‘“If you should find yourself on your own …”
‘“If I were to be lost to you …”
‘“When you will be alone …”
‘“When I am no longer there …”
‘These words recur more and more frequently, as if they haunt him, yet I know my father has an iron constitution. I cabled his doctor for reassurance; I have his reply. He makes fun of me and assures me that, barring some accident, my father has a good thirty years ahead of him.
‘Do you understand?’
It’s what they all say: Do you understand?
‘I went to see my legal adviser, Monsieur d’Hoquélus, whom you doubtless know by reputation. He’s an old man, as you know, a man of experience. I showed him these latest letters … I saw that he was almost as worried as I was.
‘And yesterday he confided in me that my father had instructed him to carry out some inexplicable transactions.
‘Monsieur d’Hoquélus is my father’s agent in France, a man he relies on. He is the one who was authorized to give me all the money I might need. Well, recently my father has told him to make lifetime gifts of considerable sums to various people.
‘Not in order to disinherit me – believe me, on the contrary: according to signed but not notarized contracts, these sums will be handed over to me in the future.
‘Why, when I am his sole heir?
‘Because he is afraid, don’t you see, that his fortune may not be passed on to me in the proper manner.
‘I’ve brought Monsieur d’Hoquélus with me. He’s in the car. If you would like to speak to him …’
How could anyone not be impressed by the gravity of the old notary? And he says almost the same things as the young man.
‘I am convinced,’ he begins, weighing his words, ‘that some important event has occurred in the life of Joachim Maura.’
‘Why do you call him Joachim?’
‘It is his real first name. In the United States, he adopted the more common name of John. And I, too, am certain that he feels he is in serious danger. When Jean admitted to me that he intended to go over there, I did not venture to dissuade him but I did advise him to go accompanied by a person of some experience …’
‘Why not yourself?’
‘Because of my age, first of all. And then for reasons which you will perhaps understand later on … I am confident that what is required in New York is a man familiar with police matters. I will add that my instructions have always been to give Jean Maura whatever money he might want and that in the present circumstances, I can only approve his desire to …’
The conversation had lasted for two hours, in hushed voices, and Monsieur d’Hoquélus had not been indifferent to the appeal of Maigret’s aged brandy. From time to time, the inspector had heard his wife come to listen at the door, not from curiosity, but to find out if she could finally set the table.
After the car had left, what was her amazement when Maigret, none too proud of having let himself be persuaded, had told her bluntly, ‘I’m leaving for America.’
‘What did you say?’
And now a yellow cab was taking him through unfamiliar streets made depressing by drizzle.
Why had Jean Maura disappeared at the very moment when they reached New York? Was Maigret to believe that he had met someone or that, in his haste to see his father again, he had cavalierly left his companion in the lurch?
The streets were becoming more elegant. The cab stopped at a corner of what Maigret did not yet know was the famous Fifth Avenue, and a doorman hurried over to him.
A fresh quandary about paying the cab driver with this unfamiliar money. Then off to the lobby of the St Regis and the reception desk, where he finally found someone who spoke French.
‘I would like to see Mr John Maura.’
‘One moment, please …’
‘Can you tell me if his son has arrived?’
‘No one has asked for Mr Maura this morning.’
‘Is he in?’
Picking up the receiver, the clerk replied frostily, ‘I will ask his secretary.’
‘Hello … Mr MacGill? … This is the front desk … There is someone here asking to see Mr Maura … What was that? … I’ll ask him … Might I have your name, sir?’
‘Maigret.’
‘Hello … Mr Maigret … I see … Very well, sir.’
Hanging up, the clerk announced, ‘Mr MacGill asked me to tell you that Mr Maura sees people only by appointment. If you wish to write to him and give him your address, he will certainly send you his reply.’
‘Would you be kind enough to tell this Mr MacGill that I have arrived from France expressly to see Mr Maura and that I have important information for him.’
‘I am sorry … These gentlemen would never forgive me for disturbing them a second time, but if you would take the trouble to write a note here, in the lobby, I will have it sent up with a bellboy.’
Maigret was furious. More with himself than with this MacGill, whom he did not know but had already begun to detest.
Just as he detested, immediately and completely, everything around him: the gilt-encrusted lobby, the bellboys smirking at him, the pretty women coming and going, the cocky men who jostled him without deigning to apologize.
Monsieur,
I have just arrived from France, entrusted with an important mission by your son and M. d’Hoquélus. My time is as precious as yours, so I would be grateful if you would see me right away.
Yours sincerely,
Maigret
For a good quarter of an hour he was left to fume off in his corner, so angry that he smoked his pipe even though he knew this was hardly the place for it. At last a bellboy arrived, who accompanied him up in the elevator, led him along a corridor, knocked on a door and abandoned him.
‘Come in!’
Why had he envisioned MacGill as a middle-aged person of forbidding aspect? He was a tall, muscular young man, fashionably dressed, who came towards him holding out his hand.
‘Forgive me, sir, but Mr Maura is besieged by so many solicitants of all sorts that we must create a strong barrier around him. You tell me you’ve just come over from France … Am I to understand that you are the … the former … that is to say …’
‘The former Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, yes.’
‘Please, do sit down. Cigar?’
Several boxes of them were set out on a table. A huge mahogany desk dominated the immense drawing room yet did not make it seem at all like an office.
Disdaining the Havana cigars, Maigret had refilled his pipe and now studied the other man rather coolly.
‘You wrote that you’ve brought us news of Monsieur Jean?’
‘If you will allow me, I’ll speak personally of that to Monsieur Maura when you’ve been kind enough to take me to him.’
MacGill showed all his teeth, which were quite beautiful, in a smile.
‘It’s easy to see, sir, that you are from Europe. Otherwise you would know that John Maura is one of the busiest men in New York, that even I have no idea where he is at this moment and, finally, that I handle all his affairs, including the most personal ones. You may therefore speak candidly and tell me …’
‘I’ll wait until Mr Maura agrees to receive me.’
‘He would still have to know what all this is about.’
‘I told you, it’s about his son.’
‘Am I, given your profession, to assume that the young man has done something foolish?’
Unflinching, Maigret continued to stare coldly at
the other man.
‘Forgive me for insisting, inspector. Although you have retired, according to the newspapers, I suppose that you are still addressed by your title? Forgive me, as I said, for reminding you that we are in the United States, not France, and that John Maura’s time is limited. Jean is a charming boy, perhaps a bit too sensitive, but I wonder what he could have …’
Maigret calmly rose and picked up the hat he had placed on the rug beside his chair.
‘I’ll be taking a room in this hotel. When Mr Maura has decided to see me …’
‘He will not be back in New York for about two weeks.’
‘Can you tell me where he is at present?’
‘That’s hard to say. He travels by plane and was in Panama the day before yesterday. Today he might have landed in Rio or Venezuela …’
‘Thank you.’
‘Do you have friends in New York, inspector?’
‘No one besides a few police chiefs with whom I’ve worked on occasion.’
‘Would you allow me to invite you to lunch?’
‘I think I would rather have lunch with one of them …’
‘And if I insisted? I am sorry about the role my position forces me to play and I do hope you won’t hold it against me. I’m older than Jean, but not by much, and am quite fond of him. You haven’t even given me any news of him …’
‘Excuse me, but may I know how long you’ve been Mr Maura’s private secretary?’
‘About six months. What I mean is, I’ve been with him for six months but have known him a long time, if not for ever.’
Someone was walking in the next room. Maigret saw MacGill’s face change colour. The secretary listened anxiously to the approaching footsteps, watched the gilt knob on the door to the next room slowly turn, then open slightly.
‘Come here a moment, Jos …’
A thin, nervous face, crowned with hair that was still blond although streaked with white. Eyes that took in Maigret; a forehead folding into a frown. The secretary hurried over, but the new arrival had already changed his mind and entered the office, still staring at Maigret.
‘Have we …?’ he began, as when one appears to recognize somebody and tries to remember more.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Police Judiciaire. More precisely, former Inspector Maigret, as I’ve been retired for a year now.’
John Maura was shorter than average, lean, but apparently endowed with exceptional energy.
‘Is it to me that you wish to speak?’
He turned to MacGill without waiting for a reply.
‘What is it, Jos?’
‘I don’t know, chief … The inspector …’
‘If you wouldn’t mind, Mr Maura, I would like to speak to you in private. It’s about your son.’
But there was not a single reaction in the face of the man who wrote such affectionate letters.
‘You may speak in front of my secretary.’
‘Very well … Your son is in New York.’
And Maigret’s eyes never left the two men. Was he mistaken? He felt distinctly that MacGill was shaken, whereas Maura’s sole response was simply to say casually, ‘Oh …’
‘Aren’t you surprised?’
‘You must know that my son is free to do whatever he likes.’
‘Aren’t you at least astonished that he hasn’t yet come to see you?’
‘Given that I don’t know when he may have arrived …’
‘He arrived this morning, with me.’
‘In that case, you must know.’
‘I know nothing, that’s just it. In the rush of disembarkation and arrival formalities I lost sight of him. The last time I saw and spoke to him was when the ship was anchored at the Quarantine Landing.’
‘It’s quite possible that he met up with some friends.’
And John Maura slowly lit a long cigar with his initials on the band.
‘I’m sorry, inspector, but I do not see how my son’s arrival—’
‘Has any connection with my visit?’
‘That is more or less what I wanted to say. I am very busy this morning. With your permission, I will leave you with my secretary, to whom you may speak freely. Please excuse me, inspector.’
A rather abrupt nod. He turned on his heel and vanished next door. After a moment’s hesitation, MacGill murmured, ‘With your permission …’
And he disappeared in the wake of his employer, closing the door behind him. Maigret was alone in the office, alone and not very proud of himself. He heard whispering in the neighbouring room. He was about to leave angrily when the secretary reappeared, brisk and smiling.
‘You see, my dear sir, you were wrong to distrust me.’
‘I thought Mr Maura was in Venezuela or Rio …’
The young man laughed.
‘Back at Quai des Orfèvres, where you had heavy responsibilities, didn’t you ever use a little white lie to get rid of a visitor?’
‘Thanks anyway for having treated me to the same thing!’
‘Come, don’t hold a grudge against me … What time is it? Eleven thirty … If it’s all right with you, I’ll phone the desk to reserve you a room, otherwise you’d have some difficulty getting one. The St Regis is one of the most exclusive hotels in New York. I’ll give you time to take a bath and change, and, if you like, we’ll meet at the bar at one o’clock, after which we’ll have lunch together.’
Maigret was tempted to refuse and walk out wreathed in his surliest expression. He would have been quite capable, had there been a ship that very evening for Europe, of sailing home without pursuing any closer acquaintance with this city that had welcomed him so harshly.
‘Hello … Front desk, please … Hello, MacGill here. Would you please reserve a suite for a friend of Mr Maura … Yes … Mr Maigret. Thank you.’
And turning toward the inspector, he asked, ‘Do you speak a little English?’
‘Like all those who learned it in school and have forgotten it.’
‘In that case, you’ll sometimes find things difficult at first. Is this your first trip to the United States? … I assure you that I will be ready to assist you in any way I can.’
Someone was behind the connecting door, probably John Maura. MacGill knew this, too, but did not seem bothered by it.
‘Just follow the bellboy. I’ll see you later, inspector. And Jean Maura will have doubtless reappeared in time to have lunch with us. I’ll have your luggage brought up to you.’
Another elevator. A sitting room, a bedroom, a bathroom, a porter waiting for his tip, at whom Maigret stared in bafflement because he had rarely been so bewildered – and even humiliated – in his life.
To think that ten days earlier he’d been quietly playing belote with the doctor, the fertilizer dealer and the mayor of Meung in the warm and always rather dimly lit Café du Cheval Blanc!
2.
Surely this red-headed man was some kind of good genie! On 49th Street, a few steps from the lights and racket of Broadway, he had gone down several stairs as if heading for a cellar and pushed open a door, the window of which had a curtain with little red checks. Those same democratic red checks, so reminiscent of the humble bistros of Montmartre and the Parisian suburbs, reappeared on the tables – and there as well were the zinc-sheathed bar, a familiar smell of cooking and a plumpish patronne, a touch provincial, who came over in welcome.
‘What will you have to eat, my dears? There’s always steak, of course, but today I have such a coq au vin …’
The genie or, rather, Special Agent O’Brien,
smiled very sweetly, almost bashfully.
‘You see?’ he said to Maigret, not without a touch of irony. ‘New York is not what people think.’
And soon an authentic Beaujolais stood on the table to accompany the steaming plates of coq au vin.
‘You’re not going to tell me, O’Brien, that Americans are used to …’
‘Eating the way we are this evening? Perhaps not every day. Perhaps not everyone. But believe me, some of us do not turn up our noses at classic cookery, and I’ll find you a hundred restaurants like this one. You arrived this morning, and barely twelve hours later here you are right at home, aren’t you? … Now go on with your story.’
‘This MacGill, as I mentioned, was waiting for me at the bar in the St Regis. I could tell immediately that he’d decided to change his attitude towards me.’
MacGill had stuck to him all afternoon, and it was only after shaking him off that Maigret had been able at six o’clock to call Special Agent O’Brien of the FBI, whom he had met in France a few years earlier while involved in a major international case.
No creature could have been gentler, more placid than this tall redhead with a sheepish expression, a man so shy that at the age of forty-six he still blushed. He had told Maigret to meet him in the St Regis lobby, but after the inspector mentioned John Maura, O’Brien had first taken his colleague to a small bar near Broadway.
‘I suppose you don’t like whisky or cocktails?’
‘I admit that if there’s any beer around …’
It was a bar like any other. A few men at the counter; lovebirds at the four or five tables bathed in shadows. Wasn’t it a strange idea to have brought him to a place where he clearly didn’t fit in?
And wasn’t it stranger yet to see O’Brien select a coin from his pocket and slip it solemnly into the slot of a jukebox that began softly to play a sappy, sentimental melody?
And the redhead smiled, considering his colleague with a twinkling eye.
‘You don’t like music?’
Maigret hadn’t had time yet to work off all his ill humour and could not help letting it show.
Maigret in New York Page 2
