The Hotel Majestic (13 page)

“It was through colleagues at the Imperia that he learnt, about a year ago, that the Majestic was looking for a professional dancing-partner for its tea-room. He applied, and was taken on after a few days' trial. He then adopted the name Eusebio Fualdès, and the hotel management have no complaints to make on his account.

“According to the staff, he is a rather timid, sentimental and shy boy. Some of them call him ‘a proper girl.'

“He doesn't talk much, and conserves his strength, because he's apt to have relapses and has several times had to go and lie down on a bed in the basement, especially when he has had to stay late because of gala evenings.

“Although he gets on well with everyone, he doesn't seem to have any friends and is not much inclined towards gossip.

“It is thought that his monthly earnings, including tips, must be in the region of two thousand to two thousand five hundred francs.

“That just about sums up life in the household in the Rue Caulaincourt.

“Edgar Fagonet doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and doesn't take any drugs. His poor health prevents him doing so.

“His mother is a woman from the North of France—stocky and energetic. She has often spoken—to the concierge for one—about getting a job herself, but the fact that she has to look after her daughter has always prevented this.

“We have tried to find out if Fagonet has ever been to the Côte d'Azur. We can't get any precise information on this point. Some say he stayed there for a few days, about three or four years ago, while he was still at the Imperia, with a middle-aged woman. But the information is too vague to be admitted as evidence.”

 

 

Maigret slowly filled pipe no. 3, filled the stove, and went to have a look at the Seine, which was tinged with gold by a pale winter sun. Then he sighed comfortably and sat down again.

“Ramuel was born in Nice, of a French father, now deceased, and an Italian mother, whom we cannot trace and who seems to have gone back to her own country some time ago. His father was a market-gardener.

“At eighteen, Jean Ramuel was bookkeeper to a wholesaler in Les Halles in Paris, but we have been unable to get precise information about this, because the merchant died ten years ago.

“Enlisted voluntarily at nineteen. Left the army with the rank of quartermaster-sergeant at twenty-four and entered the service of a broker whom he left almost immediately to work as junior accounts clerk in a sugar refinery in Egypt.

“He stayed there three years, came back to France, took various jobs in the city sector of Paris and tried his luck on the Stock Exchange.

“At thirty-two, he embarked for Guayaquil, in Ecuador, to work for a Franco-English mining company. He was commissioned to go and sort out the accounts, which seemed to be in a mess.

“He was away for six years. It was there that he met Marie Deligeard, on whom we have little information and who was most probably engaged in a somewhat disreputable profession in Central America.

“He returned with her. The company headquarters having been transferred to London, we have little information about this period.

“The couple then lived for some time fairly comfortably in Toulon, Cassis and Marseilles. Ramuel tried his hand at some property and land deals, but didn't have much success.

“Marie Deligeard, whom he introduces as Madame Ramuel, although they aren't married, is a loud-mouthed, vulgar woman who is quite prepared to make scenes in public and who takes a malicious pleasure in making a spectacle of herself.

“They have frequent rows. Sometimes Ramuel leaves his companion for several days, but it's always she who has the last word.

“Ramuel and Marie Deligeard then came to Paris, and took quite a comfortable furnished flat in the Rue Delambre: bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and hall, at a rent of eight hundred francs a month.

“Ramuel took a job as an accountant in the Atoum Bank, in the Rue Caumartin. (The bank has now crashed, but Atoum has started a carpet business in the Rue des Saints-Pères, in the name of one of his employees.)

“Ramuel left the bank before the crash, and almost immediately saw an advertisement and applied for the post of bookkeeper at the Majestic.

“He has been there three years. The management are quite satisfied with him. The staff don't like him, because he's excessively strict.

“On several occasions, when he's had a tiff with his companion, he has stayed for days at the hotel without going home, sleeping on a makeshift bed. He has nearly always had telephone calls on these occasions, or else the woman has come to fetch him from the basement herself.

“The staff can't believe their eyes, because she seems to inspire absolute terror in him.

“Note that Jean Ramuel returned to the communal life in the flat in the Rue Delambre yesterday.”

A quarter of an hour later, the old usher knocked softly on Maigret's door. Receiving no answer, he pushed the door quietly open and crept in on tiptoe.

The superintendent seemed to be asleep. He was sprawled in his chair, with his waistcoat unbuttoned and a burnt-out pipe in his mouth.

The usher was about to cough to let him know he was there when Maigret mumbled, without opening his eyes:

“What is it?”

“A gentleman to see you . . . Here's his card.”

Maigret still seemed reluctant to shake off his drowsiness and he stretched out his hand without opening his eyes. Then he sighed and, putting the visiting card down on his desk, picked up the telephone.

“Shall I bring him in?”

“In a minute . . .”

He had barely glanced at the card: ÉTIENNE JOLIVET, ASSISTANT MANAGER OF CRÉDIT LYONNAIS, O BRANCH.

“Hello! . . . Would you ask Monsieur Bonneau, the examining magistrate, to be good enough to give me the name and address of Monsieur Clark's solicitor . . . Solicitor . . . yes . . . that's right . . . Then get him for me on the telephone . . . It's urgent . . .”

For more than quarter of an hour, the dapper Monsieur Jolivet, in striped trousers, black jacket and hat as rigid as reinforced concrete, remained sitting very upright on the edge of his chair, in the gloomy waiting-room at Police Headquarters. His companions were an evil-looking youth and a streetwalker who was recounting her adventures in a raucous voice.

“. . . For a start, how could I have taken his wallet, without him noticing? . . . These provincials are all the same . . . They daren't tell their wives what they've spent in Paris and so they pretend they've been robbed . . . It's lucky the vice squad superintendent knows me . . . That's proof that . . .”

“Hello! . . . Monsieur Herbert Davidson? . . . How do you do, Monsieur Herbert Davidson. Superintendent Maigret here . . . Yes . . . I had the pleasure of meeting your client Monsieur Clark yesterday . . . He was most kind . . . What's that? . . . No . . . not at all! . . . I've forgotten all about it . . . I'm telephoning because I got the impression that he was prepared to help us in so far as he was able . . . You say he's with you at the moment? . . .

“Could you ask him . . . Hello! . . . I know that in the circles he moves in, particularly in the United States, the partners in a marriage lead fairly separate lives . . . Nevertheless he may have noticed . . . No, just a minute . . . Wait, Monsieur Davidson, you can translate for him afterwards . . . We know that Mrs. Clark received at least three letters from Paris during the last few years . . . I want to know if Monsieur Clark saw them . . . And I also particularly want to know if by any chance she received any more letters of the same kind . . . Yes . . . I'll hang on . . . thank you . . .”

And he heard a murmur of voices at the other end of the line.

“Hello! . . . Yes? . . . He didn't open them? . . . He didn't ask his wife what they were? . . . Naturally! How very strange . . .”

He would like to see Madame Maigret getting letters without showing them to him!

“About one every three months? . . . Always in the same handwriting? . . . Yes . . . A Paris postmark? . . . Just a minute, Monsieur Davidson . . .”

He went and opened the door of the inspectors' room, because they were making a terrible noise.

“Shut up, you lot!”

Then he came back.

“Hello! . . . Fairly substantial sums? . . . Would you be good enough, Monsieur Davidson, to make a written note of these details and send it to the examining magistrate? . . . No! Nothing else . . . I apologize . . . I don't know how the papers got hold of it, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with it . . . Only this morning I sent away four journalists and two photographers who had been lying in wait for me in the corridor at Police Headquarters. Please give my regards to Monsieur Clark . . .”

He frowned. When he had opened the door of the inspectors' room just now, he had thought he recognized? . . . He looked in again, and there, sitting on the table, were a reporter and his photographer colleague.

“Listen, my young friend . . . I think I was shouting loud enough for you to hear just now . . . If a single word of what I said appears in your rag, you'll never get another scrap of information out of me . . . Understand?”

But he was half smiling as he went back to his room and rang for the usher.

“Bring in Monsieur . . . Monsieur Jolivet . . .”

“Good morning, superintendent . . . Forgive me for bothering you . . . I thought I ought . . . When I read the paper yesterday evening . . .”

“Please sit down . . .”

“I should add that I didn't come here on my own initiative, but after consultation with our head manager, who I telephoned first thing this morning . . . The name Prosper Donge struck me, because I happened to have seen the name somewhere recently . . . I should explain that it's my job at the O Branch to pass the cheques . . . They go through automatically, of course, because the customer's account has been checked previously . . . I just glance at them . . . Attach my stamp . . . However, as a large sum of money was involved . . .”

“Just a minute . . . Do you mean Prosper Donge was a customer of yours?”

“He had been for five years, superintendent. And before that, even, because his account was transferred to us at the beginning of that period by our Cannes branch . . .”

“Can I ask you a few questions . . . It will make it easier for me to get my ideas in order . . . Prosper Donge was a customer at your Cannes branch . . . Can you tell me the size of his account at that date?”

“A very modest account, like that of most of the hotel employees who are customers of ours . . . However, one must remember that as they get their board and lodging free, if they are careful, they can put aside the greater part of their earnings . . . It was so in Donge's case and he paid about a thousand to fifteen hundred francs into his account each month . . .

“In addition to that, he had just got twenty thousand francs from a bond he had asked us to buy for him . . . So in fact he had about fifty-five thousand francs on arrival in Paris . . .”

“And he went on paying in small amounts?”

“Well—I've brought a list of his transactions with me. There's something very worrying about it, as you will see . . . The first year, Donge, who was living in a flat in the Rue Bray, near the Étoile, paid in about another twelve thousand francs . . .

“The second year, he made withdrawals and didn't pay in. He changed his address. He went to live in Saint-Cloud, where I gathered from the cheques he wrote, he was having a house built . . . Cheques to the estate agent, to the carpenter, to the decorators, to the builders . . .

“So by the end of that year, as you can see from this statement, he only had eight hundred and thirty-three francs and a few centimes left in his account . . .

“Then, three years ago, that is a few months later . . .”

“Excuse me—You said
three years ago
. . . ?”

“That's right . . . I'll give you the exact dates in a minute . . . Three years ago, he sent a letter notifying us that he had moved and asking us to note his new address: 117b Rue Réaumur . . .”

“Just a minute . . . Have you ever seen Donge in person?”

“I may have seen him, but I don't remember . . . I'm not at the counter. I have a private office where I only see the public through a sort of spy-hole . . .”

“Have your employees seen him?”

“I asked several of the staff that this morning . . . One of the clerks remembers him, because he was also having a house built in the suburbs . . . He told me he remembered remarking that Donge had left his house almost before it had been built . . .”

“Could you telephone this man?”

He did so. Maigret took the opportunity of stretching, like someone who is still half asleep, but his eyes were alert.

“You were saying . . . Let me see . . . Donge changed his address and went to live at 117b Rue Réaumur . . . Will you excuse me a moment?”

He disappeared in the direction of the inspectors' office.

“Lucas . . . Jump in a taxi . . . 117b Rue Réaumur . . . Find out all you can about Monsieur Prosper Donge . . . I'll explain later . . .”

He came back to the assistant branch manager. “What transactions did Donge make after that?”

“It's that that I wanted to see you about. I was horrified, this morning, when I looked at his account, and even more horrified when I saw the last entry . . . The first American cheque . . .”

“Excuse me—the what?”

“Oh—there were several! The first American cheque, drawn on a bank in Detroit and made out to Prosper Donge, was dated March, three years ago, and was for five hundred dollars . . . I can tell you what that was worth, exactly, at the time . . .”