A Man's Head (16 page)

He seemed to be talking to himself. They had now reached the first floor, and Maigret went straight through the dressing room and into the bedroom where Mrs Henderson had been murdered.

‘Come in, Radek … I imagine that you are not particularly upset by the thought that two women were killed here? One detail you might perhaps not know. We never found the knife. It was assumed that, as he ran away, Heurtin must have
thrown it into the Seine.'

Maigret sat down on the edge of the bed, at the very place where the body of the American woman had been found.

‘Want to know what I think? Well, I think the killer hid the knife here. But he hid it so well that that we missed it … Wait a moment! … Hang on! … Did you notice the shape of that parcel which Madame Crosby went
off with? … Thirty centimetres long and just a few centimetres wide … The measurements of a substantial dagger, wouldn't you say? … You're quite right, Radek! This is a horribly tangled business! … But … hello, what have we
here?'

He leaned forwards over the polished parquet, where there were fairly clear footprints. They made out a small heel print, the heel of a woman's shoe.

‘How is your eyesight? … Good, then you can help me to follow these prints … Who knows, we might even find out why Madame Crosby came here tonight!'

Radek hesitated, looked closely at Maigret like a man who is wondering what part he is being cast for. But he could not read the expression on the inspector's face.

‘The trail leads to the maid's bedroom, right? … And then? … Bend lower, man … Unlike me, you don't yet weigh a hundred kilos! … Well? … The prints stop in front of this
cupboard? … Ah, it's a hanging-wardrobe! … Is it locked? … No! Wait a moment before opening it … You mentioned a corpse … What do you say? What if there's one inside!'

Radek lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking.

‘Come on! We'll have to make up our mind and open it … Go at it, man …'

And, still talking, Maigret straightened his tie in a mirror, but without once taking his eyes off his companion.

‘Well?'

The cupboard door opened:

‘Is there a dead body in there? What's the matter?'

Radek had taken three steps back. He was staring with astonishment at a young women with fair hair who now emerged from her hiding-place. She moved somewhat stiffly but was not at all scared.

It was Edna Reichberg.

She looked first at Maigret and then at the Czech as though she was waiting for an explanation. She did not appear in the least concerned.

But she did display the awkwardness of someone who acts a part to which he or she is not accustomed.

Ignoring her entirely, Maigret had turned to Radek, who was trying to regain his composure.

‘What have you got to say now? We were expecting a corpse – or rather you led me to think that I was going to find a corpse – and what we get is a charming young woman who is very much alive!'

Edna had turned and was also looking at the Czech.

‘Well, Radek?' Maigret went on cheerfully.

Silence.

‘Do you still believe that I'll never understand anything? … Did you speak? …'

The Swedish girl, whose eyes never left Radek, opened her mouth, but the cry of fear died in her throat.

Maigret had turned back to the mirror and was smoothing down his hair with the flat of his hand. Meanwhile, the Czech had pulled a revolver out of his pocket and, taking quick aim, he pulled the trigger at the very instant the girl was vainly
trying to scream.

It was a sight as amazing as it was absurd. There was a faint metallic click, like something a child's toy might have made. No bullet was fired. Radek pulled the trigger again.

The rest happened so quickly that Edna did not understand what followed. Maigret had seemed to be solidly planted where he was. Yet, in the space of one second, he pounced and crashed with all his weight into the Czech, sending him sprawling on the
floor.

Had he not said: ‘A hundred kilos!'?

And, making full use of his bulk, he overpowered his opponent, who, after two or three attempts to break free, lay still, his hands imprisoned in handcuffs.

‘I'm sorry, mademoiselle,' said the inspector as he got to his feet. ‘It's all over … I have a taxi at the door waiting for you … Radek and I still have lots to say to each other.'

The Czech sat up, incandescent, wild-eyed. Maigret laid one heavy hand on his shoulder and said:

‘Now isn't that so, little man!'

From 3 a.m. to dawn, light shone in Maigret's office on Quai des Orfèvres, and the few police officers who had work to do in the building could hear the dull drone of voices.

At eight, the inspector sent the office clerk to bring up two breakfasts. Then he phoned Coméliau, the examining magistrate, at his home.

It was nine o'clock when the door opened. Maigret emerged behind Radek, who was no longer handcuffed.

Both men looked equally exhausted. But neither murderer nor inquisitor displayed any sign of animosity.

‘Is it this way?' asked the Czech when they reached the end of a corridor.

‘Yes. We'll go through the Palais de Justice. It will be quicker …'

He led him through the passage to Paris' central police station reserved for members of the Préfecture, to be booked. The formalities did not take long. As a guard escorted Radek to the cells, Maigret gave him a look, as if he were about to
say something, perhaps goodbye, but instead he shrugged his shoulders and made his way slowly to Monsieur Coméliau's office.

The magistrate was on the defensive and, when there was a knock at the door, he adopted an air of casual unconcern. But there was no need.

Maigret did not crow. He did not gloat, nor were his words sarcastic. He just looked haggard, like a man who has just completed a long and arduous task.

‘Mind if I smoke? … Thanks … It's cold in here …'

And he directed a bilious look at the central heating, which had been removed from his own office at his orders and replaced by an old cast-iron stove.

‘It's all over … As I told you over the phone, he has confessed … I don't think you'll have any more problems with him. He's a good loser and concedes that he's lost the game.'

The inspector had made notes on scraps of paper, which he would need to write up his report, but he had mixed them up and now stuffed them back in his pocket with a sigh.

‘The distinguishing feature of this case …' he began.

But the expression was far too high-flown for him. He got to his feet and began pacing up and down with his hands clasped behind his back. Then he resumed:

‘This case was a frame-up from the start! That's the top and bottom of it! It's not my word but the murderer's. And even when he said it, the murderer himself did not appreciate the full extent of what he was saying.

‘What struck me when Joseph Heurtin was arrested was that it was not possible to slot his crime into any category. He did not know the victim. He hadn't stolen anything. He had no sadistic tendencies and he wasn't deranged.

‘I wanted to review the investigation and I found that all the evidence had an increasingly false ring to it.

‘And false is, I assure you, the right word. Not accidentally false but knowingly, even scientifically, false! False in ways designed to mislead the police and direct the courts towards the most disastrous of outcomes!

‘And what can be said about the real murderer? That he is even more false than the whole of his carefully staged plot.

‘You know as well as I do the workings of the minds of different sorts of criminals.

‘Well, neither of us could know what went on in the mind of someone like Radek.

‘I've stayed close to him for the last week, watching him, trying to guess what he was thinking. A week of going from one staggering discovery to another, a week of being led up the garden path!

‘He has a cast of mind which defeats all our attempts at classification! Which is why he would never have been involved in our inquiries at all
if he hadn't had some obscure desire to be caught
!

‘Because it was he who gave me the leads I needed. And he did it with a confused sense that he was risking his own downfall … And yet he just carried on.

‘And what if I told you that he now seems more relieved than anything else …?'

Maigret had not raised his voice. But there was a controlled intensity about him which gave his words extraordinary power. From outside came the sound of comings and goings in the corridors of the prosecutor's office, and at intervals a court
usher would call a name, or gendarmes would tramp by in their boots.

‘A man who has killed, not with a particular object in mind, but for killing's sake! I almost said, for fun … No, don't object … You'll see … I shouldn't think he'll talk much, or
even answer the questions you put to him, because he's told me that all he wants now is one thing: peace.

‘But the evidence which will be supplied to you will be enough.

‘His mother was a domestic servant in a small town in Czechoslovakia. He was brought up in a house in the suburbs which resembled an army barracks. And if he got himself an education it was because he was given scholarships and received
support from charities.

‘I'm certain that as a boy he was permanently scarred by his situation and that he started to hate the world, which he saw only from below.

‘He was also a boy when he became convinced that he was a genius. To become famous and rich through his intelligence, that was the dream which brought him to Paris, where he had to accept that his mother, who was sixty-five years of age and
suffering from a disease of the marrow of her spinal column, was still working as a servant so that she could send him money!

‘His pride was inordinate, all-consuming! And it was compounded by impatience, for Radek, a medical student, knew that he was suffering from the same disease as his mother and that he had only a few years to live.

‘At the outset, he worked like a slave, and his teachers were amazed by his ability.

‘He made no friends and did not talk to anyone. He was poor, but he was used to poverty.

‘He often attended lectures wearing nothing at all on his feet. At various times, he unloaded vegetables at the market at Les Halles to earn a little money.

‘But this did not prevent the inevitable happening. His mother died. The money stopped coming.

‘Then suddenly, from one day to the next, he abandoned his dreams. He could have worked, as many students do. But he didn't even try. Did he suspect that he would never be the man of genius he had always wanted to be? Did he doubt
himself?

‘So he did nothing.
Absolutely nothing!
He hung around brasseries. He wrote letters to distant relatives asking for financial support. He got money from charitable organizations. He scrounged off fellow countrymen, cynically, even
making a virtue of his lack of gratitude.

‘The world did not understand him! So he hated the world!

‘He spent all his time nurturing his hatred. In Montparnasse, he sat next to people who were happy, rich and healthy. He drank café au lait while cocktails circulated at nearby tables.

‘Did he think of turning to crime? Perhaps. Twenty years ago, he would have become a militant anarchist, and you'd have found him throwing a bomb in a capital city somewhere. But that's no longer the fashion.

‘He was alone and wanted to remain apart. He brooded. He took a perverse pleasure in being alone, in the knowledge of his own superiority and of the unfairness of fate towards him.

‘He was remarkably intelligent but had an even more acute sense of human weakness.

‘One of his professors told me about a strange compulsion he already had at medical school which made him quite frightening. He had only to observe someone for a few minutes and he would be able to
sense
that person's physical
defects.

‘Once he gleefully told a young man who was not expecting it:

‘“Three years from now you'll be in a sanatorium!”

‘Or:

‘“Your father died of cancer, didn't he! So you take care!”

‘Such accurate diagnostic ability was unheard of! And it applied to both inherited physical and mental conditions.

‘It was his only form of entertainment as he sat in his corner at the Coupole. He was sick himself and was always watching out for signs of sickness in others.

‘Crosby came within his observational ambit, for he was a regular at the same bar. Radek painted me a picture of him which was strikingly true.

‘Where, I admit, I had seen only what we would call a daddy's boy, no more, a fairly run-of-the-mill playboy, Radek showed the cracks in the façade.

‘He described a Crosby who was fit and well, popular with women, enjoying life to the full, but also a Crosby who was prepared to do the most appalling things to satisfy his desires.