The Hotel Majestic (14 page)

“It doesn't matter!”

“The cheque was paid into his account. Six months later another cheque for the same amount was sent to us by Donge, asking us to pay it in and credit it to his account . . .”

The assistant manager suddenly became worried by the superintendent's complacent expression, and the fact that he no longer appeared to be listening to him. And Maigret's thoughts were far away. It had suddenly occurred to him that if he hadn't telephoned the solicitor before seeing his visitor, if he hadn't asked certain questions when he was speaking to him, it would all have looked as though it was sheer chance . . .

“I'm listening, Monsieur—Monsieur Jolivet isn't it?”

He had to look at the visiting card each time he said it.

“Or rather, I already know what you are going to tell me. Donge continued to receive cheques from Detroit, at the rate of about one every three months . . .”

“That is correct . . . But . . .”

“The cheques amounted to how much altogether?”

“Three hundred thousand francs . . .”

“Which remained in the bank without Donge ever drawing any money out?”

“Yes . . . But for the last eight months, there has been no cheque . . .”

Ah! Hadn't Mrs. Clark been on a cruise in the Pacific, with her son, before coming to France?

“During this time, did Donge continue to pay small amounts into his account?”

“I can't find any trace of any . . . Of course any such payments would have been derisory compared with the cheques from America . . . But I'm just coming to the worrying part . . . The letter the day before yesterday . . . It wasn't me who dealt with it . . . It was the head of the foreign currency department—you'll see why in a minute . . . Well, we got this letter from Donge the day before yesterday . . . Instead of containing a cheque as usual, it asked us to make one out for him, payable to the bearer, at a bank in Brussels . . . It's a common procedure . . . People going abroad often ask us to give them a cheque payable at another bank, which avoids complications with letters of credit and also avoids the necessity of carrying large sums in cash . . .”

“How much was the cheque for?”

“Two hundred and eighty thousand French francs . . . Nearly all the money in his account . . . In fact there is now only a little under twenty thousand francs in Donge's account . . .”

“You made out the cheque?”

“We sent it to the address he gave, as requested . . .”

“Which was?”

“Monsieur Prosper Donge, 117b Rue Réaumur, as usual . . .”

“So the letter would have been delivered yesterday morning?”

“Probably . . . But in that case, Donge can't be in possession of it . . .”

And the assistant manager brandished the newspaper.

“He can't have got it, because, the day before yesterday, at just about the time when we were making out the cheque, Prosper Donge was arrested!”

Maigret leafed rapidly through the telephone directory and discovered that 117b Rue Réaumur, where there were several numbers, also had a telephone in the concierge's lodge. He dialled the number. Lucas had arrived there a few minutes earlier.

He gave him brief instructions.

“A letter, yes, addressed to Donge . . . The envelope is stamped with the address of the O Branch of the Crédit Lyonnais . . . Hurry, old chap . . . Call me back . . .”

“I think, superintendent,” said the assistant branch manager solemnly, “I did right to . . .”

“Yes! Yes!”

But he no longer saw the poor fellow, and paid not the slightest attention to him. He was miles away, as if in a dream, and had to keep moving objects about, stirring up the stove, walking to and fro.

“An employee from the Crédit Lyonnais, sir . . .”

“Tell him to come in . . .”

As he spoke, the telephone rang. The bank clerk remained standing nervously in the doorway, staring at his assistant manager in horror, wondering what he could possibly have done to be summoned to the Quai des Orfèvres.

“Lucas?”

“Well, chief, the building isn't a residential block. It's only offices, most of them with only one room. Some of them are rented by provincial businessmen who find it useful to have a Paris address. Some of them practically never set foot in the place and their mail is forwarded on to them. Others have a typist to answer the telephone . . . Hello! . . .”

“Go on.”

“Three years ago, Donge had an office here for two months, at a rent of six hundred francs a month . . . He only came here two or three times . . . Since then he has sent a hundred francs to the concierge each month to forward his mail . . .”

“Where is it forwarded to? . . .”

“Poste Restante to the Jem bureau, 42 Boulevard Haussmann . . .”

“To what name?”

“The envelopes are ready typed and Donge sends them in advance . . . Wait—it's a bit dark in the lodge . . . Yes, put the light on, mate . . . Here we are . . . J. M. D. Poste Restante, Jem, 42 Boulevard Haussmann . . . That's all . . . Private bureaux are allowed to accept letters addressed with initials only . . .”

“Did you keep your taxi? . . . No? . . . Idiot! Jump in a cab . . . What time is it? . . . Eleven . . . Get over to the Boulevard Haussmann . . . Did the concierge send on a letter yesterday morning? . . . He did? . . . Hurry, then . . .”

He had forgotten the two men, who didn't know what to do and were listening in bewilderment. His thoughts had raced ahead so fast that he almost found himself asking: “What are you two still doing here?”

Then he suddenly calmed down.

“What do you do at the bank?” he asked the clerk, who started in surprise.

“I'm on current accounts.”

“Do you know Prosper Donge?”

“Yes, I know him . . . That is, I've seen him several times . . . You see he was having a house built in the suburbs at one time, and so was I . . . Only I chose a plot of land at . . .”

“Yes—I know . . . Go on . . .”

“He used to come in from time to time to draw out small amounts for the workmen who didn't have bank accounts and wouldn't accept cheques . . . He found it very tiresome . . . I remember we discussed it . . . We said everyone should have a bank account as they do in America . . . It was difficult for him to get there, because he had to be at the Majestic from six in the morning until six at night, and the bank was shut by then . . . I told him . . . the assistant manager won't mind, because we do it for some of our customers . . . that he could just telephone me and that I would send him the money to be signed for on receipt . . . I sent him money like that to the Majestic two or three times . . .”

“Have you seen him since?”

“I don't think so . . . But I had to go to Étretat for two summers running, to run the branch there . . . He could have come in then . . .”

Maigret pulled open a drawer of his desk, took out a photograph of Donge and laid it on the desk without saying a word.

“That's him!” said the bank clerk. “You couldn't miss his face. It appears—so he told me—that he had smallpox as a child and the farm people he was living with didn't even call in a doctor . . .”

“Are you sure that's him?”

“As sure as I am of anything!”

“And you'd recognize his writing?”

“I would certainly recognize it,” the assistant manager put in, annoyed at being relegated to second place.

Maigret handed them various bits of paper, with writing by different people on them.

“No! . . . No! . . . That's not his writing . . . Ah! . . . Wait a minute . . . There's one of his 7s . . . He had a very characteristic way of writing his 7s . . . And his Fs too . . . That's one of his Fs . . .”

The writing they were pointing at was indeed Donge's; it was one of the slips he scrawled when people ordered so many coffees, coffee with croissants, tea, portions of toast or cups of chocolate.

The telephone remained silent. It was just midday.

“Well, thank you very much, gentlemen!”

What on earth was Lucas doing at the Jem bureau? He was quite capable of having taken a bus, to save the taxi fare!

Apart, they might still have passed. But standing together by the entrance to Police Headquarters, they looked as if they were waiting at a factory gate, and made a pathetic, grotesque pair. Gigi perched on her thin legs, in her worn rabbit-skin coat, her eyes wary, defying the policeman on duty at the entrance and peering to see who it was whenever she heard anyone coming; and poor Charlotte, who hadn't had the heart to do her hair or put on make-up, with her large moon-like face blotched and red because she'd been crying and was still sniffling. Her nose was bright red, and looked like a small red ball in the middle of her face.

She was wearing a decent black cloth coat, with an astrakhan collar and band of astrakhan round the hem. She held limply on to a large glacé kid bag. Without the ghoulish presence of Gigi, and the red gleaming in the middle of her face, she might have looked fairly presentable.

“There he is!”

Charlotte hadn't budged, but Gigi had been walking frenziedly to and fro. And now she had seen Maigret arriving, with a colleague. Too late, he saw the two women. It was sunny out on the quay, with a touch of spring in the air.

“Excuse me, superintendent . . .”

He shook hands with his colleague . . .

“Have a good lunch, old chap . . .”

“Can we talk to you for a minute, superintendent?”

And Charlotte burst into tears, stuffing her handkerchief which was rolled in a ball into her mouth. People in the street turned round. Maigret waited patiently. Gigi said, as if to excuse her friend: “The magistrate sent for her and she's just been seeing him . . .”

Oh dear—Monsieur Bonneau. He had a right to do so, of course. But all the same . . .

“Is it true, sir, that Prosper has . . . has admitted everything?”

This time Maigret smiled openly. Was that all the magistrate had been able to think up? That corny trick used by junior policemen? And that great goose Charlotte had believed him!

“It's not true, is it? I knew it wasn't! If you knew what he said to me! . . . To listen to him you'd think I was the lowest of the low . . .”

The policeman on duty at the entrance was looking at them with amusement. It was a curious sight—Maigret besieged by the two women, one of them crying and the other peering at him with no attempt to hide her antagonism.

“As if I'd write an anonymous letter accusing Prosper, when I'm sure he didn't kill her! . . . If it had been a revolver, now, I might just have believed it . . . But not strangling someone . . . And particularly not doing it again the next day to some poor man who hadn't done anything . . . Have you discovered anything else, then, superintendent? Do you think they'll keep him in prison?”

Maigret signed to a taxi which was passing.

“Get in!” he told the two women. “I was going on an errand—you can come with me . . .”

It was quite true. He had at last had a telephone call from Lucas, who had drawn a blank at the Jem bureau. He had asked him to meet him in the Boulevard Haussmann. And he had just had the idea that he might . . .

Both the women tried to sit on the flap seats, but he made them sit on the back seat and he himself sat with his back to the driver. It was one of the first fine days of the year. The streets of Paris lay gleaming in the sun, and everyone looked more cheerful.

“Tell me, Charlotte, is Donge still paying his savings into the bank?”

He felt irritated with Gigi, who frowned each time he opened his mouth, as if suspecting a trap. She was clearly longing to say to her friend: “Look out! . . . Think before you answer . . .”

But Charlotte exclaimed: “Savings! Poor love! . . . We haven't saved anything for a long time now! . . . Since we've had this house weighing us down, and that's a fact! . . . It was supposed to cost forty thousand francs at the most, according to the estimates . . . First the foundations cost three times as much as they expected, because they found a subterranean stream . . . Then, when the walls were being built, there was a building strike which brought everything to a stop just as winter began . . . Five thousand francs here . . . Three thousand francs there . . . They fleeced us on all sides! If I told you how much the house had cost us to date you wouldn't believe it! I don't know the exact figure, but it must be more than eighty thousand, and there are still some things which haven't been paid for . . .”

“So Donge hasn't any money in the bank?”

“He hasn't even got an account . . . He hasn't had one for . . . wait a minute . . . for about three years now . . . I remember because one day the postman brought a money order for about eight hundred francs . . . I didn't know what it was . . . When Donge got back he told me he had written to the bank to close his account . . .”

“You can't remember the date?”

“What's that got to do with you?” asked Gigi, who couldn't refrain from adding her sour note.

“I know it was in the winter, because I was busy breaking the ice round the pump when the postman came . . . Wait . . . I went to the market in Saint-Cloud that day . . . I bought a goose . . . So it must have been a few days before Christmas . . .”

“Where are we going?” grumbled Gigi, looking out of the window.

Just at that moment, the taxi stopped in the Boulevard Haussmann, just before the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Lucas was standing on the pavement and goggled as he saw Maigret follow the two women out of the cab.