Maigret Takes a Room

by Georges Simenon

  ‘So in short, you think it’s odd that so shy a young man should attack the manager of a nightclub and then, later, shoot at a police inspector?’

  ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’

  In the end they hadn’t been able to conceal from the press the identity of the ‘gangster of Rue Campagne-Première’, as the papers called him. They had even published a photograph found among his things on the front page.

  ‘Perhaps if you had listened to him, nothing would have happened,’ Mademoiselle Clément said dreamily to the girl.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He would have become your boyfriend. He’d have had other things on his mind besides robbing a bar …’

  ‘It’s time for me to go. I’m going to the cinema with a friend. Good evening …’

  When she had gone, Mademoiselle Clément murmured:

  ‘Delightful, isn’t it? She starts by announcing that she’s not going out, that she’s behind with some tailoring, because she makes her dresses herself. Then, half an hour later, I hear her coming downstairs with her hat on. She’s suddenly remembered that she was meeting a friend to go to the cinema. Those young ones, they can’t bear feeling locked up …’

  ‘Does she have a boyfriend?’

  ‘Just a cousin.’

  ‘Who comes to see her from time to time?’

  ‘He goes up for a moment when they’re going out together, all open and above board. That’s quite rare, because I think he works in the evening. Except on Sundays …’

  ‘On Sundays?’

  ‘They go to the country. When it rains they stay up there.’

  She looked at him with a disarming smile.

  ‘In short, you only have nice people here!’

  ‘There are so many more nice people in the world than you think! I don’t understand how people can see wickedness everywhere. Wait! Here’s Monsieur Kridelka coming back,’ she added, after glancing through the spyhole.

  He was a man in his forties, with darker hair than the Auvergnat in the bistro and a pale complexion, who wiped his feet mechanically on the mat before going upstairs.

  ‘He lives on the second floor as well, the room next to Mademoiselle Isabelle.’

  Maigret consulted the notes that Vauquelin had given him.

  ‘He’s Yugoslavian,’ he said.

  ‘He’s lived in Paris for a long time.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘You would never guess. He’s a nurse in a mental hospital. That’s probably why he doesn’t talk much. Apparently it’s a very tough job. He deserves some credit, because he was a lawyer back home. You don’t want to come and sit down in the sitting room?’

  She sat down herself with a piece of pale-blue knitting on her knees and started juggling with the needles.

  ‘It’s for the Lotards’ baby. Some landladies don’t want children in the house. As far as I’m concerned, as I say, we need a bit of everything, pianos as well as children. Madame Saft is expecting a baby as well.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Second floor, on the right of the corridor. She’s French, but he’s Polish. If you had arrived a few minutes earlier you’d have seen him coming home. He’s the one who does the shopping when he comes back from the office. They eat mostly cold food. I don’t think she likes cooking. She was a student. He’s finished his studies.’

  ‘Studies in what?’

  ‘Chemistry. He didn’t find a job as a chemist and works as an assistant pharmacist near Rue de Rennes. People are brave, don’t you think? They haven’t found an apartment either. When I see a couple introducing themselves, I know in advance what they’re going to say, that it’s temporary, that they’ll have accommodation soon. The Lotards have been waiting for three years. The Safts hope to move before the baby’s born.’

  That made her laugh, with her curious, throaty laugh. It didn’t take much to put her in a state of joy. She was like those nuns who cheer up convent life by deriving amusement from the most innocent jokes.

  ‘Did you know Paulus well, Mademoiselle Clément?’

  ‘I knew him as well as I know the others. He had only been here for five months.’

  ‘What sort of young man was he?’

  ‘You’ve heard what Mademoiselle Isabelle told you. That’s him to a T. He was so shy that he looked away when he walked past the spyhole.’

  ‘Did he get a lot of mail?’

  ‘Only the odd letter from Limoges. They came from his family. I recognized the two handwritings, his father’s and his mother’s. His mother wrote to him twice a week, and his father once a month. He always looked impressed when I gave him the letters from his father.’

  ‘Did he never take women to his room?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have dared.’

  ‘When his friend came to see him, did you know he was going to sleep here?’

  ‘No. I was even worried, the first time. I was waiting for him to leave before I went to sleep, because I don’t like to be woken when I’m dropping off. In the morning he came down on tiptoes before it was quite daylight, and I was amused by that. I have a brother who was like that. He’s married now and lives in Indochina. When we were at home and he was seventeen or eighteen, he brought some friends to his room, secretly, boys who didn’t dare to go home because it was too late.’

  ‘Did Paulus confide in you at all?’

  ‘We were good friends, in the end. He sometimes came to say goodnight, he told me how difficult it was to sell encyclopedias. His briefcase was so heavy, with that fat book in it, that his arm was swollen. He often skipped meals, I’m sure.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Sometimes he came back when I was having dinner. I just had to see the way he glanced at my plate, the way he sniffed the smells of cooking to understand. I said kindly: “Will you have a bowl of soup with me at least, Monsieur Paulus?” At first he refused, claiming that he was leaving the table. Then he ended up sitting opposite me.’

  She looked at him with her clear eyes.

  ‘Did he pay you regularly?’

  ‘You can tell that you’ve never run a rooming house, Monsieur Maigret. They never pay regularly, none of them, you see. If they were able to pay regularly, they probably wouldn’t be here. I don’t want to be indiscreet and show you my notebook, the one in which I write the sums they owe me.

  ‘But they’re still honest. They give me the money in the end, often in small sums.’

  ‘Even Monsieur Valentin?’

  ‘He’s the most penniless of them all. The girls who come and take singing lessons pay him even more irregularly, and some of them don’t pay him at all.’

  ‘And he gives them lessons anyway?’

  ‘Probably because he thinks they’re gifted? He’s so kind!’

  At that very moment, Maigret turned towards her for no precise reason, and he had a sense that he saw a different expression from the usual on the fat woman’s face. Unfortunately it was only a flash, and a moment later her eyes were lowered over her pale-blue knitting.

  What he thought he had discovered, in place of the joyful candour that she usually displayed, was an irony which was neither less cheerful nor less childish, but which troubled him.

  At first he had told himself it was a phenomenon of the kind one encounters from time to time.

  He wondered now if his exultation wasn’t down to the fact that she was playing a part, not just to deceive him, not just to hide something from him, but for the pleasure of acting a part.

  ‘Are you enjoying yourself, Mademoiselle Clément?’

  ‘I always enjoy myself, Monsieur Maigret.’

  This time she looked at him with all her candour back in place. In girls’ schools it’s rare not to encounter at least one girl who is a head taller than the others and has that same puffy flesh. At the age of thirteen or fourteen they look like enormous china dolls, with clear eyes that see nothing of life, and with a smile directed at their dreams.

  Until now, Maigret hadn�
��t met a forty-year-old version of the same thing.

  The smoke from his pipe turned the air increasingly blue, forming a moving blanket around the salmon-coloured lampshade.

  It was a strange sensation to be there, sitting in an armchair, almost as if he was at home, except that at home he would have taken his jacket off. He was still sure that she would ask him to do just that in a day or two.

  He jumped when he heard the phone ringing and looked at the time on his watch.

  ‘That must be for me …’ he said, hurrying to pick it up.

  And, like the day before on the boulevards, he was slightly embarrassed, he felt almost guilty.

  ‘It’s me, yes … You didn’t have too much trouble getting a line …? Fine … Fine … I assure you that I’m fine … No, quite calm … I’m being looked after, yes … How is your sister?’

  When he hung up and came back to the sitting room, Mademoiselle Clément’s eyes were lowered over a book, and she waited until he was sitting down and had relit his pipe before asking airily:

  ‘Your wife?’

  3.

  In which the mention of a glass of cold beer plays an important part, and Maigret discovers one of Mademoiselle Clément’s tenants in an unexpected place

  Maigret spent a good part of the night swearing, grumbling and sometimes groaning; ten times he cursed the idea he had had of coming to stay in the rooming house on Rue Lhomond, and there were moments when he was ashamed of it, as if he were accusing himself of yielding to some shameful tendency, or at least some unmentionable weakness. But when morning came he felt quite content to be there.

  Should he blame the chartreuse? He had always detested liqueurs. Mademoiselle Clément, on the contrary, seemed to love them.

  Just as she had done the previous day, she had had no hesitation in going and getting the bottle from the sideboard and, at the very sight of the syrupy green liquid, her face expressed a childish greed, her eyes shone, her lips moistened.

  He hadn’t had the courage to refuse. In the end it was an evening in green and blue, the green of the liqueur and the pale blue of the knitting, which was lengthening invisibly in the landlady’s lap.

  They hadn’t drunk a lot, because the glasses were tiny. When he had gone up to his room, Maigret wasn’t even slightly tipsy, and Mademoiselle Clément, when he had left her downstairs, only had a slightly more ringing laugh than usual.

  He hadn’t turned the light on straight away. After taking off his tie and opening his collar, he had gone towards the window and leaned against it, as thousands of Parisians must have been doing that night.

  The air had a velvety smoothness which was almost palpable. No movement, no sound troubled the peace of Rue Lhomond, which falls at almost imperceptible gradient towards the lights of Rue Mouffetard. Somewhere, behind the houses, a rumble could be heard, the muffled sounds of cars passing along Boulevard Saint-Michel, of brakes and car-horns, but all that was in another world; between the roofs of the houses, between the chimney-pots, there was a splendid vista of an infinity populated by stars.

  Monsieur Kridelka must have been sleeping in the next room, because there was no sound, and the window wasn’t lit.

  Lowering his head, Maigret could see in the darkness, or rather guess, the place on the pavement where Janvier had fallen.

  The streetlight was further away, shining, alone.

  After a moment of stillness, you could pick up the pulsations of the house.

  On the first floor, the Lotards had gone to bed too. But someone, probably the wife, soon got up again because the baby was crying. She didn’t turn the main light on, just a night-light, because only a faint glimmer appeared in their window. In her nightdress, barefoot, she must have been preparing something for him, probably a bottle; he thought he heard a clink of a glass, and at the same time she hummed mechanically.

  It was at that moment, around 11.30, that Mademoiselle Blanche turned out her light. She had finished her book, and, a little while later, the sound of the toilet flushing could be heard.

  The little bistro, further off, where Maigret had had his dinner, had closed its doors long ago, and it was at around the same time, at 11.30, that for no reason Maigret had started thinking about a nice cold glass of beer. Perhaps because a bus had braked near Boulevard Saint-Michel and had reminded him of its brasseries?

  It quickly turned into an obsession. The chartreuse had made his mouth pasty, and he felt that his throat was still thick with the mutton stew that he had had at the Auvergnat’s bistro, and which he had thought was so tasty.

  For a moment he thought about putting his tie back on, going out, creeping downstairs and running to the nearest brasserie.

  Mademoiselle Clément had gone to bed. He would have to wake her up to go out, and then again to come back.

  He lit a pipe, still leaning on the window-sill, breathing in the night, but that idea of beer wouldn’t let him go.

  Here and there, in the darkness of the houses opposite, rectangles of varying brightness appeared, not many, five or six, and sometimes one of them went out; sometimes, behind the curtains or blinds, shadows could be seen moving in silence.

  It must have been exactly the same the day before, when poor Janvier was pacing back and forth on the pavement.

  He heard a noise, at the end of the street. Then voices that echoed oddly among the houses, a man’s voice and a woman’s voice. It was almost possible to make out what they were saying. They held each other by the arms. They stopped two buildings along. A hand tugged a bell-pull, and a moment later the couple disappeared, and a door shut heavily.

  Facing him, on the first floor, behind a faintly lit blind, a man frequently passed back and forth, then became invisible before appearing again.

  A taxi stopped outside the door. A certain amount of time passed without anyone getting out, and Maigret thought that a couple must be kissing inside. It was Mademoiselle Isabelle who got out, humming, and made for the doorway, turning back several times towards the person in the car.

  He heard the muffled bell, thought of Mademoiselle Clément asleep, pressing her face to the spyhole after turning on the light. Footsteps on the stairs. Then, very close to him, a key in the lock, followed almost immediately by the creak of a mattress and two shoes falling on the floor. He would have sworn that the girl uttered a sigh of relief as she took her shoes off and that she was now stroking her aching feet.

  She got undressed and ran some water.

  The sound made him even thirstier, and he too walked towards the tap and filled the tooth mug. The liquid tasted stale.

  Then, in a bad temper, he took his clothes off, with the window still open, brushed his teeth and went to bed.

  At first he thought he was going to go to sleep straight away. He dozed. His breathing became regular. The images from the day began to mix in a half-sleep.

  And yet, five or ten minutes later, he was completely awake, his eyes open, thinking harder than ever about a glass of beer. This time he felt a burning in his stomach and had no doubt that it was the mutton stew. On Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, he would have got up to take a little bicarbonate of soda. He hadn’t brought any and didn’t dare wake Mademoiselle Clément to ask her for some. He closed his eyes again and sank as deeply as possible into his bed and then started to feel little gusts of air wandering over his skull and the back of his neck.

  He got up to go and close the window. The man opposite still hadn’t gone to bed. He was pacing the room behind the blind, and Maigret wondered what he could be doing, walking around like that. Perhaps he was an actor rehearsing a part? Or maybe talking to someone sitting down whose outline couldn’t be seen.

  There was another light, right at the top, in the attic of the same house, and he would see that light again in the early hours of the morning.

  He slept, he had to sleep. A bad, agitated sleep, never quite losing consciousness of the place where he was, or of his problems, which in fact assumed an exaggerated importance.

 
It almost became an affair of state, even worse, a matter of life or death. The slightest details were magnified, as if seen through a drunken haze. He had a responsibility not only towards Janvier, but towards Janvier’s wife, who was so brave and so tired.

  Had she not looked at him as if to tell him that she was putting her fate and that of her unborn baby in his hands? Madame Maigret wasn’t there. And for that too, God knows why, he felt guilty.

  He was thirsty. Every now and again the burning in his chest became more acute, and he was aware that he was uttering a groan; he had to be careful not to wake the tenants, particularly the Lotards’ baby, which had gone back to sleep.

  As for him, he shouldn’t have gone to sleep. He was there to watch. His duty was to listen to sounds, to spy on comings and goings.

  A taxi moving down the street made so much noise that it seemed to be insulting the silence. It stopped. A door slammed. But it was further off, at least ten houses away.

  Everyone was sleeping. He thought of Mademoiselle Isabelle turning over in her bed, the blonde’s body must already be quite clammy. The Safts, in the other room, were lying in the same bed. He had visited their room. The bed was so narrow that he wondered how there was room for them both.

  He sat down on his own bed. More precisely, he found himself sitting on his bed without being aware of having moved and, all of a sudden, he pricked up his ears. He was sure he had heard an unusual sound, perhaps a chink of porcelain or china.

  He waited, motionless, holding his breath, and there was a second sound, on the ground floor, this time a dresser being closed.

  He struck a match to look at his watch. It was half past two in the morning.

  Barefoot, he went and cautiously opened the door and then, sure that someone had got up, he put on his trousers and slipped on to the stairs.

  He hadn’t reached the first floor when he made a step creak. It must always have creaked. He could have sworn that a moment before there was a faint light in the corridor, like the one that seeps from beneath the door of a lit room.