Pietr the Latvian

by Georges Simenon

  Maigret went up to the front desk at the Majestic:

  ‘Mortimer?’

  ‘He’s just been driven to the American Embassy, where he’s having lunch …’

  Pietr was on his way to his seat in the empty dining room.

  ‘Will you be lunching with us, sir?’ the manager asked Maigret.

  ‘Lay me a setting opposite that man, thank you.’

  The hotelier found that hard to swallow.

  ‘Opposite? …’ he sputtered. ‘I can’t do that! The room is empty and …’

  ‘I said, opposite.’

  The manager would not give up and ran after the detective.

  ‘Listen! It will surely cause a to-do … I can put you at a table where you’ll be able to see him just as well.’

  ‘I said, at his table.’

  It was then, pacing about the lobby, that he realized he was weary. Weary with an insidious lassitude that affected him all over, and his whole self besides, body and soul.

  He slumped into the wicker chair he had sat in that morning. A couple consisting of a lady ripe in years and an overdressed young man stood up straight away. From behind her lorgnette the woman said in a voice that was meant to be overheard:

  ‘These five-stars aren’t what they used to be … Did you see that …’

  ‘That’ was Maigret. And he didn’t even smile back.

  12. A Woman With a Gun

  ‘Hello! … Err … Um … Is that you?’

  ‘Maigret speaking,’ the inspector sighed. He’d recognized Dufour’s voice.

  ‘Shush! … I’ll keep it short, chief … Went toilet … Handbag on table … Looked … Gun inside!’

  ‘Is she still at Le Select?’

  ‘She’s eating …’

  Dufour must have looked like a cartoon conspirator in the telephone booth, waving his arms about in mysterious and terrified ways. Maigret hung up without a word as he didn’t have the heart to respond. Little foibles which usually made him smile now made him feel almost physically sick.

  The manager had resigned himself to laying a place for Maigret opposite the Latvian, who’d asked the waiter:

  ‘In whose honour …?’

  ‘I can’t say, sir. I do as I’m told …’

  So he let it drop. An English family group of five burst into the dining room and warmed up the atmosphere a bit.

  Maigret deposited his overcoat and hat in the cloakroom, walked across the dining room and halted for a moment before sitting down. He even made as if to say hello.

  But Pietr didn’t seem to notice him. The four or five glasses of spirits he’d drunk seemed to have been forgotten. He conducted himself with icily impeccable manners.

  He gave not the slightest hint of nerves. With his gaze on a far horizon, he looked more like an engineer trying to solve some technical problem in his head.

  He drank modestly, though he’d selected one of the best burgundies of the last two decades.

  He ate a light meal: omelette aux fines herbes, veal cutlet in crème fraîche.

  In the intervals between the dishes he sat patiently with his two hands flat on the table, paying no attention to what was going on around him.

  The dining room was beginning to fill up.

  ‘Your moustache is coming unstuck’, Maigret said suddenly.

  Pietr didn’t react. After a while he just stroked his lips with two fingers. Maigret was right, though it was hardly noticeable.

  Maigret’s imperturbability was legendary among his colleagues, but even so he was having trouble holding himself back.

  He was going to have an even tougher time of it that afternoon.

  Obviously he did not expect Pietr to do anything to put himself in jeopardy, given the close surveillance. All the same, he’d surely taken one step towards disaster in the morning. Wasn’t it reasonable to hope he would be pushed all the way down by the unremitting presence of a man acting like a blank wall, shutting him off from the light?

  Pietr had coffee in the lobby and then asked for his lightweight overcoat to be brought down. He strolled down the Champs-Élysées and a little after two went into a local cinema.

  He didn’t come out until six. He’d not spoken to anyone, not written anything, nor made a move that was in any way suspicious.

  Sitting comfortably in his seat he’d concentrated on following the twists and turns of an infantile plot.

  If he’d looked over his shoulder as he then sauntered towards Place de l’Opéra to have his aperitif he’d have realized that the figure behind him was made of tough, persistent stuff. But he might also have sensed that the inspector was beginning to doubt his own judgement.

  That was indeed the case. In the darkness of the cinema, doing his best not to watch the images flickering on the screen, Maigret kept on thinking about what would happen if he were to make an arrest on the spot.

  But he knew very well what would happen! No convincing material evidence on his side. On the other side, a heavy web of influence weighing on the examining magistrate, the prosecutor, going right up to the foreign minister and the minister of justice!

  He was slightly hunched as he walked. His wound was hurting, and his right arm was getting even stiffer. The doctor had said firmly:

  ‘If the pain starts to get worse, come back here straight away! It’ll mean you’ve got an infection in the wound …’

  So what? Did he have time to bother about that?

  ‘Did you see that?’ a guest at the Majestic had said that morning.

  Heavens above, yes! ‘That’ was a cop trying to stop leading criminals from doing any more harm, a cop set on avenging a colleague who’d been murdered in that very same five-star hotel!

  ‘That’ didn’t have a tailor in London, he didn’t have time to get manicured every morning, and his wife had been cooking meals for him for three days in a row without knowing what was going on.

  ‘That’ was a senior detective earning 2,200 francs a month who, when he’d solved a case and put criminals behind bars, had to sit down with paper and pencil and itemize his expenses, clip his receipts and documentation to the claim, and then go and argue it out with accounts!

  Maigret had no car of his own, no millions, not even a big team. If he commandeered a city policeman or two, he still had to justify the use he made of them.

  Pietr, who was sitting a metre away from him, paid for a drink with a 50 franc note and didn’t bother to pick up the change. It was either a habit or a trick. Then, presumably to irritate the inspector, he went into a shirt-maker’s and spent half an hour picking twelve ties and three dressing gowns. He left his calling card on the counter while a smartly dressed salesman scurried after him.

  The lesion was definitely becoming inflamed. Sometimes he had intense shooting pains in the whole of his shoulder and he felt like vomiting, as if he had a stomach infection as well.

  Rue de la Paix, Place Vendôme, Faubourg Saint-Honoré! Pietr was gadding about …

  Back to the Majestic at last … The bellhops rushed to help him with the revolving door.

  ‘Chief …’

  ‘You again?’

  Officer Dufour emerged tentatively from the shadows with a worried look in his eyes.

  ‘Listen … She’s vanished …’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I did my best, I promise! She left Le Select. A minute later she went into a couturier’s at no. 52. I waited an hour and then interrogated the doorman. She hadn’t been seen in the first-floor showroom. She’d simply walked straight through, because the building has a second exit on Rue de Berry.’

  ‘That’s enough!’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Take a break!’

  Dufour looked Maigret in the eye, then turned his gaze sharply aside.

  ‘I swear to you that …’

  To his amazement, Maigret patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘You’re a good lad, Dufour! Don’t let it get you down …’

  Then h
e went inside the Majestic, saw the manager making a face and smiled back.

  ‘Oppenheim?’

  ‘He’s just gone up to his room.’

  Maigret saw a lift that was free.

  ‘Second floor …’

  He filled his pipe and suddenly realized with another smile that was somewhat more ironical than the first that for the last several hours he’d forgotten to have a smoke.

  • • •

  He went to the door of no. 17 and didn’t waver. He knocked. A voice told him to come in. He did so, closing the door behind him.

  Despite the radiators a log fire had been lit in the lounge, for decoration. The Latvian was leaning on the mantelpiece and pushing a piece of paper towards the flames with his toe, to get it to light.

  At a glance Maigret saw that he was not as cool as before, but he had enough self-control not to show how much that pleased him.

  He picked up a dainty gilded chair with his huge hand, carried it to within a metre of the fire, set it down on its slender legs and sat astride it.

  Maybe it was because he had his pipe back between his teeth. Or maybe because his whole being was rebounding from the hours of depression, or rather, of uncertainty, that he’d just been through.

  In any case, the fact is he was now tougher and weightier than ever. He was Maigret twice over, so to speak. Carved from a single piece of old oak, or, better still, from very dense stone.

  He propped his elbows on the back of the chair. You could feel that if he was driven to an extremity he could grab his target by the scruff of his neck with his two broad hands and bang his head against the wall.

  ‘Mortimer is back,’ he said.

  The Latvian watched the paper burn, then slowly looked up.

  ‘I’m not aware …’

  It did not escape Maigret’s eye that Pietr’s fists were clenched. It also did not escape him that there was a suitcase next to the bedroom door that had not been in the suite before. It was a common suitcase that cost 100 francs at most, and it clashed with the surroundings.

  ‘What’s inside that?’

  No answer. Just a nervous twitch. Then a question:

  ‘Are you going to arrest me?’

  He was anxious, to be sure, but there was also a sense of relief in his voice.

  ‘Not yet …’

  Maigret got up and pushed the suitcase across the floor with his foot, and then bent down to open it.

  It contained a brand-new grey off-the-peg suit, with its tags still on it.

  The inspector picked up the telephone.

  ‘Hello! … Is Mortimer back? … No? … No callers for no. 17? Hello! … Yes … A parcel from a shirt-makers on the Grands Boulevards? … No need to bring it up …’

  He put the phone down and carried on interrogating aggressively:

  ‘Where is Anna Gorskin?’

  At last he felt he was making progress!

  ‘Look around …’

  ‘You mean she’s not in this suite … But she was here … She brought this suitcase, and a letter …’

  The Latvian gave a quick stab at the charred paper to make it collapse. Now it was just a pile of ash.

  Maigret was fully aware that this was no time for careless words. He was on the right track, but the slightest slip would give his advantage away.

  Out of sheer habit he got up and went to the fire so abruptly that Pietr flinched and made as if to put up his arms in self-defence, then blushed with embarrassment. Maigret was only going to stand with his back to the fire! He took short, strong puffs at his pipe.

  Silence ensued for such a long time and with so much unspoken that it strained nerves to breaking point.

  The Latvian was on a tightrope and still putting on a show of balance. In response to Maigret’s pipe he lit a cigar.

  • • •

  Maigret started to pace up and down and nearly broke the telephone table when he leaned on it. The Latvian didn’t see that he’d pressed the call button without picking up the receiver. The result was instantaneous. The bell rang. It was reception.

  ‘Hello! … You called?’

  ‘Hello! … Yes … What was that?’

  ‘Hello! … This is reception …’

  Cool as a cucumber, Maigret went on:

  ‘Hello! … Yes … Mortimer! … Thank you! … I’ll drop in on him soon …’

  ‘Hello! Hello! …’

  He’d scarcely put the earpiece back on its hook when the telephone rang again. The manager was cross:

  ‘What’s going on? … I don’t get it …’

  ‘Dammit! …’ Maigret thundered.

  He stared heavily at the Latvian, who had gone even paler and who, for at least a second, wanted to make a dash for the door.

  ‘No big deal,’ Maigret told him. ‘Mortimer-Levingston’s just come in. I’d asked them to let me know …’

  He could see sweat beading on Pietr’s brow.

  ‘We were discussing the suitcase and the letter that came with it … Anna Gorskin …’

  ‘Anna’s not involved …’

  ‘Excuse me … I thought … Isn’t the letter from her?’

  ‘Listen …’

  Pietr was shaking. Quite visibly shaking. And he was in a strangely nervous state. He had twitches all over his face and spasms in his body.

  ‘Listen to me …’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Maigret finally conceded, still standing with his back to the fire.

  He’d slipped his good hand into his gun pocket. It would take him no more than a second to aim. He was smiling, but behind the smile you could sense concentration taken to an utmost extreme.

  ‘Well then? I said I was listening …’

  But Pietr grabbed a bottle of whisky, muttering through clenched teeth:

  ‘What the hell …’

  Then he poured himself a tumbler and drank it straight off, looking at Maigret with the eyes of Fyodor Yurevich and a dribble of drink glinting on his chin.

  13. The Two Pietrs

  Maigret had never seen a man get drunk at such lightning speed. It’s true he had also never seen anyone fill a tumbler to the brim with whisky, knock it back, refill it, knock the second glass back, then do the same a third time before shaking the bottle over his mouth to get the last few drops of 104 degrees proof spirit down his throat.

  The effect was impressive. Pietr went crimson and the next minute he was as white as a sheet, with blotches of red on his cheeks. His lips lost their colour. He steadied himself on the low table, staggered about, then said with the detachment of a true drunk:

  ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it? …’

  He laughed uncertainly, expressing a whole range of things: fear, irony, bitterness and maybe despair. He tried to hold on to a chair but knocked it over, then wiped his damp brow.

  ‘You do realize that you’d never have managed by yourself … Sheer luck …’

  Maigret didn’t move. He was so disturbed by the scene that he nearly put an end to it by having the man drink or inhale an antidote.

  What he was watching was the same transformation he’d seen that morning, but on a scale ten times, a hundred times greater.

  A few minutes earlier he’d been dealing with a man in control of himself, with a sharp mind backed up by uncommon willpower … A society man, a man of learning, of the utmost elegance.

  Now there was just this bag of nerves tugged this way and that as if by a crazy puppeteer, with eyes like tempests set in a wan and twisted face.

  And he was laughing! But despite his laughter and his pointless excitement, he had his ear open and was bending over as if he expected to hear something coming up from underneath.

  Underneath was the Mortimers’ suite.

  ‘We had a first-rate set-up!’ His voice was now hoarse. ‘You’d never have got to the bottom of it. It was sheer chance, I’m telling you, or rather, several coincidences in a row!’

  He bumped into the wall and leaned on it at an oblique angle, screwing up his fac
e because his artificial intoxication – alcohol poisoning, to be more precise – must have given him a dreadful headache.

  ‘Come on, then … While there’s still time, try and work out which Pietr I am! Quite an actor, aren’t I?’

  He was sad and disgusting, comical and repulsive at the same time. His level of intoxication was increasing by the second.

  ‘It’s odd they’re not here yet! But they will be! … And then … Come on, guess! … which Pietr will I be? …’

  His mood changed abruptly and he put his head in his hands. You could see on his face that he was in pain.

  ‘You’ll never understand … The story of the two Pietrs … It’s like the story of Cain and Abel … I suppose you’re a Catholic … In our country we’re Protestant and know the Bible by heart … But it’s no good … I’m sure Cain was a good-natured boy, a trusting guy … Whereas that Abel …’

  There was someone in the corridor. The door opened.

  It even took Maigret aback, and he had to clench his pipe harder between his teeth.

  For the person who had just come in was Mortimer, in a fur coat, looking as hale and ruddy as a man who has just come from a gourmet dinner.

  He gave off a faint smell of liqueur and cigar.

  His expression altered as soon as he got into the lounge. Colour drained from his face. Maigret noticed he was asymmetrical in a way that was difficult to place but which gave him a murky look.

  You could sense he’d just come in from outside. There was still some cooler air in the folds of his clothes.

  There were two sides to the scene. Maigret couldn’t watch both simultaneously.

  He paid more attention to the Latvian as he tried to clear his mind once his initial fright had passed. But it was already too late. The man had taken too large a dose. He knew it himself, even as he desperately applied all his willpower to the task.

  His face was twisted. He could probably see people and things only through a distorting haze. When he let go of the table he tripped, came within a whisker of falling over but miraculously recovered his balance.