ONE

It was still raining the following morning. The rain was soft, cheerless and hopeless, like a widow’s tears. It could be felt rather than seen, although it spread over everything like a cold layer of varnish and dotted the Seine with countless little vibrant circles. Those starting out for work as late as nine o’clock might well have imagined that they were in time to catch the milk train, with the gas lamps still alight in the lingering darkness.

Maigret, as he reached the top of the stairs at police headquarters, glanced involuntarily at the “aquarium” and could not shake off the feeling that he would see Cécile sitting there in her usual place, humble and resigned, as she had been on her last visit. An ugly thought had formed in his mind this morning, he could not imagine why. No doubt, as he walked along half asleep, sheltering close to the walls of the dripping houses, the girl in the movie house, Nouchi, and Monsieur Charles had flitted like shadows across his consciousness. And now, in the corridor leading to his office, it occurred to him to wonder whether Cécile and Monsieur Dandurand…

He had no grounds for any such suspicion. It was distasteful to him. It sullied his recollections, and yet the Chief Superintendent’s thoughts kept reverting to it.

“Wait a minute…There’s someone…The Chief Commissioner would like to see you at once.”

It was the guard, who was preventing Maigret from going into his own office.

“Did you say there was someone in there?” he asked.

A minute or so later, he was knocking at the Chief Commissioner’s door.

“Come in, Maigret. Feeling better? Look, I’ve taken the liberty of using your office as a waiting room for a visitor. I couldn’t think where else to put him. Besides, it’s your pigeon, really. Here, read this.”

Maigret stared blankly at the proffered visiting card, which read:

Jean Tinchant

Minister of State at the Foreign Office

—begs the Chief Commissioner of the Police Judiciaire to give every assistance to Monsieur Spencer Oats of the Institute of Criminology of Philadelphia, who has been highly recommended to us by the United States Embassy

“What does he want?”

“To study your methods.”

And the Chief Commissioner could not help laughing as he watched Maigret stride away, with shoulders hunched and fists clenched, for all the world as if he were bent on pounding the American criminologist to a pulp.

“I’m delighted to meet you, Chief Superintendent…”

“One moment, Monsieur Spencer…Hello!…Switchboard?…Maigret speaking. Any messages for me?…He hasn’t been found yet?…Get me Bourg-la-Reine nineteen…”

Quite a likable fellow, this American. A tall, scholarly-looking young man, with red hair and a thin face, wearing a sober suit of good cut, and speaking with a slight, rather pleasant accent.

“Is that you, Berger?…Well?…”

“Nothing, Chief…He bedded down on the divan, fully dressed. I must say I’m feeling hungry, and there isn’t a thing to eat in the flat. I daren’t take the risk of slipping out to buy some croissants. Will you be coming soon?…No! He’s as good as gold. He even went so far as to say he didn’t blame you, and that he’d have done the same in your place…He’s quite confident that you will soon realize you have made a mistake.”

Maigret hung up and went across to his stove, which he proceeded to light, much to the surprise of the American.

“What can I do for you, Monsieur Spencer?”

He deliberately chose to call him by his Christian name because he had not the least idea how to pronounce Oats.

“To begin with, Chief Superintendent, I should very much like to hear your views on the psychology of the murderer…”

Maigret, meanwhile, had picked up his mail from his desk and was opening it.

“Which murderer?” he asked, glancing through his letters.

“Why…murderers in general.”

“Before or after?”

“What do you mean?”

Maigret smoked his pipe, read his letters, warmed his back, and seemed to attach no importance to this disjointed interchange.

“What I mean is, are you referring to murderers before or after they have committed the crime? Because, needless to say, before they are not yet murderers…For thirty, forty, fifty years of their lives, longer sometimes, they are just people like anyone else, aren’t they?”

“Of course…”

At long last, Maigret looked up and, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, said:

“What makes you think, Monsieur Spencer, that just killing one of his own kind should change a man’s character from one minute to the next?”

He went over to the window and gazed out at the little circles on the Seine.

“So what it really comes down to,” said the American, “is that a murderer is a man like any other…”

There was a knock on the door. Lucas came in, carrying a file of papers. Catching sight of the visitor, he seemed about to beat a retreat.

“What is it, my boy? Ah! Yes…Well then, you’d better take the file across to the D.P. P.’s office…I take it the Hôtel des Arcades is still under surveillance?”

Lucas brought him up to date on the Polish case, but Maigret had not lost the thread of his argument.

“Why does a man commit murder, Monsieur Spencer? From motives of jealousy, greed, hatred, envy; sometimes, though more rarely, from necessity…In other words, he may be driven by any one of the human passions…Now every one of us is subject to these passions to a greater or lesser degree. My neighbor invariably opens his window on summer nights and blows his hunting horn. Consequently, I hate him. But I very much doubt if I shall murder him…And yet, only last month, a retired colonial servant, whose temper had been shortened by recurring bouts of tropical fever, fired a shot at the man who lived in the apartment above him, because he had a wooden leg and would insist on pacing up and down all night, pounding the floorboards.”

“I can see what you mean…But what about the psychology of the murderer afterward?”

“That’s no concern of mine…That’s a matter for juries and prison governors and guards…My job is to find the culprit. And for that purpose, all that concerns me is his personality before the act. Whether he had it in him to commit that particular murder, and how and when he committed it…”

“The Chief Commissioner gave me to understand that you might perhaps allow me to be present at…”

He wouldn’t be the first! So much the worse for him!

“I know you are working on the Bourg-la-Reine case, and I have followed the newspaper reports with great interest…Do you know already who did it?”

“I know who didn’t, at any rate…All the same, he…Allow me to ask you a question, Monsieur Spencer. A man believes himself to be a suspect. Rightly or wrongly, he imagines the police are in possession of evidence incriminating him. His wife is expecting a child at any moment. There isn’t so much as a penny in the house…This man rampages into his sister’s flat like a madman, demanding money, every penny she’s got. His sister gives him a hundred and thirty francs…What does he do with it?”

And Maigret pushed a newspaper across the desk to his visitor. It was the evening paper of the previous day, with the photograph of Maigret laying his hand on Gérard Pardon’s shoulder.

“Is this the young man?”

“That’s him…Last night, from this office, I broadcast his description to all police stations up and down the country. A watch is being kept on all frontiers…A hundred and thirty francs…”

“Are you saying he’s innocent?”

“I am convinced that he is not guilty of the murder of either his aunt or his sister…If he had asked for the money earlier in the day, I would have concluded that he wanted it to buy a revolver to shoot himself.”

“But he’s innocent?”

“Precisely, Monsieur Spencer…that’s the point I’m trying to make. An innocent man may have the seeds of guilt in him, just as a guilty man may be innocent at heart…Luckily, by the time the boy got hold of the hundred and thirty francs, the gunsmiths had already put up their shutters. I presume, therefore, that he’s on the run…So the question is, how far could he go with a hundred and thirty francs?…Just about across the Belgian frontier…”

He picked up the receiver and asked to be put through to the Forensic Laboratory.

“Hello!…Maigret here…Who is that speaking? Oh, it’s you, Jaminet! I want you to get your gear together and rustle up an assistant…Yes…And wait for me downstairs in a taxi.”

Then, turning to the American:

“We may be about to make an arrest.”

“You know who did it?”

“I think so, but I’m not sure…To tell the truth, I’d be inclined to…Would you mind waiting for me here for a few minutes, Monsieur Spencer?”

Maigret went through to the Palais de Justice, making use of the notorious communicating door which should have been bricked up years ago, that same door without which Cécile could not have died where she did. It was so convenient! What good had it done to repeat, year after year, for the past ten or was it twenty years…?

The Chief Superintendent knocked at the Examining Magistrate’s door, but, when invited to take a seat, shook his head.

“I can’t stay…I’ve got someone waiting for me…What I came for, Judge, was to ask if you wouldn’t mind too much if I were to arrest a man who may turn out to be innocent. I should point out, mind you, that he’s a nasty type, with a number of convictions for sexual offenses, and he’d scarcely have the nerve to lodge a complaint.”

“In that case…What’s his name?”

“Charles Dandurand.”

Ten minutes later, Maigret and Spencer Oats got into the taxi on the Quai des Orfèvres in which the two technicians from the Forensic Laboratory were waiting. It was shortly after ten when the taxi drew up at Bourg-la-Reine. Juliette Boynet’s house was shrouded in a Scotch mist, so that it looked blurred and much faded, as in an old photograph.

“Wait for me upstairs on the fifth-floor landing,” said Maigret to the technicians.

He rang Dandurand’s bell. Berger, who had dark rings under his eyes from lack of sleep, came to the door.

“Haven’t you brought any food?”

Monsieur Charles had taken off his collar. He had the crumpled look of a man who has slept in his clothes. He was wearing a pair of old bedroom slippers.

“I presume…” he began.

“I shouldn’t presume anything if I were you, Monsieur Dandurand. You’re almost sure to get it wrong. I have here a warrant for your arrest, duly signed by the examining magistrate assigned to the case.”

“Ah!”

“You don’t sound surprised…”

“No…I’m sorry for you, that’s all.”

“Have you nothing to say before you leave? You will be kept in custody at the Santé…”

“All I have to say is that you are making a mistake.”

“Aren’t you forgetting what you did yesterday in Juliette Boynet’s bedroom, while I was on the telephone in here?”

A bitter smile flickered over the unshaven face of the man.

“Stay with him, Berger…See that he gets dressed. When he’s ready, take him to the Préfecture and book him.”

Abruptly, he turned around, seized the kid by her thin shoulders, and said angrily:

“Listen to me, Nouchi, if you get under my feet just once more…”

“What will you do to me?” she asked, thrilled.

“You’ll see, and it will be no joke!…Be off with you!”

He went upstairs and proceeded to open the door of the fifth-floor apartment.

“Now, this is what I want you fellows to do…Careful, Monsieur Spencer, don’t go in there…”

“But we’ve already fingerprinted the whole apartment,” objected the photographer.

“On the day after the murder. Quite right…And only two sets of prints were found in Juliette Boynet’s bedroom, her own and Cécile’s. There were no men’s fingerprints, none of Gérard Pardon’s, and none of that sorry rogue’s downstairs…But it so happens that last night, while I was speaking on the phone in his study, he came into this room. I’m sure of that because I could hear his footsteps…I don’t know what he was up to…but he was taking a grave risk, so he must have had some very compelling reason. I want you to find out what he touched…so get going! Now do you see why I asked you not to go into that room, Monsieur Spencer?”

The technicians had set up their apparatus, and were getting down to the job. Maigret, his hands in his pockets, wandered from room to room.

“It’s not a very pretty story, is it? A miserly, crazy old woman…a girl, or rather a somewhat faded young woman, none too generously endowed by nature. Will you come downstairs for a moment?”

They reached Monsieur Charles’s apartment just as he was leaving, wearing a hat and coat, in company with Inspector Berger.

“Don’t worry about your things, Monsieur Dandurand. I’ll take charge of the key to your apartment. Incidentally, you will presumably be appointing a lawyer very shortly to represent you. I shall expect to see him here.”

Whereupon he shut the door and went not into the study of the former lawyer but into his bedroom.

“Take a seat, Monsieur Spencer…Listen…”

“You can hear every word that’s said up there.”

“Correct! I don’t know what your new houses are like in America, but ours are about as soundproof as cigar boxes…Pay no attention to their footsteps. See if you can make out what they’re doing…”

“It sounds as if…that’s odd. It’s much more difficult…”

“I agree with you…There, now! Someone is fiddling with a drawer…He’s opening it…But can you tell which drawer it is?”

“It’s not possible…”

“Right! That settles one point. From his own apartment, Dandurand could hear every word that was spoken on the floor above. He could judge more or less where everyone in Juliette Boynet’s household happened to be at any given time. On the other hand, the precise details of who was doing what…I only hope that idiot Gérard hasn’t thrown himself into the Seine!”

“But you say he’s innocent!”

“I said I believed he was…Unfortunately, I’m not infallible…I also pointed out that innocent people often behave as if they were guilty…I hope Berthe is still with his wife. At any moment she may give birth to a bouncing boy.”

Above their heads, furniture was being dragged across the floor.

“If you were a miser, Monsieur Spencer…”

“There are no misers in the States…Miserliness is a characteristic of a mature civilization. We haven’t reached that stage yet.”

“In that case, let us suppose that you are an old woman, an old Frenchwoman…You are in possession of millions, and yet your life style is no more lavish than that of any widow living on a small, fixed income…”

“I find that difficult to imagine…”

“Make an effort. Your only pleasure in life is counting the bills that represent your life savings. That is the problem that has haunted me for the past three days, because, you see, a man’s life depends upon it. Find where the money is hidden and you find the killer.”

“I suppose…” began the American.

“You suppose what?” interrupted Maigret, almost aggressively.

“If I were such a person as you have described…I would keep my money where I could readily lay my hands on it at all times.”

“That’s exactly what I thought…but wait! Although considerably handicapped, Juliette Boynet was nevertheless able to get around in the apartment. She would stay in bed in the mornings until about ten, when her niece would bring in her breakfast and the morning paper.”

“Maybe she hid the money in her bed? I seem to have heard somewhere that it’s common practice in France to sew one’s savings into one’s mattress.”

“The only thing is that, for the rest of the day, until she returned to bed at night, Juliette spent her time in the sitting room…Just before she died, she had eight hundred thousand francs in the house, in thousand-franc bills. That many bills would be quite bulky. Now, listen carefully. There are only two people who could have known where that money was hidden. The old woman’s niece, Cécile, who lived with her. She was not in her aunt’s confidence, but she might accidentally have…”

“Monsieur Dandurand, on the other hand, was in the old lady’s confidence, wasn’t he?”

“Only to some extent…You can take it from me, he didn’t know where she kept the money. Women like Juliette Boynet don’t trust anybody, not even their guardian angels! Still, as you yourself have noticed, you can’t make a sound up there that isn’t heard in this room…Let’s go up, shall we? If the telephone rings, we shall hear it.”

It was such a humid day that the banister rail was sticky to the touch. In the piano teacher’s apartment, a pupil was playing scales. The Hungarians were quarreling, and Nouchi’s shrill voice was clearly to be heard.

“Well, boys?”

“It’s amazing, Chief…”

“What is?”

“Are you sure the fellow wasn’t wearing rubber gloves?”

“I know for certain he wasn’t.”

“He walked on the carpet…But up to now, we haven’t found any sign that he touched anything, apart from the door knob. In fact, the only prints we’ve found are yours.”

A powerful spotlight had been plugged into the outlet. The presence of cameras gave a different feel to the room which Juliette Boynet had occupied for so many years.

“She used a cane, didn’t she?” the American asked suddenly.

Maigret whipped around as if he had been stung.

“Wait…The thing that…”

What was the one thing that the old woman could take with her everywhere, from her bedroom into the sitting room and from there into the dining room at mealtimes? Her cane, of course! But it would not be possible to hide eight hundred thousand francs in thousand-franc bills in a cane, even if it were hollow!

The Chief Superintendent took another searching look at the contents of the room.

“What about this?” he asked suddenly, pointing to a small, low, boxlike object, covered in worn tapestry, which Juliette Boynet had probably used as a footstool. “Any prints?”

“Not a thing, Chief.”

Maigret picked it up and put it on the bed. He felt along the row of brass studs securing the tapestry, and was able to raise the top, which formed a kind of lid. The interior was lined with a copper receptacle, and had obviously been intended originally as a foot warmer, to be filled with charcoal.

There was a silence. Everyone was staring at a parcel, wrapped in an old newspaper, which was wedged into the copper liner.

“The eight hundred bills must be in here,” said Maigret at last, relighting his pipe. “Look, Monsieur Spencer…And please don’t mention this to your colleagues at the Institute of Criminology, it would be too embarrassing. I had the mattress ripped open and the boxspring taken apart, I had the walls tapped, and the floorboards and the fireplace. And it never occurred to me that an old woman with swollen legs, having to hobble about on a cane, might have this footling little bit of furniture taken from room to room to rest her feet on. Careful with that newspaper! You fellows had better give it a thorough going-over…”

Maigret, wrapped in his own thoughts, spent the next ten minutes setting all the clocks right, as a result of which they all chimed one after another.

“We’re done, Chief.”

“Are his prints on it?”

“They are…As for the bills, there are eight hundred and ten of them.”

“I shall need envelopes and sealing wax.”

When the whole of the little fortune was safely under seal, he telephoned the Public Prosecutor’s office and arranged for a senior official to come and collect it.

“Will you come with me, Monsieur Spencer?”

Outside in the street, he turned up the collar of his overcoat.

“It’s a pity we didn’t keep the taxi…But believe it or not, if I’m terrified of anyone, it’s those fellows in our accounts department. I don’t know if they’re as ferocious over expenses in the United States…How about dropping into that bistro over there for a glass of something, while we’re waiting for our streetcar? It’s where all the local workmen eat…But you’ve left your hat behind!”

“I never wear a hat.”

The Chief Superintendent stared hard at the shock of red hair spattered with glistening beads of rain. There were no two ways about it, some things Maigret would never understand!

“I’ll have a Calvados. What about you?”

“Would they have such a thing as a glass of milk, I wonder?”

Maybe that explained how a man of thirty-five had managed to retain a complexion as rosy as the muzzle of a young calf.

“A large glass, barman!”

“Of milk?”

“No! Of Calvados!”

Painstakingly, Maigret pushed fresh tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. Had that cold-blooded scoundrel Dandurand returned the eight hundred thousand francs to their hiding place in the old woman’s footstool, and thereby put his life in jeopardy?