Pietr the Latvian

by Georges Simenon

  ‘My dear Mor …’ he began.

  His eyes crossed Maigret’s and he spoke in a different voice:

  ‘Too bad, eh! Too …’

  The door slammed. Rapid footsteps going away. Mortimer had beaten a retreat. At that point Pietr fell into an armchair.

  Maigret was at the door in a trice. Before setting off, he stopped to listen.

  But the many different noises in the hotel made it impossible to identify the sound of Mortimer’s footsteps.

  ‘I’m telling you, this is what you wanted …’ Pietr stuttered, and then with slurred tongue carried on speaking in a language Maigret didn’t know.

  The inspector locked the door behind him and went along the corridor until he got to a staircase. He ran down.

  He got to the first-floor landing just in time to bump into a woman who was running away. He smelt gunpowder.

  He grabbed the woman by her clothes with his left hand. With his right hand he hit her wrist hard, and a revolver fell to the floor. The gun went off, and the bullet shattered the glass pane in the lift.

  The woman struggled. She was exceptionally strong. Maigret had no means to restrain her other than twisting her wrist, and she fell to her knees, hissing:

  ‘Let go! …’

  The hotel began to stir. An unaccustomed sound of excitement arose along all the corridors and filtered out all the exits.

  The first person to appear was a chambermaid dressed in black and white. She raised her arms and fled in fright.

  ‘Don’t move!’ Maigret ordered – not to the maid, but to his prisoner.

  But both women froze. The chambermaid screamed:

  ‘Mercy! … I haven’t done anything …’

  Then things turned quite chaotic. People started pouring in from every direction. The manager was waving his arms about in the middle of the crowd. Further down there were women in evening dress making a terrible din.

  Maigret decided to bend over and put handcuffs on his prisoner, who was none other than Anna Gorskin. She fought back, and in the struggle her dress got torn, making her bosom visible, as it often was. A fine figure of a woman she was too, with her sparkling eyes and her twisted mouth.

  ‘Mortimer’s suite …’ Maigret shouted to the manager.

  But the poor man didn’t know if he was coming or going. Maigret was on his own in the middle of a panicky crowd of people who kept bumping into each other, with womenfolk screaming, weeping and falling over.

  The American’s suite was only a few metres away. The inspector didn’t need to open the door, it was swinging on its hinges. He saw a body on the floor, bleeding but still moving. Then he ran back up to the next floor, banged on the door he’d locked himself, got no response, and then forced it open.

  Pietr’s suite was empty!

  The suitcase was still on the floor where he had left it, with the off-the-peg suit laid over it.

  An icy blast came from the open window. It gave on to a courtyard no wider than a chimney. Down below you could make out the dark rectangular shapes of three doors.

  • • •

  Maigret went back down with heavy tread. The crowd had calmed down somewhat. One of the guests was a doctor. But the women – like the men, moreover! – weren’t too bothered about Mortimer, to whom the doctor was attending. All eyes were on the Jewish woman slumped in the corridor with handcuffs on her wrists, snarling insults and threats at her audience. Her hat had slipped off and bunches of glossy hair fell over her face.

  A desk interpreter came out of the lift with the broken glass, accompanied by a city policeman.

  ‘Get them all out of here,’ Maigret ordered. People protested behind his back. He looked big enough to fill the whole width of the corridor. Grumpily, obstinately, he went over to Mortimer’s body.

  ‘Well? …’

  The doctor was a German with not much French, and he launched into a long explanation in a medley of two languages.

  The millionaire’s lower jaw had literally vanished. There was just a wide, red-black mess in its place. Despite this, his mouth was still moving, though it wasn’t quite a mouth any more, and from it came a babbling sound, with a lot of blood.

  Nobody could understand what it meant, neither Maigret nor the doctor who was, it turned out later, a professor at the University of Bonn; nor could the two or three other persons standing nearest.

  Cigar ash was sprinkled over the fur coat. One of Mortimer’s hands was wide open.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Maigret asked.

  The doctor shook his head, and both men fell silent.

  The noise in the corridor was abating. The policeman was moving the insistent rubberneckers down the corridor one pace at a time.

  Mortimer’s lips closed and then opened again. The doctor kept still for a few seconds. Then he rose and, as if relieved of a great weight, declared:

  ‘Dead, ja … It was hard …’

  Someone had stepped on the fur coat, which bore a clear imprint of the sole of a shoe.

  The policeman, with his silver epaulettes, appeared in the open doorway and didn’t say anything at first.

  ‘What should I …’

  ‘Get them all out of here, every single one …’ Maigret commanded.

  ‘The woman is screaming …’

  ‘Let her scream …’

  He went to stand in front of the fireplace. But there was no fire in this hearth.

  14. The Ugala Club

  Every race has its own smell, and other races hate it. Despite opening the window and puffing relentlessly at his pipe, Inspector Maigret could not get rid of the background odour that made him uncomfortable.

  Maybe the whole of Hôtel du Roi de Sicile was impregnated with the smell. Perhaps it was the entire street. The first whiff hits you when the hotel-keeper with the skullcap opens his window, and the further you go up the stairs, the stronger it gets.

  In Anna Gorskin’s room, it was overpowering. That’s partly because there was food all over the place. The saucisson was full of garlic but it had gone soft and turned an unprepossessing shade of pink. There were also some fried fish lying on a plate in a vinegary sauce.

  Stubs from Russian cigarettes. Half a dozen cups with tea-dregs in them. Sheets and underwear that felt still damp. The tang of a bedroom that has never been aired.

  He’d come across a small grey canvas bag inside the mattress that he’d taken apart. A few photos as well as a university diploma dropped out of it.

  One of photographs displayed a steep cobbled street of gabled houses of the kind you see in Holland, but painted a bright white to show off the neat black outlines of windows, doors and cornices.

  On the house in the foreground was an inscription in ornate lettering reminiscent of Gothic and Cyrillic script at the same time

  6

  Rütsep

  Max Johannson

  Tailor

  It was a huge building. There was a beam sticking out from the roof with a pulley on the end used to winch up wheat for storage in the loft. From street level, six steps with an iron railing led up to the main door.

  On those steps a family group was gathered round a dull, grey little man of about forty – that must be the tailor – trying to look solemn and superior.

  His wife, in a satin dress so tight it might burst, was sitting on a carved chair. She was smiling cheerfully at the photographer, though she’d pursed her lips to make herself look a little more distinguished.

  The parents were placed behind two children holding hands. They were both boys, aged around six or eight, in short trousers, black long socks, in white embroidered sailor collar shirts with decorations on the cuffs.

  Same age! Same height! A striking likeness between them, and with the tailor.

  But you couldn’t fail to notice the difference in their characters. One had a decisive expression on his face and was looking at the camera aggressively, with some kind of a challenge. The other was stealing a glance at his brother. It was a look of trust and admiration
.

  The photographer’s name was embossed on the image: K. Akel, Pskov.

  The second black-and-white photograph was bigger and more significant. Three refectory tables could be seen lengthwise, laden with bottles and plates, and, at their head, a display-piece made of six flags, a shield with a design that couldn’t be made out, two crossed swords and a hunting horn. The diners were students between seventeen and twenty years of age, wearing caps with narrow silver-edged visors and velvet tops which must have been that acid shade of green which is the Germans’ favourite colour, and their northern neighbours’ too.

  They all had short hair and most of their faces were fine-featured. Some of them were smiling unaffectedly at the camera lens. Others were toasting it with an odd kind of beerstein made of turned wood. Some had shut their eyes against the magnesium flare.

  Clearly visible in the middle of the table was a slate with the legend:

  Ugala Club

  Tartu

  Students have clubs of that kind in universities all over the world. One young man, however, was separate from the others. He was standing in front of the display without his cap. His shaved head made his face stand out. Unlike most of the others, in lounge suits, this young man was wearing a dinner jacket – a little awkwardly, as it was still too big for his shoulders. Over his white waistcoat he wore a wide sash, as if he’d been made Knight Commander of something. It was the sash of office of the captain of the club.

  Curiously, although most of those present looked at the photographer, the really shy ones had turned instinctively towards their leader. Looking at him with the greatest intensity from his side was his double, who had to twist his neck almost out of joint in order to keep his eyes on his brother.

  The student with the sash and the one who was gazing at him were unquestionably the same as the lads in front of the house in Pskov, that’s to say the sons of tailor Johannson.

  The diploma was written in antique-looking script on parchment, in Latin. The text was larded with archaic formulas that appointed one Hans Johannson, a student of philosophy, as a Fellow of the Ugala Club. It was signed at the bottom by the Grand Master of the Club, Pietr Johannson.

  • • •

  In the same canvas bag there was another package tied up with string, also containing photographs as well as letters written in Russian.

  The photographs were by a professional in Vilna. One of them portrayed a plump and stern-looking middle-aged Jewish lady bedecked with as many jewels as a Catholic reliquary.

  A family resemblance with Anna Gorskin was obvious at first glance. There was a photo of her too, aged around sixteen, in an ermine toque.

  The correspondence was on paper printed with the tri-lingual letterhead of

  Ephraim Gorskin

  Wholesale Furrier

  Royal Siberian Furs a Specialty

  Branches in Vilna and Warsaw

  Maigret was unable to translate the handwritten part. But he did at least notice that one heavily underlined phrase recurred several times over.

  He slipped these papers into his pocket and conscientiously went over the room one last time. It had been occupied by the same person for such a long time that it had ceased to be just a hotel room. Every object and every detail down to the stains on the wallpaper and the linen told the full story of Anna Gorskin.

  There was hair everywhere: thick, oily strands, like Asian hair.

  Hundreds of cigarette butts. Tins of dry biscuits; broken biscuits on the floor. A pot of dried ginger. A big preserving jar containing the remains of a goose confit, with a Polish label. Caviar.

  Vodka, whisky, and a small vessel, which Maigret sniffed, holding some left-over opium in compressed sheets.

  Half an hour later he was at Quai des Orfèvres, listening to a translation of the letters, and he hung on to sentences such as:

  ‘… Your mother’s legs are swelling more and more …’

  ‘… Your mother is asking if you still get swollen ankles when you walk a lot, because she thinks you have the same ailment as she does …’

  ‘… We seem to be safe now, though the Vilna question hasn’t been settled. We’re caught between the Lithuanians and the Poles … But both sides hate the Jews …’

  ‘… Could you check up on M. Levasseur, 65, Rue d’Hauteville, who has ordered some skins but has not provided any credit guarantee? …’

  ‘… When you’ve got your degree, you must get married, and then the both of you must take over the business. Your mother isn’t any use …’

  ‘… Your mother won’t get out of her chair all day long … She’s becoming impossible to manage … You ought to come home …’

  ‘… The Goldstein boy, who got back two weeks ago, says you’re not enrolled at the University of Paris. I told him he was wrong and …’

  ‘… Your mother’s had her legs tapped and she …’

  ‘… You’ve been seen in Paris in unsuitable company, I want to know what is going on …’

  ‘… I’ve had more unpleasant information about you. As soon as business permits, I shall come and see for myself …’

  ‘… If it wasn’t for your mother, who does not want to be left alone and who according to the doctor will not recover, I would be coming to get you right now. I order you to come home …’

  ‘… I’m sending you five hundred zloty for the fare …’

  ‘… If you are not home within a month I will curse you …’

  Then more on the mother’s legs. Then what a Jewish student on a home visit to Vilna told them about her bachelor life in Paris.

  ‘… Unless you come home straight away I want nothing more to do with you …’

  Then the final letter:

  ‘… How have you managed for a whole year since I stopped sending you any money? Your mother is very upset. She says it is all my fault …’

  Detective Chief Inspector Maigret did not smile once. He put the papers in his drawer and locked it, drafted a few telegrams and then went down to the police cells.

  Anna Gorskin had spent the night in the common room. But Maigret had at last ordered them to put her in a private cell, and he went and peered at her through the grating in the door. Anna was sitting on the stool. She didn’t jump but slowly turned her face towards the hatch, looked straight at Maigret and sneered at him.

  He went into the cell and stood there looking at Anna for quite a while. He realized that there was no point trying to be clever or asking those oblique questions that sometimes prompt an inadvertent admission of guilt.

  He just grunted:

  ‘Anything to confess?’

  ‘I admit nothing!’

  ‘Do you still deny killing Mortimer?’

  ‘I admit nothing!’

  ‘Do you deny having bought grey clothes for your accomplice?’

  ‘I admit nothing!’

  ‘Do you deny having them taken up to his room at the Majestic together with a letter in which you declared you were going to kill Mortimer and also made an appointment to meet outside the hotel?’

  ‘I admit nothing!’

  ‘What were you doing at the Majestic?’

  ‘I was looking for Madame Goldstein.’

  ‘There’s nobody of that name at the hotel.’

  ‘I was unaware of that …’

  ‘So why were you running away with a gun in your hand when I came across you?’

  ‘In the first floor corridor I saw a man fire at someone and then drop his gun on the floor. I picked it up off the floor in case he decided to fire it at me. I was running to raise the alarm …’

  ‘Had you ever set eyes on Mortimer?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘But he went to your lodgings in Rue du Roi-de-Sicile.’

  ‘There are sixty tenants in the building.’

  ‘Do you know Pietr the Latvian, or Oswald Oppenheim?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘That does not hold water …’

  ‘I don’t give a damn!’


  ‘We’ll find the salesman who brought up the grey suit.’

  ‘Go ahead!’

  ‘I’ve told your father, in Vilna …’

  For the first time she tensed up. But she put on a grin straight away:

  ‘If you want him to make the effort then you’d better send him the fare …’

  Maigret didn’t rise to the bait, but just carried on watching her – with interest, but also with some sympathy. You couldn’t deny she had guts!

  On first reading, her statement seemed insubstantial. The facts seemed to speak for themselves. But that’s exactly the kind of situation where the police often lack sufficient solid evidence with which to confound the suspect’s denials.

  And in this case, they had no evidence at all! The revolver hadn’t been supplied by any of the gunsmiths in Paris, so there was no way of proving it belonged to Anna Gorskin. Second: she’d been at the Majestic at the time of the murder, but it’s not forbidden to walk in and around large hotels of that kind as if they were public spaces. Third: she claimed she’d been looking for someone, and that couldn’t be ruled out.

  Nobody had seen her pull the trigger. Nothing remained of the letter that Pietr had burned.

  Circumstantial evidence? There was a ton of it. But juries don’t reach a verdict on circumstantial evidence alone. They’re wary of even the clearest proof for fear of making a judicial error, the ghost that defence lawyers are forever parading in front of them.

  Maigret played his last card.

  ‘Pietr’s been seen in Fécamp …’

  That got the response he wanted. Anna Gorskin shuddered. But she told herself he was lying, so she got a grip on herself and didn’t rise to the bait.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘We have an anonymous letter – we’re checking it out right now – that says he’s hiding in a villa with someone called Swaan …’

  Anna glanced up at him with her dark eyes. She looked grave, almost tragic.

  • • •

  Maigret was looking without thinking at Anna Gorskin’s ankles and noticed that, as her mother feared, the young woman already had dropsy. Her scalp was visible through her thinning hair, which was in a mess. Her black dress was dirty. And there was a distinct shadow on her upper lip.