A Man's Head (13 page)

‘Ask the doorman. He called the taxi for them.'

The doorman remembered them:

‘Hold on! It was that blue taxi – he usually parks here … They can't have gone far because he's there, he's back already.'

The next moment, the taxi-driver was saying:

‘The last fare? I drove them to the Pelican, Rue des Écoles.'

‘Take me there!'

Maigret walked into the Pelican in the foulest of moods, put the doorman in his place and then the waiter who tried to show him into the main hall.

Among the crowd of good-time girls and revellers milling around the bar, he spotted the two men he was looking for perched on high bar stools in a corner.

It took him only a glance to see that Janvier's eyes were shining and his face over-excited.

Radek on the other hand was staring grim-faced into his glass.

Without hesitating, Maigret went straight up to them, while Janvier, patently drunk, made signs which meant: ‘All in hand! … Leave everything to me! … Don't show your face!'

He stood next to the two men. The Czech, slow-tongued, murmured:

‘Aha! It's you again!'

Janvier was still making signs in a way which he believed was both discreet and eloquent.

‘What will you have to drink, inspector?'

‘Look, Radek …'

‘Bartender! Same again for my friend here!'

And the Czech swallowed the concoction he had in the glass in front of him and sighed:

‘I'm listening … And you're listening too, aren't you, Janvier?'

At the same time he thumped the young inspector on the back:

‘Is it long since you've been to Saint-Cloud?' said Maigret slowly and clearly.

‘Me? … Ha ha ha! … That's a good one!'

‘You know there's another corpse?'

‘Gravediggers are doing good business, then. Your very good health, inspector.'

He wasn't playing games. He was drunk, certainly not as drunk as Janvier, but even so he had had more than enough to be glassy-eyed and for him to hang on to the bar rail.

‘And who is the lucky man?'

‘William Crosby.'

For the space of a few seconds, Radek seemed to be fighting against his drunkenness, as if he had suddenly realized the gravity of the moment.

Then he gave a derisive laugh as he straightened himself up, leaned back and made a sign to the barman to refill their glasses.

‘Well now, isn't that just one in the eye for you!'

‘And what does that mean?'

‘You're nowhere near, man! … In fact, further away than ever! … I told you from the start … So now let me make a useful suggestion. Janvier and I, we're both agreed … Your job is to follow
me. Actually, I don't give a damn! Only instead of walking like sheep one behind the other playing games, I think it would make more sense if we had a good time together … Have you had dinner? … In that case, since we never know what tomorrow might bring, I suggest we
make a night of it for once … This place is full of pretty girls. We'll each pick one. Janvier has already been chatting up that brunette over there … I haven't made my mind up yet … Naturally it's on me …

‘So, what do you say?'

He stared at Maigret, who stared back and found no trace of drunkenness in his companion's face.

Instead he saw the same eyes ablaze with acute intelligence which were now fixed on him with a look of consummate irony, as though Radek were truly possessed by fierce exultant joy.

It was eight in the morning. Maigret, who had left Radek and Janvier four hours earlier, was drinking black coffee while slowly, with a pause after every sentence, he was writing in a cramped hand:

7 July. At midnight, Joseph Heurtin drinks four glasses of spirits in the Pavillon Bleu in Saint-Cloud and drops a third-class railway ticket.

2.30 a.m. Mrs Henderson and her maid are stabbed to death, and the traces left by the murderer are those of Joseph Heurtin.

4 a.m. Heurtin returns home to Rue Monsieur-le-Prince.

8 July. Heurtin reports for work as usual.

9 July. On the evidence of his shoe-prints he is arrested at his place of work, in Rue de Sèvres. He does not deny going to Saint-Cloud. He says that he has not killed anybody.

2 October. Joseph Heurtin, still protesting his innocence, is sentenced to death.

15 October. He escapes from the Santé prison using the plan devised by the police, wanders through Paris all night and ends up at the Citanguette, where he falls asleep.

16 October. The morning papers carry the story of his escape, without comment. At ten that morning an unknown hand writes a letter in the Coupole, which is sent to
Le Sifflet
and reveals that the police were complicit in the break-out. The
unidentified writer is a man, a foreigner, who writes using his left hand and is probably suffering from some incurable illness.

6 p.m. Heurtin gets up. Inspector Dufour, who tries to take the newspaper he is holding away from him, is hit with a soda siphon. Heurtin makes the most of the confusion, blacks out the room and runs off while the inspector panics and fires a shot
but to no avail.

17 October. At 12 noon William Crosby, his wife and Edna Reichberg are drinking aperitifs in the bar of the Coupole, where they are regulars. Radek the Czech is sitting at a table, where he orders café au lait and a yogurt. The Crosbys and Radek do
not appear to know each other.

Outside, Heurtin, exhausted and hungry, waits for someone.

The Crosbys leave, and he doesn't turn a hair.

Heurtin goes on waiting
even when Radek is the only one left in the bar
.

5 p.m. The Czech orders caviar, refuses to pay and leaves, escorted by two policemen.

Once he has gone, Heurtin ends his picket and makes his way to his parents' house at Nandy.

That same evening, at around nine o'clock, Crosby changes a 100-dollar bill in the Hôtel Georges V and puts the bundles of French notes in his pocket.

Accompanied by his wife, he attends a charity gala at the Ritz, gets back to his suite around three in the morning and does not go out again.

18 October. At Nandy, Heurtin has crept into an outhouse, where his mother finds and hides him.

9 a.m. His father suspects that he is there and orders him to leave once it is dark.

10 a.m. Heurtin tries to commit suicide by hanging himself in the outhouse.

In Paris, Radek is released by the inspector-in-charge at Montparnasse police station at about 7 a.m. He manages to lose Inspector Janvier, who is tailing him, shaves and changes his shirt somewhere, although he does not have a centime in his
pocket.

10 a.m. He makes a conspicuous entrance at the Coupole, waves a 1,000-franc note and settles himself down at a table.

A little later, he sees Maigret enter and invites him to sample the caviar and, without any prompting, raises the Henderson case and asserts that the police will never get to the bottom of it.

But no one in the police has ever mentioned the name Henderson in his presence.

Then, quite spontaneously, he lays ten bundles of 100-franc notes on the table and volunteers the information that they are newly minted and therefore easily traceable.

William Crosby, who returned to his hotel at three in the morning,
has at that moment not set foot outside his suite.
Yet these are the same notes as the ones given to him the previous evening by the clerk in the Georges V in exchange for
his banknote.

Inspector Janvier remains at the Coupole to keep an eye on Radek. After lunch, the Czech invites him to have a drink
and makes two phone calls
.

4 p.m. There is a man in the villa at Saint-Cloud, although it has been deserted ever since the funeral of Mrs Henderson and her maid.

The man is William Crosby. He is up on the first floor. He hears the sounds of footsteps in the garden. It is impossible that
he does not recognize Maigret
through the window.

He hides. He runs away as Maigret advances. He climbs up to the second floor. He is forced to retreat room by room and, finally trapped in a room from which there is no exit, he opens the window, sees that there is no escape, puts a gun in his
mouth and fires.

Mrs Crosby and Edna Reichberg go dancing in the salon de thé at the Hôtel Georges V.

Radek invites Inspector Janvier to dine with him and then afterwards to have a drink in a bar in the Latin Quarter.

When Maigret catches up with them at 11 p.m., they are drunk and, until 4 a.m., Radek takes great delight in dragging his companions from bar to bar, making them drink, drinking himself and appearing at times drunk and at others lucid, scattering
statements which are deliberately ambiguous and repeating that the police will never solve the Henderson case.

4 a.m. He invites two women to his table. He insists that both his companions do likewise and, when they refuse, he goes off with the women to a hotel in Boulevard Saint-Germain.

19 October. At eight in the morning, the hotel's reception desk replies:

‘The two women are still asleep. Their friend has just left. He settled the bill in full.'

Maigret was overcome by a weariness such as he had rarely felt during an investigation. He looked cursorily over what he had just written and, without a word, shook the hand of a colleague who had said hello and, with a gesture, indicated that he
was to be left to himself.

In the margin, he made a note: ‘Ascertain what William Crosby was doing between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. on 19 October.'

Then suddenly, with a purposeful movement of his head, he picked up the receiver and asked to be put through to the Coupole.

‘I want to know how long it's been since the last time correspondence arrived for the name of Radek.'

Five minutes later, he had the answer.

‘At least ten days.'

He then asked to speak to the hotel where the Czech had a room.

‘About a week,' he was told in response to the same question.

He reached for the phone book, found the list of poste restante offices and rang the one in Boulevard Raspail.

‘Do you have someone on your books by the name of Radek? … No? … He must use his initials only to get his post sent to him … Police business … Listen, miss … He's foreign, quite shabbily
dressed, with very long, curly red hair … What was that? … The initials M. V.? … When was the last time he got a letter? … Yes, please find out … I'll wait … No, don't hang up …'

There was a knock at the door. Without turning round he called out:

‘Come!

‘Yes, still here … What's that? Yesterday morning at nine? … And this letter came through the post? … Thank you! … Oh, just a moment … The letter was quite large, was it, large enough to
contain a bundle of banknotes?'

‘You're doing well!' growled a voice behind Maigret.

The inspector turned. The Czech was standing there, looking forlorn yet with a barely perceptible twinkle in his eye. As he took a seat, he went on:

‘True, it wasn't a very clever thing to do. But now you know: yesterday morning I collected money that had been sent to me care of the poste restante in Boulevard Raspail. The previous evening, the money was in the pocket of the late
lamented Crosby … But was it Crosby himself who sent it? Now there's a question.'

‘Did the duty clerk let you in here?'

‘He was busy dealing with some woman. I just behaved as if I work here and saw your name on a door. It wasn't difficult. And to think that here we are, at the beating heart of the nation's top police force!'

Maigret observed that his face looked tired, not tired like the face of a man who has passed a sleepless night, but like the face of a patient whose illness has just taken a turn for the worse. There were bags under his eyes. His lips were
bloodless.

‘Is there something you want to say to me?'

‘I don't know. I mostly wanted to see how you were. Did you get home in one piece last night?'

‘Good of you to ask.'

From where he was sitting, he could see the summary Maigret had just written out to clarify his ideas, and the suspicion of a smile flitted over his lips.

‘Know anything about the Taylor case?' he asked unexpectedly. ‘No, you probably don't keep up with American newspapers. Well, Desmond Taylor, one of Hollywood's best-known directors, was murdered in 1922. At least a
dozen film stars, including some pretty women, were suspects. They were all released without charge. Well now, do you have any idea of what is still being said about it, today, after all these years? I'm quoting from memory, but my memory is excellent:
The police have known very well
who killed Taylor from the first day of the investigation. But the evidence they have is inadequate and so flimsy that, even if the perpetrator turned himself in, he would have to provide irrefutable evidence himself and call witnesses to back up his story
.'