Maigret Travels

by Georges Simenon

  ‘What number, detective chief inspector?’

  ‘The Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo.’

  Within a few moments he had learned from the porter of the Hôtel de Paris that Monsieur Joseph Van Meulen did indeed have a suite at the hotel, that he had been called to Nice by a telephone call, that his chauffeur had driven him there and that he had been away for quite a long time and had only just got back.

  Right now he was having a bath. He had a table booked for the gala dinner at the Sporting Club that very evening.

  They hadn’t seen Countess Palmieri, who was very well known in the hotel. As for Mademoiselle Nadine, she hadn’t gone with Van Meulen when he had left in his car.

  Who was Nadine? Maigret had no idea. The porter, though, seemed convinced the whole world knew who she was, and Maigret avoided asking any questions.

  ‘Are you taking the Rome plane?’ the young inspector asked.

  ‘No. I’ll book a seat on Swissair for tomorrow morning. I’ll probably spend the night in Monte Carlo.’

  ‘I’ll take you to Swissair.’

  A desk on the concourse, side by side with other desks.

  ‘Do you know Countess Palmieri?’

  ‘She’s one of our best customers. She took a plane for Geneva not long ago.’

  ‘Do you know where she’s staying in Geneva?’

  ‘She doesn’t usually stay in Geneva, but in Lausanne. We’ve often sent her tickets at the Lausanne Palace.’

  It suddenly struck Maigret that Paris was so large and the world so small! It took him almost as long to get to Monte Carlo by coach as it had taken him to fly here from Orly.

  4.

  In which Maigret meets another billionaire, as naked as the colonel, but alive and well

  Here, too, there was no desire to advertise the presence of the police. Entering the lobby, Maigret recognized the porter, whom he had phoned from the airport and with whom, he realized on seeing him, he had several times had dealings when the man worked in a luxury hotel on the Champs-Élysées. At that time, he hadn’t presided over the key rack, nor had he worn this long frock coat, but had been a mere bellboy at the guests’ beck and call.

  In the lobby, there were still people in beachwear as well as men already in dinner jackets. A large, almost naked woman in front of Maigret, her back scarlet, a little dog under her arm, gave off a strong smell of suntan oil.

  Instead of calling Maigret by his name – let alone addressing him as detective chief inspector! – the porter gave him a conspiratorial wink and said:

  ‘Just a moment … Yes, I’ve taken care of it.’

  Then he picked up the telephone.

  ‘Hello, Monsieur Jean?’

  He spoke in a low voice: the telephones must have been particularly sensitive here.

  ‘The person I told you about has arrived. Should I send him up? … Of course.’

  Then, to Maigret:

  ‘Monsieur Van Meulen’s secretary is waiting for you on the fifth floor, outside the lift, and he’ll take you …’

  It was rather as if they were doing him a favour. A young man dressed up to the nines was indeed waiting for him in the corridor.

  ‘Monsieur Joseph Van Meulen has asked me to apologize for seeing you during his massage, but he has to go out almost immediately afterwards. He’s also asked me to tell you that he’s delighted to meet you in the flesh. He’s followed some of your cases with enormous interest.’

  It was all a little odd. Why couldn’t Van Meulen tell him these things himself, since they were about to find themselves face to face?

  Maigret was admitted to a suite so similar to the one in the George-V – the same furniture, an identical layout – that he might have thought himself still in Paris if he hadn’t seen the harbour and the yachts through the windows.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret,’ Monsieur Jean announced, opening the door to the bedroom.

  ‘Come in, detective chief inspector, make yourself at home,’ said a man lying on his stomach, stark naked, being kneaded by a masseur in white trousers and a vest that left his huge biceps uncovered. ‘I’ve been expecting a visit, but I assumed they would just send me a local inspector. That you went to all this trouble personally …’

  He didn’t finish the sentence. He was the second billionaire Maigret had encountered in one day and was as naked as the first, although that didn’t seem to embarrass him in the least.

  In the photographs found in the biscuit tin, many of the people were barely dressed, as if, above a certain social level, there were a different notion of modesty.

  The man was probably very tall and still quite slim. He was tanned all over except for a narrow strip of skin that his swimming trunks had prevented from absorbing the sun and which was embarrassingly white. Maigret couldn’t see his face, which was buried in the pillow, but the skull, equally tanned, was bald and smooth.

  Heedless of the masseur’s presence – he was probably of no importance in his eyes – Van Meulen continued:

  ‘I knew, of course, that you would track down Louise. I advised her this morning, on the telephone, that she shouldn’t try to hide. Mind you, I didn’t know at that point what had happened. She didn’t dare give me the details over the phone. Besides, she was in such a state … Have you met her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s a strange creature, one of the oddest and most endearing women there are … Have you finished yet, Bob?’

  ‘Two more minutes, monsieur.’

  The masseur, with his broken nose and squashed ears, must once have been a boxer. His forearms and the backs of his hands were covered with jet-black hairs on which sweat had formed.

  ‘I assume you’re still in touch with Paris? What’s the latest news?’

  The man was speaking quite naturally, with a relaxed air.

  ‘The investigation is still in its early stages,’ Maigret replied cautiously.

  ‘I’m not talking about the investigation. What about the papers? Have they published the story?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if one of the Philpses at least, probably the younger of the two, hadn’t already got on a plane for Paris.’

  ‘Who would have informed them?’

  ‘Arnold, of course. And as soon as the women find out …’

  ‘Are you referring to the colonel’s ex-wives?’

  ‘This concerns them first and foremost, doesn’t it? I have no idea where Dorothy is, but Alice must be in Paris, and Muriel, who lives in Lausanne, will jump on the first plane … That’s enough, Bob. Thank you. Same time tomorrow … No, wait, I have an appointment! Shall we say four o’clock?’

  The masseur had placed a yellow terry towel over the middle part of Van Meulen’s body, and Van Meulen stood up slowly, wrapping the towel around himself like a loincloth. Standing, he was indeed very tall, strong and muscular, in perfect physical condition for a man of sixty-five, perhaps even seventy. He looked at Maigret with a curiosity he made no attempt to conceal.

  ‘It gives me great pleasure …’ he said, without going into further details. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I get dressed in front of you? I have to, I’ve invited twenty people to the gala dinner this evening. I just have time to take a shower …’

  He went into the bathroom, and water could be heard running. The masseur put his things away in a small case, donned a coloured jacket and left after also throwing Maigret a curious glance.

  Van Meulen was already back, wrapped in a dressing gown, drops of water on his skull and face. His dinner suit, his white silk shirt, socks, shoes, everything he was going to wear was together on an ingenious clothes stand the like of which Maigret had never seen before.

  ‘David was a good friend, an old partner in crime, I might say. We’d known each other for more than thirty years – no, wait, thirty-eight years exactly – and we’d been equal partners in quite a few business deals. I was very surprised by the news of his death, especially a death like that
.’

  The surprising thing was how completely natural he was, so much so that Maigret couldn’t recall having encountered anything like it in his life. He came and went, occupied with getting ready, and it was almost as if he were alone and talking to himself.

  This was the man the little countess called ‘Daddy’, and Maigret was starting to understand why. You sensed his strength. You could rely on him. The young secretary was in the next room, making telephone calls. A waiter nobody had rung for brought in a misted glass containing a clear liquid, in all likelihood a Martini, on a silver tray. It must have been the hour for it, part of the daily routine.

  ‘Thank you, Ludo. May I offer you something, Maigret?’

  He didn’t say ‘detective chief inspector’, or ‘monsieur’, and there was nothing shocking about that. It could even be seen as a way of putting the two of them on an equal footing.

  ‘I’ll have the same as you.’

  ‘Very dry?’

  Maigret nodded. Van Meulen had already put on trousers, vest and black silk socks and was looking around for his shoe horn so that he could put on his polished shoes.

  ‘Have you ever met her?’

  ‘You mean Countess Palmieri?’

  ‘Louise, yes. If you don’t yet know her, you may find this hard to understand. You have wide experience of men, I know, but I wonder if you understand women so well … Are you planning to go and see her in Lausanne?’

  He wasn’t playing any tricks, wasn’t trying to pretend that the countess was anywhere else.

  ‘She’ll have had time to calm down a little. This morning, when she called me from the clinic, she was so incoherent that I advised her to get on the first plane she could and come to see me.’

  ‘The two of you were married, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, for two and a half years. We’ve remained good friends. Why should we have fallen out? … It’s a miracle that the nurse at the George-V thought of putting some clothes and Louise’s handbag in the ambulance, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to leave the hospital. She had no money in her bag, just some small change. At Orly, she was forced to pay her taxi fare with a cheque, and that wasn’t the only thing. Anyway, I had her picked up at the airport, and we had a bite to eat in Nice, where she told me the story.’

  Maigret avoided asking any questions, preferring to let Van Meulen speak freely.

  ‘I hope you don’t suspect her of killing David?’

  Receiving no reply, Van Meulen stiffened.

  ‘That would be a bad mistake, Maigret, I tell you this as a friend. And first of all, allow me to ask a question. Are you sure that someone kept David’s head underwater?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Louise, of course.’

  ‘So she saw him?’

  ‘Yes, she saw him and wouldn’t dream of denying it. Didn’t you know that? … Jean, could you give me my cufflinks and my shirt front buttons?’

  He was suddenly anxious.

  ‘Listen, Maigret, I’d better put you in the picture, otherwise you might get the wrong idea, and I’d like to avoid Louise being bothered more than is necessary. She’s still a little girl. She may be thirty-nine, but she’s a child and she’ll always be a child. That’s very much part of her charm. It’s also what’s constantly got her into impossible situations.’

  The secretary helped him to put on his platinum cufflinks, and Van Meulen sat down opposite Maigret, as if granting himself a moment’s rest.

  ‘Louise’s father was a general, and her mother was minor provincial nobility. She was born in Morocco, I think, where her father was stationed, but she spent much of her youth in Nancy. She already wanted to live her own life and she eventually managed to persuade her parents to send her to Paris to study art history … Cheers!’

  Maigret took a gulp of his Martini and looked around for a pedestal table to put his glass on.

  ‘Put it on the floor, it doesn’t matter where … She met an Italian, Count Marco Palmieri. It was love at first sight. Have you met Palmieri?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You will.’

  He seemed sure of that.

  ‘He’s a real count, but has no money. From what I know, when he met Louise he was living off the kindness of a middle-aged lady. Louise’s parents in Nancy took a good deal of persuading. But she sweetened the pill somehow, and they finally gave their consent to the marriage. Let’s call that the first chapter, the time when people started talking about the “little countess”. They had an apartment in Passy, then a hotel room, an apartment again, lots of ups and downs, but they never stopped being seen at cocktail parties and receptions and in places where people amuse themselves.’

  ‘Was Palmieri using his wife?’

  Van Meulen frankly hesitated.

  ‘No. Not in the way you think. She wouldn’t have allowed that anyway. She was madly in love with him and she still is. It gets harder to understand, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth. I’m even convinced that Marco’s in love with her, too, or that at any rate he can’t do without her. All the same, they did quarrel. She left him three or four times after violent scenes, but never for more than a few days. Marco would just have to show up looking pale and haggard and beg forgiveness, and she’d fall into his arms again.’

  ‘What did they live on?’

  Van Meulen shrugged imperceptibly.

  ‘You ask me that? What do so many people we shake hands with every day live on? It was during one of those bad patches that I met her. I felt sorry for her. I didn’t think it was the life for her, she was worn out, I thought she’d soon wither in the hands of a man like Marco and, as I’d just divorced, I proposed to her.’

  ‘Were you in love with her?’

  Van Meulen looked at him without saying a word and his eyes seemed to be repeating the question.

  ‘The same kind of thing,’ he said at last, ‘has happened several times in my life, as it happened to David. Does that answer your question? I make no secret of the fact that I had a conversation with Marco and gave him a large cheque to take a trip to South America.’

  ‘And he agreed?’

  ‘I have ways of persuading people.’

  ‘I assume he’d committed a number of … indiscretions?’

  A barely perceptible shrug.

  ‘Louise was my wife for nearly three years, and I was quite happy with her.’

  ‘But you knew she was still in love with Marco?’

  Van Meulen’s expression seemed to say:

  ‘What of it?’

  He continued:

  ‘She went everywhere with me. I travel a lot. She met my friends, some of whom she already knew. There were difficult moments, of course, and even a few really bad quarrels … I think she had, and still has, a genuine affection for me. She called me Daddy, which doesn’t shock me: after all, I am thirty years older than her.’

  ‘Was it through you that she met David Ward?’

  ‘Yes, it was through me, as you say.’

  A little ironic gleam had appeared in his eyes.

  ‘It wasn’t David who took her away from me, but Marco, who came back one fine day, thin and wretched, and started spending his days on the pavement opposite looking like a stray dog. One evening, she threw herself in my arms, sobbing, and confessed that—’

  The telephone had rung in the next room, and now the secretary, who had answered it, appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Monsieur Philps on the line.’

  ‘Donald or Herbert?’

  ‘Donald.’

  ‘What did I tell you? He’s the younger one … Is he calling from Paris?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Put him through to me here.’

  He reached out his hand for the telephone. The conversation was conducted in English.

  ‘Yes …’ Van Meulen replied to whatever was asked at the other end. ‘No … I don’t know yet … Apparently there’s no doubt about it … Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, who’s handling the case, is with
me right now … I’ll certainly be going to Paris for the funeral, although it’s really inconvenient, because I was supposed to be leaving for Ceylon the day after tomorrow. Are you at the George-V? … If I find out anything, I’ll call you … No, I’ll be out this evening and won’t be back until three in the morning … Have a good evening.’

  He looked at Maigret.

  ‘There you go. Philps is on the spot, as I predicted. He’s very agitated. The English newspapers already know about it, and he’s being besieged by reporters … Where was I? I really do have to finish getting dressed … My ties, Jean.’

  He was brought six bow ties to choose from. They all looked identical, but he examined them carefully before selecting one.

  ‘What else could I have done? I told her I would divorce her, and since I didn’t want Marco to leave her penniless, rather than give her a lump sum I settled a modest regular income on her.’

  ‘And you continued to see her socially?’

  ‘I continued to see both of them. Does that surprise you?’

  He knotted his bow tie in front of the mirror, stretching his neck so that his Adam’s apple stood out.

  ‘As was only to be expected, the scenes started all over again. Then, one fine day, David divorced Muriel, and now it was his turn to play the Good Samaritan.’

  ‘But he didn’t marry her?’

  ‘He didn’t have time. He was waiting for the divorce proceedings to be over … Come to think of it, I wonder what’s going to happen now. I don’t know exactly what stage they’d reached, but if all the papers haven’t been signed, it’s quite possible that Muriel Halligan will be considered David’s widow.’

  ‘Is this all that you know?’

  ‘No,’ Van Meulen replied simply. ‘I also know at least some of what happened last night, and it might as well be me telling you as Louise. Before anything else, I want to make it quite clear that she didn’t kill David Ward. First of all, she’s probably incapable of it.’

  ‘Physically, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, that is what I mean. Morally, if I may use the expression, we’re all capable of committing murder, provided we have sufficient motive and we’re convinced we won’t get caught.’