“Where is it forwarded to? . . .”
“Poste Restante to the Jem bureau, 42 Boulevard Haussmann . . .”
“To what name?”
“The envelopes are ready typed and Donge sends them in advance . . . Wait—it’s a bit dark in the lodge . . . Yes, put the light on, mate . . . Here we are . . . J. M. D. Poste Restante, Jem, 42 Boulevard Haussmann . . . That’s all . . . Private bureaux are allowed to accept letters addressed with initials only . . .”
“Did you keep your taxi? . . . No? . . . Idiot! Jump in a cab . . . What time is it? . . . Eleven . . . Get over to the Boulevard Haussmann . . . Did the concierge send on a letter yesterday morning? . . . He did? . . . Hurry, then . . .”
He had forgotten the two men, who didn’t know what to do and were listening in bewilderment. His thoughts had raced ahead so fast that he almost found himself asking: “What are you two still doing here?”
Then he suddenly calmed down.
“What do you do at the bank?” he asked the clerk, who started in surprise.
“I’m on current accounts.”
“Do you know Prosper Donge?”
“Yes, I know him . . . That is, I’ve seen him several times . . . You see he was having a house built in the suburbs at one time, and so was I . . . Only I chose a plot of land at . . .”
“Yes—I know . . . Go on . . .”
“He used to come in from time to time to draw out small amounts for the workmen who didn’t have bank accounts and wouldn’t accept cheques . . . He found it very tiresome . . . I remember we discussed it . . . We said everyone should have a bank account as they do in America . . . It was difficult for him to get there, because he had to be at the Majestic from six in the morning until six at night, and the bank was shut by then . . . I told him . . . the assistant manager won’t mind, because we do it for some of our customers . . . that he could just telephone me and that I would send him the money to be signed for on receipt . . . I sent him money like that to the Majestic two or three times . . .”
“Have you seen him since?”
“I don’t think so . . . But I had to go to Étretat for two summers running, to run the branch there . . . He could have come in then . . .”
Maigret pulled open a drawer of his desk, took out a photograph of Donge and laid it on the desk without saying a word.
“That’s him!” said the bank clerk. “You couldn’t miss his face. It appears—so he told me—that he had smallpox as a child and the farm people he was living with didn’t even call in a doctor . . .”
“Are you sure that’s him?”
“As sure as I am of anything!”
“And you’d recognize his writing?”
“I would certainly recognize it,” the assistant manager put in, annoyed at being relegated to second place.
Maigret handed them various bits of paper, with writing by different people on them.
“No! . . . No! . . . That’s not his writing . . . Ah! . . . Wait a minute . . . There’s one of his 7s . . . He had a very characteristic way of writing his 7s . . . And his Fs too . . . That’s one of his Fs . . .”
The writing they were pointing at was indeed Donge’s; it was one of the slips he scrawled when people ordered so many coffees, coffee with croissants, tea, portions of toast or cups of chocolate.
The telephone remained silent. It was just midday.
“Well, thank you very much, gentlemen!”
What on earth was Lucas doing at the Jem bureau? He was quite capable of having taken a bus, to save the taxi fare!
9
MONSIEUR CHARLES’ S NEWSPAPER
Apart, they might still have passed. But standing together by the entrance to Police Headquarters, they looked as if they were waiting at a factory gate, and made a pathetic, grotesque pair. Gigi perched on her thin legs, in her worn rabbit-skin coat, her eyes wary, defying the policeman on duty at the entrance and peering to see who it was whenever she heard anyone coming; and poor Charlotte, who hadn’t had the heart to do her hair or put on make-up, with her large moon-like face blotched and red because she’d been crying and was still sniffling. Her nose was bright red, and looked like a small red ball in the middle of her face.
She was wearing a decent black cloth coat, with an astrakhan collar and band of astrakhan round the hem. She held limply on to a large glacé kid bag. Without the ghoulish presence of Gigi, and the red gleaming in the middle of her face, she might have looked fairly presentable.
“There he is!”
Charlotte hadn’t budged, but Gigi had been walking frenziedly to and fro. And now she had seen Maigret arriving, with a colleague. Too late, he saw the two women. It was sunny out on the quay, with a touch of spring in the air.
“Excuse me, superintendent . . .”
He shook hands with his colleague . . .
“Have a good lunch, old chap . . .”
“Can we talk to you for a minute, superintendent?”
And Charlotte burst into tears, stuffing her handkerchief which was rolled in a ball into her mouth. People in the street turned round. Maigret waited patiently. Gigi said, as if to excuse her friend: “The magistrate sent for her and she’s just been seeing him . . .”
Oh dear—Monsieur Bonneau. He had a right to do so, of course. But all the same . . .
“Is it true, sir, that Prosper has . . . has admitted everything?”
This time Maigret smiled openly. Was that all the magistrate had been able to think up? That corny trick used by junior policemen? And that great goose Charlotte had believed him!
“It’s not true, is it? I knew it wasn’t! If you knew what he said to me! . . . To listen to him you’d think I was the lowest of the low . . .”
The policeman on duty at the entrance was looking at them with amusement. It was a curious sight—Maigret besieged by the two women, one of them crying and the other peering at him with no attempt to hide her antagonism.
“As if I’d write an anonymous letter accusing Prosper, when I’m sure he didn’t kill her! . . . If it had been a revolver, now, I might just have believed it . . . But not strangling someone . . . And particularly not doing it again the next day to some poor man who hadn’t done anything . . . Have you discovered anything else, then, superintendent? Do you think they’ll keep him in prison?”
Maigret signed to a taxi which was passing.
“Get in!” he told the two women. “I was going on an errand—you can come with me . . .”
It was quite true. He had at last had a telephone call from Lucas, who had drawn a blank at the Jem bureau. He had asked him to meet him in the Boulevard Haussmann. And he had just had the idea that he might . . .
Both the women tried to sit on the flap seats, but he made them sit on the back seat and he himself sat with his back to the driver. It was one of the first fine days of the year. The streets of Paris lay gleaming in the sun, and everyone looked more cheerful.
“Tell me, Charlotte, is Donge still paying his savings into the bank?”
He felt irritated with Gigi, who frowned each time he opened his mouth, as if suspecting a trap. She was clearly longing to say to her friend: “Look out! . . . Think before you answer . . .”
But Charlotte exclaimed: “Savings! Poor love! . . . We haven’t saved anything for a long time now! . . . Since we’ve had this house weighing us down, and that’s a fact! . . . It was supposed to cost forty thousand francs at the most, according to the estimates . . . First the foundations cost three times as much as they expected, because they found a subterranean stream . . . Then, when the walls were being built, there was a building strike which brought everything to a stop just as winter began . . . Five thousand francs here . . . Three thousand francs there . . . They fleeced us on all sides! If I told you how much the house had cost us to date you wouldn’t believe it! I don’t know the exact figure, but it must be more than eighty thousand, and there are still some things which haven’t been paid for . . .”
“So Donge hasn’t any money i
n the bank?”
“He hasn’t even got an account . . . He hasn’t had one for . . . wait a minute . . . for about three years now . . . I remember because one day the postman brought a money order for about eight hundred francs . . . I didn’t know what it was . . . When Donge got back he told me he had written to the bank to close his account . . .”
“You can’t remember the date?”
“What’s that got to do with you?” asked Gigi, who couldn’t refrain from adding her sour note.
“I know it was in the winter, because I was busy breaking the ice round the pump when the postman came . . . Wait . . . I went to the market in Saint-Cloud that day . . . I bought a goose . . . So it must have been a few days before Christmas . . .”
“Where are we going?” grumbled Gigi, looking out of the window.
Just at that moment, the taxi stopped in the Boulevard Haussmann, just before the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Lucas was standing on the pavement and goggled as he saw Maigret follow the two women out of the cab.
“Wait a second . . .” the superintendent told them.
He drew Lucas aside.
“Well?”
“Look . . . You see that sort of narrow shop, between the suitcase shop and the ladies’ hairdresser? That’s the Jem bureau . . . It’s run by a revolting old man whom I couldn’t get any information from . . . He wanted to shut the bureau and go off to lunch, pretending it was his lunch hour . . . I forced him to stay . . . He’s furious . . . He insists that I’ve no right without a warrant . . .”
Maigret went into the shop, which was so poorly lit it was almost dark, and cut in two by a dirty wooden counter. Small wooden pigeon-holes, also filthy, lined the walls and these were full of letters.
“I’d like to know . . .” the old man began.
“I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” Maigret growled. “You get letters addressed by initials, I believe, which is not allowed by the official poste restante, so your clientele must be a pretty bunch . . .”
“I pay my licence,” the old man promptly objected.
He wore glasses with heavy lenses, behind which darted rheumy eyes. His jacket was dirty and the collar of his shirt frayed and greasy. A rancid smell emanated from his body and filled the whole shop.
“I want to know if you have a register where you note the real name of your clients against the initials . . .”
The man snickered.
“D’you think they’d come here if they had to give their names? . . . Why not ask them for identity papers?”
It was somewhat unpleasant to think of pretty women coming furtively into the shop, which had served as a go-between for so many adulterous couples, and many other shady transactions.
“You got a letter yesterday morning addressed with the initials J. M. D. . . .”
“It’s possible. I’ve already said so to your colleague. He even insisted on checking that the letter was no longer here . . .”
“So, someone came to collect it. Can you tell me when?”
“I’ve no idea, and even if I had, I doubt if I’d tell you . . .”
“You realize I may come and close down your shop one of these days?”
“Other people have said the same to me, and my shop, as you call it, has been here for the last forty-two years . . . If I counted up all the husbands who’ve come to shout at me, and who’ve even threatened me with their sticks . . .”
Lucas had been quite right in saying he was revolting.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll put up the shutters and go and have my lunch . . .”
Where could the old brute possibly have lunch? Surely he hadn’t got a family—wife and children? It seemed far more likely that he was a bachelor, with his special place at some dingy restaurant in the neighbourhood, with his napkin in a ring.
“Have you ever seen this man?”
Maigret refusing to be hustled, produced Donge’s photograph again, and curiosity gained the upper hand over the man’s ill humour. He bent to peer at it and had to hold it within a few centimetres of his face. His expression didn’t change. He shrugged.
“I don’t remember seeing him . . .” he mumbled, as if disappointed.
The two women were waiting outside, in front of the narrow shop window. Maigret called Charlotte in.
“And do you recognize her?”
If Charlotte was acting, she was doing it remarkably well; she was looking round as if shocked and embarrassed, which was hardly surprising in such surroundings.
“What is . . . ?” she began.
She was terrified. Why had she been brought here? She looked round instinctively for Gigi, who came in of her own accord.
“How many people are you going to bring in here then?”
“You don’t recognize either of them? You can’t tell me whether it was a man or a woman who came to collect the letter addressed to J. M. D., or when the letter was collected?”
Without replying, the man seized a wooden shutter and started to hang it in front of the door. There was no option but to beat a hasty retreat. Maigret, Lucas and the two women found themselves outside on the pavement, under the chestnut trees with their new spring buds.
“You two can go now! . . .”
He watched them go off. Gigi had barely gone ten metres before she started violently haranguing her companion whom she was dragging along at a pace little suited to Charlotte’s dumpy figure.
“Any news, chief?”
What could Maigret say? He was brooding, anxious. The spring weather seemed to make him irritable rather than relaxed.
“I don’t know . . . Look . . . Go and have some lunch . . . Stay in the office this afternoon . . . Tell the banks—in France and Brussels—that if a cheque for two hundred and eighty thousand francs has been presented . . .”
He was only a few metres from the Majestic. He went down the Rue de Ponthieu, and into the bar near the staff door of the hotel. They served snacks there and he ordered some tinned cassoulet, which he ate morosely, alone at a little table at the back, near two men who were hurriedly downing a snack before going to the races and who were talking about horses.
Anyone who followed him that afternoon, would have been hard put to it to decide what exactly he was doing. Having finished his meal, he had some coffee, bought some tobacco and filled his pouch. Then he went out of the bar and stood on the pavement for a while, looking around.
He probably hadn’t formulated any precise plan of action. He ambled slowly into the Majestic and along the back corridor, and stood by the clocking-on machine, rather like a traveller with hours to wait at a station, putting coins into the chocolate machines.
People brushed past him, mostly cooks, with cloths round their necks, nipping out to have a quick drink at the bar next door.
As he went farther along the corridor, the heat grew more intense, and there was a strong smell of cooking.
The cloakroom was empty. He washed his hands at a basin, for no reason, to pass the time, and spent a good ten minutes cleaning his nails. Then, as he was too hot, he took off his overcoat and hung it in locker 89.
Jean Ramuel was sitting in state in his glass cage. In the still-room opposite, the three women were working at an accelerated pace, with a new cook in a white jacket who had replaced Prosper.
“Who’s that?” Maigret asked Ramuel.
“A temp, whom they’ve engaged until they find someone . . . He’s called Monsieur Charles . . . So you’ve come to take a little stroll round, superintendent? . . . Excuse me a minute . . .”
It was hectic. The luxury clientele ate late, and the chits were piling up in front of Ramuel, waiters were dashing past, all the telephones were ringing at once and the service-lifts were shooting up and down non-stop.
Maigret, still wearing his bowler, wandered about with his hands in his pockets, stopping by a cook who was thickening a sauce as if it fascinated him, watching the women wash up, or peering through the glass partitions into the guests’ servants’ hal
l.
He went up the back stairs, as he had done on his first visit, but stopped on all the floors this time, without hurrying, and still looking rather disgruntled. As he went down again, he was joined by the manager, who was out of breath.
“They’ve just told me you were here, superintendent . . . I don’t suppose you’ve had lunch? . . . May I offer . . .”
“I’ve eaten, thank you . . .”
“May I inquire if you’ve any news? . . . I was so taken aback when they arrested that Prosper Donge . . . But are you sure you won’t have anything? . . . A brandy, perhaps? . . .”
The manager was growing more and more embarrassed, finding himself on the narrow staircase with Maigret, who obstinately refused to show any reaction. At times the superintendent seemed as slumberous and thick-skinned as a pachyderm.
“I had hoped the press wouldn’t get on to the affair . . . You know, for a hotel, what . . . As for Donge . . .”
It was hopeless. Maigret offered him no help as he stumbled on. He had started going downstairs again, and they had now reached the basement.
“A man I would have cited as of exemplary character, only a few days ago . . . Because as you can imagine, we get all sorts in a hotel like this . . .”
Maigret was glancing from one glass partition to another, or as he would say, from one aquarium to another. They finally ended up in the cloakroom, by the famous locker 89, where two human lives had come definitely to an end.
“As for that poor Colleboeuf . . . Forgive me if I’m boring you . . . I’ve just thought of something . . . Don’t you think it would need unusual strength to strangle a man in broad daylight, only a few metres from numerous people—I mean so that the victim had no chance to cry out or struggle? . . . It would be possible now, because everyone’s rushing about making a din . . . But at half past four or five in the afternoon . . .”
“You were in the middle of lunch, I imagine?” Maigret murmured.
“It doesn’t matter . . . We’re used to eating when we can . . .”
The Hotel Majestic Page 11
