The Hotel Majestic (2 page)

Donge continued his daily routine, ranging the silver coffee pots in order of size—one, two or three cups . . . Then the little milk jugs . . . teapots . . .

He caught sight of Jean Ramuel, looking dishevelled, in the bookkeeper's glass booth.

“Hmm . . . Spent the night here again!” he said to himself.

For the past three or four nights, Ramuel, the bookkeeper, had slept at the hotel instead of going home to Montparnasse.

Officially, this was not allowed. There was a room with three or four beds in it at the end of the corridor, near the door leading to the wine cellars. But in theory the beds were for the use of members of the staff who needed to rest between their hours of work.

Donge waved his hand in greeting to Ramuel, who replied equally casually.

Then it was time for the head chef—vast and full of pomp—to arrive back from the market with his van which he parked in the Rue de Ponthieu for his assistants to unload.

By half past seven there were at least thirty people scurrying about in the basements of the Majestic, and bells began to ring, service-lifts began to descend and were loaded before ascending with their trays, while Ramuel speared pink, blue and white chits on the metal prongs on his desk.

Then it was time for the day porter, in his light blue uniform, to take up his post in the foyer, and for the post clerk to sort the letters in his little cubbyhole. The sun was probably shining out in the Champs-Élysées, but down in the basement they were only aware of the buses rumbling overhead, making the glass partitions tremble.

At a few minutes past nine—at four minutes past nine precisely, it was later established—Prosper Donge came out of his still-room and a few seconds later went into the cloakroom.

“I had left my handkerchief in my coat pocket . . .” he stated when interrogated.

At all events he found himself alone in the room with its hundred metal lockers. Did he open his? There were no witnesses. Did he look for his handkerchief? Possibly he did.

There were in fact not a hundred but only ninety-two lockers, all numbered. The last five were empty.

Why did it occur to Prosper Donge to open locker 89, which didn't belong to anyone and was therefore not locked?

“It was automatic . . .” he said later. “The door was ajar . . . I didn't think . . .”

In the locker was a body which had been pushed in upright and which had fallen over on itself. It was the body of a woman of about thirty, very blonde—peroxide blonde in fact—wearing a dress of fine black wool.

Donge didn't cry out. He turned very pale, and going up to Ramuel's glass cage, bent to whisper through the grille.

“Come here a minute . . .”

The bookkeeper followed him.

“Stay here . . . Don't let anyone in . . .”

Ramuel bounded up the stairs, burst into the foyer cloakroom and saw the porter talking to a chauffeur.

“Is the manager here yet?”

The porter gestured with his chin towards the manager's office.

 

 

Maigret paused outside the revolving door, and was about to tap his pipe on his heel to empty it. Then he shrugged and put it back in his mouth. It was his first pipe of the day—the best.

“The manager is expecting you, superintendent . . .”

There were few signs of life in the foyer as yet. An Englishman was arguing with the post clerk and a young girl walked through on grasshopper-long legs carrying a hatbox which she had probably come to deliver.

Maigret went into the office and the manager shook his hand silently and pointed to a chair. There was a green curtain across the glass door, but if one pulled it back a little one could see everything that went on.

“A cigar?”

“No thank you . . .”

They had known each other for a long time. There was no need to say much. The manager was wearing striped trousers, a black jacket and a tie which seemed to have been cut from some rigid material.

“Here . . .”

He pushed a registration form towards his visitor.

 

The telephone rang. The manager answered impatiently. Maigret folded the form in four and put it in his wallet. “Which of them is it?”

“Mrs. Clark . . .”

“Ah!”

“The hotel doctor, whom I telephoned as soon as I had informed the Police, and who lives just round the corner in the Rue de Berri, is already here. He says Mrs. Clark was strangled some time between 6 and 6:30 a.m.”

The manager was plunged in gloom. There was no need to tell an old hand like Maigret that it was a disaster for the hotel and that if there was any way of hushing it up . . .

“The Clark family have been here a week then . . .” murmured the superintendent. “What sort of people are they?”

“Well heeled . . . Very . . . He's a great, tall, silent American, about forty . . . Forty-five perhaps . . . His wife—poor thing!—seems to be French . . . Twenty-eight or nine . . . I didn't see very much of her . . . The governess is pretty . . . The maid, who also looks after the child, is very ordinary, rather surly . . . Ah! . . . I nearly forgot to tell you . . . Clark left for Rome yesterday morning . . .”

“Alone?”

“From what I can gather, he is in Europe on business . . . He has a ball-bearing factory . . . He has to visit various European capitals and he decided to leave his wife, son and staff in Paris for the time being . . .”

“What train did he get?” Maigret asked.

The manager picked up the telephone.

“Hello! Porter? . . . What train did Mr. Clark catch yesterday . . . Suite 203, yes . . . Wasn't there any luggage to go to the station? He only took a grip? . . . By taxi? . . . Désiré's taxi? . . . Thank you . . .

“Did you get that, superintendent? He left at eleven o'clock yesterday morning in a taxi, Désiré's taxi, which is nearly always parked outside the hotel. He took only one small bag with him . . .”

“Do you mind if I make a call myself? . . . Hello! Judicial Police, please, mademoiselle . . . Police Headquarters? . . . Lucas? Get over to the Gare de Lyon . . . Check on the trains to Rome from 11 a.m. yesterday . . .”

He continued giving instructions, while his pipe went out.

“Tell Torrence to find Désiré's taxi . . . Yes . . . Which is usually outside the Majestic . . . Find out where he took a fare, a tall thin American he picked up outside the hotel yesterday . . . That's it . . .”

He looked for an ashtray in which to empty his pipe. The manager handed him one.

“Are you sure you won't have a cigar? . . . The nanny is in a great state . . . I thought it best to tell her . . . And the governess didn't sleep at the hotel last night . . .”

“What floor is the suite on?”

“On the second floor . . . Looking out over the Champs-Élysées . . . Mr. Clark's room, separated from his wife's by a sitting-room . . . Then the child's room, the nanny's and the governess's . . . They wanted to be all together . . .”

“Has the night porter left?”

“He can be reached by telephone, I know, because I had to contact him one day. His wife is the concierge at a new block of flats in Neuilly . . . Hello! . . . Can you get me . . .”

Five minutes later they knew that Mrs. Clark had gone to the theatre alone the evening before, and that she had got back a few minutes past midnight. The nanny had not gone out. The governess on the other hand had not dined at the hotel and had been out all night.

“Shall we go downstairs and have a look?” Maigret sighed.

The foyer was busier now, but no one had any idea of the drama which had taken place while they were still asleep.

“We'll go this way . . . I'll lead the way, superintendent . . .”

As he spoke, the manager frowned. Someone was coming through the revolving door, letting in a shaft of sunlight. A young woman in a grey suit came in and, as she passed the post desk, asked in English: “Anything for me?”

“That's her, superintendent—Miss Ellen Darroman . . .”

Fine silk stockings, with straight seams. The well-groomed look of someone who had dressed with care. She didn't look at all tired, and the brisk February air had brought colour to her cheeks.

“Do you want to talk to her?”

“Not yet . . . Wait a minute . . .”

And Maigret went over to an inspector he had brought with him, who was standing in a corner of the foyer.

“Don't let that girl out of your sight . . . If she goes into her room, stand outside the door . . .”

The cloakroom. The tall mirror turned on its hinges. The superintendent followed the manager down the narrow staircase. A sudden end to all the gilt, potted plants and elegant bustle. A smell of cooking rose to meet them.

“Does this staircase go to all the floors?”

“There are two of them . . . leading from the cellar to the attics . . . But you have to know your way around to use them . . . For instance, upstairs, there are little doors exactly the same as the other doors, but with no number on. None of the visitors would ever guess . . .”

It was nearly eleven o'clock. There were not fifty, but more like a hundred and fifty people now, scurrying about in the basement, some in cooks' white hats, others in waiters' coats, or cellarmen's aprons, and the women, like Prosper Donge's Three Fatties, doing the rough work . . .

“This way . . . Careful you don't get dirty or slip . . . The passages are very narrow . . .”

Through the glass partitions everyone stared at them, and particularly at the superintendent. Jean Ramuel was busy catching each chit handed up to him as its bearer flew past, and casting an eagle eye over the contents of the trays.

It was a shock to see the unexpected figure of a policeman standing on guard outside the cloakroom. The doctor—who was very young—had been warned that Maigret was coming, and was smoking a cigarette while waiting.

“Shut the door . . .”

The body was lying on the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by the metal lockers. The doctor, still smoking, muttered: “She must have been attacked from behind . . . She didn't struggle for very long . . .”

“And her body wasn't dragged along the ground!” Maigret added, examining the dead woman's black clothes. “There are no traces of dust . . . Either the crime was committed here, or she was carried, by two people probably, because it would be difficult in this labyrinth of narrow corridors . . .”

There was a crocodile handbag in the locker in which she had been found. The superintendent opened it, and took out an automatic, which he slipped into his pocket, after checking the safety catch was on. There was nothing else in the bag except a handkerchief, a powder compact, and a few banknotes amounting to less than a thousand francs.

Behind them the basement was humming like a beehive. The service-lifts shot up and down, bells rang ceaselessly and they could see heavy copper saucepans being wielded behind the glass partitions of the kitchens, and chickens being roasted in their dozens.

“Everything must be left in place for the Public Prosecutor's Department to see,” Maigret said. “Who found the body? . . .”

Prosper Donge, who was cleaning a percolator, was pointed out to him. He was tall, with the kind of red hair usually referred to as carroty, and looked about forty-five to forty-eight. He had blue eyes and his face was badly pockmarked.

“Has he been here long?”

“Five years . . . Before that he was at the Miramar, in Cannes . . .”

“Reliable?”

“Extremely reliable . . .”

There was a partition separating Donge and the superintendent. Their eyes met through the glass. And a rush of colour flooded the face of the still-room chef, who like all redheads, had sensitive skin.

“Excuse me, sir . . . Superintendent Maigret is wanted on the telephone . . .”

It was Jean Ramuel, the bookkeeper, who had hurried out of his cage.

“If you'd like to take the call here—”

A message from Headquarters. There had only been two express trains to Rome since eleven o'clock the day before. Oswald J. Clark had not travelled on either of them. And the taxi driver, Désiré, whom they had managed to contact on the telephone at a bistro where he was one of the regulars, swore he had taken his fare, the day before, to the Hotel Aiglon, in the Boulevard Montparnasse.

Voices, from the staircase, one of them the high-pitched voice of a young woman protesting in English to a room waiter who was trying to bar her way.

It was the governess, Ellen Darroman, who was bearing down on them.

Pipe in mouth, bowler on the back of his head, and hands in the pockets of his vast overcoat with the famous velvet collar, Maigret watched her arguing vehemently with the hotel manager.

And one glance at the superintendent's face made it clear that there would not be much sympathy lost between him and Ellen Darroman.

“What's she saying?” he sighed, interrupting, unable to understand a single word the American woman said.

“She wants to know if it's true Mrs. Clark has been murdered, and if anyone has telephoned to Rome to let Oswald J. Clark know; she wants to know where the body has been taken and if . . .”

But the girl didn't let him finish. She had listened impatiently, frowning, had thrown Maigret a cold glance and had gone on talking faster than ever.