Louise repeatedly tries to make phone calls from the café

Louise repeatedly tries to make phone calls from the café in an episode reconstructed through the waiter Eugène’s testimony to Janvier. From about half-past ten until nearly midnight, Louise returns again and again to the telephone booth, drinking three grogs and making at least ten attempts to reach someone. The account gives her movements a precise place and duration, but not the identity of the person she sought or proof that a call connected. That gap is central to the scene: the effort is visible, while its intended destination remains out of reach.

Setting and Witness

Louise stops at a café on the corner of Rue Caumartin and Rue St. Lazare after leaving the shop on Rue de Douai a few minutes past ten. Eugène, the waiter who serves her, places her arrival at about half-past ten. He remembers her sitting in a corner near the cash desk and looking cold when she orders a grog. His observations supply concrete details by which Janvier can reconstruct the interval between her departure from the shop and her later move to Le Roméo.

The account also identifies Eugène with unusual specificity: he is bald, lives at Bécon les Bruyères, and has a daughter about the same age as the dead girl. Those details establish him as an identifiable witness rather than an anonymous source, and the daughter’s age offers a point of comparison with Louise. But his proximity does not give him access to what she is trying to do. He sees the repeated visits to the booth; he cannot say whom she is calling or what answer she receives.

The Repeated Attempts

When Eugène brings the first grog, Louise asks for a telephone counter and goes into the booth. She comes out almost at once, then keeps returning to dial a number every few minutes. Between her arrival and nearly midnight, she makes at least ten attempts. She drinks three grogs in all. The repetition makes the telephone the episode’s organizing action: Louise’s stay is measured not by conversation with the people around her but by each renewed effort to place a call.

The report carefully stops short of resolving whether any attempt succeeds. Eugène does not know if Louise finally gets through. His account therefore distinguishes between persistence and outcome: her continued dialing is certain, but the person at the other end, if there was one, remains unknown. Nothing in the episode establishes what she hoped to say or why the call mattered. Its evidentiary force lies instead in the duration and recurrence of the effort, which make the unanswered question part of the scene rather than a detail that the witness can settle.

A Visible Distress, an Unspoken Need

Eugène thinks each time Louise emerges from the booth that she may begin to cry, but she does not. Once, he tries to start a conversation; she only stares at him without answering. These are the limits of his account as well as its most affecting details. He can report the expectation of tears, her silence, and the stare, but not her thoughts. The scene presents distress through what a stranger can observe without converting that observation into an explanation of her private purpose.

Her silence contrasts with the repeated attempts to communicate by telephone. In the café itself, a person tries to speak to her and receives no answer; at the booth, Louise keeps trying to reach someone whose response Eugène cannot confirm. The contrast makes her presence among other people different from successful contact with them. It does not prove that she has no one to turn to, but it shows that, during this long café stop, the effort to reach someone remains unresolved in the witness’s knowledge.

Reconstruction and Significance

Janvier links Eugène’s recollection to Louise’s movements: she leaves the shop on Rue de Douai shortly after ten, reaches the café by about half-past ten, stays there until nearly midnight, and then moves on to Le Roméo. The timings make the café a substantial interval in the evening, not a momentary stop. Her repeated telephone attempts provide the principal account of what she did during that interval, while the waiter’s recollection anchors the sequence in observable actions and approximate times.

Maigret points out that Louise was practically penniless, a circumstance Janvier admits he had not considered. That detail sharpens the circumstances of the café stop without explaining the calls: Louise spends time there, orders three grogs, and repeatedly tries the telephone while lacking money. Janvier also observes that she must have been a bit high after the drinks, but this is an inference about her condition, not a reported statement from Louise. The distinction matters to the reconstruction: the witness supplies actions and impressions; the investigators draw conclusions from them.

The episode ultimately contributes a small but telling piece of the investigation by fixing Louise’s late-evening route and recording an effort that she never explains to Eugène. It offers no confirmed recipient, successful conversation, or reason for the calls. Instead, its significance rests on the mismatch between the precision of the outward record—corner, time, drinks, repeated entries into the booth—and the absence of an answer about whom Louise sought. Her persistence can be established; the connection she wanted cannot.