The Hotel Majestic (7 page)

“It began when she left with the American?”

“Did Prosper tell you that? . . . Give me another glass of water, there's a good bloke . . . A Yank she met at the Belle Étoile, who fell in love with her . . . He took her to Deauville, then Biarritz . . . I must admit Mimi knew how to do things properly . . . She wasn't like the rest of us . . . Is Charlotte still working at the Pélican? . . . And look at me! . . .”

She gave a dreadful laugh, disclosing villainous teeth.

“One day, she just wrote that she was going to have a baby and that she was going to make the American think it was his . . . What was he called now? . . . Oswald. Then she wrote again to tell me that it nearly went wrong because the baby had hair the colour of a carrot . . . Can you imagine it! I wouldn't want Prosper to know that . . .”

Was it the effect of the two glasses of water she had drunk? She pulled one leg after the other out of bed, long, thin legs which would attract few male glances. When she was standing upright, she appeared tall, skeleton-like. What long hours she must spend pacing up and down the dark pavements or loitering at a café table before she got any results . . .

Her stare became more fixed. She examined Maigret from head to toe.

“You're from the police, eh?”

She was getting angry. But her mind was still cloudy and she was making an effort to clear her thoughts.

“What did Jean tell me? . . . Ah! . . . And who brought you here anyway? . . . He made me promise not to talk to anyone . . . Admit it! . . . Admit you're from the police . . . And I . . . Why should it matter to the police, if Prosper and Mimi . . .”

The storm broke, suddenly, violently, sickeningly: “You dirty bastard! . . . Swine! . . . You took advantage of me being . . .”

She had opened the door, and the sounds from outside could be heard even more clearly.

“If you don't get out at once, I'll . . . I'll . . .”

It was ridiculous, pathetic. Maigret just managed to sidestep the jug she threw at his legs, and she was still hurling abuse after him as he went down the stairs.

The bar was empty. It was too early still.

“Well?” Monsieur Jean asked, from behind his counter.

Maigret put on his coat and hat, and left a tip for the waiter.

“Did she tell you what you wanted?”

A voice, from the stairs: “Jean! . . . Jean! . . . Come here—I must tell you . . .”

It was poor wretched Gigi, who had padded down in her stockings and now pushed a dishevelled head round the door of the bar.

Maigret thought it better to leave.

On the Croisette, in his black coat and bowler hat, he must have looked like a provincial come to see the carnival on the Côte d'Azur for the first time. Masked figures bumped into him. He had difficulty disentangling himself from the brass bands. On the beach, a few winter visitors ignored the festival and were sunbathing: their near-naked bodies already brown, covered with oil . . .

The Miramar was down there, a vast yellow structure with two or three hundred windows, with its doorman, car attendants and touts . . . He nearly went in . . . But what was the use?

Didn't he already know everything he needed to know? He no longer knew if he was thirsty or drunk. He went into a bar.

“Have you got a railway timetable?”

“Trains to Paris? There's an express—first, second and third class—at 20:40 hours . . .”

He drank another half litre. There were hours to fill in. He couldn't think what to do. And later, he had nightmare memories of those hours spent in Cannes, amidst the carnival.

At times, the past became so real to him that he could literally see Prosper, with his red hair, great candid eyes, pitted skin, coming out of the Miramar by the little back door and hurrying across to the Brasserie des Artistes.

The three women, who would be eight years younger then, would be there having lunch or dinner. Prosper was ugly. He knew it. And he was passionately in love with Mimi, the youngest, and prettiest, of the three.

His burning glances must have made them laugh heartlessly, at first.

“You shouldn't, Mimi,” Charlotte must have intervened. “He's a good sort. You never know how it may turn out . . .”

Then the Belle Étoile, in the evening. Prosper never set foot inside. He knew his place. But he met them in the early morning to eat onion soup at the café . . .

“If a man like that loved me, I would . . .”

Charlotte must have been impressed by his humble devotion. And Gigi wasn't yet on cocaine.

“Don't take any notice, Monsieur Prosper! . . . She pretends to make fun of you, but at heart . . .”

And they had been lovers! Had lived together perhaps. Prosper spent most of his savings on presents. Until the day when a passing American . . .

Had Charlotte told him, later, that the child was definitely his?

Good, kind Charlotte—she knew he didn't love her, that he still loved Mimi, and yet she was living with him, happily, in their little house in Saint-Cloud.

While Gigi slipped farther and farther . . .

“Some flowers, monsieur? . . . To send to your little girlfriend . . .”

The flowerseller spoke ironically, because Maigret didn't look like a man who has a little girlfriend. But he sent a basket of mimosa to Madame Maigret.

Then, as he still had half an hour before the train left, a kind of intuition made him telephone Paris. He was in a little bar near the station. The musicians from the bands now had dusty trousers. Whole carriage-loads of them were leaving for nearby stations, and the fine Sunday afternoon was drawing drowsily to a close.

“Hello! Is that you, chief? . . . You're still in Cannes?”

He could tell from Lucas's voice that he was excited.

“Things have been happening here . . . The examining magistrate is furious . . . He's just telephoned to know what you are doing . . . Hello? They made the discovery only threequarters of an hour ago . . . It was Torrence, who was on duty at the Majestic, who telephoned . . .”

Maigret stood listening to his account in the narrow booth, and grunted from time to time. Through the window, he could see, in the light from the setting sun which filled the bar, the musicians in their white linen trousers and silver-braided caps, and now and then one of them would jokingly sound a long note on his bombardon or trombone, while the golden liquid sparkled in their glasses.

“Right! . . . I'll be there tomorrow morning . . . No! Of course . . . Well if the magistrate insists, you'll have to arrest him . . .”

It had only just happened, then. Downstairs at the Majestic . . . Thé dansant time, with music drifting along the passageways . . . Prosper Donge like a great goldfish in his glass cage . . . Jean Ramuel, yellow as a quince, in his . . .

From what Lucas said—but the inquiry had not yet begun—the night porter had been seen going along the corridors, in his outdoor clothes. No one knew what he was doing there. Everyone had enough to do himself without bothering about what was happening elsewhere.

The night porter was called Justin Colleboeuf. He was a quiet, dull little man, who spent the night alone in the foyer. He didn't read. There was no one to talk to. And he didn't go to sleep. He sat there, on a chair, for hour after hour, staring straight ahead of him.

His wife was the concierge at a new block of flats in Neuilly.

What was Colleboeuf doing there at half past four in the afternoon?

Zebio, the dancer, had gone to the cloakroom to put on his dinner-jacket. Everyone was going about his business. Ramuel had come out of his booth several times.

At five o'clock, Prosper Donge had gone along to the cloakroom. He took off his white jacket and put on his own jacket and coat, and collected his bicycle.

Then a few minutes later a bellboy went into the cloakroom. He noticed that the door of locker 89 was slightly open. The next minute the whole hotel was alerted by his yells.

In the locker, folded over itself, in a grey overcoat, was the body of the night porter. His felt hat was at the back of the cupboard.

Like Mrs. Clark, Justin Colleboeuf had been strangled. The body was still warm.

Meanwhile, Prosper Donge, on his bike, peacefully passed through the Bois de Boulogne, crossed the Pont de Saint-Cloud, and got off his bicycle to go up the steep road to his house.

“A pastis!” Maigret ordered, as there didn't seem to be anything else on the counter.

Then he got into the train, his head as heavy as it had been when he was a child, after a long day in the country, in the blazing sun.

They had been travelling for some time. Maigret had already taken off his jacket, tie and stiff collar, as the compartment was once again too hot; it was as though hot air, and the smell of the train, was oozing from everywhere—woodwork, floor, seats.

He bent to unlace his shoes. Not content with his free first class pass, he had taken a couchette; too bad if anyone objected. And the guard had promised him that he would have his compartment to himself.

Suddenly, as he was still bending over his shoes, he had the unpleasant feeling that someone was looking at him, from close to. He looked up. There was a pale face peering through the window from the corridor. Dark eyes. A large mouth, badly made up, or rather enlarged, by two streaks of red applied at random, which had then run.

But the most noticeable thing about the face was its expression of dislike, hatred. How had Gigi got there? Before Maigret could put on his shoe again, the girl's face puckered in disgust and she spat on to the window, in his direction, then went back down the corridor.

He remained impassive, and got dressed. Before leaving the compartment, he lit a pipe, as if for moral support. Then he went down the corridor, from carriage to carriage, assiduously looking in each compartment. The train was a long one. Maigret walked through at least ten coaches, bumped into the partitions, had to disturb fifty or more people.

“Sorry . . . Sorry . . .”

He came to where the carpet ended. The third class compartments. People were dozing six to a side. Others were eating. Children stared into space.

In a compartment with two sailors from Toulon who were going “up” to Paris, and an old couple who were nodding off, mouths agape, the woman clutching her basket on her lap, he found Gigi, huddled in a corner.

He hadn't noticed, earlier, in the corridor, how she was dressed. He had been so surprised that he had only taken in that it wasn't the Gigi of the Brasserie des Artistes, with her wandering gaze and slack mouth.

Wrapped in a cheap fur coat, her legs crossed, revealing down-at-heel shoes and a large ladder in her stocking, she stared straight ahead of her. Had she succeeded, on her own, in dragging herself out of the comatose state in which she had been that afternoon? Had someone given her something to take? Or possibly a new dose of cocaine had revived her?

Maigret made no move. He watched her for a while, trying to sign to her; she still took no notice. So he opened the door.

“Would you come out for a minute?”

She hesitated. The two sailors were staring at her. Make a scene? She shrugged and got up to join him, and he shut the door.

“Haven't you had enough?” she hissed at him. “You should be pleased with yourself, shouldn't you! You should feel proud of yourself! You took advantage of the fact that a poor girl was in the state I was in . . .”

He saw that she was about to cry, that her garishly painted mouth was trembling, and turned away.

“And you didn't lose any time in locking him up, did you!”

“Tell me, Gigi. How do you know Prosper has been arrested?”

A weary gesture.

“Haven't you heard? I thought the telephone tapping would see to that . . . It doesn't matter if I tell you, because you'll soon know . . . Charlotte telephoned Jean . . . Prosper had just got back from work when a taxi full of cops arrived and took him away . . . Charlotte's in a terrible state . . . She wanted to know if I'd talked . . . And I did talk, didn't I? I told you enough to . . .”

A violent jolt of the train made her fall against Maigret, and she recoiled in horror.

“I'll be even with you yet! I swear! Even if Prosper did kill that dirty bitch Mimi . . . I'll tell you something, superintendent . . . On my honour, the honour of a prostitute, a slut who has nothing to lose, I swear to you that if he's condemned to death, I'll find you and plug you full of holes . . .”

She paused for a moment, scornfully. He didn't say anything. He felt it wasn't an empty threat, that she was just the type, in fact, to wait for him on some lonely street corner and empty her automatic into him.

The two sailors were still watching them from the compartment.

“Goodnight,” he sighed.

He went back to his compartment, got undressed at last and lay down.

The dimmed light was shedding a vague blue glow on the ceiling. Maigret lay there with his eyes shut, frowning.

One question kept worrying him. Why had the examining magistrate ordered Prosper Donge's arrest? What had the magistrate, who had not left Paris, and who did not know Gigi, or the Brasserie des Artistes, learnt? Why arrest Donge rather than Jean Ramuel or Zebio?

He felt vaguely apprehensive. He knew the magistrate.

He hadn't said anything when he saw him arrive at the Majestic with the public prosecutor, but he had made a face, because he had worked with him in the past.

He was a man of integrity, certainly, a good, family man even, who collected rare editions of books. He had a fine square-cut, grey beard. Maigret had once had to make a raid on a gambling den with him. It was in the daytime, when the place was empty. Pointing to the large baccarat tables shrouded under dust-covers, the magistrate had asked ingenuously: “Are those billiard tables?”