Pietr the Latvian

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Certainly, sir …’

  The manager was more pliant now because he sensed that events could easily get out of hand, to disastrous effect.

  ‘What are you going to do, inspector?’

  But Maigret had already moved off and was standing all clumsy and awkward in the middle of the lobby. He looked like a tourist in a historic church trying to work out without the help of a guide what there was to inspect.

  • • •

  There was a ray of sunshine shedding golden light on the entire lobby of the Majestic. At nine in the morning it was almost deserted. Just a few travellers at separate tables having breakfast while reading the papers.

  In the end Maigret slumped into a wicker chair next to the fountain, which for one reason or another wasn’t working that morning. The goldfish in the ceramic pond had decided to stop swimming about, and the only thing moving were fish-jaws going up and down, chewing water.

  They reminded the inspector of Torrence’s open mouth. That must have made a strong impression on him, because he wriggled about for a long time before finding a comfortable position.

  A sprinkling of flunkeys passed by from time to time. Maigret did not take his eyes off them, because he knew that a bullet could fly at any moment.

  The game he was in had got near to show-down.

  The fact that Maigret had unmasked the identity of Oppenheim, alias Pietr the Latvian, was no big deal. In itself it didn’t put the detective at risk.

  The Latvian was hardly in hiding. On the contrary, he was flaunting himself in front of his trackers, as he was confident they had nothing on him.

  The proof of that was the flurry of telegrams that had tracked him step by step from Krakow to Bremen, from Bremen to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to Brussels and Paris.

  But then came the corpse on the Étoile du Nord! Most of all, there was Maigret’s discovery of the unexpected relations between the East European and Mortimer-Levingston.

  And that was a major discovery!

  Pietr was a self-avowed crook who was happy to taunt international police forces: ‘Just try to catch me red-handed!’

  Mortimer was, in the eyes of the whole world, an honest and upright man!

  There were just two people who might have guessed the connection between them.

  That very evening, Torrence was murdered! And Maigret came under fire from a revolver in Rue Fontaine!

  A third, bewildered person, who probably knew next to nothing but might serve as a lead to further investigation, had also been eliminated: José Latourie, a professional dancer.

  So Mortimer and the Latvian, presumably reassured by the three disposals, had gone back to their allotted places. There they were upstairs, in their luxury suites, giving orders on the telephone to a whole team of domestics of a five-star hotel, taking baths, eating meals, getting dressed.

  Maigret was waiting for them on his own. He wasn’t comfortable in his wicker chair: one side of his chest was stiff and throbbing, and he could barely use his right arm, because it was wracked by persistent pain.

  He could have arrested them there and then. But he knew that wouldn’t be any use. At most he might get someone to testify against Pietr the Latvian, alias Fyodor Yurevich, alias Oswald Oppenheim, and who must have had many other identities as well, including that of Olaf Swaan.

  But what had he got against the American millionaire Mortimer-Levingston? Within an hour of arrest, the US Embassy would lodge a protest! The French banks and companies and financial institutions on whose boards he sat would wheel in political support.

  What evidence did he have? What clues? The fact that he’d vanished for a few hours when Pietr was also absent?

  That he’d had supper at Pickwick’s Bar and that his wife had danced with José Latourie?

  That a police sergeant had seen him go into a scruffy lodging house at the sign of the Roi de Sicile?

  It would all be torn to shreds! Apologies would have to be made and, to satisfy the Americans, there would have to be a scapegoat. Maigret would be sacked, at least for show.

  But Torrence was dead!

  He must have been carried across the hall at the crack of dawn on a stretcher. Or else the manager had warded off the possibility of an early riser seeing such an unpleasant spectacle by having the corpse taken out by the service entrance!

  That was very likely! Narrow corridors, spiral staircases … the stretcher would have bumped into the railings …

  Behind the mahogany counter the telephones rang. Comings and goings. Hurried commands. The manager came up to him:

  ‘Mrs Mortimer-Levingston is leaving … They’ve just rung from upstairs to have her trunk brought down … The car is waiting …’

  Maigret smiled faintly.

  ‘Which train?’

  ‘She’s flying to Berlin from Le Bourget airfield …’

  He’d barely finished his sentence when she appeared, dressed in a light-grey travelling cape, carrying a crocodile-skin handbag. She was moving quickly but when she got to the revolving door she couldn’t resist turning round.

  Maigret made a great effort to stand up so as to be certain she would see him. He was sure she had bitten her lip. Then she left even more hurriedly, waving her hands about and giving orders to her chauffeur.

  The manager was wanted elsewhere. The inspector was all on his own beside the fountain, which suddenly began to spout. It must have been on a time-clock.

  It was 10 a.m.

  Maigret smiled inwardly, sat down weightily but with great care, because the slightest movement pulled on his wound, which was hurting him more and more.

  ‘You get rid of the weakest links …’

  That’s what it was! First José Latourie, reckoned to be unreliable, had been got rid of with three stabs; and now Mrs Mortimer, who was also quite emotional. They were packing her off to Berlin! And doing her a favour.

  • • •

  The tough guys were staying behind: Pietr, who was taking ages to get dressed; Mortimer-Levingston, who had probably not lost an ounce of his aristocratic grandeur; and Pepito Moretto, the team’s hit-man.

  Connected by invisible threads, all three were gearing themselves up.

  The enemy was in their midst, in a wicker armchair, sitting quite still with his legs stretched out in the middle of the lobby as the hotel began to get busier. Haze from the tinkling fountain misted his face.

  The lift came down and stopped.

  The first to emerge was Pietr, wearing a beautifully tailored cinnamon-coloured suit and smoking a Henry Clay cigar.

  He was master of the house. That was what he paid for. Casually, confidently, he sauntered round the hall, stopped here and there, looked into the showcases that prestige shops set up in the lobbies of grand hotels, glanced at the board displaying the latest foreign currency rates and finally took up position less than three metres away from Maigret to stare at the artificial-looking goldfish in the pond. He flicked cigar ash into the water and then sailed off to the library.

  11. Arrivals and Departures

  Pietr glanced through a few newspapers, paying particular attention to the Revaler Bote, from Tallinn. There was only one out-of-date issue at the Majestic. It had probably been left behind by another guest.

  He lit another cigar at a few minutes to eleven, went across the lobby and sent a bellhop to fetch his hat.

  Thanks to the sun falling on one side of the Champs-Élysées, it was quite mild.

  Pietr went out without his coat, with just a grey homburg on his head, and walked slowly up to the Arc de Triomphe like a man out for a breath of fresh air.

  Maigret kept fairly close behind, making no effort to remain unseen. As the dressing on his wound made moving about uncomfortable, he did not appreciate the walk.

  • • •

  At the corner of Rue de Berry he heard a whistle that wasn’t very loud and took no notice of it. Then another whistle. So he turned round and saw Inspector Dufour performing a mystifying dumb show so as
to let him know he had something to tell him.

  Dufour was in Rue de Berry, pretending to be fascinated by a pharmacist’s window display, so his gesticulations appeared to be addressed to a waxwork female head, one of whose cheeks was covered with a meticulous simulation of eczema.

  ‘Come over here … Come on! Quickly …’

  Dufour was offended and indignant. He’d been prowling around the Majestic for an hour, using every trick of the trade – and now his chief was ordering him to break cover all at once!

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘The Jewish woman …’

  ‘She went out?’

  ‘She’s here … And since you made me cross over, she can see us, right now …’

  Maigret looked around.

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘From Le Select … She’s sitting inside … Look! The curtain’s moving …’

  ‘Carry on watching her …’

  ‘Openly?’

  ‘Have a drink at the table next to hers, if you like.’

  At this point in the game there was no point playing hide-and-seek. Maigret walked on and caught up with Pietr in a couple of hundred metres. He hadn’t tried to take advantage of Maigret’s conversation with Dufour to slip away.

  And why should he slip away? The match was being played on a new pitch. The two sides could see each other. Pretty much all the cards were on the table now.

  Pietr walked up and down the Champs-Élysées twice over, from Étoile to the Rond-Point and back again, and by then Maigret had grasped his character, entirely.

  He had a slender, tense figure that was fundamentally more thoroughbred than Mortimer’s, but his breeding was of a kind particular to Northern peoples.

  Maigret was already familiar with the type. He’d met others of the same ilk in the Latin Quarter during his days as a medical student (though he never completed the course), and they had baffled the Southerner that he was.

  He had a particular recollection of one such, a skinny, blond Pole whose hair was already thinning at the age of twenty-two. He was the son of a cleaning lady, and for seven years he came to lectures at the Sorbonne without any socks, living on one egg with a slice of bread a day. He couldn’t afford to buy the print versions of the lectures so he had to study in public libraries. He got to know nothing of Paris, of women, or of French ways. But scarcely had he got his degree than he was appointed a senior professor in Warsaw. Five years later Maigret saw him on a return visit to Paris, as a member of a delegation of foreign scientists. He was as skinny and icy as ever, but he went to a dinner at the presidential palace.

  Maigret had met others, too. Not all of them were quite so special. But they were all amazingly keen to learn a huge range of different things. And learn they did!

  To learn for the sake of learning! Like that Belgian professor who knew all the languages of the Far East – more than forty of them – without ever having set foot in Asia or being at all interested in the peoples whose languages he dissected, to amuse himself.

  Ferocious will-power of the same kind could be seen in the grey-green eyes of Pietr the Latvian. But as soon as you thought you could pigeon-hole him in the category of intellectuals, you noticed other features that didn’t fit at all.

  In a sense you could feel the shadow of Fyodor Yurevich, the Russian vagrant in the trenchcoat, hovering over the neat figure of the guest at the Majestic.

  It was a moral certainty that they were one and the same man; their identity was about to become a patent fact as well.

  The evening he got to Paris, Pietr went missing. Next morning Maigret caught up with him in Fécamp in the shape of Fyodor Yurevich.

  Fyodor returned to Rue du Roi-de-Sicile. A few hours later, Mortimer dropped in on him at his lodging. Several people then came out of the building, including a bearded old man.

  Next morning Pietr was back in his place at Hôtel Majestic.

  What was astounding was that, apart from a fairly striking physical resemblance, these two incarnations had absolutely nothing in common.

  Fyodor Yurevich was a genuine Slavic vagrant, a sentimental and manic déclassé. Everything fitted perfectly. He didn’t make the slightest error even when he leaned on the counter in the drinking hole in Fécamp.

  On the other hand there wasn’t a thread out of place in the character of the East European intellectual, breathing refinement from head to toe. The way he asked the bellhop for a light, the way he wore his top-quality English homburg, his casual stroll in the sun along the Champs-Élysées and the way he looked at window-displays – it was all quite perfect.

  It was so perfect it had to go deeper than play-acting. Maigret had acted parts himself. Although the police use disguise and deep cover less often than people imagine, they still have to do it from time to time. But Maigret in make-up was still Maigret in some aspect of his being – in a glance, or a tic. When he’d dressed up as a cattle-dealer, for example (he had done that once, and got away with it), he was acting the role of a cattle-dealer. But he hadn’t become a cattle-dealer. The persona he’d put on remained external to him.

  Pietr-Fyodor was both Pietr and Fyodor from inside.

  The inspector’s view could be summed up this way: he was both one thing and the other not only in dress but in essence.

  He’d been living two quite different lives in alternation for many years, that was clear, and maybe all his life long.

  These were just the random thoughts that struck Maigret as he walked slowly through the sweet-smelling light air.

  All of a sudden, though, the character of Pietr the Latvian cracked wide open.

  • • •

  What brought this about was significant in itself. He had paused opposite Fouquet’s and was about to cross the street, manifestly intending to have an aperitif at the bar of that high-class establishment.

  But then he changed his mind. He carried on along the same side of the avenue, then suddenly began to hurry before darting down Rue Washington.

  There was café nearby of the sort you find nestled in all the really plush areas of the city, to cater for taxi-drivers and domestic staff.

  Pietr went in, and Maigret followed him, opening the door just as the Latvian was ordering an ersatz absinthe.

  He was standing at the horseshoe counter. From time to time a waiter in a blue apron gave it a desultory wipe with a dirty dishcloth. There was a knot of dust-covered building workers to the Latvian’s left, and, on his right, a gas company cashier.

  The leader of the Baltic gang clashed with the surroundings in every detail of his impeccably tasteful and stylish attire.

  His blond toothbrush moustache and his thin, almost transparent eyebrows caught the light. He stared at Maigret, not straight on, but in the mirror at the back of the bar.

  That’s when the inspector noticed a quiver in Pietr’s lips and an almost imperceptible contraction of his nostrils.

  Pietr must have been watching himself in the mirror too. He started drinking slowly, but soon he gulped down what was left in his glass in one go and waved a finger to say:

  ‘Same again!’

  Maigret had ordered a vermouth. He looked even taller and wider than ever in the confined space of the bar. He didn’t take his eyes off the Latvian.

  He was having something like double vision. Just as had happened to him in the hotel lobby, he could see one image superimposed on another: behind the current scene, he had a vision of the squalid bar in Fécamp. Pietr was going double. Maigret could see him in his cinnamon suit and in his worn-out raincoat at the same time.

  ‘I’m telling you I’d rather do that than get beaten up!’ one of the builders exclaimed, banging his glass down on the counter.

  Pietr was now on his third glass of green liquid. Maigret could smell the aniseed in it. Because the gas company cashier had moved away, he was now shoulder to shoulder with his target, at touching distance.

  Maigret was two heads taller than Pietr. They were both facing the mirror, and gazed
at each other in that pewter-tinted screen.

  The Latvian’s face began to decompose, starting with his eyes. He snapped his white dry-skinned fingers, then wiped his forehead with his hand. A struggle then slowly began on his face. In the mirror Maigret saw now the guest of the Majestic, now the face of Anna Gorskin’s tormented lover.

  But the second visage didn’t emerge in full. It kept getting pushed back by immense muscular effort. Only the eyes of Pietr’s Russian self stayed stable.

  He was hanging on to the edge of the counter with his left hand. His body was swaying.

  • • •

  Maigret tried out an experiment. In his pocket he still had the photograph of Madame Swaan that he’d extracted from the archive album of the photographer in Fécamp.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’ he asked the barman.

  ‘Two francs twenty …’

  He pretended to look for the money in his wallet and managed to drop the snapshot into a puddle of spilt drink between the counter’s raised edges. He paid no attention to it, and held out a five franc note. But he looked hard at the mirror.

  The waiter picked the photograph up and started wiping it clean, apologetically.

  Pietr was squeezing the glass in his hand. His face was rigid and his eyes were hard.

  Then suddenly there was an unexpected noise, a soft but sharp crack that made the barman at the cash register turn round with a start.

  Pietr opened his fist. Shards of broken glass tinkled on to the counter.

  He’d gradually crushed it. He was bleeding from a small cut on his index finger. He threw down a 100 franc note and left the bar without looking at Maigret.

  Now he was striding straight towards the Majestic, showing no sign of drunkenness. His gait was just as neat and his posture just the same as when he had left it. Maigret stuck obstinately to his heels. As he got within sight of the hotel he recognized a car pulling away. It belonged to the forensics lab and must have been taking away the cameras and other equipment used for fingerprint detection.

  This encounter stopped him in his tracks. His confidence sagged: he felt unmoored, without a post to lean on.

  He passed by Le Select. Through the window Inspector Dufour waved his arm in what was supposed to be a confidential gesture but could be understood by anyone with eyes as an invitation to look at the table where the Jewish woman was sitting.