Georges Simenon - Maigret and the Fortuneteller

Maigret and the Fortuneteller

Georges Simenon

The 44th Inspector Maigret Novel

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Contents

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Copyright 1944 by Editions Gallimard English translation copyright 1989 by Georges Simenon

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Simenon, Georges, 1903-Maigret and the fortuneteller.

Translation of: Sign Picpus

I. Title.

PQ2637.I53S5413 - 1989 - 843.912 - 88-16301

ISBN 0-15-155571-0

Chapter One

I t was three minutes to five. On the enormous map of Paris that covered a large part of the wall, a small white disk lighted up. Seeing it, a man put down his sandwich and thrust a plug into one of the thousand sockets of the switchboard.

Hello! Fourteenth? Your cars just left?

Maigret, who was doing his best to look unconcerned, stood, with the sun shining full on him, mopping his brow.

The man at the switchboard grunted something, removed the plug, and picked up his sandwich. It was for the superintendents benefit that he murmured: A bercy .

This meant, in their professional jargon, a drunk.

It was August, and Paris smelled of warm asphalt. Through the wide-open windows, the roar of the traffic on the Ile de la Cit penetrated this room that was the brain of the police emergency center. Below, in the courtyard of Police Headquarters, two vans packed with men stood ready and waiting to go.

Another disk lighted up, this time in the Eighteenth Arrondissement. Once again, down went the sandwich, in went the plug.

Yes? Grard? How are you? Whats going on? Is that all?

Someone had fallen out of a windowor had thrown himself out. It seemed to be the current choice for suicideby the poor and the old especially, and mainly in the Eighteenth.

Maigret knocked out his pipe on the windowsill and refilled it, glancing at the clock. It was two minutes past the hour.

Two minutes past! Had they killed the fortuneteller or hadnt they?

The door opened, and Lucas, short, round, and bustling, appeared, also mopping his brow.

Well, Chief, nothing yet?

Like Maigret, he had crossed the street that separated the Police Judiciaire from Police Headquarters to be on the spot if any news came in.

By the way, that fellows here again

Mascouvin?

Yes, and white as a sheet. He wants to talk to you. He says the only thing now is to kill himself.

Another disk lighted up. Might this be what they were waiting for? No. Not yet. Only a fight at Porte de Saint-Ouen.

A telephone call. The director of the Police Judiciaire asking for the superintendent.

Hello! Is that you, Maigret? Anything happened? Nothing so far?

A slight emphasis on the last two words, and the sarcasm wasnt lost on Maigret, who looked savagely at the receiver as he put it down. He was hot and would have given a lot for a tall glass of cold beer. For the first time in his life, he was not far from hoping that a crime had been committed.

For if the fortuneteller had not been killed on the stroke of five, hed been made a fool of, and it would be weeks, if not months, before his colleagues got tired of teasing him about it.

All because of a few words written backward on a piece of blotting paper!

Go get Mascouvin.

Certainly nobody could have looked less like a practical joker than this Mascouvin. He had turned up at the Police Judiciaire the evening before, and had insisted on seeing Superintendent Maigret in person. Nobody else would do, and he had waited obstinately, his face twitching from time to time with a nervous tic.

Its a matter of life or death, he had said.

A thin, dull man with glasses, approaching middle age, who could never have been taken for anything but a somewhat seedy bachelor, which indeed was what he was. He fidgeted the whole time he was telling his story.

Ive worked for fifteen years at Proud and Drouinyou know, the real-estate agent on Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. I live alone in a little two-room apartment on Place des Vosges. Number 21 Every evening I go and play bridge at a club on Rue des Pyramides During the last two months Ive had such bad luck. Its swallowed up all my savings I owe the countess eight hundred francs

Maigret listened with only half an ear, thinking that at that moment half of Paris was on vacation, while the rest were sitting under the awnings of caf terraces sipping cool drinks.

A countess? Who would she be? The wretched visitor made haste to explain that she had once been rich but had fallen on hard times. With almost no assets except a fine apartment on Rue des Pyramides, she had made use of it to start a bridge club. A handsome woman, according to Mascouvin, and it wasnt hard to guess he was in love with her.

This afternoon, at four oclock, Superintendent, I took a thousand francs of my firms money

He couldnt have looked more tragic if he had killed a whole family. Still fidgeting and twitching, he went on with his confession. When he left his office, he wandered around the streets with the thousand-franc note in his pocket, tormented by remorse. He entered the Caf des Sports, at the corner of Place de la Rpublique and Boulevard Voltaire, where he was in the habit of dropping in for an apritif before dinner.

Nestor, bring me some writing paper, will you?

He always called the waiter by his Christian name. Yes, he would write to his employers and tell them everything, and at the same time send them back their thousand francs. It would be easier than telling them face to face, and he could explain the whole thinghis run of bad luck for two whole months and the countesss pressing him to pay his debt.

Though he adored the countess, she had a soft spot only for a retired army officer who frequented the club.

Nestor duly returned with pen and ink and a folder that contained a few sheets of paper and a blotter.

Mascouvin opened the folder and sat staring at it, not knowing how to begin. Because he was nearsighted and didnt need his glasses for writing, he had put them down on the blotter, and they lay there, the lenses vertical to the blotter. It was in fact the way hed put them down that was the cause of everything. With the play of light, one of the lenses acted as a mirror, reflectingthe right way, of coursesomething that had been blotted. It was the phrase am going to kill , and his curiosity was immediately aroused. Who was going to kill whom?

Shifting the glasses, he was gradually able to piece together the whole sentence, in fact the whole notefor it was a note someone had written and signed.

Tomorrow afternoon on the stroke of five I am going to kill the fortuneteller. Picpus.

Five past five. The man at the switchboard had had time to finish his sandwich, which smelled of garlic, for the little white disks all over the map of Paris remained obstinately unlighted. Steps could be heard on the stairs. It was Lucas, with the wretched Mascouvin.

The latter hadnt written to his employers after all. The previous evening, after hearing his story, Maigret had advised him to go to work as usual and put the thousand-franc note back where it belonged, without saying anything about it. It had been thought just as well, however, to keep an eye on him, and Lucas was given the job. About half past nine Mascouvin went to Rue des Pyramides and hung around for a while, without going up to the countesss apartment.

He spent the night in his own apartment on Place des Vosges and was at his office at the usual time next morning. He had lunch in a cheap restaurant on Boulevard Saint-Martin.

It was only at half past four that he suddenly decided he could bear it no longer and, leaving the dingy offices of Proud and Drouin, made once again for the Quai des Orfvres.