The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin (16 page)

‘Straight in?'

‘I should damn well think
so!'

To open the inner door shared by all the
residents, they just had to turn the handle, since Belgian apartment blocks have no
concierge.

The stairs were unlit. And no light was
coming from Adèle's room.

But when Maigret pushed open the door,
confused sounds were heard, as of two men rolling on the floor fighting.

Delvigne had already drawn his revolver.
Maigret felt automatically on the left-hand wall, and found the light switch.

Then their eyes met a sight as absurd as
it was tragic.

Two men were indeed fighting. But the
sudden light and the noise took them both by surprise and they froze, still clasping
each other. One hand was gripping a throat. Tousled grey hair.

‘Don't move!' ordered Delvigne.
‘Police! Hands up!'

He closed the door without lowering the
gun. And Maigret, with a sigh of relief, unwound his muffler, unbuttoned his coat
and gasped for air, like a man who was suffering from the heat.

‘Faster than that! Hands up, I
said!'

René Delfosse tried to stand but fell
over again, since his right leg was wedged under Victor's.

Delvigne looked as if he would welcome
some advice.

Delfosse and the waiter were both on
their feet now, pale, dishevelled and taken aback.

Of the two, the young man was the more
upset, indeed he appeared devastated and unable to take in what was happening. What
was more, he was staring at Victor in stupefaction, as if he had not expected at all
to find him there.

Who had he thought he was fighting?

‘Now my friends, let's all
stay put, shall we?' said Maigret, speaking at last. ‘Is the door shut,
Chief Inspector?'

He approached his colleague and
whispered a few words. Delvigne went to the window and signalled to Girard to come
and meet them on the landing.

‘Get as many men as you can to
surround the Gai-Moulin, and don't let anyone out. But if anyone arrives, let
them in.'

And he returned to the bedroom, with its
counterpane reminiscent of whipped cream.

Victor stood unmoving. He was the very
image of a waiter as cartoonists like to depict them: drooping features and large
rheumy eyes, thinning hair usually combed over
a bald patch – although, just now, it was ruffled and
standing on end.

He was holding his shoulders sideways,
as if to give an opponent less purchase, and it would have been hard to guess what
his oblique gaze was searching for.

‘It's not the first time
you've
been arrested, I'll be bound,' said Maigret
with confidence. He was sure of that. You could tell at a glance. Here was a man who
had long been expecting to find himself facing the police and who was used to this
kind of encounter.

‘I don't know what you mean.
Adèle asked me to come and fetch something for her.'

‘Her lipstick perhaps?'

‘I heard a noise … And
someone came in.'

‘And you jumped on him. In other
words, you were looking for the lipstick in the dark. Don't move! Hands up
still, please.'

Both men were lifting weary arms above
their heads. Delfosse's hands were trembling. He tried to wipe his nose with
his sleeve, without dropping his arm.

‘And you, what did Adèle ask you
to fetch?'

The young man's teeth were
chattering, but he could not answer.

‘Keep them covered,
Delvigne.'

And Maigret walked round the room where,
on the bedside table, lay the remains of a mutton chop, some breadcrumbs, a glass
and a beer bottle, half full. He bent down to look under the bed, shrugged and
opened a cupboard that contained only dresses, linen and old shoes with broken
heels. Then he noticed a chair near the wardrobe.
Standing on it, he felt along the top ledge, and pulled
out a leather briefcase.

‘Aha,' he said, climbing
down. ‘This is the lipstick, is it, Victor?'

‘I don't know what
you're talking about.'

‘I mean, it's whatever you
were looking for.'

‘I've never seen that
briefcase in my life.'

‘Too bad for you, then. What about
you, Delfosse?'

‘I … I
swear …'

He forgot the revolver trained on him
and threw himself on the bed, breaking into a paroxysm of sobbing.

‘So, my dear Victor, you
don't want to tell us anything? Not even why you were brawling with this young
man?'

And Maigret moved the dirty plate, the
glass and the beer bottle to the floor, put the briefcase on the bedside table and
opened it.

‘Some papers here that are none of
our business, Delvigne! We'll have to pass them all over to the intelligence
people. Ah! Well I never: blueprints for a new machine-gun being produced at the
National Armaments Works at Herstal. And these look like the plans for rebuilding a
fort. And here are … some letters in code that will have to be looked at
by the specialists.'

In the hearth, the remains of a few
coals were still glowing on the grate. Suddenly, when they were least expecting it,
Victor rushed forward and made a grab at the papers. Maigret, having sensed what was
going to happen, as Delvigne stood hesitating to use his gun, punched the waiter
full in the face, and Victor went flying, without having time to throw the documents
on the fire.

The pages
scattered. Victor put both hands to his cheek, which had discoloured. It had all
happened very quickly. But Delfosse almost managed to take the opportunity to
escape. In a second, he would have jumped off the bed and run behind Delvigne, if
the Belgian police chief had not noticed, and stuck out his leg to trip him up.

‘And now?' asked
Maigret.

‘I've got nothing to
say,' said Victor, angrily.

‘I asked you a
question.'

‘
I
didn't kill
Graphopoulos.'

‘So what?'

‘You are a brute! My
lawyer—'

‘Fancy that! You already have a
lawyer?'

Delvigne was watching young Delfosse,
and following the direction of his eyes he looked towards the top of the
wardrobe.

‘I think there's something
else up there,' he said.

‘You could be right,' said
Maigret, climbing back on to the chair.

He felt around for some time, before his
hand finally found a blue leather wallet, which he opened.

‘Graphopoulos's
wallet!' he announced. ‘Thousand-franc French banknotes, about thirty of
them. And some papers. Aha! An address:
the Gai-Moulin, Rue du
Pot-d'Or
. And in different writing:
No one there
overnight
.'

Maigret was now taking no notice of
anyone else, but following his own thoughts. He looked at one of the coded letters
and counted certain symbols:

‘One, two,
three … eleven, twelve … A twelve-letter word. Graphopoulos! It
was in the briefcase.'

Steps were heard
on the stairs. A nervous knock at the door. And the excited face of Inspector
Girard.

‘The Gai-Moulin's
surrounded. No one will leave. But … Monsieur Delfosse arrived a few
minutes ago, looking for his son. He spoke to Adèle. And then he came out. I thought
it best to let him go, and then follow him. When I saw he was heading here, I ran
ahead. Listen … That'll be him on the stairs.'

And indeed they could hear
someone's hesitant steps outside, walking along the landing, trying doors, and
finally there was a knock.

Maigret himself opened the door, and
bowed to the man with the grey moustache, who gave him a contemptuous glare:

‘Is my son …?'

He saw the boy then, looking pitiful,
snapped his fingers, and said:

‘Right, you! Home!'

Things almost turned ugly. René stared
at everyone in panic, clung to the counterpane, and his teeth began chattering
desperately again.

‘Just a moment,' Maigret
interrupted. ‘Monsieur Delfosse, would you mind taking a seat.'

The other man viewed the room with
distaste.

‘You wish to speak to me? And who
might you be?'

‘Never mind. Chief Inspector
Delvigne will tell you that in good time. When your son came home earlier, did you
give him a dressing-down?'

‘I locked him in his room, and
told him to wait for my decision.'

‘Which
was—'

‘I don't know yet. Perhaps
to send him abroad to do a stint in a bank or a merchant company. It's time he
learned a bit about the world.'

‘No, Monsieur Delfosse.'

‘What do you mean, no?'

‘I simply mean that it's too
late. Your son, during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, killed Monsieur
Graphopoulos, in order to rob him.'

Maigret put up his hand to intercept the
cane with its gold pommel as it was about to descend on him. And with a forceful
twist of his wrist he made its owner release it with a moan of pain. Then he
considered it calmly, weighed it in his hand and dropped it.

‘And I'm pretty sure the
crime was committed with this stick.'

Open-mouthed, in the grip of a spasm,
René was trying to cry out but no sound came. He was a quivering mass of nerves, a
pathetic creature, petrified with fear.

‘I hope you are going to explain
yourself,' Delfosse senior nevertheless announced. ‘And as for you, my
dear Chief Inspector, I would have you know that I shall pass on to my friend the
public prosecutor—'

Maigret turned to Girard.

‘Go and fetch Adèle. Take a car.
And you can bring Génaro as well.'

‘I think—' Delfosse senior
began, approaching Maigret.

‘There now, just wait,' said
Maigret in the tone with which one calms down a child.

He began pacing the room. And did so
uninterruptedly
for the seven minutes it
took for his orders to be carried out.

The sound of a car engine. Steps on the
stairs. And Génaro's voice, protesting:

‘You'll have my consul to
deal with! This is preposterous! I'm a respectable club owner. And there are
fifty customers on my premises, right now.'

When he entered the room, he looked
questioningly at Victor.

Victor was magnificent.

‘We're done for!' he
said simply.

The dancer, half naked under her
revealing dress, surveyed her room, shrugging her shoulders in resignation.

‘Just answer my questions,
mademoiselle. In the course of that evening, did Graphopoulos ask you to come to his
hotel room?'

‘I didn't go!'

‘So he did ask you, then.
Therefore he must have told you that he was staying in the Hôtel Moderne, in room
18?'

She gazed at the floor.

‘Chabot and Delfosse, sitting at a
nearby table, might have overheard. What time did Delfosse get here that
night?'

‘I—'

‘What time?'

‘I was asleep. Maybe about five in
the morning.'

‘And what did he say?'

‘He asked
me to go away with him. He wanted to take a boat for America. He said he was
rich.'

‘And you refused?'

‘I was sleepy. I told him to come
to bed. But that wasn't what he wanted, so I asked him why he was so jumpy,
whether perhaps he'd done something wrong.'

‘And what did he say?'

‘He begged me to let him hide a
wallet in my room.'

‘And you pointed to the wardrobe,
on top of which there was already a briefcase.'

She shrugged again and sighed:

‘Too bad for them.'

‘Well?'

No answer. Delfosse senior was looking
haughtily and suspiciously around.

‘I should very much like to
know—' he began.

‘You'll find out soon
enough, Monsieur Delfosse. I would simply ask you to be patient for a
moment.'

This was in order to pack his pipe.

‘Let's start with Paris!
With Graphopoulos, a man who comes to ask for police protection, then the next day
tries to throw off the inspector assigned to him. Remember what I told you,
Delvigne? Something to do with either the mafia or espionage. Well, it's
espionage! Graphopoulos is rich and at a loose end. Cloak-and-dagger stuff tempts
him, as it does other people of his type. During his trips abroad, he meets some
kind of secret agent, and tells him that he too would like to opt for a life full of
mystery and the unexpected. “Secret agent!” Words that make so many
idiots daydream. They think the job just consists of … Well, never mind.
Graphopoulos is determined. And the man he approaches doesn't think he ought
to turn away a potentially interesting recruit.

‘But what the general public
doesn't know is that newcomers undergo some kind of initiation. Our Greek is
intelligent and wealthy, and he travels a lot. But does he have the necessary savvy
and discretion?