The Hotel Majestic (10 page)

And, with his hand on the door: “Didn't the burglars in the Rue Saint-Martin get in by the basement by tunnelling through two walls? . . . Goodbye, sir . . .”

He was in a bad mood, all the same. That letter from Charlotte . . . And looking at him, you would have sworn that it wasn't only anger, but that he was also a little sad.

 

 

He could have sent an inspector. But would an inspector have been able to get the feel of the house as well as he could?

A large, new, luxury building, painted white and with a wrought-iron gateway, in the Avenue de Madrid, by the Bois de Boulogne. The concierge's lodge to the right of the hall, with a glass door, furnished like a proper reception room. Three or four women dozing on chairs. Visiting cards on a tray. Another woman, whose eyes were red, who opened the door and asked: “What do you want?”

The door of a further room was open and there was a corpse lying on the bed, hands folded, a rosary clasped in the fingers, with two candles fluttering in the dim light and box-wood in a bowl of holy water.

They spoke in low tones. Blew their noses. Walked on tiptoe. Maigret made the sign of the cross, sprinkled a little holy water over the body, and stood there for a minute silently contemplating the dead man's nose, which the candle threw into strange relief.

“It's terrible, superintendent . . . Such a good man, without an enemy in the world!”

Above the bed, in an oval frame, a large photograph of Justin Colleboeuf, in his sergeant-major's uniform, taken at the time when he still had a large moustache. A croix de guerre with three palms and the military medal were fixed to the frame.

“He was in the regular army, superintendent . . . When he got to retiring age, he didn't know what to do to keep himself occupied and insisted on doing work of some kind . . . He was nightwatchman at a club in the Boulevard Haussmann for a while . . . Then someone suggested the job of night porter at the Majestic to him, and he took that . . . You see he was someone who needed very little sleep . . . At the barracks he used to get up nearly every night to go the rounds . . .”

Her neighbours, or possibly relations, nodded sympathetically.

“What did he do in the daytime?” Maigret asked.

“He got back at quarter past seven in the morning, just in time to put out the dustbins for me, because he didn't let me do any of the heavy work . . . Then he stood in the doorway and had a pipe while he waited for the postman, and had a little chat with him . . . The postman had been in the same regiment as my husband, you see . . . Then he went to bed till midday . . . That was all the sleep he needed . . . When he'd had lunch, he walked across the Bois de Boulogne to the Champs-Élysées . . . Sometimes he went into the Majestic to say hello to his colleague on duty here during the day . . . Then he had his usual in the little bar in the Rue de Ponthieu and got back at six o'clock, and left again at seven to go on duty at the hotel . . . He was so regular in his habits that people round here could set their clocks by the time when they saw him go by . . .”

“Is it a long time since he gave up wearing a moustache?”

“He shaved it off when he left the army . . . I thought he looked very funny without it . . . it made him seem less important . . . He even looked smaller somehow . . .”

Maigret inclined his head once more in the direction of the dead man and crept away on tiptoe.

He wasn't far from Saint-Cloud. He was impatient to get there and yet at the same time, for some unknown reason, he was stalling for time. A taxi went past. Oh well! He held up his arm . . .

“To Saint-Cloud . . . I'll explain where . . .”

It was drizzling. The sky was grey. It was only three o'clock but it might have been evening. The houses, in their bare little gardens, with their leafless winter trees, looked desolate.

He rang the bell. It wasn't Charlotte but Gigi who came to the door, while Donge's mistress peered from the kitchen to see who was there.

Still glowering balefully at him, Gigi let him in without saying a word. It was only two days since Maigret had last been there and yet it seemed to him that the house looked different. Perhaps Gigi had brought some of her own chaos with her. The unwashed lunch things were still on the kitchen table.

Gigi was wearing one of Charlotte's dressing-gowns, which was much too big for her, over her nightdress, and an old pair of Prosper's shoes on her bare feet. She was smoking a cigarette, and squinting through the smoke.

Charlotte, who had got up as he went in, was at a loss for words. She hadn't washed. Her skin looked blotchy, and without a bra, her bosom sagged.

He wondered who would speak first. They were giving each other anxious, suspicious looks. Maigret sat down, unabashed, with his bowler on his knee.

“I had a long talk with Prosper this morning,” he said at last.

“What did he say?” Charlotte hurriedly asked.

“That he didn't kill Mimi, or the night porter . . .”

“Ah!” Gigi cried triumphantly. “What did I tell you!”

Charlotte couldn't take it in. She seemed at a loss. She wasn't made for drama and seemed perpetually to be looking for something to cling to.

“I also saw the magistrate. He has been sent an anonymous letter concerning Prosper and Mimi . . .”

No reaction. Charlotte was still staring at him with curiosity, her lids heavy, her body limp.

“An anonymous letter?”

He handed her the recipe book which he had brought with him.

“It's your writing in this book, isn't it?”

“Yes . . . Why?”

“Would you be good enough to take a pen? . . . preferably an old one which splutters . . . And paper . . . and ink . . .”

There was a bottle of ink and a penholder on the dresser. Gigi looked from Maigret to her friend in turn, as if ready to intervene the moment she sensed danger.

“Make yourself comfortable . . . And write . . .”

“What shall I write?”

“Don't write anything, Charlotte! You can't trust them . . .”

“Write—There's no danger, I promise you—‘
Sir, I am taking the liberty of writing to you about the Donge affair, which I read about in the newspaper . . .
'

“Why do you spell newspaper with a ‘u'?”

“I don't know . . . What should I put?”

On the anonymous letter which he had in his hand, there was a “z.”

“. . . ‘
The American woman isn't really an American woman; she was a dancer and her name was Mimi . . .
'”

Maigret shrugged impatiently.

“That will do,” he said. “Now, take a look . . .”

The writing was exactly the same. Only the spelling mistakes were different.

“Who wrote that?”

“That's exactly what I would like to know . . .”

“You thought it was me?”

She was choking with anger, and the superintendent hurriedly tried to calm her.

“I didn't think anything . . . What I came to ask you is who, besides you and Gigi, knew about Prosper and Mimi's affair, and particularly about the child? . . .”

“Can you think of anyone, Gigi?”

They thought for a long time, indolently. They seemed to be aimlessly drifting in the untidy house, which had suddenly taken on a sordid aspect. Gigi's nostrils quivered from time to time, and Maigret realized that it wouldn't be long before she was out searching frantically for a fix.

“No . . . Except us three . . .”

“Who was it who got Mimi's letter at the time?”

“It was me,” said Gigi, “. . . and before I left Cannes, I found it in a box where I kept some souvenirs . . . I brought it with me . . .”

“Let me see . . .”

“Provided you promise . . .”

“Of course, you fool! Can't you see I'm trying to get Prosper out of the mess.”

He felt concerned, irritable. He had begun to have a vague feeling that there were mysterious complications to the affair, but he had not the slightest clue to tell him what they might be.

“Will you promise to give it back?”

He shrugged again, and read:

 

“May I take this letter with me?”

It was Charlotte who intervened.

“Let him, Gigi . . . It can't make it any worse . . .”

And as she showed the superintendent out: “Look! . . . Couldn't I get permission to go and see him? He has the right to have his meals sent in from outside, hasn't he? . . . Could you . . .”

And she blushed and held out a thousand franc note to him.

“If he could have a few books too . . . He used to spend all his free time reading . . .”

Rain. A taxi. The streetlamps coming alight. The Bois de Boulogne which Maigret had crossed on his bike, side by side with Donge.

“Put me down by the Majestic, will you?”

The porter followed him a little anxiously as he crossed the foyer without speaking, and took Maigret's coat and hat in the cloakroom. The manager had also seen him, through the crack in his curtains. Everyone knew Maigret—followed him with their eyes.

The bar? Why not? He was thirsty. But he was attracted by a muffled sound of music. Somewhere in the basement a band was softly playing a tango. He went down a staircase carpeted with thick carpet, into a bluish haze. People were eating cakes at little tables. Others were dancing. A waiter came up to the superintendent.

“Bring me a half, please . . .”

“We don't . . .”

Maigret gave him a look and he hurriedly scribbled something on a chit . . . The bills which . . . Maigret watched where it went . . . At the back of the room, to the right of the band, there was a sort of hatch in the wall . . .

On the other side were the glass cages, the still-room, the kitchens, the sculleries, the guests' servants' hall, and, right at the end, near the clocking-on machine, the cloakroom with its hundred metal lockers.

Someone was watching him—he could feel it—and he noticed Zebio dancing with a middle-aged woman covered in jewels.

Was it an illusion? It seemed to Maigret that Zebio's look was trying to tell him something. He turned and saw with a shock that Oswald J. Clark was dancing with his son's governess, Ellen Darroman.

They both seemed utterly oblivious of their surroundings. They were caught up in the ecstasy of new-found love. Solemn, hardly smiling, they were alone on the dance-floor, alone in the world, and when the music stopped they stood there without moving for a minute before going back to their table.

Maigret then noticed that Clark was wearing a thin band of black material on the lapel of his jacket—his way of wearing mourning.

The superintendent's fist tightened on Mimi's letter to Gigi which was in his pocket. He had a terrible desire to . . .

But hadn't the magistrate told him not to get involved with Clark, who was no doubt too much of a gentleman to grapple with a policeman?