“Ah!” Gigi cried triumphantly. “What did I tell you!”
Charlotte couldn’t take it in. She seemed at a loss. She wasn’t made for drama and seemed perpetually to be looking for something to cling to.
“I also saw the magistrate. He has been sent an anonymous letter concerning Prosper and Mimi . . .”
No reaction. Charlotte was still staring at him with curiosity, her lids heavy, her body limp.
“An anonymous letter?”
He handed her the recipe book which he had brought with him.
“It’s your writing in this book, isn’t it?”
“Yes . . . Why?”
“Would you be good enough to take a pen? . . . preferably an old one which splutters . . . And paper . . . and ink . . .”
There was a bottle of ink and a penholder on the dresser. Gigi looked from Maigret to her friend in turn, as if ready to intervene the moment she sensed danger.
“Make yourself comfortable . . . And write . . .”
“What shall I write?”
“Don’t write anything, Charlotte! You can’t trust them . . .”
“Write—There’s no danger, I promise you—‘Sir, I am taking the liberty of writing to you about the Donge affair, which I read about in the newspaper . . .’
“Why do you spell newspaper with a ‘u’?”
“I don’t know . . . What should I put?”
On the anonymous letter which he had in his hand, there was a “z.”
“. . . ‘The American woman isn’t really an American woman; she was a dancer and her name was Mimi . . .’”
Maigret shrugged impatiently.
“That will do,” he said. “Now, take a look . . .”
The writing was exactly the same. Only the spelling mistakes were different.
“Who wrote that?”
“That’s exactly what I would like to know . . .”
“You thought it was me?”
She was choking with anger, and the superintendent hurriedly tried to calm her.
“I didn’t think anything . . . What I came to ask you is who, besides you and Gigi, knew about Prosper and Mimi’s affair, and particularly about the child? . . .”
“Can you think of anyone, Gigi?”
They thought for a long time, indolently. They seemed to be aimlessly drifting in the untidy house, which had suddenly taken on a sordid aspect. Gigi’s nostrils quivered from time to time, and Maigret realized that it wouldn’t be long before she was out searching frantically for a fix.
“No . . . Except us three . . .”
“Who was it who got Mimi’s letter at the time?”
“It was me,” said Gigi, “. . . and before I left Cannes, I found it in a box where I kept some souvenirs . . . I brought it with me . . .”
“Let me see . . .”
“Provided you promise . . .”
“Of course, you fool! Can’t you see I’m trying to get Prosper out of the mess.”
He felt concerned, irritable. He had begun to have a vague feeling that there were mysterious complications to the affair, but he had not the slightest clue to tell him what they might be.
“Will you promise to give it back?”
He shrugged again, and read:
My dear old Gigi,
Phew! I’ve made it! I’ve made it at last! You and Charlotte laughed when I told you I’d get out of there one day and that I’d be a real lady.
Well, ducky, I’ve done it . . . Oswald and I were married yesterday, and it was a funny kind of wedding, because he wanted it to be in England, where it’s quite different from in France. In fact I sometimes wonder at times if I’m really married.
Let Charlotte know. We’ll be sailing for America in three or four days’ time. We don’t know exactly when we’ll be sailing, because of the strike.
As for poor Prosper, I think it would be best not to tell him anything. He’s a nice boy, but a bit simple. I don’t know how I managed to stay with him for nearly a year. It must have been my year for being kind . . .
But still, he’s done me a good turn, without knowing it. Keep this to yourself. No point in telling Charlotte—she’s a great sentimental fool.
I’ve known for some time that I was pregnant. You can imagine the face I made when I knew. I rushed to see a specialist before telling Oswald . . . We did some calculations . . . Well, it’s quite definite that the baby can’t be Oswald’s . . . So it’s poor Prosper who . . . Don’t ever let him know! He might get a rush of paternal feeling!
It would take too long to tell you everything . . . The doctor has been very decent about it . . . By cheating a bit as to the date of birth (we’ll have to pretend it’s a premature delivery), we’ve succeeded in convincing Oswald that he’s going to be a father.
He took it very well. Contrary to what one might think when one first meets him, he’s not at all cold. In fact when we’re by ourselves he’s like a child, and the other day, when we were in Paris, we visited all the pleasure gardens and rode on the roundabouts . . .
Well, I’m now Mrs. Oswald J. Clark of Detroit (Michigan), and from now on I shall speak English all the time, because Oswald, if you remember, doesn’t know a word of French.
I think of you two sometimes. Is Charlotte still just as worried about getting fat? Does she still knit all the time? I bet she’ll finish up behind the counter in a haberdasher’s shop in the provinces!
As for you, my old Gigi, I don’t think you’ll ever grow respectable. As the client in the white gaiters said so comically—you remember, the one who gulped down a whole bottle of champagne in one go?—you’ve got vice in the blood!
Say hello to the Croisette for me and don’t burst out laughing when you look at Prosper and imagine him being a father without knowing it.
I’ll send you some postcards.
Love and kisses,
Mimi.
“May I take this letter with me?”
It was Charlotte who intervened.
“Let him, Gigi . . . It can’t make it any worse . . .”
And as she showed the superintendent out: “Look! . . . Couldn’t I get permission to go and see him? He has the right to have his meals sent in from outside, hasn’t he? . . . Could you . . .”
And she blushed and held out a thousand franc note to him.
“If he could have a few books too . . . He used to spend all his free time reading . . .”
Rain. A taxi. The streetlamps coming alight. The Bois de Boulogne which Maigret had crossed on his bike, side by side with Donge.
“Put me down by the Majestic, will you?”
The porter followed him a little anxiously as he crossed the foyer without speaking, and took Maigret’s coat and hat in the cloakroom. The manager had also seen him, through the crack in his curtains. Everyone knew Maigret—followed him with their eyes.
The bar? Why not? He was thirsty. But he was attracted by a muffled sound of music. Somewhere in the basement a band was softly playing a tango. He went down a staircase carpeted with thick carpet, into a bluish haze. People were eating cakes at little tables. Others were dancing. A waiter came up to the superintendent.
“Bring me a half, please . . .”
“We don’t . . .”
Maigret gave him a look and he hurriedly scribbled something on a chit . . . The bills which . . . Maigret watched where it went . . . At the back of the room, to the right of the band, there was a sort of hatch in the wall . . .
On the other side were the glass cages, the still-room, the kitchens, the sculleries, the guests’ servants’ hall, and, right at the end, near the clocking-on machine, the cloakroom with its hundred metal lockers.
Someone was watching him—he could feel it—and he noticed Zebio dancing with a middle-aged woman covered in jewels.
Was it an illusion? It seemed to Maigret that Zebio’s look was trying to tell him something. He turned and saw with a shock that Oswald J. Clark was dancing with his son’s governess, Ellen Darroman.
They both seemed utterl
y oblivious of their surroundings. They were caught up in the ecstasy of new-found love. Solemn, hardly smiling, they were alone on the dance-floor, alone in the world, and when the music stopped they stood there without moving for a minute before going back to their table.
Maigret then noticed that Clark was wearing a thin band of black material on the lapel of his jacket—his way of wearing mourning.
The superintendent’s fist tightened on Mimi’s letter to Gigi which was in his pocket. He had a terrible desire to . . .
But hadn’t the magistrate told him not to get involved with Clark, who was no doubt too much of a gentleman to grapple with a policeman?
The tango was followed by a slow foxtrot. A frothy half followed the route the waiter’s order had taken previously—in the opposite direction. The pair were dancing again.
Maigret suddenly got up, forgot to pay for his drink, and hurried to the foyer.
“Is there anyone in Suite 203?” he asked the porter.
“I think the nanny and the boy are up there . . . But . . . If you’d like to wait while I telephone . . .”
“No, please don’t do that . . .”
“There’s the lift, on your left, sir.”
Too late. Maigret had made for the marble staircase and was slowly starting up the stairs, grunting as he went.
7
“WHAT’S HE ON ABOUT?”
Maigret was assailed for a moment by a strange thought, which however he soon forgot. He had reached the second floor of the Majestic and stopped for a moment to get his breath back. On his way up he had met a waiter with a tray, and a bellboy running up the stairs with a bundle of foreign newspapers under his arm.
On this floor there were smartly dressed women getting into the lift, who were probably going down to the thé dansant. They left a trail of scent behind them.
“They are all in their proper places,” he thought to himself. “Some behind the scenes and the others in the lounges and foyer . . . The guests on one side and the staff on the other . . .”
But that wasn’t what was bothering him, was it? Everyone, round him, was in his allotted place, doing the right thing. It was normal, for instance, for a rich foreign woman to have tea, smoke cigarettes and go out for fittings. It was natural for a waiter to carry a tray, a chamber-maid to make beds, a liftman to operate a lift . . .
In short, their functions, such as they were, were clearly defined, settled once and for all.
But if anyone had asked Maigret what he was doing there, what would he have answered?
“I am trying to get a man sent to prison, or even executed . . .”
It was nothing. A slight dizziness, probably caused by the over-luxurious, almost aggressively luxurious setting, and the atmosphere in the tea-room . . .
209 . . . 207 . . . 205 . . . 203 . . . Maigret hesitated for a moment and then knocked. His ear to the door, he could hear a child’s voice saying a few words in English, then a woman’s voice sounding more distant, and, he imagined, telling him to come in.
He crossed a little hall and found himself in a sitting-room with three windows overlooking the Champs-Élysées. By one of the windows an elderly woman, dressed in a white apron like a nurse, was sitting sewing. It was the nanny, Gertrud Borms, made to look even more severe by the glasses she wore.
But the superintendent paid no attention to her. He was looking at a boy of about six, dressed in plus-fours and a sweater which fitted snugly round his thin frame. The boy was sitting on the carpet, his few toys round him, including a large toy boat, and cars which were exact replicas of various real makes. There was a picture book on his knee which he was looking at when Maigret went in, and after glancing briefly at the visitor, he bent over it again.
When he recounted the scene to Madame Maigret, the superintendent’s description went something like this: “She said something like, ‘You we you we we well . . .’
“And to gain time, I said very quickly: ‘I hope that I’m correct in thinking this is Monsieur Oswald J. Clark’s suite? . . .’
“She went on again: ‘You we you we we well,’ or something of the sort.
“And meanwhile, I was able to get a good look at the boy. A very big head for his age, covered, as I had been told, with hair of a fiery red. The same blue eyes as Prosper Donge—the colour of periwinkles or of certain summer skies . . . A thin neck . . .
“He started talking to his nanny, in English, too, looking at me as he did so, and to me it still sounded like: ‘You we you we we well . . .’
“They were evidently asking themselves what I wanted and why I was standing there in the middle of the room. I didn’t know myself why I was there. There were flowers worth several hundred francs in a Chinese vase . . .
“The nanny finally got up. She put her work down on the chair, picked up a telephone and spoke to someone.
“‘Don’t you understand any French, little one?’ I asked the child.
“He merely gazed at me with eyes full of suspicion. A few seconds later, an employee in a tailcoat came into the suite. The nanny spoke to him. He then turned to me.
“‘She wants to know what you want?’
“‘I wanted to see Monsieur Clark . . .’
“‘He isn’t here . . . She says he is probably downstairs . . .’
“‘Thank you very much . . .’”
And that was that! Maigret had wanted to see Teddy Clark and he had seen him. He went back downstairs thinking about Prosper Donge, shut in his cell at the Santé. Automatically, without thinking, he went on down to the tea-room and, as his beer had not yet been cleared away, he sat down again.
He was in a state of mind he knew well. It was rather as if he were in a daze, although he was conscious of what was happening round him, without attaching any importance to it, without making any effort to place people or things in time or space.
Thus he saw a page go up to Ellen Darroman and say a few words to her. She got up and went to a telephone booth, in which she only remained for a few seconds.
When she came out, she immediately looked round for Maigret. Then she rejoined Clark and said something to him in a low voice, still looking at the superintendent.
In that instant, Maigret had a sudden very definite feeling that something disagreeable was about to happen. He knew that the best thing to do would be to leave at once, but he didn’t go.
He would have found it hard to explain why he stayed there, if called on to do so.
It wasn’t because he felt it was his professional duty. There was no need to stay at the thé dansant any longer—he was out of his element there.
That was precisely it—but he couldn’t have put it into words.
The magistrate had arrested Prosper Donge without consulting him, hadn’t he? And moreover he had forbidden him to concern himself with the American?
That was tantamount to saying: “That is not your world . . . You don’t understand it . . . Leave it to me . . .”
And Maigret, plebeian to the core, to the very marrow of his bones, felt hostile towards the world which surrounded him here.
Too bad. He would stay all the same. He saw Clark looking at him in turn, then Clark frowned, and, no doubt telling his companion to stay where she was, got up. A dance had just begun. The blue lighting gave way to pink. The American made his way between the couples and came and stood in front of the superintendent.
To Maigret, who couldn’t understand a word of English, it still sounded like: “Well you well we we well . . .”
But this time the tone was aggressive and it was clear that Clark was having difficulty controlling himself.
“What are you saying?”
And Clark burst out even more angrily.
That evening, Madame Maigret said, shaking her head: “Admit it! You did it on purpose! I know that way you have of looking at people! You’d make an angel lose his temper . . .”
He didn’t admit anything, but there was a twinkle in his eye. Well, what had he done anyway? He had stood
there in front of the Yankee, with his hands in his jacket pockets, staring at him as if he found the spectacle curious.
Was it his fault? Donge was still uppermost in his mind—Donge who was in prison, not dancing with the very pretty Miss Ellen. No doubt sensing that a drama was about to unfold, she had got up to join them. But before she reached them, Clark had hit out furiously at Maigret’s face, with the clean clockwork precision one sees in American films.
Two women having tea at the next table got up screaming. Some of the couples stopped dancing.
Clark seemed to be satisfied. He probably thought that the matter was now settled and that there was nothing further to add.
Maigret didn’t even deign to run his hand over his chin. The impact of Clark’s fist on his jaw had been clearly audible, but the superintendent’s face remained as impassive as if he had been lightly tapped on the head.
Although he hadn’t planned it that way, he was delighted at what had happened, and couldn’t help smiling when he thought of the examining magistrate’s face.
“Gentlemen! . . . Gentlemen! . . .”
Just as it seemed that Maigret would launch himself at his adversary and that the fight would continue, a waiter intervened. Ellen and one of the men who had been dancing grabbed hold of Clark on either side and tried to restrain him, while he still went on talking.
“What’s he on about?” Maigret grumbled calmly.
“It doesn’t matter! . . . Gentlemen, will you please kindly . . .”
Clark went on talking.
“What’s he saying?”
Then, to everyone’s surprise, Maigret began negligently to play with a shiny object which he had taken from his pocket and the fashionable women stared in amazement at the handcuffs, which they had so often heard about but never actually seen.
“Waiter, would you be good enough to translate for me? . . . Tell this gentleman that I am obliged to arrest him for insulting an officer of the law while in the course of his duty . . . And tell him too that if he is not prepared to follow me quietly, I shall have regretfully to use these handcuffs . . .”
Clark didn’t flinch. He didn’t say another word and pushed Ellen, who was clinging to his arm and trying to follow him, aside. Without waiting for his hat or coat he followed closely on the superintendent’s heels, and as they crossed the foyer, followed by a small crowd of onlookers, the manager saw them from his office, and raised his hands to heaven in horror.
The Hotel Majestic Page 8
