Liberty Bar

by Georges Simenon

  The moon was just at the angle of the roof. To the right, the shiny sea, the quivering mimosas …

  He had his gabardine under his arm. He walked back to the Hôtel Bacon without thinking, just vague images running through his head, some of them painful, some comic.

  ‘Good old William!’

  It was late. The dining room was empty apart from a serving girl who was reading the paper. That was when he noticed that it wasn’t his gabardine he had brought with him, but Brown’s – filthy and stained with oil and grease.

  In the left pocket there was a monkey wrench, in the right a handful of change and a few small square coins made of copper and marked with a figure. They were tokens for fruit machines to be found on the counters of small bars.

  There were about ten of them.

  ‘Hello! Inspector Boutigues here. Do you want me to pick you up from your hotel?’

  It was nine in the morning. Maigret had opened his window and been dozing for six hours on and off, luxuriating in the knowledge that the Mediterranean was spread out before him.

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Don’t you want to see the body?’

  ‘Yes … No … Maybe this afternoon … Ring me at lunchtime.’

  He needed to wake up. In the light of morning, the events of the previous day no longer seemed real. The memory of the two women was more like a half-forgotten nightmare.

  They wouldn’t be up yet! And if Brown had survived, he would be busy pottering in his garden or garage. All alone. Unwashed. With a pot of cold coffee sitting on an unlit stove.

  As he was shaving, Maigret noticed the tokens on the mantelpiece. He had to make an effort to remember what part they played in the story.

  ‘Brown went off on his novena and got killed, either before getting back into his car or inside it, or while crossing the garden, or in the house …’

  He had already shaved the soap off his left cheek when he murmured:

  ‘Brown can’t have gone to any of the small bars in Antibes … I’d have heard about it.’

  And besides, didn’t Gina discover that he parked his car in Cannes? A quarter of an hour later, he was on the phone to the Cannes police.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, Police Judiciaire … Could you provide me with a list of bars with fruit machines?’

  ‘There aren’t any now. They were banned two months ago by order of the Prefect. You won’t find any anywhere on the Côte d’Azur …’

  He asked his landlady where he could find a taxi.

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘Cannes!’

  ‘Then you don’t need a taxi. There’s a very regular bus service, leaving from Place Macé.’

  And so there was. In the morning sun Place Macé was even more colourful than on the previous evening. Brown must have passed through it when he drove his two women to the market.

  Maigret took the bus. Half an hour later, he was in Cannes, where he went to the garage that he had been told about. It was near the Croisette. White everywhere! Huge white hotels, white shops, white trousers and dresses, white sails out at sea.

  It was as if life were no more than a pantomime fairy-tale, a white and blue fairy-tale.

  ‘Is this where Monsieur Brown left his car?’

  ‘Here we go!’

  ‘Here we go what?’

  ‘I’m going to be given a hard time over this! I knew this was coming when I heard he’d been killed … Yes, it was here. I’ve got nothing to hide. He’d drop his car off here in the evening, then he’d come to pick it up eight, nine, ten days later …’

  ‘Drunk?’

  ‘Every time I saw him, yes!’

  ‘Do you know where he went afterwards?’

  ‘When? After he parked the car? No idea.’

  ‘Did he ask you to clean it, give it a once-over?’

  ‘No, never! He hadn’t even changed the oil for a year.’

  ‘What did you make of him?’

  The garage owner shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Bit of an eccentric?’

  ‘The Côte d’Azur’s full of them. You get used to them. Scarcely notice them any more! Look, just yesterday this American girl comes by and wants me to do her a chassis in the shape of a swan … I thought: sure, if you’re willing to pay!’

  There were still the fruit machines to follow up on. Maigret went into a bar near the harbour, which was full of nothing but yachtsmen.

  ‘Do you have any fruit machines?’

  ‘They were banned a month ago … But we’ve got a new type of machine. In two or three months they’ll ban them too …’

  ‘So there are no machines anywhere else?’

  The proprietor was non-committal on that one.

  ‘What will you have?’

  Maigret had a vermouth. He looked at the yachts lined up in the harbour, then the sailors, who had the names of their boats embroidered on to their jerseys.

  ‘Do you know Brown?’

  ‘Which Brown? … The one who got killed? … He didn’t come here.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  A vague shrug. The proprietor had other customers to serve. It was getting warmer. Even though it was only March, Maigret was sweating, a smell of summer.

  ‘I’ve heard people talk about him, but I can’t remember who,’ the proprietor said as he came back, bottle in hand.

  ‘Too bad! What I’m looking for is a fruit machine …’

  Brown took his raincoat with him during his novenas. So it was very likely that, on his return, the two women searched through his pockets.

  Therefore the tokens dated from his final trip …

  But this was all rather vague and insubstantial. And there was this sun which filled Maigret with a desire to sit on a terrace, like everyone else, and watch the boats barely moving on a calm sea.

  Bright trams … beautiful cars … He found the town’s shopping street, parallel to the Croisette …

  ‘If Brown spent his novenas in Cannes,’ he grumbled, ‘it wasn’t round here.’

  He walked. He stopped now and then to go into a bar. He drank vermouth and talked fruit machines.

  ‘It goes in waves. They raid us every three months. Then we get some new ones and carry on as normal until the next time …’

  ‘Do you know Brown?’

  ‘The Brown who was killed?’

  It was monotonous. It was past noon. The sun was beating down on the streets. Maigret wanted to accost a policeman like a tourist out on the town and ask him:

  ‘Where’s the party round here?’

  If Madame Maigret had been there she would have noticed that he was rather glassy-eyed due to all the vermouths he had drunk.

  He turned a corner, then another, and suddenly he wasn’t in Cannes any more, with its large white buildings resplendent in the sun, but in another world entirely: narrow alleyways no more than a metre wide with lines of washing strung across from one house to another.

  To the right, a sign: ‘The Sailors’ Rest’.

  To the left, a sign: ‘Liberty Bar’.

  Maigret went into the Sailors’ Rest, ordered a vermouth and stood at the counter.

  ‘Hey, I thought you had a fruit machine …’

  ‘Had one, yes!’

  His head felt heavy and his legs were aching from walking all around the town.

  ‘Some places still have them.’

  ‘Some, yes!’ muttered the barman as he wiped the counter-top with a towel. ‘There are always some who slip through the net. Still, that’s none of our business, is it …’

  And he looked out across the street as he answered Maigret’s next question:

  ‘Two francs twenty-five … I don’t have any change …’

  So the inspector went across the road to the Liberty Bar.

  3. William’s Goddaughter

  The room, which was empty, was no bigger than two metres by three. You had to go down two steps, as it was below street level.

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nbsp; A narrow bar. A shelf containing a dozen glasses. The fruit machine. And two tables.

  At the back, a glass door with a net curtain. Through the curtain the shape of heads moving. But no one got up to greet the customer. Just a woman’s voice, shouting:

  ‘What are you waiting for?’

  Maigret went in. There was another step to go down, and the window, which was flush with the courtyard, looked like a vent. In the half-light Maigret could make out three people sitting round a table.

  The woman who had cried out didn’t stop eating but looked at him as he himself had the habit of looking at people: calmly, picking up every detail.

  With her elbows on the table, she finally gave a sigh and indicated a footstool with her chin.

  ‘You took your time!’

  Next to her sat a man whom Maigret could only see from the back. He was dressed in a very clean sailor’s uniform. His fair hair was close cropped on his neck. He was wearing cuffs.

  ‘Carry on eating,’ the woman said to him. ‘It’s nothing …’

  Finally, at the other end of the table, a third person, a young woman with a lustreless complexion who stared suspiciously at Maigret with her big eyes.

  She was wearing a dressing gown. The whole of her left breast was on display, but no one paid it any attention.

  ‘Take a seat. Do you mind if we finish eating?’

  How old was she – forty-five, fifty, maybe older? It was hard to tell. She was fat, smiling, sure of herself. You could tell that nothing fazed her, that she had seen it all, heard it all, experienced it all.

  One look was enough to tell her what Maigret was here for. She hadn’t even stood up. She was cutting thick slices off a leg of mutton, which caught Maigret’s attention for a moment, for he had rarely seen one as succulent.

  ‘So are you from Nice or Antibes? I haven’t seen you round here before.’

  ‘Police Judiciaire, Paris …’

  ‘Ah!’

  That ‘ah’ showed that she understood the difference, recognized her visitor’s rank.

  ‘So it’s true, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That William was some sort of important person …’

  Now Maigret could see the sailor in profile. He was no ordinary sailor. His uniform was cut from very fine cloth. He was wearing gold braid, a yacht club badge on his cap. He seemed put out. He ate without lifting his eyes from his plate.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘We call him Yan … I don’t know his real name … He’s a steward on board the Ardena, a Swedish yacht that winters in Cannes every year … Yan is the butler, aren’t you, Yan? … This gentleman is from the police … I told you about William …’

  Yan nodded his head but showed little sign of having understood.

  ‘He says yes, but he doesn’t really know what I’m talking about!’ the woman said, paying no attention to the sailor. ‘He’s never got the hang of French … But he’s a good guy … He has a wife and kids back home … Show them your photo, Yan … Yes, photo!’

  And the man took a photo out of his jacket pocket. It showed a young woman sitting in front of a door with two babies in the grass in front of her.

  ‘Twins!’ the woman explained. ‘Yan comes here to eat now and again, because it feels like family here. He brought the mutton and the peaches …’

  Maigret looked at the girl, who was still making no effort to cover her breast.

  ‘And she is …?’

  ‘This is Sylvie, William’s goddaughter …’

  ‘Goddaughter?’

  ‘Oh, not in the church sense! … He wasn’t there when she was christened … Were you christened, Sylvie?’

  ‘Of course!’

  She continued to look at Maigret with suspicion while nibbling away at her food without relish.

  ‘William was fond of her … She told him all her troubles … He consoled her …’

  Maigret was sitting on a stool, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. The fat woman was preparing a salad seasoned with garlic that looked like a work of art.

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  He lied.

  ‘Yes … I …’

  ‘Because you should know … we’re very easy here … Isn’t that so, Yan? … Look at him! He says yes but he doesn’t understand a word … I love ’em, these Nordic boys!’

  She tasted the salad, added a dash of olive oil with a fruity aroma. There was no cloth on the table, which wasn’t very clean. There was a staircase in the kitchen which must have led up to another floor. In the corner there was a sewing machine.

  The courtyard was filled with sunlight, so much so that the window was a dazzling rectangle and by contrast the interior felt like a cold, gloomy space.

  ‘You can ask me questions … Sylvie knows everything … and as for Yan …’

  ‘Have you had this bar long?’

  ‘Maybe fifteen years … I was married to an Englishman, a former acrobat, so we had all the English sailors come here, as well as music-hall performers … My husband drowned nine years ago at the regatta … He raced for a baroness who has three boats which you probably know …’

  ‘And since then?’

  ‘Nothing! I held on to the house …’

  ‘Do you get much business?’

  ‘I don’t care about that … It’s mainly friends, like Yan, like William … They know that I’m on my own and like company … They come and share a bottle or else bring rockfish, a chicken, and I rustle something up …’

  She topped up the glasses, and noticed that Maigret didn’t have anything to drink.

  ‘You should get the inspector a drink, Sylvie.’

  Sylvie got up without a word and went to the bar. She was naked under her dressing gown. Her feet were bare in sandals. She brushed against Maigret as she passed without apologizing. While she was at the bar, the other woman murmured:

  ‘Don’t mind her … She adored William … She’s taking it very hard.’

  ‘Does she sleep here?’

  ‘Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t.’

  ‘What does she do?’

  The woman gave Maigret a reproachful look. She seemed to be saying: ‘Do you, a detective chief inspector from the Police Judiciaire, need to ask that question?’

  She added immediately:

  ‘Oh! She’s a quiet girl, not a bad bone in her body …’

  ‘Did William know?’

  That look again. Had she got Maigret wrong? Did he not understand anything? Did he need everything spelled out?

  Yan had finished eating. He was waiting to speak, but she read his thoughts.

  ‘Yes, you can go, Yan … Are you coming this evening?’

  ‘If the owners go to the casino.’

  He got up, seemed unsure about the traditional niceties. But, as the woman offered him her forehead, he planted a mechanical kiss, blushing because of the presence of Maigret. He met Sylvie on her way back with a drink.

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘Yes …’

  And he kissed her in the same way, offered Maigret a strange salute, made a quick getaway and literally dived into the street while adjusting his cap.

  ‘That boy doesn’t like going out on the town like most yacht sailors … He’d rather come here …’

  She too had finished eating now. She made herself comfortable, both elbows on the table.

  ‘Could you pass the coffee, Sylvie?’

  You could barely hear any sound from the street. Without that rectangle of light, it would have been impossible to say what hour of the day or night it was.

  An alarm clock in the middle of the mantelpiece marked the passage of time.

  ‘So what is it you want to know exactly? … Your good health … This is some of William’s whisky …’

  ‘What do people call you?’

  ‘Jaja … Or Big Jaja when they want to tease me …’

  And she looked at her enormous bosom, which was resting on the table.
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br />   ‘Have you known William long?’

  Sylvie had returned to her seat, chin resting in her hand, still not taking her eyes off Maigret. The sleeve of her dressing gown trailed in her food.

  ‘I’d say almost for ever. But I only learned his surname a week ago … I should tell you that, when my husband was still alive, the Liberty Bar was famous … There were always artists here, and they attracted the rich clientele who came to see them …

  ‘Especially the yacht owners: almost all of them are party animals, eccentrics … I remember seeing William quite a lot at that time, in his white cap, always with friends or pretty women …

  ‘These groups liked to drink champagne until the small hours and they’d stand anyone a round …

  ‘Then my husband died … I closed for a month … It was out of season … The following winter I had to spend three weeks in hospital with peritonitis.

  ‘Someone took advantage of the situation and opened a bar right on the harbour itself.

  ‘Since then, it’s been quiet … I don’t even try to attract new customers.

  ‘One day, I saw William again, and it was only then that I properly made his acquaintance … We got drunk together … We swapped stories … He slept on the divan, because he couldn’t even stand up …’

  ‘Was he still wearing a yachtsman’s cap?’

  ‘No! He looked very different. He was a maudlin drinker … He got into the habit of coming to see me from time to time …’

  ‘Did you know where he lived?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t going to interrogate him. And he never talked about his personal business …’

  ‘Did he stay here long?’

  ‘Three or four days … He brought food with him … Or else he gave me money to go to the market … He said he didn’t eat anywhere as well as he did here.’

  And Maigret looked at the pink flesh of the mutton, the remains of the scented salad. It looked really tasty.

  ‘Was Sylvie already with you?’

  ‘I should hope not! She is only twenty-one …’

  ‘How did you meet her?’

  And as Sylvie had an obstinate look on her face, Jaja said to her: