‘I was on the lookout. I’m sure.’
‘What day is it?’
‘Saturday. Or rather Sunday, as it’s one thirty in the morning.’
‘Would it be a nuisance to pack a case for a few days?’
‘When do you want to go?’
‘As soon as you are ready. If we leave it to the morning, we’ll be spotted.’
‘I need to fix my hair.’
It was 2.30, and the night was still and mild as they came downstairs, Maigret carrying the case that they used for their rare weekends away.
‘Where are you thinking of going?’
‘Anywhere with a vacancy. There must be an inn somewhere, not too far from Paris, where they have a room free.’
They drove along the Seine in a taxi, heading towards the forest of Fontainebleau. Just beyond Corbeil, Maigret remembered an inn at Morsang, where he had once stayed in the course of an investigation.
‘Are you going to wake them?’
He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He was on holiday – properly this time.
He had been right to follow his lucky star, as he didn’t need to wake the people from the inn, whose closed shutters they could see in the moonlight. Next to the Seine, among the silvery reflections, a man was setting his eel pots, and Maigret recognized the innkeeper.
‘We do have a room free, but it’s booked from tomorrow evening.’
What did that matter? The next day they were free to try their luck further on.
As they waited for the innkeeper to wake his wife, they sat quietly on the terrace at an iron table, watching the river flow by.
It wasn’t until four days later, in an inn on the banks of the Loing, that Maigret received a postcard with a picture of Quai des Orfèvres. His name and address were written in block capitals, and in the message part of the card there were just two words:
THANKS, CHIEF
1.
What happened at the George-V while it was raining in Paris, Maigret was sleeping and a certain number of people were doing their best
‘The most troublesome cases are those that seem so commonplace at first that you don’t attach any importance to them. They’re a bit like those illnesses that start in a subdued way, with a vague sense of unease. By the time you finally take them seriously, it’s often too late.’
This was something Maigret had said to Inspector Janvier as they crossed Pont-Neuf on their way back to police headquarters on Quai des Orfèvres one evening.
But tonight, Maigret made no comment on the events currently unfolding, because he was fast asleep beside Madame Maigret in his apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.
If he had been anticipating trouble, he certainly wouldn’t have thought of the Hôtel George-V, a place more often talked about in the society pages of newspapers than in the local news, but of a deputy’s daughter he had been obliged to summon to his office and advise to refrain from further bad behaviour. Although he had spoken to her in a fatherly tone, she had taken it quite badly. True, she had only just turned eighteen.
‘You’re nothing but a civil servant, I’ll see to it that your career is ruined …’
By three in the morning, a fine drizzle was falling, which although barely visible still lacquered the streets and gave a sheen to the lights, like tears to eyes.
At 3.30, on the third floor of the George-V, a bell rang in the room where a chambermaid and a valet were dozing. They both opened their eyes, but the valet was the first to notice that the yellow light had come on.
‘It’s for Jules,’ he said.
That meant that someone had rung for the waiter, who set off to take a bottle of Danish beer to a customer.
The two servants dropped off to sleep again on their respective chairs. There was a relatively long silence, then the bell rang again just as Jules, who was over sixty and had always done the night shift, returned with his empty tray.
‘Here goes!’ he muttered between his teeth.
Unhurriedly, he headed for suite 332, where a light was on above the door, knocked, waited a moment and, hearing nothing, gently opened. There was nobody in the dark sitting room. A little light came from the bedroom, where a faint, continuous moaning, like that of an animal or a child, could be heard.
The little countess was lying on the bed, her eyes half closed, her lips slightly parted, both hands on her chest more or less where the heart was.
‘Who is it?’ she moaned.
‘The waiter, countess.’
He knew her well. She knew him well, too.
‘I’m dying, Jules. I don’t want to. Call the doctor, quickly. Is there one in the hotel?’
‘Not at this hour, countess, but I’ll tell the nurse.’
Just over an hour earlier, he had brought a bottle of champagne, a bottle of whisky, some soda and an ice bucket to this same suite. The bottles and glasses were still in the sitting room, apart from one champagne glass that lay on the bedside table, tipped on its side.
‘Hello? Get me the nurse, quickly!’
Unsurprised, Mademoiselle Rosay, the duty operator, inserted a plug in one of the switchboard’s many sockets, then another.
Jules heard a distant ringing, then a sleepy voice.
‘Hello, infirmary here.’
‘Could you come down right away to suite 332?’
‘I’m dying, Jules …’
‘You’re not going to die, countess.’
He wasn’t sure what to do while waiting. Switching on the lamps in the sitting room, he noticed that the bottle of champagne was empty, whereas a quarter of the bottle of whisky was still untouched.
Countess Palmieri was still moaning, her hands taut on her chest.
‘Jules …’
‘Yes, countess?’
‘If they come too late …’
‘Mademoiselle Genévrier is on her way down now.’
‘But if they come too late, tell them I poisoned myself, but that I don’t want to die …’
The grey-haired, grey-faced nurse, whose body, beneath her white coat, still smelled of bed, entered the suite after tapping at the door for form’s sake. She was holding a brownish bottle of something or other in her hand, and her pockets were stuffed with boxes of pills.
‘She says she poisoned herself.’
Before anything else, Mademoiselle Genévrier looked around her, spotted the waste paper basket, took a tube from it and read the label.
‘Ask the switchboard operator to call Dr Frère. Say it’s urgent.’
Now that there was someone to take care of her, it was as if the countess were abandoning herself to her fate, making no further attempt to speak, her moaning growing fainter.
‘Hello? Call Dr Frère quickly. No, not me, the nurse is asking for him.’
Such things are so frequent, in luxury hotels and in some parts of Paris, that when the police emergency switchboard receives a call at night from the sixteenth arrondissement, for example, there is almost always someone who asks:
‘Barbiturates?’
It has become a generic name for this kind of suicide attempt.
‘Fetch me some hot water.’
‘Boiling?’
‘It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s hot.’
Mademoiselle Genévrier had taken the countess’s pulse and lifted her eyelid.
‘How many pills did you take?’
‘I don’t know …’ she replied in a little girl’s voice. ‘I can’t remember … Don’t let me die …’
‘Of course not, my dear. Just drink this.’
An arm round her shoulders, she held a glass in front of her lips.
‘Is it bad?’
‘Drink.’
Not far away, on Avenue Marceau, Dr Frère hastily dressed and grabbed his bag. Soon afterwards, he left the sleeping building and got into his car, which was parked outside.
The marble lobby of the George-V was deserted apart from the night receptionist reading a newspaper behind hi
s mahogany desk on one side and the porter doing nothing on the other.
‘Suite 332,’ the doctor said as he passed.
‘I know.’
The switchboard operator had told him all about it.
‘Shall I call an ambulance?’
‘Let me see first.’
Dr Frère knew most of the hotel’s suites. Like the nurse, he knocked more or less symbolically, then went in, took off his hat and headed straight for the bedroom.
After fetching a jug of hot water, Jules had withdrawn to a corner.
‘She took something doctor. I gave her …’
They exchanged a few words, which were like shorthand or like a conversation in code, while the countess, still supported by the nurse, retched violently and began to vomit.
‘Jules!’
‘Yes, doctor.’
‘Put a call through to the American Hospital in Neuilly and ask them to send an ambulance.’
There was nothing exceptional about any of this. The switchboard operator, headphones on her head, spoke to another night-shift operator over in Neuilly.
‘I don’t know for sure. It’s Countess Palmieri. The doctor’s upstairs with her now.’
The telephone rang in 332. Jules picked up the receiver.
‘The ambulance will be here in ten minutes,’ he announced.
Having just administered an injection, the doctor put the syringe back in his case.
‘Shall I dress her?’
‘Just wrap her in a blanket. If you see a suitcase anywhere, pack a few of her things. You know better than I do what she’ll ask for.’
A quarter of an hour later, two male nurses took the little countess downstairs and put her in the ambulance, while Dr Frère got back in his car.
‘I’ll get there the same time as you …’
He knew the nurses. The nurses knew him. He also knew the hospital’s switchboard operator, with whom he had a few words, as well as the young doctor on duty. These people, too, spoke little and in a kind of code, used as they were to working together.
‘Room 41 is free.’
‘How many pills?’
‘She can’t remember. The tube was found empty.’
‘Has she vomited?’
This nurse was as familiar to Dr Frère as the one at the George-V. As she got down to work, he at last lit a cigarette.
Pumping of the stomach. Taking of the pulse. Another injection.
‘All we can do now is let her sleep. Take her pulse every half hour.’
‘Yes, doctor.’
He went back down in a lift just like the one in the hotel and gave some instructions to the receptionist, who wrote them down.
‘Have you informed the police?’
‘Not yet.’
He looked at the black and white clock. 4.30.
‘Put me through to the police station in Rue de Berry.’
There were bicycles outside the door of the station, under the lamp. Inside, two young officers were playing cards, and a sergeant was making coffee on a spirit lamp.
‘Hello, Rue de Berry station … Dr What? … Frère? … All right, go ahead … Just a moment …’
The sergeant grabbed a pencil and noted down what he was being told on a scrap of paper.
‘Yes … Yes … I’ll tell them you’ll be sending your report … Is she dead?’
He hung up and said to the other two, who had been watching him:
‘Barbiturates. George-V …’
As far as he was concerned, it was just one more chore. With a sigh, he picked up the receiver again.
‘Central switchboard? … Rue de Berry station here … Is that you, Marchal? How are things over there? … Pretty quiet here … The fight? … No, we didn’t keep them. One of them has a lot of contacts, if you know what I mean. I had to phone the chief inspector, and he told me to let them go.’
The fight he was referring to had taken place in a nightclub in Rue de Ponthieu.
‘Anyway, I have something else. Barbiturates. Are you taking this down? … Countess … Yes, a countess … Whether she’s a real one or not, I have no idea … Palmieri … P for Paul, A for Arthur, L for Léon, M for … Palmieri, yes … Hôtel George-V … Suite 332 … Dr Frère … American Hospital in Neuilly … Yes, she did say something. She wanted to die, and then she changed her mind. The usual story …’
At 5.30, Inspector Justin of the eighth arrondissement questioned the night porter of the George-V, made a few notes, then spoke to Jules, the waiter, after which he headed for the hospital in Neuilly, where he was told that the countess was asleep and that her life was no longer in danger.
At eight in the morning, it was still drizzling, but the sky was clear. Lucas, who had a slight cold, took his seat behind his desk at Quai des Orfèvres, ready to look through the night’s reports.
Here, couched in bureaucratic language, was mention of the fight in Rue de Ponthieu, a dozen prostitutes arrested, a few drunks, a knife attack in Rue de Flandre and a few other incidents, none of them out of the ordinary.
Six lines also informed him of the suicide attempt by Countess Palmieri, née La Salle.
Maigret arrived at nine, somewhat anxious about the deputy’s daughter.
‘Has the chief asked for me?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Anything important in the reports?’
Lucas hesitated for a moment, came to the conclusion that an attempted suicide, even one at the George-V, was of no great importance and replied:
‘No, nothing.’
He had no inkling that in doing so he was making a serious mistake, one that would cause complications for Maigret and the whole of the Police Judiciaire.
When the bell rang in the corridor, Maigret left his office, carrying a few files, and, along with the other department heads, made his way to the commissioner’s office. Here, the cases currently being handled by the various chief inspectors were discussed, but since he knew nothing about her, Maigret did not mention Countess Palmieri.
By ten, he was back in his office. His pipe in his mouth, he began his report on an armed robbery that had occurred three days earlier, the perpetrators of which he was hoping to arrest very soon thanks to an Alpine beret left at the scene.
At about the same time, a man named John T. Arnold, having his breakfast in pyjamas and dressing gown in his room at the Hôtel Scribe, on the Grands Boulevards, picked up the telephone.
‘Hello, mademoiselle. Could you please get me Colonel Ward at the Hôtel George-V?’
‘Right away, Monsieur Arnold.’
Monsieur Arnold was a long-standing guest who lived at the Scribe virtually all year.
The switchboard operators at the Scribe and the George-V knew each other, as operators do, even though they had never met.
‘Morning, dear, can you get me Colonel Ward?’
‘Is it for Arnold?’
The two men were in the habit of calling each other several times a day, and the ten a.m. telephone call was a tradition.
‘He hasn’t rung for his breakfast yet. Shall I call him anyway?’
‘Wait. I’ll ask my man.’
The plug passed from one socket to another.
‘Monsieur Arnold? … The colonel hasn’t rung for his breakfast yet. Shall I get them to wake him?’
‘Has he left a message?’
‘They didn’t tell me anything.’
‘It is ten o’clock, isn’t it?’
‘Ten past ten.’
‘Call him.’
The plug again.
‘Ring him, dear. Too bad if he grumbles …’
Silence on the line. The switchboard operator at the Scribe had time to put through three other calls, including one from Amsterdam.
‘Are you still there, dear? Don’t forget my colonel.’
‘I keep ringing him. He doesn’t answer.’
A few moments later, the Scribe called the George-V.
‘Listen, dear. I told my man the colonel isn’t answering. He sa
ys it’s not possible, the colonel is expecting his ten o’clock call, apparently it’s very important.’
‘I’ll ring him again …’
Then, after another vain attempt:
‘Wait a minute. I’ll ask the porter if he’s gone out.’
A silence.
‘No, his key isn’t in the rack. What do you want me to do?’
In his suite, John T. Arnold was getting impatient.
‘Well, mademoiselle? Have you forgotten my call?’
‘No, Monsieur Arnold. The colonel isn’t answering. The porter hasn’t seen him go out, and his key isn’t in the rack.’
‘Let them send the waiter to knock at his door.’
It wasn’t Jules this time, but an Italian named Gino, who had taken over on the third floor, where Colonel Ward’s suite was located, five doors down from Countess Palmieri’s.
The waiter called the porter back.
‘There’s no answer, and the door’s locked.’
The porter turned to his assistant.
‘Go and have a look.’
The assistant now also knocked, saying in a low voice:
‘Colonel Ward?’
Then he took a skeleton key from his pocket and opened the door.
In the suite, the shutters were closed, and a lamp was still lit on a table in the sitting room. The lights were also on in the bedroom, the bed made up for the night, the pyjamas laid out.
‘Colonel Ward?’
There were dark clothes on a chair, socks on the carpet, and a pair of shoes, one of them upside down, showing the heel.
‘Colonel Ward!’
The bathroom door was ajar. The porter’s assistant first knocked, then opened the door and simply said:
‘Monsieur!’
He almost telephoned from the room, but was so reluctant to stay there that he preferred to leave the suite, closing the door behind him. Neglecting the lift, he ran down the stairs.
Three or four guests were standing around the porter, who was looking through a transatlantic plane schedule for them. His assistant whispered in his ear:
‘He’s dead.’
‘One moment …’ Then, only now grasping the words he had just heard: ‘What do you mean?’
‘Dead … In his bath …’
The porter asked the guests, in English, to wait a minute. He crossed the lobby and leaned across the reception desk.
Maigret Enjoys Himself Page 14
