Liberty Bar (4 page)

If Madame Maigret had been there she would
have noticed that he was rather glassy-eyed due to all the vermouths he had drunk.

He turned a corner, then another, and
suddenly he wasn't in Cannes any more, with its large white buildings resplendent
in the sun, but in another world entirely: narrow alleyways no more than a metre wide
with lines of washing strung across from one house to another.

To the right, a sign: ‘The
Sailors' Rest'.

To the left, a sign: ‘Liberty
Bar'.

Maigret went into the Sailors' Rest,
ordered a vermouth and stood at the counter.

‘Hey, I thought you had a fruit
machine …'

‘
Had
one,
yes!'

His head felt heavy and his legs were
aching from walking all around the town.

‘Some places still have
them.'

‘Some, yes!' muttered the
barman as he wiped the counter-top with a towel. ‘There are always some who slip
through the net. Still, that's none of our business, is it …'

And he looked out across the street as he
answered Maigret's next question:

‘Two francs twenty-five … I
don't have any change …'

So the inspector went across the road to
the Liberty Bar.

The room, which was empty, was no bigger
than two metres by three. You had to go down two steps, as it was below street
level.

A narrow bar. A shelf containing a dozen
glasses. The fruit machine. And two tables.

At the back, a glass door with a net
curtain. Through the curtain the shape of heads moving. But no one got up to greet the
customer. Just a woman's voice, shouting:

‘What are you waiting for?'

Maigret went in. There was another step to
go down, and the window, which was flush with the courtyard, looked like a vent. In the
half-light Maigret could make out three people sitting round a table.

The woman who had cried out didn't
stop eating but looked at him as he himself had the habit of looking at people: calmly,
picking up every detail.

With her elbows on the table, she finally
gave a sigh and indicated a footstool with her chin.

‘You took your time!'

Next to her sat a man whom Maigret could
only see from the back. He was dressed in a very clean sailor's uniform. His fair
hair was close cropped on his neck. He was wearing cuffs.

‘Carry on
eating,' the woman said to him. ‘It's nothing …'

Finally, at the other end of the table, a
third person, a young woman with a lustreless complexion who stared suspiciously at
Maigret with her big eyes.

She was wearing a dressing gown. The whole
of her left breast was on display, but no one paid it any attention.

‘Take a seat. Do you mind if we
finish eating?'

How old was she – forty-five, fifty, maybe
older? It was hard to tell. She was fat, smiling, sure of herself. You could tell that
nothing fazed her, that she had seen it all, heard it all, experienced it all.

One look was enough to tell her what
Maigret was here for. She hadn't even stood up. She was cutting thick slices off a
leg of mutton, which caught Maigret's attention for a moment, for he had rarely
seen one as succulent.

‘So are you from Nice or Antibes? I
haven't seen you round here before.'

‘Police Judiciaire, Paris
…'

‘Ah!'

That ‘ah' showed that she
understood the difference, recognized her visitor's rank.

‘So it's true, then?'

‘What?'

‘That William was some sort of
important person …'

Now Maigret could see the sailor in
profile. He was no ordinary sailor. His uniform was cut from very fine cloth. He was
wearing gold braid, a yacht club badge on his cap.
He seemed put out.
He ate without lifting his eyes from his plate.

‘Who is this?'

‘We call him Yan … I
don't know his real name … He's a steward on board the
Ardena
, a Swedish yacht that winters in Cannes every year … Yan is the
butler, aren't you, Yan? … This gentleman is from the police … I told
you about William …'

Yan nodded his head but showed little sign
of having understood.

‘He says yes, but he doesn't
really know what I'm talking about!' the woman said, paying no attention to
the sailor. ‘He's never got the hang of French … But he's a good
guy … He has a wife and kids back home … Show them your photo, Yan …
Yes, photo!'

And the man took a photo out of his jacket
pocket. It showed a young woman sitting in front of a door with two babies in the grass
in front of her.

‘Twins!' the woman explained.
‘Yan comes here to eat now and again, because it feels like family here. He
brought the mutton and the peaches …'

Maigret looked at the girl, who was still
making no effort to cover her breast.

‘And she is …?'

‘This is Sylvie, William's
goddaughter …'

‘Goddaughter?'

‘Oh, not in the church sense! …
He wasn't there when she was christened … Were you christened,
Sylvie?'

‘Of course!'

She continued to look at
Maigret with suspicion while nibbling away at her food without relish.

‘William was fond of her … She
told him all her troubles … He consoled her …'

Maigret was sitting on a stool, his elbows
on his knees, his chin in his hands. The fat woman was preparing a salad seasoned with
garlic that looked like a work of art.

‘Have you eaten?'

He lied.

‘Yes … I …'

‘Because you should know …
we're very easy here … Isn't that so, Yan? … Look at him! He
says yes but he doesn't understand a word … I love 'em, these Nordic
boys!'

She tasted the salad, added a dash of olive
oil with a fruity aroma. There was no cloth on the table, which wasn't very clean.
There was a staircase in the kitchen which must have led up to another floor. In the
corner there was a sewing machine.

The courtyard was filled with sunlight, so
much so that the window was a dazzling rectangle and by contrast the interior felt like
a cold, gloomy space.

‘You can ask me questions …
Sylvie knows everything … and as for Yan …'

‘Have you had this bar
long?'

‘Maybe fifteen years … I was
married to an Englishman, a former acrobat, so we had all the English sailors come here,
as well as music-hall performers … My husband drowned nine years ago at the
regatta … He raced
for a baroness who has three boats which you
probably know …'

‘And since then?'

‘Nothing! I held on to the house
…'

‘Do you get much business?'

‘I don't care about that
… It's mainly friends, like Yan, like William … They know that
I'm on my own and like company … They come and share a bottle or else bring
rockfish, a chicken, and I rustle something up …'

She topped up the glasses, and noticed that
Maigret didn't have anything to drink.

‘You should get the inspector a
drink, Sylvie.'

Sylvie got up without a word and went to
the bar. She was naked under her dressing gown. Her feet were bare in sandals. She
brushed against Maigret as she passed without apologizing. While she was at the bar, the
other woman murmured:

‘Don't mind her … She
adored William … She's taking it very hard.'

‘Does she sleep here?'

‘Sometimes she does, sometimes she
doesn't.'

‘What does she do?'

The woman gave Maigret a reproachful look.
She seemed to be saying: ‘Do you, a detective chief inspector from the Police
Judiciaire, need to ask that question?'

She added immediately:

‘Oh! She's a quiet girl, not a
bad bone in her body …'

‘Did William know?'

That look again. Had she got Maigret wrong?
Did he not understand anything? Did he need everything spelled out?

Yan had finished eating.
He was waiting to speak, but she read his thoughts.

‘Yes, you can go, Yan … Are you
coming this evening?'

‘If the owners go to the
casino.'

He got up, seemed unsure about the
traditional niceties. But, as the woman offered him her forehead, he planted a
mechanical kiss, blushing because of the presence of Maigret. He met Sylvie on her way
back with a drink.

‘You're leaving?'

‘Yes …'

And he kissed her in the same way, offered
Maigret a strange salute, made a quick getaway and literally dived into the street while
adjusting his cap.

‘That boy doesn't like going
out on the town like most yacht sailors … He'd rather come here
…'

She too had finished eating now. She made
herself comfortable, both elbows on the table.

‘Could you pass the coffee,
Sylvie?'

You could barely hear any sound from the
street. Without that rectangle of light, it would have been impossible to say what hour
of the day or night it was.

An alarm clock in the middle of the
mantelpiece marked the passage of time.

‘So what is it you want to know
exactly? … Your good health … This is some of William's whisky
…'

‘What do people call you?'

‘Jaja … Or Big Jaja when they
want to tease me …'

And she looked at her enormous bosom, which
was resting on the table.

‘Have you known
William long?'

Sylvie had returned to her seat, chin
resting in her hand, still not taking her eyes off Maigret. The sleeve of her dressing
gown trailed in her food.

‘I'd say almost for ever. But I
only learned his surname a week ago … I should tell you that, when my husband was
still alive, the Liberty Bar was famous … There were always artists here, and they
attracted the rich clientele who came to see them …

‘Especially the yacht owners: almost
all of them are party animals, eccentrics … I remember seeing William quite a lot
at that time, in his white cap, always with friends or pretty women …

‘These groups liked to drink
champagne until the small hours and they'd stand anyone a round …

‘Then my husband died … I
closed for a month … It was out of season … The following winter I had to
spend three weeks in hospital with peritonitis.

‘Someone took advantage of the
situation and opened a bar right on the harbour itself.

‘Since then, it's been quiet
… I don't even try to attract new customers.

‘One day, I saw William again, and it
was only then that I properly made his acquaintance … We got drunk together
… We swapped stories … He slept on the divan, because he couldn't even
stand up …'

‘Was he still wearing a
yachtsman's cap?'

‘No! He looked very different. He was
a maudlin drinker … He got into the habit of coming to see me from time to time
…'

‘Did you know where
he lived?'

‘No. I wasn't going to
interrogate him. And he never talked about his personal business …'

‘Did he stay here long?'

‘Three or four days … He
brought food with him … Or else he gave me money to go to the market … He
said he didn't eat anywhere as well as he did here.'

And Maigret looked at the pink flesh of the
mutton, the remains of the scented salad. It looked really tasty.

‘Was Sylvie already with
you?'

‘I should hope not! She is only
twenty-one …'

‘How did you meet her?'

And as Sylvie had an obstinate look on her
face, Jaja said to her:

‘The inspector knows the score, OK?
… It was one evening when William was here … It was just the two of us in
the bar … Sylvie came in with some gentlemen she had met who knows where,
travelling salesmen or some such. They were already merry. They ordered some drinks
… As for her, you could see straight away she was new to all this. She wanted to
get them away before they got completely drunk … She didn't know what she
was doing … and so the inevitable happened: in the end they got so drunk that they
didn't bother with her any more and went off and left her here … She was
crying … She admitted that she had just arrived from Paris for the season and that
she didn't even have enough money to pay for a hotel room … She slept with
me … She got into the habit of coming here …'

‘Basically,'
Maigret grumbled, ‘everyone who comes in here gets into the same habit
…'

And the old woman, beaming, replied:

‘What can I say? It's the
Lord's own house! We're easy-going here. We take each day as it comes
…'

And she meant it. Her gaze descended slowly
to the young woman's bust and she sighed: