Maigret in Vichy, page 9
‘Maybe so you wouldn’t detain her …?’
‘What right would I have had to detain her, unless I’d had something on her?’
‘You know the law, but she doesn’t.’
‘We’ll find out this evening or tomorrow morning whether she’s gone home to La Rochelle …’
‘It’s most likely …’
‘I think so too, but all the same I’m furious … I intended to see her again and have a long chat with her … It’s true that I might learn more … Are you free at two o’clock?’
That was when Maigret took his nap and he replied reluctantly:
‘I don’t have anything particular to do, naturally.’
‘While I was out of the office this morning, someone telephoned the local police station and asked to speak to me … I’m here at the moment … In the end I accepted the office they offered to lend me … It was a girl who gave her name as Madeleine Dubois … And guess what her job is …?’
Maigret said nothing.
‘She’s the night telephonist at the Hôtel de la Gare. My Vichy colleague told her that I’d probably be in my office, in Avenue Victoria, by around two p.m … He asked her whether she could tell him what she was calling about, but she preferred to see me in person … I’m expecting her shortly …’
‘I’ll be there …’
He didn’t have a nap but discovered the charming white turreted residence surrounded by gardens that was the Vichy police headquarters. A police officer led him down a corridor on the first floor where an office almost empty of furniture had been put at Lecoeur’s disposal.
‘It’s five to two …’ said Lecoeur. ‘I hope she’s not going to change her mind … That reminds me, I’d better find a third chair …’
He could be heard opening doors in the corridor until he found what he was looking for.
On the dot of two o’clock the duty officer knocked on the door and announced:
‘Madame Dubois …’
She came into the room, a petite, lively woman with dark hair and a very mobile gaze that darted from one man to the other.
‘Who should I speak to?’
Lecoeur introduced himself but didn’t mention Maigret, who sat down in a corner.
‘I don’t know if what I have to tell you is of any use to you … At the time, I didn’t attach any importance to it … The hotel’s full … I had a lot of work, up till one o’clock in the morning, then, as usual, I went to sleep … It’s about one of our guests, Madame Lange …’
‘I presume you mean Mademoiselle Francine Lange?’
‘I thought she was married. I know that her sister’s dead and that she was buried this morning … Last night, at about half past eight, someone asked to be put through to her …’
‘A man?’
‘A man, yes, with a very strange voice … I’m almost certain he suffers from asthma, because I had an uncle who had it and who spoke just like that—’
‘He didn’t give his name?’
‘No.’
‘He didn’t ask for the room number?’
‘No … I rang but no one answered … So I told him that the person he wished to speak to was not in her room … He called again at around nine o’clock and there was still no answer from room 406 …’
‘Mademoiselle Lange and her companion had only one room for the two of them?’
‘Yes … The man called back a third time at eleven o’clock and, this time, Mademoiselle Lange answered … I put him through …’
She looked embarrassed, glanced over at Maigret as if to gauge the effect her next words would have on him. She too must have recognized him.
‘Did you listen in …?’ asked Lecoeur kindly.
‘I’m sorry … I don’t normally … We have a reputation for eavesdropping, but if people knew how uninteresting it is, they’d think differently … Perhaps it’s because of the sister’s murder … Or because of the man’s strange voice …
‘“Who’s calling?” she asked.
‘“Am I speaking to Mademoiselle Francine Lange?”
‘“Yes …”
‘“Are you alone in the room?”
‘She hesitated. But I was almost positive her companion was with her.
‘“Yes … and what business is that of yours?”
‘“I have a confidential message for you … Listen carefully … If we’re cut off, I’ll call you back in half an hour …”
‘He was wheezing, sometimes making a sort of whistling sound, like my uncle.
‘“I’m listening … You still haven’t told me who you are …”
‘“That doesn’t matter … It is essential that you remain in Vichy for a few days … It is in your interest … I’ll contact you, I’m not sure when yet … Our conversation could earn you a very large sum of money … Do you understand …?”
‘He stopped talking and hung up. After a few minutes, room 406 rang.
‘“Mademoiselle Lange here … I have just received a telephone call … Can you tell me whether it came from Vichy or elsewhere?”
‘“From Vichy.”
‘“Thank you.”
‘There … At first, I thought it was none of my business. Then, this morning, I was unable to go to sleep and I telephoned here to ask who was in charge of the investigation …’
She fiddled anxiously with her handbag, her gaze flitting between the two men.
‘Do you think it’s important?’
‘You haven’t been back to the hotel?’
‘I’m not on duty again until eight o’clock this evening …’
‘Mademoiselle Lange has left.’
‘Didn’t she go to her sister’s funeral?’
‘She left Vichy almost immediately afterwards.’
‘Oh!’
Then, after a silence:
‘You think that man wanted to lure her into a trap, don’t you? He wouldn’t happen to be the strangler, would he?’
She turned pale at the idea of having had the murderer of the lady in lilac on the end of the line.
Maigret did not regret missing his nap.
5.
Once the telephonist had left, the two men stayed where they were, Maigret puffing on his pipe, Lecoeur smoking a cigarette that came close to singeing his moustache. The smoke hung in wisps above their heads. In the courtyard, a dozen or so officers could be heard doing gymnastics.
There was a prolonged silence. Both were seasoned veterans who knew the ins and outs of the job. They’d had dealings with all sorts of criminals, all sorts of witnesses.
‘It was obviously the killer who telephoned …’ sighed Lecoeur at length.
Maigret didn’t reply immediately. They didn’t react in the same way. Without mentioning the word ‘methods’, one which neither of them liked, they had different approaches to a problem.
Now, since the lady in lilac had been strangled, Maigret had not thought a great deal about the murderer. This was not deliberate. He was somehow haunted by the woman, whom he kept seeing in his mind’s eye, sitting on her yellow chair in front of the bandstand, with her long face and gentle smile, which was sometimes belied by the steeliness of her gaze.
That image had been fleshed out a little when he’d visited the house in Rue du Bourbonnais, learned about her time in Nice, her life in Paris, or at least the little that was known, and even the books she read.
The strangler was only a shape, a tall, muscular man whom Madame Vireveau claimed to have seen on the corner of the street, walking very fast, and a bar owner had noticed without being able to make out his features.
Imperceptibly, Maigret was starting to think about him.
‘I wonder how he found out that Francine Lange had booked into the Hôtel de la Gare …’
The newspapers that had reported on the arrival of the victim’s sister had not given the address where she was staying.
Maigret advanced cautiously, hesitantly.
‘Why would he not quite simply have telephoned different hotels and asked to speak to Mademoiselle Lange …’
He imagined him in front of a telephone directory. The list of hotels must be very long. Had he proceeded in alphabetical order?
‘You could perhaps call a hotel whose name begins with A or with B …’
With an amused look in his eye, Lecoeur picked up the receiver.
‘Would you get me the Hôtel d’Angleterre? … No. Not the management, or reception. I’d like to speak to the telephonist … Hello! Are you the telephone operator at the Hôtel d’Angleterre? … This is the Police Judiciaire … Has someone asked to be put through to a certain Mademoiselle Lange? … No, not the victim … Her sister, Francine Lange … That’s right … Ask your colleague …’
He informed Maigret:
‘There are two of them on the switchboard … The hotel has five or six hundred rooms … Hello, yes … Yesterday morning? … Pass me your colleague, would you? … Hello! Was it you who took the call? … Nothing struck you? … A croaky voice, you say? … As if the man … Yes … I understand … Thank you …’
And to Maigret:
‘Yesterday morning, at around ten … A croaky voice, or rather that of a man who has trouble breathing …’
Someone who was taking the waters, as Maigret had thought from the very first day, and who had run into Hélène Lange by chance … He’d have followed her to find out where she lived …
The telephone rang. It was the inspector who’d been sent to Lyon. He’d discovered no trace of the victim in the town’s hotels, but a post-office clerk remembered her. She’d come twice, both times to collect a fat padded envelope. The first time, the envelope had been waiting for a week. The second time, it had just arrived.
‘Do you have the dates?’
Lost in thought, still puffing avidly on his pipe, Maigret watched his colleague at work.
‘Hello! Crédit Lyonnais? … Have you got that list of deposits I requested? … No … I’ll have someone collect it later … Can you tell me if a payment was received immediately after the 13th of January last year and another the 22nd of February this year? … I’ll hold on, yes …’
It didn’t take long.
‘A deposit of eight thousand francs on the 15th of January … Another of five thousand on the 23rd of February this year …’
‘The average deposit is five thousand francs, is that correct?’
‘Nearly all are … With a few rare exceptions … I have the statement in front of me … I see that, five years ago, the sum of twenty-five thousand francs was credited to the account … It is the only deposit of that size …’
‘Always in cash?’
‘Always.’
‘What is the balance on the account at present?’
‘Four hundred and fifty-two thousand, six hundred and fifty …’
Lecoeur repeated the figure to Maigret.
‘She was rich …’ he muttered, ‘and yet she rented out furnished rooms during the season …’
He was surprised to hear Maigret reply:
‘He’s very rich …’
‘It’s true … It appears that this money all comes from the same source … A man who can pay five thousand francs a month, occasionally larger sums …’
But that man was not aware that Hélène Lange was the owner of a little white house with pale green shutters in Vichy’s France neighbourhood. Each time he sent money, it was to a different address.
Was the money not sent on a fixed date and did Mademoiselle Lange deliberately not pick it up until a few days later so as to be certain that her chosen post office wasn’t being watched?
A wealthy man, or in any case, very comfortably off … When he’d spoken to the sister on the phone, he hadn’t made a precise arrangement … He’d asked her to stay in Vichy a few days longer, and to wait for his call … Why?
‘He must be married … He’s here with his wife and perhaps his children … He’s not free when he wants …’
Now Lecoeur was intrigued to watch Maigret’s brain at work. Was it really his brain, though? He was now trying to get under the man’s skin.
‘Rue du Bourbonnais, he didn’t find what he was looking for … and Hélène Lange didn’t talk … If she’d talked, she probably wouldn’t have died … He wanted to frighten her to get the information he needed out of her …’
‘So, despite his wife, he was free that evening …’
Maigret fell silent, pondering this objection.
‘What was on at the theatre on Monday?’
Lecoeur picked up the telephone to inquire.
‘Tosca … It was a sell-out …’
This wasn’t rigorous reasoning, true. It wasn’t even reasoning. Maigret tried to imagine a man, a fairly important figure, probably staying at one of the best hotels in Vichy. He had his wife, his friends …
The previous day or the day before that, he’d run into Hélène Lange and followed her to find out where she lived.
That evening, Tosca was being performed at the Grand Casino theatre. Aren’t women fonder of Italian opera than men?
‘Why don’t you go without me? … I’m tired from my treatment … I’ll take the opportunity to have an early night …’
What information did he want from Hélène Lange and why did she obstinately refuse to talk?
Had he gone into the house before her, forcing an easy lock, and searched her apartment before she arrived home?
Or had he only turned up once she was back home, and had he already killed her when he ransacked the place?
‘Why that little smile, chief?’
‘Because I’m thinking of a stupid detail … Before the Hôtel de la Gare, the murderer must, if he went in alphabetical order, have made thirty or so phone calls … Does that not suggest something to you …?’
He filled a fresh pipe.
‘The entire police force is looking for him … His wife is probably staying with him in a hotel room … However, he has to repeat numerous times a surname that is the same as that of the victim …
‘In hotels, all calls go through the switchboard … Furthermore, there’s his wife to contend with …
‘It’s risky to telephone from a café, or a bar, where there’s the possibility of being overheard …
‘If I were you, Lecoeur, I’d have a certain number of men watching the public call-boxes …’
‘But he did get hold of Francine Lange!’
‘He’s going to call her back …’
‘She’s not in Vichy any more …’
‘He doesn’t know that …’
In Paris, like most husbands, Maigret saw his wife three times a day: when he woke up, at midday and in the evening. Although he sometimes didn’t go home for lunch.
So during the rest of the day he could have got up to anything without her knowing.
But in Vichy? They were together almost twenty-four hours a day, and he wasn’t the only one in this situation.
‘He can’t even linger too long in a call-box …’ Maigret sighed.
He probably went out to buy cigarettes or get a breath of fresh air while his wife was getting dressed. One or two telephone calls … If she was taking the waters as well, and if she was having hydrotherapy, that gave him a little more time to himself …
He imagined this man taking advantage of every opportunity, creating them, like a kid lying to his mother.
A portly man of a certain age, wealthy, with an important job, in Vichy to try to find a cure for his asthma …
‘Does it not surprise you that the sister left?’
Francine Lange liked money. Goodness knows what she’d got up to when she lived in Paris to come by it. Now she owned a thriving business. She was going to inherit her sister’s fortune.
But was she the sort of woman to thumb her nose at a large sum?
Was it the police she feared? It seemed unlikely. Unless she’d decided to flee for good, to go abroad.
No! She’d returned to La Rochelle, where the police could question her just as well as in Vichy. For the time being, she was still on the road, her boyfriend at the wheel, while youths turned their heads to stare enviously after the red convertible.
‘She’ll arrive around mid-afternoon, because they must be driving fast …’
‘Have the newspapers mentioned that she lives in La Rochelle?’
‘No … They only reported her arrival …’
‘She was already afraid this morning, at the funeral parlour and at the cemetery …’
‘I wonder why it was you she was looking at covertly …’
‘I think I understand …’
Maigret smiled, not without embarrassment.
‘The press has given me a reputation as a sort of confessor … She must have been tempted to confide in me, to ask me for advice … Then she said to herself that it was too big a thing …’
Lecoeur frowned.
‘I don’t see …’
‘The man tried to get a piece of information out of Hélène Lange and this information was important enough to make him lose all control … It’s rare for someone to strangle a person in cold blood … He came to Rue du Bourbonnais unarmed … He didn’t intend to kill … But he left empty-handed …’
Thinking of the strangling, Maigret added:
‘So to speak …’
‘He presumes the sister has the same piece of information?’
‘It’s certain … Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble and he wouldn’t have taken so many risks to find out where she was staying … He wouldn’t have telephoned her and wouldn’t have hinted to her about the payment of a large sum …’
‘What about her? Does she know what he wants from her?’
‘It’s possible …’ muttered Maigret checking the time on his watch.
‘It’s likely, isn’t it …? As is proved by the fact that she was scared enough to leave without telling us anything …’
‘I have to go and meet my wife …’
He nearly added:
‘Like the other fellow!’
Like that portly man with broad shoulders who had to make up childish excuses to go and telephone from a call-box.
