“You say she heard someone running downstairs and then a door slam. The door of the house, I suppose. On which floor is the flat? The
Lec?ur asked the new caller to wait, then came back to Javel.
“An old woman, you say. Madame Fayet. Worked as charwoman. Dead? A blunt instrument. Is the doctor there? You’re sure she’s dead? What about her money? I suppose she had some tucked away somewhere. Right. Call me back. Or I’ll ring you.”
He turned to the detective, who was now sleeping soundly.
“Janvier! Hey, Janvier! This is for you.”
“What? What is it?”
“The killer.”
“Where?”
“Near the Rue Lecourbe. Here’s the address. This time he’s done in an old charwoman, a Madame Fayet.”
Janvier put on his overcoat, looked round for his hat, and gulped down the remains of the coffee in his cup.
“Who’s dealing with it?”
“Gonesse, of the Fifteenth.”
“Ring up the P. J., will you, and tell them I’ve gone there.”
A minute or two later, Lec?ur was able to add another little cross to the six that were already in the column. Someone had smashed the glass of the pillar in the Avenue d’Iena only one hundred and fifty yards from the Arc de Triomphe.
“Among the broken glass they found a handkerchief flecked with blood. It was a child’s handkerchief.”
“Has it got initials?”
“No. It’s a blue-check handkerchief, rather dirty. The chap must have wrapped it round his knuckles for breaking the glass.”
There were steps in the corridor. The day shift coming to take over. They looked very clean and close-shaven and the cold wind had whipped the blood into their cheeks.
“Happy Christmas!”
Sommer closed the tin in which he brought his sandwiches. Mambret knocked out his pipe. Only Lec?ur remained in his seat, since there was no relief for him.
The fat Godin had been the first to arrive, promptly changing his jacket for the grey-linen coat in which he always worked, then putting some water on to boil for his grog. All through the winter he suffered from one never- ending cold which he combated, or perhaps nourished, by one hot grog after another.
“Hallo! Yes, I’m still here. I’m doing a shift for Potier, who’s gone down to his family in Normandy. Yes. I want to hear all about it. Most particularly. Janvier’s gone, but I’ll pass it on to the P. J. An invalid, you say? What invalid?”
One had to be patient on that job, as people always talked about their cases as though everyone else was in the picture.
“A low building behind, right. Not in the Rue Michat, then? Rue Vasco de Gamma. Yes, yes. I know. The little house with a garden behind some railings. Only I didn’t know he was an invalid. Right. He doesn’t sleep much. Saw a young boy climbing up a drainpipe? How old? He couldn’t say? Of course not, in the dark. How did he know it was a boy, then? Listen, ring me up again, will you? Oh, you’re going off. Who’s relieving you? Jules? Right. Well, ask him to keep me informed.”
“What’s going on?” asked Godin.
“An old woman who’s been done in. Down by the Rue Lecourbe.”
“Who did it?”
“There’s an invalid opposite who says he saw a small boy climbing up a drainpipe and along the top of a wall.”
“You mean to say it was a boy who killed the old woman?”
“We don’t know yet.”
No one was very interested. After all. murders were an everyday matter to these people. The lights were still on in the room, as it was still only a bleak, dull daylight that found its way through the frosty window panes. One of the new watch went and scratched a bit of the frost away. It was instinctive. A childish memory perhaps, like Sommer’s
The latter had gone home. So had Mambret. The newcomers settled down to their work, turning over the papers on their desks.
A car stolen from the Square la Bruyere.
Lec?ur looked pensively at his seven crosses. Then, with a sigh, he got up and stood gazing at the immense street plan on the wall.
“Brushing up on your Paris?”
“I think I know it pretty well already. Something’s just struck me. There’s a chap wandering about smashing the glass of telephone pillars. Seven in the last hour and a half. He hasn’t been going in a straight line but zigzagging— first this way, then that.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t know Paris.”
“Or knows it only too well! Not once has he ventured within sight of a police station. If he’d gone straight, he’d have passed two or three. What’s more, he’s skirted all the main crossroads where there’d be likely to be a man on duty.” Lec?ur pointed them out. “The only risk he took was in crossing the Pont Mirabeau, but if he wanted to cross the river he’d have run that risk at any of the bridges.”
“I expect he’s drunk,” said Godin, sipping his rum.
“What I want to know is why he’s stopped.”
“Perhaps he’s got home.”
“A man who’s down by the Quai de Javel at half past six in the morning isn’t likely to live near the Etoile.”
“Seems to interest you a lot.”
“It’s got me scared!”
“Go on.”
It was strange to see the worried expression on Lec?ur’s face. He was notorious for his calmness and his most dramatic nights were coolly summarized by the little crosses in his notebook.
“Hallo! Javel? Is that Jules? Lec?ur speaking. Look here, Jules, behind the flats in the Rue Michat is the little house where the invalid lives. Well, now, on one side of it is an apartment house, a red-brick building with a grocer’s shop on the ground floor. You know it?
“Good. Has anything happened there? Nothing reported. No, we’ve heard nothing here. All the same, I can’t explain why, but I think you ought to inquire.”
He was hot all at once. He stubbed out a half finished cigarette.
“Hallo! Ternes? Any alarms gone off in your neighborhood? Nothing? Only drunks? Is the
His eyes went back to the street plan on the wall, in which no light went on for a good ten minutes, and then only for an accidental death in the Eighteenth Arrondissement, right up at the top of Montmartre, caused by an escape of gas.
Outside, in the cold streets of Paris, dark figures were hurrying home from the churches...
One of the sharpest impressions Andre Lec?ur retained of his infancy was one of immobility. His world at that period was a large kitchen in Orleans, on the outskirts of the town. He must have spent his winters there, too, but he remembered it best flooded with sunlight, with the door wide open onto a little garden where hens clucked incessantly and rabbits nibbled lettuce leaves behind the wire netting of their hutches. But, if the door was open, its passage was barred to him by a little gate which his father had made one Sunday for that express purpose.
On weekdays, at half past eight, his father went off on his bicycle to the gas works at the other end of the town. His mother did the housework, doing the same things in the same order every day. Before making the beds,
