"Incidentally, was the lobster good yesterday?"

  "There's enough left for a salad."

  "Call me a taxi, will you?"

  No bus this morning, even one with a rear platform. No landscape, no colored images gliding voluptuously over his retina.

  "The Quai des Orfevres!"

  First his office.

  "Get me Fernand Barillard...Etoile 42.38...Hello, Madame Barillard?...Superintendent Maigret here...Can I speak to your husband, please...I'll wait, yes..."

  His hand automatically leafed through the reports piled on his desk.

  "Hello!...Barillard?...It's me again...Yesterday I forgot to ask you to stay at home this morning and probably most of the day...I know!...I know!...Too bad! Your clients will wait...No, I have no idea when I'll be seeing you..."

  Lucas's account was only a confidential note for the Superintendent and his official report would be made later.

  "Nothing important to report. She walked around the apartment until two in the morning, and on several occasions, when she passed near me, I thought she was going to scratch my face. She finally shut herself in her room, and after about half an hour I no longer heard any sound. At eight, when Jarvis relieved me, she seemed to be asleep. I'll call the Quai around eleven to find out if you need me."

  Lapointe's report was hardly more interesting.

  It had been telephoned at three in the morning.

  "For Superintendent Maigret. Monsieur Louis and his companion stayed at the Clou Dorè until half past eleven. The girl is named Louise Pegasse, nicknamed Lulu the Torpedo, the name under which she appears at the end of the program in a striptease club, the Boule Verte on Rue Pigalle.

  "Monsieur Louis accompanied her there. I followed him and sat at a table next to him. After using the stage door, Lulu reappeared on the stage, and when her act was over she sat at the bar, where she and her colleagues have to encourage the customers to drink.

  "Monsieur Louis did not move, did not telephone, never left the room.

  "Shortly before three, Lulu whispered a few words in his ear. He got his hat and, one behind the other, we waited in the street. Lulu soon came out. The couple went on foot to a residential hotel on Place Saint-Georges: the Hotel du Square.

  "I questioned the night porter. Louise Pegasse has been living in the hotel for several months. She often comes back with a man, rarely the same one. It's the second or third time Monsieur Louis has followed her to her room. I'm calling from a bistro that is about to close. I'll stay on duty."

  "Janvier! Where's Janvier? Hasn't he arrived?"

  "He's in the men's room, sir."

  Janvier came in.

  "Send a man opposite the Hotel du Square on Place Saint-Georges to relieve Lapointe, who must be dead tired. If he's got nothing new to report, he can go home to bed and call in the late afternoon. I may need him then."

  He only just had time to rush to the morning conference, arriving last by a lot. There were conspiratorial glances in his direction, because he had the expression he adopted on big days: his set look, his pipe at an angle, squeezed so tightly between his teeth that he had been known to snap the ebonite tip.

  "I'm sorry, sir."

  He did not listen to any of the things that were said.

  When his turn came, he just mumbled:

  "I'm continuing the investigation into Palmari's death. If all goes well, I might conceivably break up the jewel-robbery organization at the same time."

  "Your same old theory! How many years have you suspected Palmari?"

  "Quite a number, I admit."

  Other reports were waiting for him, in particular those of Gastinne-Renette and the medical expert.

  The three bullets that had hit Manuel, one of which had lodged in the back of the wheelchair, had indeed been fired from Palmari's Smith and Wesson.

  "Janvier! Come in for a minute."

  He gave him instructions to organize the duty roster for Rue des Acacias.

  A little later he went through the glass door leading from the Police Judiciaire to the Palais de Justice. He went up two floors before finding the office of the Magistrate, Ancelin, right at the top of the building.

  It was one of the offices that had not been modernized, reserved for newcomers, and the Magistrate had to pile his papers on the bare floor and keep the lights on all day.

  On seeing Maigret, the plump Magistrate rubbed his hands. "You can take a few minutes off," he told his clerk. "Sit down, my dear Superintendent. I'm eager to know how far you've got."

  Maigret summed up his activities of the day before, and the reports received that morning.

  "Do you expect all these scattered elements to fit into something conclusive?"

  "Every character implicated in this case is afraid. Everyone, at the moment, is isolated from the others, with no means of communication..."

  "I see! I see! Very cunning! Not very regular, on the other hand. I couldn't do anything like that, but I'm beginning to understand your tactics. Now what are you going to do?"

  "First, a little round of Rue La Fayette, where they have the diamond market every morning, in a brasserie and in the street. I know a certain number of diamond dealers. It's a place I've often had occasion to visit. Then, for reasons you can guess, I'll be going to the Gelot cardboard-box factory."

  "So, if I understand correctly, the case is as follows..."

  And with a mischievous expression, the Magistrate analyzed the mechanism of the case, which proved that he had spent part of the night studying the file.

  "I suppose you think Palmari is at the head of the business. For years, in his bar in Montmartre he came across vagrants of all ages, who used to meet there. The older generation had gradually dispersed all over France, but it had nevertheless retained its contacts.

  "In other words, with a well-placed telephone call, Palmari could produce the two or three men he needed for such and such a job. Right?"

  Maigret agreed, amused by the Magistrate's excitement.

  "Although he was isolated from the world as a result of his accident, nothing stopped him from directing his organization through Aline Bauche. In rapid succession he bought the buildings where he lived with her, and I now wonder whether he had a definite aim when he did that."

  "Among other things, it enabled him to give certain tenants notice to leave when he needed a vacant apartment."

  "Barillard, for example. Very convenient to have an accomplice on your own floor when you're being watched by the police. Do you think Barillard is capable of recutting precious stones and putting them into circulation?"

  "Putting them into circulation, yes. Cutting them, no. Because it's one of the most expert jobs in the world. Barillard reported on the jewelry displays worth having a crack at. In view of his profession, this was easy.

  "Through Aline, who periodically gave us the slip and went to the Hotel Bussiere..."

  "Hence the purchase of the hotel, which was also a good investment."

  "Some accomplices used to come up from the provinces for a couple of days. Aline, or maybe Barillard, would wait for them in an appointed place, to take possession of the jewels.

  "On the whole, the perpetrators of the smash-and-grab raids could leave without any difficulty, without even knowing who they had been working for, which is why the few vagrants we arrested couldn't tell us a thing."

  "So someone is missing."

  "Exactly. The diamond cutter."

  "Good luck, Maigret. Do you mind if I call you that? Call me Ancelin."

  And the Superintendent replied with a smile:

  "I'll try. In view of my past dealings with examining magistrates, particularly with a certain Comeliau, I doubt if I'll succeed at once. In the meantime, good day, sir. I'll keep in touch."

  It was a Gelot son who answered the telephone when he called the cardboard-box factory on Avenue des Gobelins from his office.

  "No, no, Monsieur Gelot. There's nothing to worry about. It's simply a matter of checking something that has nothing to do with the reputation of your firm. You say Fernand Barillard is an excellent salesman and I'm prepared to believe you.

  "I would just like to know, for our information only, which jewelers have given him orders over the last two years, for example. I suppose your accounting department will have no difficulty in making out this list, which I'll come and collect at the end of the morning. Don't worry. We know how to be discreet."

  In the inspectors' room, he gazed slowly at the faces around him and ended up, as usual, by picking on Janvier.

  "Doing anything important?"

  "No, Chief. I was finishing a report, which can wait. All this paper work!"

  "Get your hat and follow me."

  Maigret belonged to the generation that included many men who did not want to drive. He personally feared his absentmindedness, the brown studies he would fall into during an investigation.

  "To the corner of Rue La Fayette and Rue Cadet."

  In the police force one of the principles when taking an important step is always to be accompanied. If he had not had Lapointe with him the night before, at the Clou Dorè, he would not have been able to have Monsieur Louis followed, and it would probably have taken several days before he got interested in Barillard.

  "I'll park the car and join you."

  Like him, Janvier knew the precious-stone market. Most Parisians, on the other hand, even those who pass Rue La Fayette every morning, do not suspect that those unassuming-looking men dressed like office clerks, who chat in groups in the street and around the tables of the brasserie, have fortunes' worth of precious stones in their pockets.

  These stones, in little bags, pass from hand to hand, without the deals being accompanied by any immediate receipt.

  In this closed set, where everyone knows everyone else, trust reigns supreme.

  "Hello, Berenstein!"

  Maigret shook hands with a tall, thin man who had just left two companions after pocketing a package of diamonds like an ordinary letter.

  "Hello, Superintendent. Another jewel robbery?"

  "Not since last week."

  "You haven't found your man yet? I've discussed it for at least the twentieth time with my colleagues. Like me, they know all the diamond cutters operating in Paris. As I told you, there aren't many of them, and I'm prepared to answer for them. Not one of them would risk recutting stolen or even suspect stones. Those people have a good nose, believe me! Will you have a beer with me?"

  "With pleasure. The moment my inspector has crossed the street."

  "Well, Janvier! You've arrived promptly, I see."

  They sat around a table, and some dealers stood talking between the rows. Occasionally one of them pulled a magnifying glass out of his pocket to examine a stone.

  "Before the war the two main stonecutting centers were Antwerp and Amsterdam. Curiously enough, for reasons I haven't yet discovered, most of the stonecutters were, or still are, from the Baltic-Latvia or Estonia.

  "In Antwerp they had foreigners' identity cards, and when they retreated before the German advance, they were all directed to Royan and then to the United States.

  "After the war, the Americans did what they could to keep them. They hardly managed to keep a tenth of them, because they were all homesick.

  "And yet some of them, when they came back, were seduced by Paris. You'll find them in the Marais and Saint-Antoine. Each of them is known, has a sort of pedigree, because it's a trade that is handed down from father to son and that has its secrets."

  Maigret suddenly looked at him vaguely, as though he were no longer listening.

  "Wait. You said..."

  A word Berenstein had said had struck him.

  "What did I say that worries you?"

  "Just a minute! The German advance...The stonecutters from Antwerp...The United States...Some of them staying there...And why couldn't some have stayed in France at the time of the exodus?"

  "It's possible. Since they're almost all Jews, they might well have ended up in concentration camps or ovens."

  "Unless..."

  The Superintendent suddenly got up.

  "Off we go, Janvier! Where's your car? Good-bye, Berenstein. I'm sorry. I should have thought of it earlier..."

  And Maigret slipped as fast as he could past the groups crowding the sidewalk.

  Chapter 6

  Janvier looked straight ahead, squeezing the steering wheel of the little black car slightly tighter than usual, and he had to resist his desire to watch the face of Maigret, sitting next to him. Once, he opened his mouth to ask a question that was scalding his lips, but he had enough self-control to say nothing.

  Although he had been working for the Superintendent ever since he joined the Police Judiciaire and had collaborated with him in hundreds of investigations, he was nevertheless impressed each time the phenomenon, which had just been set in motion, was produced.

  The day before, Maigret had plunged into the case with a light-hearted frenzy, producing characters out of the dark, turning them this way and that in his large paws like a cat with a mouse, and then putting them back in their corners. He sent inspectors left and right, as though he had no definite plan, telling himself something would always emerge.

  Suddenly he was no longer playing. Janvier was sitting next to another person, a human bulk that nothing could affect, an almost terrifying monolith.

  At the end of the morning, the avenues, the streets of Paris, were a real firework in the July heat. There were splashes of light everywhere.

  They burst from the slate and red-tiled roofs, from the windowpanes, where a red geranium sang: they ran off the multicolored bodies of motorcars, blue, green, yellow, they even seemed to come from the horns, the voices, a squeal of brakes, the ring of a bell, the shrill whistle of a policeman.

  It was as though the black car were as resistant to this symphony as an island of silence and immobility, as though Maigret himself were an impassive block, and he certainly saw nothing, heard nothing, did not even notice that they had arrived at Rue des Acacias.

  "We're here, Chief."

  He stepped heavily out of the car, which had become too narrow for him, gazed blankly at the familiar street, then raised his head, looking as though he were going to take over the whole building, its floors and its occupants.

  Yet he took the time to empty his pipe on the sidewalk by tapping it on his heel, and to fill another and light it.

  Janvier did not ask if he should go with him, nor did he say anything to Janin, who was watching the building and wondered why the Chief did not seem to recognize him.

  Maigret made for the elevator, and Janvier followed him. Instead of going up to the fourth floor, the Superintendent went on to the fifth, and strode on up to the attics.

  Turning to the left, he stopped at the door of the deaf-and-dumb man, and, knowing he would receive no answer, he turned the knob. The door opened.

  The Fleming's room was empty.

  The Superintendent almost ripped off the curtain on the wardrobe and made a short inventory of the few clothes he found in more or less poor condition.

  His eyes photographed every corner of the room, after which he went down a floor, hesitated, and plunged once again into the elevator, which took him to the ground floor.

  The concierge was in her lodge, a shoe on her right foot, a slipper on her left foot.

  "Do you know if Claes has gone out this morning?"

  Seeing him so tense impressed her deeply.

  "No. He hasn't come down yet."

  "You haven't left your lodge?"

  "Not even to do the stairs. My neighbor did them for me because I've got my pains again."

  "He didn't go out last night?"

  "Nobody went out. I only opened the door to tenants coming home. Anyhow, you've got your man in the street and he can tell you."

  Maigret was thinking hard, thinking tough, according to the expression Janvier had invented for his own use.

  "Tell me...Each tenant has a part of the attic at his disposal, as far as I can see..."

  "Exactly. And as a rule they can each rent an additional maid's room."

  "That's not what I'm asking. And the cellars?"

  "Before the war, there were only two large cellars and everyone put his own coal in his own corner. During the war, when hard coal got as expensive as caviar, quarrels broke out, and all the tenants claimed their heaps were getting smaller. Anyhow, the landlord at that time had partitions built, with doors and padlocks."

  "So every tenant has his own cellar."

  "Yes."

  "Claes, too?"

  "No. He's not a proper tenant, since he lives in a maid's room."

  "And the Barillards?"

  "Of course."

  "Have you got the keys to the cellars?"

  "No. I've just said they've got padlocks. Each tenant has his own."

  "Can you see who goes down to the cellars?"

  "Not from here. The cellar stairs are opposite the back stairs, down there. You just have to push the door with nothing written on it, with no doormat."

  Maigret went back to the elevator and looked Janvier in the eye without saying anything.

  He did not have the patience to ring at Barillard's door but rapped violently with his fist. Madame Barillard, in a cretonne dress, opened it with a frightened face.

  "Your husband?"

  "He's in his study. He says you won't let him go to work."

  "Call him in."

  Barillard's silhouette could be seen, still in pajamas and a dressing gown. Despite his efforts, he did not look as well or as self-confident as the day before.

  "Get the key to the cellar."

  "But..."

  "Do as I say."

  It was all happening in unreality, in a dream, or, rather, a nightmare. Suddenly the relationship between the protagonists was no longer the same. It seemed as though everyone was in a state of shock and that words had changed value, as had movements and looks.

  "Go ahead."

  He pushed him into the elevator, and on the ground floor ordered shortly:

  "To the basement."

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12