a warrant against you. On the other hand, I don’t suppose you want to sleep in Rue Saint-Charles tonight.”
“I couldn’t…”
“You haven’t got any money. I would rather not see you let loose again in Paris trying to find a friend who’ll lend you something.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Inspector Janvier is going to take you to a small hotel, not far from here, on the Ile Saint-Louis. You can have food sent up to you. If you pass a drugstore or a pharmacy, buy yourself some soap, a razor, and a toothbrush…”
The Chief Inspector gave Janvier a wink.
“I’d rather you didn’t go out. Besides, I must warn you that if you should happen to…”
“I’ll be followed… I realized that. I’m innocent.”
“So you said.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“It’s not my job to trust people. I’m content to wait. Good night.”
Alone once again, Maigret paced his office for a few minutes, pausing every now and then in front of the window. Then he picked up the telephone to tell his wife that he would not be home for dinner.
A quarter of an hour later he was back in the subway on his way to Bir-Hakeim. He knocked on the studio door, and Lapointe let him in.
The smell of disinfectant still hung in the air. Lourtie, seated in the only armchair, was smoking a small, exceptionally strong cigar.
“Do you want to sit down. Chief?”
“No thank you. I presume you found nothing new?”
“Some photos. Here’s one of the Ricains together on the beach. Another in front of their car…”
Sophie wasn’t bad-looking. She had that slightly sulky look that is fashionable among young people and a bouffant hair style. In the street one might have taken her for any one of thousands with the same mannerisms and the same way of dressing.
“No wine or liquor?”
“A bottle with some dregs of whisky in that cupboard.”
An old, nondescript cupboard, like the cabinet and the chairs, but made original by the flat white paint which contrasted with the black floor and red walls.
Maigret, with his hat on, pipe in mouth, pulled open the doors and drawers. Very few clothes, three dresses altogether, cheap, garish. Some trousers, polo shirts…
The kitchenette, next to the bathroom, was scarcely larger than a cupboard, with its gas ring and miniature refrigerator. In the latter he found an opened bottle of mineral water, a quarter of a pound of butter, three eggs, a cutlet in a congealed sauce.
Nothing was clean, neither the clothes nor the kitchen, nor the bathroom in which the dirty laundry was strewn about.
“Nobody called?”
“Not since we’ve been here.”
By now the crime must have found its way into the evening papers, or would be doing so at any moment.
“Let Lourtie go and have a bite, then come back here and settle down as comfortably as possible. All right, Lourtie, old boy?”
“All right, Chief. Am I allowed a nap?”
As for Maigret and Lapointe, they set out on foot for the Old Wine Press.
“Have you arrested him?”
“No. Torrence has taken him off to the Stork, on the Ile Saint-Louis.”
It was not the first time that they had put a customer they had been anxious to keep an eye on in there.
“Do you think he killed her?”
“He’s both intelligent enough and stupid enough to have done it. On the other hand…”
Maigret struggled for words, but could not find them. He had seldom been so intrigued by a person as he was by this François Ricain. At first sight, he was just an ambitious young man of the kind one runs into every day in Paris or any other capital city.
A future failure? He was only twenty-five. Men who later became famous were still pounding the pavement at his age. At moments the Chief Inspector was inclined to trust him. Then, immediately afterwards, he would give a discouraged sigh.
“If I were his father…”
What would he do with a son like François? Try to bring him around, guide him back onto the rails?
He decided to go and see the father in Montmartre. Unless he came around to the Police Headquarters of his own accord when he read the papers.
Lapointe, who was walking beside him in silence, was little more than twenty-five years old. Maigret mentally compared the two men.
“I think it’s there. Chief, on the other side of the boulevard, near the Air Terminal subway station.”
They found themselves gazing at an entrance door flanked by two worm-eaten wine presses, with heavily curtained windows through which filtered the pink light of the lamps, which were already lit.
It was not time yet for aperitifs, much less for dinner, and there were only two people in the room, a woman, on the customers’ side of the bar, perched on a high stool and drinking through a yellowish straw, and the boss on the other, bent over a newspaper.
The lights were pink, the bar was supported by wine presses, the massive tables were covered with checked cloths, and the walls were three-quarters paneled with dark woodwork.
Maigret, walking ahead of Lapointe, frowned as he caught sight of the man with the newspaper, as if he were trying to remember where he had seen him before.
The boss, for his part, raised his head, but it only took him an instant to recognize the Chief Inspector.
“What a coincidence,” he remarked, tapping the still fresh print. “I was just reading that you were in charge of the case.”
And, turning to the girl:
“Fernande, meet Chief Inspector Maigret in person… Sit down. Inspector. What can I offer you?”
“I didn’t know you had gone into the restaurant business.”
“When you begin to get on a bit…”
It was true that Bob Mandille must have been about Maigret’s age. He was much talked about in the old days, when he used to think up some new stunt every month, walking along the wing of an airplane in flight, parachuting over the Place de la Concorde and landing a few feet from the Obelisk, or leaping from a galloping horse into a racing car.
The movie industry had turned him into one of its most celebrated stunt men after trying in vain to make him a male lead. People had lost count of the accidents he had had, and his body must be a mass of scars.
He had kept his figure and his elegance. There was just a touch of stiffness in his movements, something mechanical. As for his face, it was just a little too smooth, with slightly too regular features, probably the result of plastic surgery.
“Scotch?”
“Beer.”
“Same for you, young man?”
Lapointe was not at all pleased to be addressed in this way.
“You see, Monsieur Maigret. I’ve had enough. The insurance companies tell me I’m too old to be a good risk and all of a sudden they don’t want me in the movies any more. So I married Rose and turned publican… You’re looking at my hair? Do you remember my picture, when I was scalped by the blades of a helicopter and my head was as bald as an egg? A wig, that’s all it is…”
He raised it, gallantly, as if it were a hat.
