‘What is it?’
‘Police! Give me the name of the tenant who just came in.’
The man grunted something in his own language, then went to a drawer and brought out a grimy ledger that he shoved through the hatch without a word.
At the same instant Maigret sensed he was being watched from the unlit stairwell. He turned round quickly and saw an eye shining from about ten stairs above.
‘Room number?’
‘Thirty-two …’
He thumbed through the ledger and read:
Fyodor Yurevich, age 28, born Vilna, labourer, and Anna Gorskin, age 25, born Odessa, no occupation.
The Jew had gone back to the table to continue eating his meal like a man without a worry. Maigret drummed on the window. The hotel-keeper stood up slowly and reluctantly.
‘How long has he been staying here?’
‘About three years.’
‘What about Anna Gorskin?’
‘She’s been here longer than he has … Maybe four and a half years …’
‘What do they live on?’
‘You’ve read the book … He’s a labourer.’
‘Don’t try that on me!’ Maigret riposted in a voice that sufficed to change the hotelier’s attitude.
‘It’s not for me to stick my nose in where it’s not wanted, is it?’ he now said in an oilier tone. ‘He pays up on time. He comes and he goes and it’s not my job to follow him around …’
‘Does anybody come to see him?’
‘Sometimes … I’ve got over sixty tenants in here and I can’t keep an eye on all of them at once … As long as they’re doing no harm! … Anyway, as you’re from the police you should know all about this establishment … I make proper returns … Officer Vermouillet can confirm that … He’s the one who comes every week …’
Maigret turned around on an impulse and called out:
‘Anna Gorskin, come down now!’
There was a ruffling noise in the stairway, then the sound of footsteps, and finally a woman stepped out into a patch of light.
• • •
She looked older than the ledger’s claim of twenty-five. That was probably hereditary. Like many Jewish women of her age, she had put on weight, but she was still quite good-looking. She had remarkable eyes: very dark pupils set in amazingly white and shining corneas. But the rest of her was so sloppy as to spoil that first impression. Her black, greasy and uncombed hair fell in thick bunches onto her neck. She was wearing a worn-out dressing gown, loosely tied and allowing a glimpse of her underwear. Her stockings were rolled down above her thick knees.
‘What were you doing in the stairwell?’
‘I live here, don’t I? …’
Maigret sensed straight away what kind of a woman he was dealing with. Excitable, irreverent, hammer and tongs. At the drop of a hat she could throw a fit, rouse the entire building, give an ear-splitting scream and probably accuse him of outlandish offences. Did she perhaps know she was unassailable? In any case, she looked at her enemy with defiance.
‘You’d be better advised to go look after your man …’
‘None of your business …’
The hotelier stayed behind his window, rocking his head from left to right, from right to left, with a morose and reproving look on his face; but there was laughter in his eyes.
‘When did Fyodor leave?’
‘Yesterday evening … At eleven …’
She was lying! Plain as day! But there was no point coming at her head-on – unless he wanted to pin back her arms and march her down to the station.
‘Where does he work?’
‘Wherever he chooses …’
You could see her breasts heave under her ill-fitting dressing gown. There was a hostile, haughty sneer on her face.
‘What’ve the police got against Fyodor, anyway?’
Maigret decided to say rather quietly:
‘Get upstairs …’
‘I’ll go when I feel like it! You ain’t got no right to order me about.’
What was the point of answering back and risking creating an ugly incident that would only hold things up? Maigret shut the ledger and handed it back to the hotel-keeper.
‘All above board and hunky-dory, right?’ the latter said, after gesturing at the young woman to keep quiet. But she stood her ground with her fists on her hips, one side of her lit by the light from the hotelier’s office, the other in darkness.
Maigret looked at her again. She met his gaze straight on and felt the need to mutter:
‘You don’t scare me one bit …’
He just shrugged and then made his way down a staircase so narrow his shoulders touched both of its squalid walls.
• • •
In the corridor he ran into two bare-necked Poles who turned away as soon as they saw him. The street was wet, making the cobblestones glint. In every corner, in the smallest pools of shadow, in the back alleys and passageways you could sense a swarm of humiliated and rebellious humanity. Shadowy figures flitted past. Shopkeepers sold products whose very names were unknown in France.
Less than 100 metres away was Rue de Rivoli and Rue Saint-Antoine – broad, well-lit streets with trams, market stalls and the city police … Maigret caught a passing street urchin with a cauliflower ear by the shoulder:
‘Go fetch me a policeman from Place Saint-Paul …’
But the lad just looked at him with fear in his eyes, then answered in some incomprehensible tongue. He didn’t know a word of French!
The inspector then spied a beggar.
‘Here’s a five franc coin … Take this note to the cop at Place Saint-Paul.’
The tramp understood. Ten minutes later a uniformed sergeant turned up.
‘Call the Police Judiciaire and tell them to send me an officer straight away … Dufour, if he’s free …’
Maigret cooled his heels for at least another half-hour. People went into the hotel. Others came out. But the light stayed on at the third-floor window, second from the left.
Anna Gorskin appeared at the doorway. She’d put on a greenish overcoat over her dressing gown. She was hatless and despite the rain she was wearing red satin sandals. She splashed her way across the street. Maigret kept out of sight, in the shadows.
She went into a store and came out a few minutes later laden with a host of small white packets, plus two bottles. She vanished back into the hotel.
• • •
At long last Inspector Dufour showed up. He was thirty-five and spoke three languages quite fluently, which made him a precious asset. But he had a habit of making the simplest things sound complicated. He could turn a common burglary or a banal snatch-and-grab case into a dramatic mystery, tying himself up in knots of his own making. But as he was also uncommonly persistent, he was highly suitable for a well-defined job like staking out or tailing a suspect.
Maigret gave him a description of Fyodor Yurevich and his girlfriend.
‘I’ll send you a back-up. If one of those two comes out, stay on their tail. But one of you has to stay behind to man the stake-out … Got that?’
‘Are we still on the Étoile du Nord case? … It’s a mafia hit, right?’
Maigret went off without answering. He got to his office at Quai des Orfèvres fifteen minutes later, dispatched an officer to back up Dufour, leaned over his stove and swore at Jean for not stoking it up to a red-hot glow. He hung his sopping greatcoat on the back of the door. It had gone so stiff that the shape of his shoulders could still be made out in it.
‘Did my wife call?’
‘This morning … She was told you were out on a case …’
She was used to that. He knew that if he went home she would just give him a kiss, stir the pot on the stove and serve him a delicious plate of stew. The most she would dare – but only when he’d sat down to eat – would be to put her chin on her hand and ask:
‘Everything OK? …’
The meal would always be ready for him, whether he turned
up at noon or at five.
‘Torrence?’ he asked Jean.
‘He called at 7 a.m.’
‘From the Majestic?’
‘I don’t know. He asked if you’d left.’
‘What else?’
‘He called again at ten past five this afternoon. He asked for you to be told he was waiting for you.’
Maigret had only had a herring to eat since the morning. He stayed upright in front of his stove for a while. It was beginning to roar, for Maigret had an unrivalled knack for getting even the least combustible coal to catch. Then he plodded his way to the cupboard, where there was an enamel sink, a towel, a mirror and a suitcase. He dragged the case into the middle of his office, undressed and put on clean underwear and dry clothes. He rubbed his unshaven chin.
‘It’ll have to do …’
He looked lovingly at the fire, which was now burning grandly, placed two chairs next to it and carefully laid out his wet clothes on them. There was one sandwich left over from the previous night on his desk, and he wolfed it down, still standing, ready to depart. Only there wasn’t any beer. He was more than a little parched.
‘If anything at all comes in for me, I’m at the Majestic,’ he said to Jean. ‘Get them to call me.’
And at long last he slumped into the back seat of a taxi.
7. The Third Interval
Torrence wasn’t to be found in the lobby, but in a first-floor room in front of a top-notch dinner. He explained with a broad wink:
‘It’s all the manager’s fault! … He practically went down on bended knee to get me to accept this room and the gourmet meals he sends up …’
He was speaking in a whisper. He pointed to a door.
‘The Mortimers are next door …’
‘Mortimer came back?’
‘Around six this morning. In a foul mood. Wet, dirty, with chalk or lime all over his clothes …’
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing … He tried to get back to his room without being noticed. But they told him his wife had waited up for him in the bar. And she had! … She’d ended up befriending a Brazilian couple … They had to keep the bar open all night just for them … She was atrociously drunk …’
‘And then?’
‘He went as white as a ghost. His mouth went all twisted. He said a curt hello to the Brazilians, then took his wife by the armpits and dragged her off without another word … I reckon she slept it off until four this afternoon … There wasn’t a sound from their suite until then … Then I heard whispering … Mortimer rang the front desk to have the newspapers brought up …’
‘Nothing about the case in the papers, I hope?’
‘Not a word. They’ve respected the embargo. Just a two-liner saying that a corpse had been found on the Étoile du Nord and that the police were treating it as suicide.’
‘Next?’
‘Room service brought them up some lemon juice. Mortimer took a stroll around the lobby, went straight past me two or three times, looking worried. He sent coded wires to his New York bank and to his secretary, who’s been in London these past few days …’
‘That’s it?’
‘At the moment they’re just finishing dinner. Oysters, cold chicken, salad. The hotel keeps me abreast of everything. The manager is so delighted to have me shut away up here that he’ll sweat blood to do me any favour I ask. That’s why he came up just now to tell me that the Mortimers have got tickets to see The Epic at the Gymnase Theatre tonight. A four-acter by someone or other …’
‘Pietr’s suite?’
‘Quiet as the grave! Nobody has been in it. I locked the door and put a blob of wax on the keyhole, so nobody can get in without my knowing …’
Maigret had picked up a chicken leg and was chewing at it quite shamelessly while looking round for a stove that wasn’t there. In the end he sat on the radiator and asked:
‘Isn’t there anything to drink?’
Torrence poured him a glass of a superb Mâcon blanc, which his chief drank thirstily. Then there was a scratching at the door and a valet entered in a conspiratorial manner.
‘The manager requests me to inform you that Mr and Mrs Mortimer’s car has been brought to the front.’
Maigret glanced at the table still laden with food with the same sorrow he had expressed in his eyes on leaving the stove in his office.
‘I’ll go,’ he said regretfully. ‘You stay here.’
He tidied himself up in front of the mirror, wiping his mouth and his chin. A moment later he was in a taxi waiting for the Mortimer-Levingstons to get into their limousine.
• • •
They weren’t long in coming. Mortimer was wearing a black overcoat that hid his dinner jacket; she was swaddled in furs, as on the previous night.
She must have still been tired, because her husband was discreetly propping her up with one hand. The limousine set off without a whisper.
Maigret hadn’t known that this was an opening night at the Gymnase, and he was almost refused entry. City police formed a guard of honour beneath the canopy. In spite of the rain passers-by stopped to watch the guests alight from their cars. Inspector Maigret had to ask to see the manager and wait his turn in corridors, where he stuck out as the only person not wearing formal attire. The manager was at his wits’ end, waving his arms about.
‘There’s nothing I’d like better than to oblige! But you’re the twentieth person to ask me for a “spare seat”! There aren’t any spare seats! There aren’t any seats! … And you’re not even properly dressed! …’
He was being assailed from all quarters.
‘Can’t you see? Put yourself in my shoes …’
In the end Maigret had to stay standing up next to a door with the usherettes and the programme-sellers.
The Mortimer-Levingstons had a box. There were six people in it, of whom one was a princess and another a government minister. People came and went. Hands were kissed, smiles exchanged.
The curtain rose on a sunlit garden. Shushes, murmurs, footsteps. Finally the actor’s voice could be heard, wobbly at first but then more confident, creating an atmosphere.
Latecomers were still taking their seats. More shushing. Somewhere a woman giggled.
Mortimer was more lord of the manor than ever. Evening dress suited him to a tee. The white shirt-front brought out the ivory hue of his skin.
Did he see Maigret? Did he not? An usherette brought the inspector a stool to sit on, but he had to share it with a portly lady in black silk, the mother of one of the actresses.
First interval, second interval. Comings and goings in the boxes. Artificial enthusiasm. Greetings exchanged between the parterre and the circle. The foyer, the corridors and even the front steps buzzed like a hive in high summer. Names were dropped in a whisper – names of maharajahs, ministers, statesmen and artists.
Mortimer left his box on three occasions, reappearing in a stage-box and then in the pit, and finally to have a chat with a former prime minister, whose hearty laugh could be heard twenty rows away.
End of Act Three. Flowers on the stage. A skinny actress was given an ovation. Seats flapping up made a racket and shuffling feet sounded like the swell of the sea. When Maigret turned to look up at the Americans’ box, Mortimer-Levingston had vanished.
• • •
Now for the fourth and last act. That was when anybody who had an excuse got into the wings and the actors’ and actresses’ dressing-rooms. Others besieged the cloakrooms. There was much fussing over cars and taxis.
Maigret lost at least ten minutes looking around inside the theatre. Then, without hat or coat, he had to quiz the doorman and the policemen on duty outside to find out what he needed to know.
He learned eventually that the Mortimers’ olive-green limousine had just driven off. He was shown where it had been parked, outside a bar often frequented by traders in cloakroom receipts. The car had gone towards Porte Saint-Martin. The American plutocrat hadn’t retrieved his overcoat.
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Outside, clumps of theatre-goers huddled wherever they could get out of the rain.
Maigret smoked a pipe with his hands in his pockets and a grumpy look on his face. The bell rang. People flocked inside. Even the municipal police went in to watch the last act.
The Grands Boulevards looked as scruffy as they always did at 11 p.m. The shafts of rain lit by the streetlamps were thinning out. The audience spewed out of a cinema which then switched off its lighting, brought in its billboards, and shut its doors. People stood in line at a bus stop, beneath a green-striped lamp-post. When the bus came there was an argument, because there were no number-tags left in the ticket machine. A policeman got involved. Long after the bus had left he remained in contentious discussion with an indignant fat man.
At last a limousine came to a gliding halt on the tarmac. The door opened even before it was at a standstill. Mortimer-Levingston, in tails but without a hat, bounded up the stairs and went into the warm and brightly lit lobby. Maigret took a look at the chauffeur. He was 100 per cent American: he had a hard face with a jutting chin, and he sat stock still in his seat as if he’d been turned to stone by his uniform.
The inspetor opened one of the padded doors barely an inch or two. Mortimer was standing at the back of his box. A sarcastic actor was speaking his lines in staccato. Curtain. Flowers. Thunderous applause.
People rushing for the exits. More shushing. The lead actor uttered the name of the author and went to fetch him from a box to bring him centre stage. Mortimer kissed some hands and shook others, gave a 100 franc tip to the usherette who brought him their coats. His wife was pale-faced, with blue rings under her eyes. When they had got back into their car there was a moment of indecision.
The couple were having an argument. Mrs Levingston was agitated. Her husband lit a cigarette and put out his lighter with an angry swipe of his hand. Eventually, he said something to the chauffeur through the intercom tube, and the car set off, with Maigret in a taxi following behind.
• • •
It was half past midnight. Rue La Fayette. The white colonnade of La Trinité was sheathed in scaffolding. Rue de Clichy.
The limousine stopped in Rue Fontaine, outside Pickwick’s Bar. A concierge in a blue and gold uniform. Coat check. A red curtain lifted and a snatch of tango emerged.
Pietr the Latvian Page 5