He returned to the riverbank, but caught nothing more, and at six o’clock in the evening he and his wife were in the crowded train traveling to Paris.

  They had some cold meat and watched the darkness fall, the streets, which were still practically empty, and the houses across the way, where a few lights were beginning to go on.

  Boulay did not use to spend his Sundays in the country. His night clubs were open seven days a week, and he was not the man to leave them without supervision. As for his three women, they probably felt no desire to leave their little Italy on Rue Victor-Masse.

  At nine o’clock on Monday morning Maigret looked in at the Quai des Orfèvres to make sure that there was nothing new, and at a quarter to ten a taxi deposited him on Rue Pigalle. A funeral notice with a black border was fastened to the grille of the Lotus. On Rue Victor-Masse, there was another on the door of the Train Bleu.

  The sidewalk across from what had been Boulay’s home was swarming with people. Every now and then, somebody or some small group broke away to go into the house, whose door was hung with black draperies.

  Like the others, he waited his turn in front of the elevator, where you got an advance whiff of the flowers and tapers. The living room had been transformed into a mortuary chapel, and some dark figures were standing around the coffin—Antonio, Monsieur Raison, and an old headwaiter who was regarded as one of the family—while a woman could be heard sobbing in a nearby room.

  He shook hands, went downstairs again, and waited with the others. He recognized faces he had glimpsed in the dead man’s night clubs. All his staff must have been there; the women in fantastically high heels had tired faces, eyes that looked surprised to see the morning sun.

  “Quite a crowd, eh?”

  It was the doorman, Louis Boubée, alias Mickey, dressed in black, who had tugged the Chief Superintendent by the sleeve and seemed proud of the success the funeral was having.

  “They’re all here…”

  He meant the proprietors of all the night clubs in Paris, including those on the Champs-Élysées and in Montparnasse, the musicians, the barmen, the waiters…

  “Have you seen Jo?”

  He pointed to Jo the Wrestler, who waved to the Chief Superintendent and who was also dressed in black for the occasion.

  “A mixed crowd, isn’t it?”

  Loud suits, light-colored hats, big signet rings, and shoes in suède or crocodile. Everybody had come. Boulay might not have belonged to the underworld and might have deserved the nickname of the “Grocer,” but he still had been part of the night life of Montmartre.

  “You don’t know who did it yet?”

  At that moment the lawyer came out of the house, which the Chief Superintendent had not seen him enter; the hearse, which had just drawn up alongside the sidewalk, hid him from Maigret almost immediately.

  There were so many flowers and wreaths that they filled two whole cars. Behind the hearse, Antonio walked by himself, followed by the staff and the dancers. Then came all the other mourners, forming a procession over a hundred yards long.

  The shopkeepers on the way came out to watch, housewives stopped on the curb, and people leaned out of windows. Finally, running alongside the dark line of people, there were photographers taking shots of the procession.

  The organ boomed out just as the six men carrying the coffin crossed the threshold of the church. The women followed, wearing thick veils. For a moment, Jean-Charles Gaillard’s eyes met those of the Chief Superintendent; then the two men were separated by the crowd.

  Maigret stayed at the back of the church, into which a ray of sunshine penetrated every time the door opened. And he went on passing the same pictures through his head, like a pack of cards.

  Boulay taking his watch out of his pocket… Boulay waiting for a few minutes before walking down the Rue Pigalle…

  Antonio had done things handsomely. There was not just a funeral service but a sung Mass.

  The congregation took a long time coming out. Four or five cars were waiting for the family and the dead man’s closest colleagues, for there was no room left in the Montmartre cemetery and Boulay’s body was destined for Ivry.

  Antonio found time to make his way through the crowd to reach the Chief Superintendent.

  “Would you like a place in one of the cars?”

  Maigret shook his head. He was watching the lawyer walking away and he elbowed his way after him.

  “A fine funeral,” he observed, rather as Mickey had said on Rue Victor-Masse. “You’re not going to the cemetery?”

  “I’ve got some work waiting for me. Besides, I wasn’t invited…”

  “The whole of Montmartre was there…”

  Some of the crowd was still drifting away when the hearse and the other cars drove off.

  “You must have recognized quite a few of your clients.”

  “So would any other lawyer.”

  Changing the subject, as if he found that one distasteful, Gaillard asked:

  “Have you got a line on the murderer?”

  “Let’s call it the beginning of a line…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I still haven’t got the main thing, namely the motive…”

  “You’ve got all the rest?”

  “I haven’t any proof yet, I’m afraid… Did you go to the country yesterday?”

  The lawyer looked at him in surprise.

  “Why do you ask that?”

  They, like many other people, were walking up Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, which had rarely been so crowded at that hour of the day, and were just passing the Saint-Trop’; the frame containing the photographs of naked women had been removed and the funeral notice put in its place.

  “No reason in particular,” replied Maigret. “Because I went there with my wife… Because most Parisians, on Sunday, go to the country or to the seaside…”

  “My wife hasn’t been able to go away for a long time now…”

  “So that you spend Sunday by yourself on Rue La Bruyère?”

  “I take the opportunity to study my files.”

  Was Jean-Charles Gaillard wondering why the Chief Superintendent was keeping close to him? Normally Maigret would have gone down toward the center of the city. But he continued to keep in step with the lawyer, and soon they found themselves on Rue La Bruyère, where the blue car was in its place in front of the house.

  There was a moment of embarrassment. Maigret showed no sign of going away. The lawyer was holding his key.

  “I won’t ask you in, because I know how busy you are…”

  “As it happens, I was just going to ask you if I might use your telephone…”

  The door opened.

  “Come into my study…”

  The door leading into the adjoining office was open and a secretary about thirty years old stood up. Without taking any notice of Maigret, she spoke to her employer.

  “There have been two calls, one of them from Cannes…”

  “I’ll see about them later, Lucette…”

  Gaillard seemed preoccupied.

  “Is it a local call you want to make? Here’s the telephone.”

  “Thank you…”

  Through the window he could see a paved courtyard in the middle of which there was a rather fine linden tree.

  Still standing, Maigret dialed his number.

  “Hello… Has Inspector Lapointe got back?… Put me through to him, will you?… Thank you… Yes… Hello… Lapointe?… Did you find what you were looking for?”

  He listened for a long time, while the lawyer, without sitting down at his desk, moved some files around.

  “Yes… yes… I see… You’re sure about the dates… You got him to sign a statement?… No, I’m on Rue La Bruyère. Is Lucas back?… Not yet?…”

  While he was talking, he looked at the courtyard, at a couple of blackbirds hopping about on the paving stones, at the shadow of the lawyer as he walked up and down in front of the window.

  “Yes, wait for me. I won’t be long and there may be something new…”

  He, too, was entitled to play his little comedy. After replacing the receiver, he mimed embarrassment, scratching his head with a perplexed expression.

  The two of them were still standing, and the lawyer was looking at him inquisitively. Maigret prolonged the silence on purpose. When he spoke, it was to say, with a hint of reproach in his voice:

  “You haven’t a very good memory, Monsieur Gaillard…”

  “What are you insinuating?”

  “Or else, for some reason I can’t quite fathom, you haven’t been telling me the truth…”

  “What about?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I swear I…”

  He was a tall, strong man, who only a few moments before had been quite sure of himself. But now his face looked like that of a little boy caught red-handed and insisting on protesting his innocence.

  “I honestly don’t know what you mean…”

  “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Of course not.”

  Maigret slowly filled his pipe, scowling like a man who has an unpleasant task to perform.

  The other man said:

  “Won’t you sit down?”

  “I won’t be a moment… When I came to see you on Friday, I spoke to you about your car…”

  “That’s possible… We had a rather disjointed conversation and I was too struck by what I had just learned to register any details…”

  “You told me that your car was usually parked in front of your house and that you left it there for the night…”

  “That’s correct… It spent last night there, for instance, and the night before that. You may have seen it as you came in…”

  “But recently there were a few days when it wasn’t there…”

  He acted as if he were searching his memory.

  “Wait a moment…”

  He had suddenly gone very red, and Maigret almost felt sorry for him. It was obvious that it was only thanks to a tremendous effort that he retained an air of self-assurance.

  “I can’t remember whether it was last week or the week before that the car needed some repairs… I can ask my secretary. It was she who telephoned to the garage to pick it up…”

  All the same, he made no move toward the communicating door.

  “Call her in…”

  He finally pushed open the door.

  “Will you come in here for a moment? The Chief Superintendent has a question he wants to ask you…”

  “Don’t be alarmed, mademoiselle. It’s a very innocent question. I should like to know what day you telephoned to the garage on Rue Ballu to come and get the car…”

  She looked at her employer as if to ask his permission to reply.

  “Monday afternoon,” she said at last.

  “You mean last Monday?”

  “Yes…”

  She was pretty and pleasant, and her white nylon dress revealed an appetizing body. Was there something between her and Gaillard?… That was none of Maigret’s business for the moment.

  “Was it a big repair job?”

  “I can show you the bill from the garage. I received it this morning… they had to change the muffler. They had thought they would be able to bring the car back on Wednesday morning…”

  “And they didn’t?”

  “They phoned to apologize… It’s an American car… Contrary to their expectations, there wasn’t a spare muffler available in Paris and they had to telephone to their depot at Le Havre…”

  Jean-Charles Gaillard was pretending to have no interest in the conversation and, seated at last at his desk, was looking through a file.

  “When was the car delivered?”

  “Thursday or Friday… Will you excuse me? It’s marked in my diary…”

  She went into her office and came back a moment later.

  “Thursday evening. They had the muffler delivered by express and worked all day…”

  “You didn’t come back after dinner?”

  Another glance at the lawyer.

  “No. That rarely happens… only when there is some urgent work to be done.”

  “That didn’t happen last week?”

  She shook her head unhesitatingly.

  “I haven’t worked in the evening for at least two weeks.”

  “Thank you, mademoiselle.”

  She went out, closing the door behind her, and Maigret stood there, his pipe in his mouth, in the middle of the study.

  “Well, that’s that,” he muttered in the end.

  “What’s what?”

  “Nothing. A little fact which may be important, just as it may not. You know enough about our work to know that we’ve no right to neglect anything…”

  “I don’t see what my car…”

  “If you were in my place, you would see. Thank you for letting me use your telephone. It’s time that I went back to the office.”

  The lawyer stood up.

  “You have nothing else to ask me?”

  “What would I have to ask you? I put all the questions to you on Friday that I wanted to put to you. I presume you answered me truthfully?”

  “I have no reason to…”

  “Quite. All the same, with regard to your car…”

  “I admit that I had forgotten all about it. This was the third or fourth time in the last few months that that car needed repairs, and that’s why I’m thinking of selling it.”

  “You used taxis for three days?”

  “That’s correct… I sometimes take taxis even when the car is outside my house. You don’t have to look for a place to park.”

  “I see. Have you got a case this afternoon?”

  “No. I’ve already told you that I don’t often appear in court. I am more a legal adviser…”

  “So you will be at home all afternoon?”

  “Unless I have an appointment somewhere else. Just a moment…”

  He opened the door of the adjoining office again.

  “Lucette! Will you look and see if I have an outside appointment this afternoon?”

  Maigret had the impression that the young woman had been crying. Neither eyes nor nose was red, but her eyes were troubled and uneasy.

  “I don’t think so… all your appointments are here.”

  All the same, she consulted the red diary.

  “No…”

  “There’s your answer,” concluded the lawyer.

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you think you’ll need me?”

  “I’ve nothing definite in mind, but one never knows… Good-by, mademoiselle.”

  She nodded to him without looking at him. As for Jean-Charles Gaillard, he led the Chief Superintendent to the front hall. The door of the waiting room was half open, and as they passed they caught sight of the legs of a man.

  “Thank you again for letting me use the telephone…”

  “Don’t mention it…”

  “And forgive me for bothering you…”

  When, after walking about fifty yards along the sidewalk, Maigret turned around, Gaillard was still standing at the door, following him with his eyes.

  * * *

  7

  « ^ »

  It had happened several times, indeed quite often, but never in such a clear, characteristic way. You work in a given direction all the more stubbornly when you are not too sure of yourself and have little data in hand.

  You tell yourself that you remain free, when the time comes, to make a turn and search in another direction.

  You send inspectors right and left. You think you are marking time, and then you discover a new clue and you start moving cautiously forward.

  And all of a sudden, just when you least expect it, the case slips out of your grasp. You cease to be in control of it. It is events that are in command and that force you to take measures you had not foreseen, and for which you were not prepared..

  In these cases there are a few uncomfortable hours to get through. You rack your brains. You ask yourself whether you were headed in the wrong direction from the start, and whether you are not going to find yourself faced with a blank wall or, worse still, with a reality different from what you had imagined.

  What, in fact, had been Maigret’s sole starting point? A simple conviction, backed up, admittedly, by experience: members of the underworld do not strangle. They use a gun and sometimes a knife, but in all the records at Police Headquarters there was no trace of a single crime by strangulation that could be laid at their door.

  A second accepted idea was that they leave their victim where he lies. Again, there was not a single instance in the archives of a criminal having kept a corpse at home for several days before dumping it on a sidewalk.

  Thus the Chief Superintendent had been hypnotized by Émile Boulay’s last evening, by his telephone calls, by his wait on the sidewalk, beside the uniformed Mickey, until the moment when the former steward had walked slowly away down Rue Pigalle.

  The whole edifice of Maigret’s thought was built on these foundations and on the story of the five thousand francs withdrawn from the bank on May 22.

  It presumed that there was no emotional tangle in the little Italy on Rue Victor-Masse, that the three women got along together as well as they appeared to, that Boulay had no mistress elsewhere, and finally that Antonio was an honest individual.

  If a single one of these hypotheses—or, rather, of these convictions—was incorrect, the whole of his case fell to the ground.

  Perhaps that was why he kept his bad-tempered look and moved ahead only with a certain repugnance.

  It was a hot afternoon; the sun was beating down on the window, so that the Chief Superintendent had lowered the blind. He and Lucas had taken off their jackets, and, behind closed doors, were engaged in a task that would probably have made an examining magistrate shrug his shoulders.

  It is true that the magistrate in charge of the case was leaving them in peace, convinced that it was a matter of an unimportant underworld vendetta, and the press was showing no greater interest.

  “A lawyer doesn’t kill his clients…”

  This was becoming a refrain that Maigret could not get rid of, any more than he could get rid of a song heard again and again on the radio or television.

 

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