Story

Georges Simenon

The Man in the Street 

The four men were packed close together in the taxi. Paris was in the grip of frost. At half-past seven in the morning, the city looked leaden, and the wind drove powdery rime across the ground. 

The thinnest of the four men, on a folding seat, had a cigarette stuck to his lower lip and handcuffs on his wrists. The biggest of them, a heavy-jawed man in a thick overcoat and a bowler hat, was smoking a pipe and watching the railings of the Bois de Boulogne race past. 

‘Would you like me to put up a lovely fight.^’ the handcuffed man proposed amiably. ‘With writhing, cursing, foaming at the mouth, the lot.^’ 

And Maigret growled, as he took the cigarette from the man’s lips and opened the car door, since they had now reached the Porte de Bagatelle: 

‘Don’t you try and be too clever!’ 

The avenues in the Bois were deserted, as white as limestone and as hard. A dozen people were kicking their heels at the corner of a woodland ride, and a photographer attempted to take a picture of the group as they approached. But Louis the Kid, as he had been instructed, held his arms in front of his face. 

Maigret looked slowly round like a sulky bear, noticing every- thing, the new blocks of flats in the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, with their shuttered windows, a few workmen on bicycles coming in from Puteaux, a tram with its lights on, a couple of concierges approaching, their hands purple with cold. 

‘All set?’ he asked. 

The day before, he had had the following paragraph inserted in the newspapers: 

THE CRIME AT BAGATELLE 

This time the police have not been slow in clearing up a case that appeared to present insuperable difficulties. As has already been stated, on Monday morning a park-keeper in the Bois de Boulogne discovered on one of the walks, some hundred metres from the Porte de Bagatelle, a body which was identified on the spot as that of Ernest Borms, a well-known Viennese doctor, who had been living in Neuilly for some years. 

Borms was in evening dress. He must have been attacked dur- ing the Sunday night as he was returning to his flat in the Boule- vard Richard-Wallace. 

He was shot point-blank through the heart with a small calibre revolver. 

Borms was a youngish man, handsome and very well-dressed, who moved in fashionable society. 

Scarcely forty-eight hours after this murder, the Criminal Investigation Department have made an arrest. Tomorrow morning, between seven and eight, a reconstitution of the crime will take place on the spot. 

Later on, at Police Headquarters, this case was to be cited as particularly characteristic of Maigret’s method; but when it was spoken of in his presence, he had a peculiar habit of averting his head with a growl. 

Well! Everything was ready. Almost no loiterers, as he had foreseen. It was not without good reason that he had chosen such an early hour. In fact, among the ten or fifteen people who were kicking their heels were a number of detectives wearing their most innocent air; one of them, Torrence, who adored dressing up, had disguised himself as a milkman, which caused Maigret to shrug his shoulders. 

Provided Louis the Kid didn’t overdo things…! He was an old acquaintance of the police and had been arrested the day before for picking pockets in the metro.

‘You can lend us a hand tomorrow morning and we’ll see to it that you get off lightly this time . 

He had been taken out of the cells. 

‘Let’s go!’ growled Maigret. ‘When you heard footsteps you were hiding in this corner, weren’t you?’ 

‘Just as you say, Superintendent… I was staring, you see... Absolutely broke!... So I said to myself that a big shot in a dinner jacket on his way home must have plenty of dough on him “Your money or your life,” I breathe in his ear And I give you my word it wasn’t my fault if the gun went off. I think it was the cold that made my finger press the trigger.’

11 a.m. Maigret was prowling about his room in the Quai des Orfevres, smoking his pipe and fiddling endlessly with the telephone. 

‘Hello! Is that you. Chief.? It’s Lucas... I followed the old boy who seemed to be interested in the reconstruction… Nothing doing there. He’s a crank who goes for a walk in the Bois every morning.’

‘All right! You can come back.’ 

11:15 a.m. ‘Hello, Chief.? This is Torrence. I shadowed the young man you tipped me the wink about… He’s a salesman on the Champs-Elysées shop, who’s hoping to become a private enquiry agent. . . Shall I come back?’ 

Not until 11.55 was there a call from Janvier. 

‘I’m working fast. Chief. I’m afraid the bird might get away…I’m watching him in the little mirror set in the door of the phone box. I’m at the Nain Faune bar in the Boulevard Rochechouart…Yes… He spotted me. He’s not got a clear conscience… As we crossed the Seine he threw something into the river. He’s tried to lose me about ten times…Shall I wait for you here?’

And thus began a chase which was to go on for five days and five nights, through a city that was unaware of it, among hurrying pedestrians, from bar to bar, from bistro to bistro, Maigret and his detectives taking it in turns to pursue a solitary man and becoming, in the end, as exhausted as their quarry. 

Maigret alighted from his taxi in front of the Nain Fame, at aperitif time, and found Janvier leaning against the counter. He made no effort to assume an innocent air; quite the reverse! 

‘Which is he?’ 

With a jerk of his chin the detective indicated a man sitting at a small table in a corner. The man was watching them with pale blue- grey eyes that gave his face a foreign look. A Scandinavian or a Slav? Probably the latter. He wore a grey overcoat, a well-cut suit, a soft felt hat. 

‘What’ll you drink. Chief? A hot picon?’

‘Hot picon be it... What’s he drinking?’ 

‘A brandy… the fifth since this morning... You mustn’t mind if my speech is a bit slurred, but I’ve had to follow him into every bistro... He’s tough, you know. Look at him... he’s been like that all morning. He wouldn’t drop his eyes for the world.’ 

It was quite true. And it was odd. One could not call it arrogance or defiance. The man was simply looking at them. If he was feeling anxious, he did not show it. His face expressed sadness, rather; but a calm, thoughtful sadness. 

‘At Bagatelle, when he noticed that you were watching him, he immediately moved away and I followed suit. He turned round be- fore he’d gone a hundred metres. Then instead of leaving the Bois as he had apparently meant to, he strode off down the first walk he came to. He turned round again. He recognized me. He sat down on a bench, in spite of the cold, and I stopped... On several occasions I had the feeling that he wanted to speak to me, but he always ended by shrugging his shoulders and moving off again.’

Janvier went on: ’At the Porte Dauphine I nearly lost him, for he jumped into a taxi, and it was only by sheer luck that I found another almost immediately. He got out in the Place de I’Opera and rushed into the metro. One behind the other, we changed lines five times, and he began to understand that he wouldn’t get rid of me that way. We came up above ground again. We were in the Place Clichy. Since then we’ve been going from bar to bar... I was waiting for a convenient place with a telephone booth from which I could keep an eye on him. When he saw me telephoning he gave a sort of bitter little laugh... And afterwards one would have sworn he was expecting you . 

‘Ring them up at the “office”... Tell Lucas and Torrence to be ready to join me at short notice... And a photographer from the Records Department with a very small camera . 

‘Waiter!’ the stranger called out. ‘How much?’ 

‘Three francs fifty’ 

‘I’m willing to bet he’s a Pole,’ Maigret whispered to Janvier. ‘Let’s go!’

They did not get far. In the Place Blanche they followed the man into a small restaurant and sat down at the table next to his. It was an Italian restaurant, and they ate pasta. 

At three o’clock Lucas came to take over from Janvier, who was sitting with Maigret in a brasserie opposite the Gare du Nord. 

‘The photographer?’ Maigret enquired.

‘He’s waiting to catch the man when he comes out.’

And when the Pole left the place, after reading the newspapers, a detective stepped up briskly towards him. When he was less than a yard away the click of a camera was heard. The man swiftly covered his face with his hand, but it was too late, and then, showing that he had understood, he cast a reproachful glance at the Superintendent. 

‘It’s clear, my friend,’ Maigret soliloquized, ‘that you’ve some good reasons for not taking us to your home. But however much patience you have, mine’s at least equal to yours… 

By evening a few snowflakes were drifting in the streets, while the stranger walked about, his hands in his pockets, waiting for bedtime. 

‘ShallI relieve you for the night. Chief?’ Lucas proposed.

‘No! I’d rather you saw to the photograph. Consult the files first of all. Then ask around in foreigners’ circles. He’s no recent arrival; somebody must know him.’ 

‘Suppose we published his picture in the papers?’ 

Maigret gave his subordinate a contemptuous glance. So Lucas, who had worked with him for so many years, didn’t understand? Had the police got a single piece of evidence? Not one! A man had been killed at night in the Bois de Boulogne; no weapon had been found, no fingerprints; Dr. Borms lived alone, and his one servant did not know where he had been the night before. 

‘Do as I tell you. Off with you…!’

Finally, at midnight, the man brought himself to enter a hotel. Maigret followed. It was a second-rate, indeed a third-rate hotel. 

‘I want a room…’

‘Will you fill in the form?’

He did so, hesitantly, his fingers numb with cold.

He looked Maigret up and down, as if to say: 

‘If you think this worries me…! I can write whatever I fancy.’ 

And he put down a name at random: Nicolas Slaatkovitch, arrived in Paris the previous day.

It was obviously false. Maigret rang the Police Judiciaire. The records of lodging houses and registers of foreigners were searched; enquiries were made to frontier police. There was no sign of any Nicolas Slaatkovitch. 

‘A room for you too?’ asked the proprietor somewhat resentfully, for he had recognized a policeman. 

‘No, thanks. I shall spend the night on the stairs.’ 

It seemed safer. He sat down on a step in front of the door of room number seven. Twice the door opened. The man peered into the darkness, caught sight of Maigret’s figure and eventually went back to bed. In the morning his beard had grown and his cheeks were rough. He had not been able to change his shirt. He had not even a comb with him, and his hair was dishevelled. 

Lucas appeared. 

‘Shall I take over. Chief?’ 

But Maigret could not bring himself to leave the stranger. He watched him pay for his room. He saw him turn pale, and he guessed. 

A little later, in fact, in a bar where, practically side by side, they drank café crème and ate croissants, the man openly counted his store of wealth. One hundred-franc note, two twenty-franc pieces and one piece of ten, plus some small change. His lips twisted in a bitter grin. 

Well, he wouldn’t get far with that. When he came to the Bois de Boulogne he must just have left home, for he had freshly shaven cheeks and clothes without a speck of dust or a crease. He had probably expected to be back shortly afterwards; he hadn’t even looked to see what money he had in his pockets. 

What he had thrown into the Seine, Maigret guessed, must have been identity papers and possibly visiting cards. At all costs, he wanted to prevent anyone finding out where he lived. 

And he set off again on the long, weary ramble of the homeless, lingering in front of shops and stalls, entering bars from time to time for somewhere to sit and take refuge from the cold, reading newspapers in brasseries. 

A hundred and fifty francs! No restaurant for him at midday; he had to content himself with hard-boiled eggs, which he ate stand- ing up at a bar counter, washed down with a glass of beer, while Maigret devoured sandwiches. 

The man hesitated for a long time in front of a cinema, wondering whether to go in. He fingered the coins in his pocket. Better try and last out... He went on walking, walking.

In fact, one detail struck Maigret: this exhausting ramble always followed the same course, through the same districts: between the Trinite and Place Clichy, between Place Clichy and Barbes by way of the Rue Caulaincourt, then from Barbès to the Gare du Nord and the Rue La Fayette. . 

Was the man afraid of being recognized elsewhere? Surely he had chosen the districts farthest from his home or his hotel, those which he did not habitually visit. Did he, like so many foreigners, frequent the Montparnasse district? The neighbourhood of the Panthéon?

To judge by his clothes, he was moderately well-off; they were comfortable, quiet and well-cut. A professional man, no doubt. Maigret noticed that he wore a wedding ring. 

Maigret had had to resign himself to handing over his place to Torrence. He had hurried home. Madame Maigret was disap- pointed, because her sister had come on a visit from Orleans and she had prepared a special dinner, and now her husband, after shaving and changing, was off again, announcing that he didn’t know when he would be back. 

He made straight for the Quai des Orfevres.

‘Anything for me from Lucas?’

Yes. There was a message from the inspector. He had passed round the photograph in a number of Polish and Russian circles. Nobody knew the man. Nor was there anything to be learnt from the various political groups. As a last resort he had had a great many copies of the photograph printed; in every part of Paris policemen went from door to door, enquiring from concierges, and showing the document to the landlords of bars and the waiters in cafes. 

‘Hello! Superintendent Maigret? I’m an usherette at the news-cinema in the Boulevard de Strasbourg... There’s a gentleman here. Monsieur Torrence... He told me to call you to say that he’s here, but daren’t leave the hall…

It was cunning of the man; he had reckoned that this was the warmest place to spend a number of hours at little expense... Two francs entry... and you could stay on for several performances! 

A curious intimacy had sprung up between the hunter and the hunted, between the man with the unshaven chin and rumpled clothes and Maigret, who kept stubbornly on his trail. There was even one comical detail: they had both caught colds. Their noses were red. Almost rhythmically, they pulled out their handkerchiefs, and once the man gave an involuntary smile on seeing Maigret give a whole series of sneezes. 

After sitting through five consecutive programmes at the news- cinema, they moved on to a squalid hotel in the Boulevard de la Chapelle. The man signed the same name on the register. And Mai- gret, once again, settled down on the staircase. But since this was a hotel frequented by prostitutes, he was disturbed every ten minutes by couples who stared at him with curiosity, and the women felt uneasy. 

Would the man make up his mind to go home once his money was spent or when he was at the end of his tether? In a brasserie where he stayed for some length of time and took off his grey overcoat, Maigret seized hold of this without hesitation and examined the inside of the collar. It bore the label of the ‘Old England’ shop in the Boulevard des Italiens. It was a ready-made garment, and the shop must have sold dozens like it. Maigret noticed one significant piece of evidence: it was a year old. So the stranger must have been in Paris for a year at least. And during that year he must have stayed somewhere. . 

Maigret had begun drinking toddies to get rid of his cold. The stranger was becoming close-fisted; he drank only coffee, not even laced with spirits, and ate hard-boiled eggs and croissants. 

The news from the ‘office’ was still the same: nothing to report! Nobody had recognized the photograph of the Pole, and no missing person had been reported. 

Nor was there any further information about the dead man. He had earned a good income, took no interest in politics, led a busy social life, and since he specialized in nervous diseases his patients were chiefly women. 

Maigret had never yet had occasion to study the question of how long it takes for a well-bred, well-dressed, well-groomed man to lose his gloss once he is turned out into the streets. He knew, now, that it took four days. The beard, for one thing. The first morning the man looked like a lawyer, a doctor, an architect or an industrialist, and one could imagine him living in a comfortable flat. A four-day beard had transformed him so much that if his picture had been published in connection with the Bois de Boulogne affair people would have declared: ‘He’s obviously a murderer!’ 

The cold air and the lack of sleep had reddened his eyelids, and there was a hectic flush on his cheekbones. His shoes were unpolished and shapeless, his overcoat looked shabby and his trousers bagged at the knees. 

Even his gait... He no longer walked in the same way... He slunk along by the wall... he lowered his eyes when people looked at him as they passed when he went past a restaurant where customers were sitting in front of well-filled plates... 

‘Your last twenty francs, poor fellow!’ Maigret reckoned. ‘And what next?’’

Lucas, Torrence and Janvier relieved him from time to time, but he gave up his post to them as seldom as possible. He would burst into his chief’s office at Police Headquarters. 

‘You ought to take a rest, Maigret.’

Peevish and prickly, Maigret seemed torn by conflicting feelings. 

‘Is it or isn’t it my job to catch the murderer.?’ 

‘Obviously…’

‘Then I’m off!’ he sighed with a touch of resentment in his voice. ‘I wonder where we shall go to bed tonight?’

Only twenty francs left, not even that! When he rejoined Torrence, the latter informed him that the man had eaten three hard- boiled eggs and drunk two coffees, laced with brandy, in a bar at the corner of the Rue Montmartre. 

‘Eight francs fifty... He’s got eleven fifty left…’ 

He admired the man. Far from trying to conceal himself he walked level with him, sometimes right beside him, and had to control an impulse to speak to him. 

‘Come on, old chap! Don’t you think it’s time for a meal…? Somewhere or other there’s a warm home waiting for you, a bed, slippers, a razor…eh? And a good dinner…’

The man, however, went on prowling aimlessly under the arc lamps of the Halles, among the heaps of cabbages and carrots, stepping aside when he heard the whistle of a train, avoiding market gardeners’ trucks. 

‘You won’t be able to afford a room!’ 

The Meteorological Office that evening registered eight degrees below zero. The man treated himself to hot sausages from an open- air stall. He would reek of garlic and burnt fat all night! 

At one point he tried to slip into a shed and lie down in one cor- ner. A policeman, to whom Maigret had not had time to give in- structions, sent him packing. Now he was limping. The Quais. The Pont des Arts—provided he didn’t take it into his head to throw himself into the Seine! Maigret felt he would not have the courage to jump in after him into the black water, where ice was beginning to drift. 

He walked along the tow-path. Some tramps were grumbling; under the bridges, the best places were already taken. In a little street near the Place Maubert, through the windows of a strange tavern, old men could be seen asleep, their heads on the table. For twenty sous, a glass of red wine included! The man looked at Maigret through the darkness. Then, with a fatalistic shrug, he pushed open the door. Before it had closed, Maigret caught a nauseating whiff; he decided to remain outside. Summoning a constable on the beat, he posted him as sentry on the pavement while he went off to ring Lucas, who was on duty that night. 

‘We’ve been hunting for you for the past hour. Chief! We’ve found out who the man is, thanks to a concierge, Stephan Strevzki, thirty-four years old, born in Warsaw; he’s been living in France for the past three years. He’s married to a fine-looking Hungarian girl called Dora. They rent a twelve thousand franc flat in Passy, in the Rue de la Pompe… Nothing to do with politics. The concierge has never seen the murdered man… Stephan went out on Monday morning earlier than usual… She was surprised not to see him come back, but she didn’t worry.’ 

‘What’s the time now?’ 

‘ Half-past three…I’m alone at Headquarters and I’ve had some beer brought up, but it’s very cold!’ 

‘Listen, Lucas… You’re to… Yes, I know…! Too late for the morning ones, but in the evening ones… Understood?’

That morning an indefinable odour of poverty seemed to cling to the man’s very clothes. His eyes were more sunken. The glance he threw at Maigret, in the pale dawn, was one of pathetic reproachfulness. Had he not been brought, gradually but yet at a dizzying speed, to the lowest rung of the ladder? He pulled up the collar of his overcoat. He did not leave the district. He dived into a bistro which had just opened, and there drank four brandies in quick succession, as though to drive away the appalling aftertaste that the night had left in his throat and his breast. 

Now there was nothing left for him but to keep on walking along streets slippery with frost. He must be aching in every limb; he was limping with the left leg. From time to time he halted and looked around despairingly. 

Since he no longer went into cafes where there was a telephone, Maigret could not be relieved. Back to the quais! And there the man almost automatically fingered the secondhand books, turning their pages, occasionally checking the authenticity of a print or an en- graving. An icy wind swept the Seine. As the barges moved for- ward, the water made a clinking sound due to the clashing of tiny fragments of ice.

From afar off, Maigret could see the Police Judiciaire building and the window of his office. His sister-in-law must have gone back to Orleans. If only Lucas…

He did not know, as yet, that this appalling case was going to become a classic, and that generations of detectives would relate it in every detail to their juniors. Absurdly, what disturbed him most was a trivial detail: the man had a spot on his forehead, which, looked at closely, would probably prove to be a boil, and which was turning from red to purple. 

If only Lucas… 

At midday, the man, who unquestionably knew his Paris well, made his way towards the paupers’ soup kitchen at the far end of the Boulevard Saint-Germain. He joined the queue of down-and-outs. An old man spoke to him, but he pretended not to understand. Then another, whose face was pitted with smallpox, addressed him in Russian. 

Maigret crossed over to the pavement on the other side of the street, and after a moment’s hesitation yielded to the irresistible urge to enter a bistro and eat sandwiches; he turned away so that the man, if he looked through the window, should not see him eating. 

The poor fellows moved on slowly, and were let in four or five at a time into the hall where they were given bowls of hot soup. The queue grew longer. From time to time someone would push at the back, and the others protested. 

1 p.m… The newsboy came running from the far end of the street, leaning forward eagerly. 

‘Paper! Paper L’Intransigeant…! L’Intran…’

He, too, was trying to forestall his rivals. He could spot likely purchasers from afar. He paid no attention to the line of paupers. 

Humbly the man raised his hand, saying: Tsssttl’ People in the queue looked at him. So he still had a few sous for a paper? Maigret, too, hailed the newsboy, unfolded the paper, and found to his relief, on the front page, what he was looking for: the photo- graph of a young woman, smiling and beautiful.

MISSING WOMAN 

A young Polish woman, Mme Dora Strevzki, is said to have disappeared four days ago from her home in Passy, 17 Rue de la Pompe. A disturbing factor in the case is that the husband of the missing woman, M. Stephan Strevzki, also disappeared from his home the day before, Monday, and the concierge, who informed the police... stated… 

The man, borne forward by the moving queue, had only five or six paces more to go to get his bowl of steaming soup. At that very moment he stepped out of line, crossed the street, nearly got knocked over by a bus, but reached the pavement just as Maigret stood in front of him. 

‘I’m all yours,’ he declared quite simply. ‘Take me off… I’ll answer all your questions.’ 

Everyone was waiting in the passage at Police Headquarters, Lucas, Janvier, Torrence, and others who had not been working on the case but knew about it. As they passed, Lucas gave Maigret a sign that meant: ‘It’s all right!’ 

A door opened and then shut. Beer and sandwiches were on the table. 

‘Have something to eat first…’

Embarrassed, the man could scarcely swallow. Then at last he said: 

‘Since she’s gone away and is safe somewhere Maigret felt impelled to turn and poke the stove. 

‘When I read about the murder in the paper... I’d suspected for quite some time that Dora was having an affair with that man... I knew she was not his only mistress... I knew Dora with her impulsive character... D’you understand? If he had tried to get rid of her, I knew she was capable of... And she had a pearl-handled revolver, she always carried it in her bag... When the papers announced the capture of the murderer and the reconstruction of the crime, I wanted to watch…’

Maigret would have liked to say, like an English policeman: ‘I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence.’

The man had kept his hat and overcoat on.

‘Now that she’s safe. For I suppose…’ He cast an anxious look around, as a sudden suspicion crossed his mind. ‘She must have understood, when she saw that I’d not come back... I knew it would end like that, I knew Borms was not the man for her and that she’d come back to m... She went out alone on Sunday evening, as she had taken to doing recently.

Maigret blew his nose; he took a long time blowing it. A ray of sunlight, that bleak winter sunlight that goes with icy weather, came and went. It came in through the dirty window. The boil was gleaming on the man’s forehead; Maigret could only think of him as ‘the man’.

‘Yes, your wife killed him... She must have killed him when she realized that he was not serious about her... And you realized that she had killed him… And you didn’t want.’

He suddenly went up close to the Pole.

‘I’m sorry, old fellow,’ he muttered as though he was speaking to an old friend, ‘I had to get at the truth, hadn’t I? It was my duty to.…’ 

He opened the door. 

‘Bring in Madame Dora Strevzki... Lucas, you carry on. I’m going to…’

And nobody saw him again at Headquarters for two days. The director rang him up at home. 

‘Look here, Maigret... You know that she’s confessed everything and tht. By the way, how’s your cold. I gather…’

‘It’s nothing at all. It’s all right ... In twenty-four hours… And how is he?’ 

‘What?... Who..? 

‘The man! The husband!’ 

‘Ah, now I follow you. I didn’t know who you were referring to. He’s engaged the best lawyer in Paris. He hopes... You know, crimes of passion…’

Maigret went back to bed and doped himself with aspirin and hot toddies. Later on, when anyone asked him about the investigation, he would growl discouragingly: 

‘What investigation?’ 

And the man came to see him once or twice a week to keep him informed about the lawyer’s hopes. 

The result was not outright acquittal: a year with remission of sentence. 

And it was from this man that Maigret learnt to play chess.