Maigret went in behind the couple and sat at a table near the door, which must have always stayed empty because it caught every draught.
The Mortimers had been seated near to the jazz band. The American read the menu and chose what he would have for supper. A professional dancer bowed to his wife. She went on the floor. Levingston watched her with remarkable intensity. She exchanged a few remarks with her dancing partner but never once turned towards the corner where Maigret was sitting.
Most people here were in formal attire, but there were also a few foreigners in lounge suits. Maigret waved away a hostess who tried to sit at his table. A bottle of champagne was put in front of him, automatically. There were streamers all about. Puffer balls flew through the air. One landed on Maigret’s nose, and he glowered at the old lady who’d aimed it at him.
Mrs Mortimer had gone back to her table. The dancer wandered around the floor for a moment then went towards the exit and lit a cigarette. Suddenly he lifted the red plush curtain and vanished. It took three minutes for Maigret to think of going to see what was happening outside.
The dancer had gone.
The rest of the night dragged on drearily. The Mortimers ate copiously – caviar and truffles au champagne, then lobster à l’américaine, followed by cheese.
Mrs Mortimer didn’t go back to the dance-floor.
Maigret didn’t like champagne, but he sipped at it to slake his thirst. He made the mistake of nibbling the roasted almonds on the table, and that made him even thirstier.
He checked the time on his wristwatch: 2 a.m.
People began leaving the nightspot. Nobody took the slightest notice of a dancer performing her routine. A drunk foreigner with three women at his table was making more noise than all the other customers put together. The professional dancer, who had stayed outside for only fifteen minutes, had taken some other ladies round the dance-floor. But it was all over. Weariness had set in.
Mrs Mortimer looked worn out; her eyelids were dark blue.
Her husband signalled to an attendant. Fur coat, overcoat and top hat were brought.
Maigret sensed that the dancer, who was talking to the sax player, was watching him nervously.
He summoned the manager, who kept him waiting. He lost a few minutes.
When he finally got outside, the Americans’ limousine was just going round the corner into Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. There were half a dozen taxis waiting at the rank opposite. Maigret began crossing the road.
A gunshot rang out. Maigret put his hand to his chest, looked around, could not see anything, but heard the footsteps of someone running away down Rue Pigalle.
He staggered on for a few metres, propelled by his own inertia. The concierge ran up to him and held him upright. People came out of Pickwick’s Bar to see what was going on. Among them Maigret noticed the tense figure of the professional dancer.
8. Maigret Gets Serious
Taxi drivers who ‘do nights’ in Montmartre don’t need things spelled out to them and often get the point without a word being said.
When the shot was fired, one of the waiting drivers at the rank opposite Pickwick’s Bar was about to open the passenger door for Maigret, not knowing who he was. But maybe he guessed from the way the inspector held himself that he was about to give a ride to a cop.
Customers at a small bar on the opposite side of the street came running. Soon there would be a whole crowd gathered round the wounded man. In the blink of an eye the driver lent a hand to the doorman who was propping up Maigret, without a clue what else to do. In less than half a minute the taxi was on its way with the inspector in the back.
The car drove on for ten minutes or so and came to a halt in an empty street. The driver got out the front, opened the passenger door, and saw his customer sitting in an almost normal posture, with one hand under his jacket.
‘I can see it’s no big deal, like I thought. Where can I take you?’
Still, Maigret looked quite upset, mainly because it was a flesh wound. His chest had been torn; the bullet had grazed a rib and exited near his shoulder blade.
‘Quai des Orfèvres …’
The driver muttered something that couldn’t be made out. En route, the inspector changed his mind.
‘Take me to Hôtel Majestic … Drop me off at the service entrance on Rue de Ponthieu …’
He screwed up his handkerchief into a ball and stuffed it over his wound. He noted that the bleeding had stopped.
As he progressed towards the heart of Paris he appeared to be in less pain, but increasingly worried.
• • •
The taxi-driver tried to help him out. Maigret brushed him off and crossed the pavement with a steady gait. In a narrow entranceway he found the watchman drowsing behind his counter.
‘Anything happen?’
‘What do you mean?’
It was cold. Maigret went back out to pay the driver, who grunted once again because all he was getting for his great exploit was a measly 100 franc tip.
In the state he was in, Maigret was an impressive sight. He was still pressing his handkerchief to his chest wound, under his jacket. He held one shoulder higher than the other, but all the same he was being careful to save his strength. He was slightly light-headed. Now and again he felt as if he was floating on air, and he had to make an effort to get a grip on himself so as to see clearly and move normally.
He climbed an iron stairway that led to the upper floors, opened a door, found he was in a corridor, got lost in the labyrinth and came upon another stairway identical to the first, except that it had a different number on it.
He was going round in circles in the hotel’s back passages. Luckily he came across a chef in a white toque, who stared at him in fright.
‘Take me to the first floor … Room next to the Mortimers’ suite.’
In the first place, however, the chef wasn’t privy to the names of the hotel guests. In the second place, he was awed by the five blood streaks that Maigret had put on his face when he’d wiped it with his hand. He was struck dumb by this giant of a man lost in a narrow servants’ corridor with his coat worn over his shoulders and his hand permanently stuck to his chest, distorting the shape of his waistcoat and jacket.
‘Police!’
Maigret was running out of patience.
He felt the threat of a dizzy spell coming on. His wound was burning hot and prickling, as if long needles were going through it.
At long last the chef set off without looking over his shoulder. Soon Maigret felt carpet beneath his feet, and he realized he’d left the service area and was in the hotel proper. He kept an eye on the room numbers. He was on the odd-numbered side.
Eventually he came across a terrified valet.
‘The Mortimers’ suite?’
‘Downstairs … But … You …’
He went down a stairway, and meanwhile, the news spread among the staff that there was a strange wounded man wandering about the hotel like a ghost.
Maigret stopped to rest against a wall for a moment and left a bloodstain on it; three very dark red drops also fell on the carpet.
At last he caught sight of the Mortimers’ suite and, beside it, the door of the room where Torrence was to be found. He got to the door, walking slightly crabwise, pushed it open …
‘Torrence! …’
The lights were on. The table was still laden with food and drink. Maigret’s thick eyebrows puckered. He could not see his partner. On the other hand he could smell something in the air that reminded him of a hospital.
He took a few more wobbly steps. And suddenly came to a stop by a settee.
A black-leather-shod foot was sticking out from under it.
• • •
He had to try three times over. As soon as he took his hand off his wound, blood spurted out of it at an alarming rate. Finally he took the towel that was lying on the table and wedged it under his waistcoat, which he fastened as tight as he could. The smell in the room made him nauseous.
He lifted one end of the settee with weak arms and swung it round on two of its legs. It was what he expected: Torrence, all crumpled up, with his shoulder twisted round as if he’d had his bones broken to make him fit into a small space.
There was a bandage over the lower part of his face, but it wasn’t knotted. Maigret got down on his knees.
Every gesture was measured and even slow – no doubt because of the state he was in. His hand hovered over Torrence’s chest before daring to feel for his heart. When it reached its target, Maigret froze. He didn’t stir but stayed kneeling on the carpet and stared at his partner.
Torrence was dead! Involuntarily Maigret twisted his lips and clenched his fist. His eyes clouded over and he uttered a terrible oath in the shut and silent room.
It could have sounded merely grotesque. But it did not! It was fearsome! Tragic! Terrifying!
Maigret’s face had hardened. He didn’t cry. That must be something he was unable to do. But his expression was full of such anger and pain as well as astonishment that it came close to looking stunned.
Torrence was thirty years old. For the last five years he had worked pretty much exclusively for Inspector Maigret.
His mouth was wide open, as if he’d made a desperate attempt at getting his last gasp of air.
One floor up, a traveller was taking off his shoes, directly over the dead man’s body.
Maigret looked around to seek out the enemy. He was breathing heavily.
Several minutes passed in this manner. Maigret got up only when he sensed some hidden process beginning to work inside him.
He went to the window, opened it and looked out on the empty roadway of the Champs-Élysées. He let the breeze cool his brow then went to pick up the gag he’d ripped off Torrence’s mouth.
It was a damask table napkin embroidered with the monogram of the Majestic. It still gave off a faint whiff of chloroform. Maigret stayed upright. His mind was a blank, with just a few shapeless thoughts knocking about inside it and raising painful associations.
Once again, as he had done in the hotel passageway, he leaned his shoulder on the wall, and quite suddenly his features seemed to sink. He had aged; his spirits were low. Was he at that moment in time on the verge of bursting into tears? No, he was too big and substantial. He was made of a tougher cloth.
The settee was squint and touching the table that hadn’t been cleared. On one plate chicken bones were mixed up with cigarette butts.
The inspector stretched out an arm towards the telephone. But he didn’t pick up the receiver. Instead, he snapped his fingers in anger, turned back towards the corpse and stared at it.
He scowled bitterly and ironically when he thought of all the regulations, formal procedures and precautions he had to observe to please the examining magistrate.
Did any of that matter? It was Torrence, for heaven’s sake! Almost the same as if it had been himself, dammit!
Torrence, who was part of the team, who …
Despite his apparent calm he unbuttoned his colleague’s waistcoat with such feverish energy that he snapped off two of its buttons. That’s when he saw something that made his face go quite grey.
On Torrence’s shirt, exactly over the centre of his heart, there was a small brown mark.
Smaller than a chickpea! There was just one single drop of blood, and it had coagulated into a clot no larger than a pinhead. Maigret’s eyes clouded over, and he twisted his face into a grimace of outrage he could not express in words.
It was disgusting, but in terms of crime it was the very apex of skill! He need look no further. He knew what the trick was, because he’d learned about it a few months earlier, in an article in a German crime studies journal.
First the chloroform towel, which overpowers the victim in twenty to thirty seconds. Then the long needle. The murderer can take his time and find just the right place between the ribs to get it straight into the heart, taking a life without any noise or mess.
Exactly the same method had been used in Hamburg six months earlier.
A bullet can miss its targets or just wound a man – Maigret was living proof of that. But a needle plunged into the heart of a man already made inert kills him scientifically, with no margin of error.
• • •
Inspector Maigret recalled one detail. That same evening, when the manager had reported that the Mortimers were leaving, he’d been sitting on the radiator, gnawing a chicken leg, and he’d been so overcome with his own comfort that he’d been on the verge of giving himself the hotel stake-out and sending Torrence to tail the millionaire at the theatre. That memory disturbed him. He felt awkward looking at his partner and felt nauseous, though he couldn’t tell whether it was because of his wound, his emotions or the chloroform that was still hanging in the air.
It didn’t even occur to him to start a proper methodical investigation.
It was Torrence lying there! Torrence, who’d been with him on all his cases these last few years! Torrence, a man who needed just one word, a single sign, to understand whatever he meant to say!
It was Torrence lying there with his mouth wide open as if he were still trying to suck in a bit of oxygen and keep on living! Maigret, who was unable to shed tears, felt sick and upset, with a weight on his shoulders, and nausea in his heart.
He went back to the telephone and spoke so quietly that he had to be asked to repeat his request.
‘Police Judiciaire? … Yes … Hello! … Headquarters? … Who is that speaking? … What? … Tarraud? … Listen, my lad … You’re going to run round to the chief’s address … Yes, his home address … Tell him … Tell him to join me at the Majestic … Straight away … Room … I don’t know the room number, but he’ll be shown up … What? … No, nothing else. …
‘Hello? … What’s that? … No, nothing wrong with me …’
He hung up. His colleague had started asking questions, puzzled by the odd sound of Maigret’s voice, and also because what he’d asked for was odder still.
He stood there for a while longer, with his arms swinging by his side. He tried not to look at the corner of the room where Torrence lay. He caught sight of himself in a mirror and realized that blood had soaked through the towel. So, with great difficulty, he took off his jacket.
• • •
One hour later the Superintendent of Criminal Investigation knocked at the door. Maigret opened it a slit and grunted at the valet who’d brought up the chief to say he was no longer needed. He only opened the door further when the flunkey had vanished. Only then did the super realize that Maigret was bare-chested. The door to the bathroom was wide open, and the floor was a puddle of reddish water.
‘Shut the door, sharpish,’ Maigret said, with no regard for hierarchy.
On the right side of his chest was an elongated and now swollen flesh wound. His braces were hanging down his legs.
He nodded towards the corner of the room where Torrence was lying and put a finger to his lips.
‘Shush! …’
The superintendent shuddered. In sudden agitation, he inquired:
‘Is he dead?’
Maigret’s chin fell to his chest.
‘Could you give me a hand, chief?’ he mumbled gloomily.
‘But … you’re … It’s a serious …’
‘Shush! The bullet came out, that’s the main thing. Help me wrap it up tight …’
He’d put the basin on the floor and cut the sheet in two.
‘The Baltic gang …’ he explained. ‘They missed me … but they didn’t miss my poor Torrence …’
‘Have you disinfected the wound?’
‘Yes, I washed it with soap then put some tincture of iodine on it …’
‘Do you think …’
‘That’s enough for now! … With a needle, chief! … They anaesthetized him, then killed him with a needle …’
Maigret wasn’t himself. It was as if he was on the other side of a net curtain that made him look and sound all fuzzy.<
br />
‘Hand me my shirt …’
His voice was blank. His gestures were measured and imprecise. His face was without expression.
‘You had to come here … Seeing as it’s one of our own … Not to mention that I didn’t want to make waves … You can have him taken away later … Keep all mention of it out of the papers … Chief, you do trust me, don’t you?’
All the same there was a catch in Maigret’s voice. It touched the super, who took him by the hand.
‘Now tell me, Maigret … What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing … I’m quite calm, I swear … I don’t think I’ve ever been so calm … But now, it’s between them and me … Do you understand? …’
The superintendent helped him get his waistcoat and his jacket on. The dressing changed Maigret’s appearance, broadening his waist and making his figure less neat, as if he had rolls of fat.
He looked at himself in the mirror and screwed up his face ironically. He was well aware that he now looked all soft. He’d lost that rock-solid, hard-cased look of a human mountain that he liked his enemies to see.
His face was pale, puffy and streaked with red. He was beginning to get bags under his eyes.
‘Thank you, chief. Do you think you can do the necessary, as far as Torrence is concerned?’
‘Yes, we can keep it out of the news … I’ll alert the magistrates … I’ll go to see the prosecutor in person.’
‘Good! I’ll get on with the job …’
He was tidying his mussed hair as he spoke. Then he walked over to the corpse, stopped in his tracks and asked his colleague:
‘I’m allowed to close his eyes, aren’t I? … I think he would have liked me to do it …’
His fingers were shaking. He kept them on the dead man’s eyelids for a while, as if he was stroking them. The superintendent became agitated and begged him:
‘Maigret! Please …’
The inspector got up and cast a last glance around the room.
‘Farewell, chief … Don’t let them tell my wife I’ve been hurt …’
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