Maigret Takes a Room

by Georges Simenon

  Maigret Takes a Room

  * * *

  Georges Simenon

  Translated by Shaun Whiteside

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 9

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  Maigret Takes a Room

  ‘I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov’

  — William Faulkner

  ‘A truly wonderful writer … marvellously readable – lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates’

  — Muriel Spark

  ‘Few writers have ever conveyed with such a sure touch, the bleakness of human life’

  — A. N. Wilson

  ‘One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century … Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories’

  — Guardian

  ‘A novelist who entered his fictional world as if he were part of it’

  — Peter Ackroyd

  ‘The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature’

  — André Gide

  ‘Superb … The most addictive of writers … A unique teller of tales’

  — Observer

  ‘The mysteries of the human personality are revealed in all their disconcerting complexity’

  — Anita Brookner

  ‘A writer who, more than any other crime novelist, combined a high literary reputation with popular appeal’

  — P. D. James

  ‘A supreme writer … Unforgettable vividness’

  — Independent

  ‘Compelling, remorseless, brilliant’

  — John Gray

  ‘Extraordinary masterpieces of the twentieth century’

  — John Banville

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Georges Simenon was born on 12 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life. Between 1931 and 1972 he published seventy-five novels and twenty-eight short stories featuring Inspector Maigret.

  Simenon always resisted identifying himself with his famous literary character, but acknowledged that they shared an important characteristic:

  My motto, to the extent that I have one, has been noted often enough, and I’ve always conformed to it. It’s the one I’ve given to old Maigret, who resembles me in certain points … ‘understand and judge not’.

  Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels.

  1.

  In which Maigret spends an evening as a bachelor and ends up at Cochin hospital

  ‘Why don’t you come and have dinner at ours, pot luck?’

  Good old Lucas had probably added:

  ‘I can assure you that my wife would be delighted.’

  Poor Lucas! It wasn’t true, because his wife, who panicked at the drop of a hat, and who found having a guest for dinner complete torture, would undoubtedly have given him an earful.

  They had both left Quai des Orfèvres at about seven o’clock, when the sun was still shining, had made for the Brasserie Dauphine and taken a seat in their regular corner. They had taken a first aperitif staring into space like people who have finished their working day. Then, without realizing that he was doing it, Maigret had tapped his saucer with a coin to call the waiter and ask for the same again.

  There are things that aren’t very important, of course. Things that we exaggerate when expressing them, because in fact they are much more subtle than that. And yet Maigret was convinced that Lucas was thinking:

  ‘It’s because his wife is away that the boss is having a second glass even though he doesn’t have to.’

  Two days previously Madame Maigret had been called to Alsace to be by the bedside of her sister, who was about to have an operation.

  Did Lucas imagine that he was a bit lost? Or unhappy? In any case, he invited him to dinner, perhaps, out of kindness, a little more insistently than he had intended. He also had a certain way of looking at him, as if he was complaining. Or was all that in the detective chief inspector’s imagination?

  As if by some irony of fate, for two days there had been no urgent case to keep him in his office after seven in the evening. He could even have left at six o’clock, when under normal circumstances it was a miracle if he got home in time for a meal.

  ‘No. I’m going to take advantage of the situation to go to the cinema,’ he had replied.

  And he had said ‘take advantage’ without meaning to, since it did not reflect his thoughts.

  He and Lucas had parted at Châtelet. Lucas had raced down the escalator to the Métro, while Maigret stood in the middle of the pavement, unsure what to do. The sky was pink. The streets looked pink. It was one of the first evenings to feel like spring, and all the pavement cafés were full of people.

  What did he fancy eating? Because he was on his own, because he could go anywhere at all, he seriously asked himself that question, thinking about the different restaurants that might be able to tempt him, as if he were about to celebrate. First he took a few steps towards Place de la Concorde, and that made him feel a little guilty, because he was pointlessly going further and further away from home. In the window of a butcher’s shop he saw some prepared snails, swimming in parsley butter, which looked as if it had been painted.

  His wife didn’t like snails. He himself seldom ate them. He decided to have some this evening, to ‘take advantage’, and he turned on his heels to make towards a restaurant near Bastille, where they are a speciality.

  They knew him there.

  ‘Table for one, Monsieur Maigret?’

  The waiter looked at him with a hint of surprise, a hint of reproach. On his own he couldn’t get a good table, and he was put in a kind of corridor, against a pillar.

  The truth is that he hadn’t expected anything extraordinary. He hadn’t even really wanted to go to the cinema. He didn’t know what to do with his big body. And yet he felt vaguely disappointed.

  ‘And what sort of wine would you like?’

  He didn’t dare to order too good a wine, still not wanting to appear to be taking advantage.

  And three-quarters of an hour later, when the street lights had come on in the bluish evening, he found himself standing once again, still on his own, in Place de la Bastille.

  It was too early to go to bed. He had had time, at the office, to read the evening paper. He didn’t want to start a book that would keep him up part of the night.

  He decided to go to the cinema and set off along the Grands Boulevards. Twice he stopped to examine some posters that didn’t hold his attention. A woman looked at him insistently, and he almost blushed, because she seemed to have guessed that he was temporarily a bachelor.

  Did she also expect him to take advantage? She overtook him and turned round, and the more embarrassed he appeared, the more certain she became that he was a timid client. She murmured a few words to him as she passed, and he had to cross pavements to get rid of her.

  As far as the cinema. He felt a little guilty at the thought of going in on his own. Or ridiculous at any rate. He went into a bar and had a calvados. There too, a woman smiled at him invitingly.

  He had leaned against thousands of bars and never had that sensation before.

  To get some peace, he finally chose a small basement cinema showing nothing but newsreels.

  At 10.30 he was still wandering about outside. He stopped at the same bar, had
another calvados, as if he was already creating a tradition, and then, stuffing his pipe, he headed slowly towards Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

  All evening, in short, he had had a sense of being in the wrong place and even though he hadn’t done anything reprehensible, he felt something like remorse in a corner of his conscience.

  He took his key from his pocket as he climbed the stairs. There was no light under the door, no smell of cooking to welcome him home. He had to turn on the switches himself. Passing by the sideboard, he decided to pour himself a drink, which he could do today without exchanging a glance with his wife.

  He started to undress without drawing the curtains. He walked to the window and was taking off his braces when the phone rang.

  He was sure at that very moment that an unpleasant event explained his unease during the evening.

  ‘Hello …!’

  His sister-in-law wasn’t dead, because it wasn’t his wife speaking, and the call came from Paris.

  ‘Is that you, chief?’

  So it was the Police Judiciaire. He recognized the loud voice of Torrence, which, on the phone, rang out like a bugle.

  ‘I’m glad you’re home. I’ve rung you four times. I called Lucas, who told me you were at the cinema. But I didn’t know which one …’

  Torrence, overwhelmed, seemed not to know where to start.

  ‘It’s about Janvier …’

  Maigret unconsciously adopted his gruff voice to ask:

  ‘What does Janvier want?’

  ‘He’s just been taken to Cochin hospital. He took a bullet right in the chest.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘He must have gone under the knife by now.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At Quai des Orfèvres. Someone has to stay here. I did what needed to be done on Rue Lhomond. Lucas jumped in a taxi to go to the Cochin. I told Madame Janvier too, so she should have got there by now.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  He was going to hang up, already putting on his braces with one hand, when it occurred to him to ask:

  ‘Was it Paulus?’

  ‘No one knows. Janvier was on his own in the street. He had gone on night duty at seven. Young Lapointe was supposed to take over at seven in the morning.’

  ‘Did you send some men into the house?’

  ‘They’re still there. They’re keeping me up to date on the phone. They haven’t found anything.’

  Maigret had to walk to Boulevard Voltaire to catch a taxi. Rue Saint-Jacques was almost deserted, with only the lights from a few bistros. He hurried through the entrance of the Cochin and received something like a whiff of all the hospitals he had ever known in his life.

  Why surround the sick, the injured, people you are trying to keep alive and those who are about to die with such a bleak and lugubrious atmosphere? Why that light, at once weak and cruel, which exists only there and in certain administrative offices? And why, at the door, are you welcomed by people with surly expressions?

  He almost expected someone to ask him for his ID. The ward intern looked like a child, and wore his white cap at an angle out of bravado.

  ‘Building C. We’ll take you there …’

  He was seething with impatience. Furious with everyone, he was now angry with the nurse who was guiding him for having lipstick and wavy hair.

  Some badly lit courtyards, some staircases, a long corridor and, at the end of that corridor, three silhouettes. The way there, between him and those silhouettes, seemed interminable, the parquet smoother than anywhere else.

  Little Lucas took a few steps towards him with the oblique gait of a beaten dog.

  ‘They think he’ll pull through,’ he said immediately, with his head lowered. ‘He’s been in the operating theatre for three-quarters of an hour.’

  Madame Janvier, eyes red and hat plonked awkwardly on her head, looked at him pleadingly, as if he could do something, and suddenly she stuffed a handkerchief to her mouth and burst into tears.

  He didn’t know the third person, who had a long moustache and stood discreetly apart.

  ‘He’s a neighbour,’ Lucas explained. ‘Madame Janvier couldn’t leave the children on their own; she called a neighbour, whose husband agreed to come with her.’

  The man, who had heard the conversation, gave a wave of his hand and smiled at Lucas to thank him.

  ‘What does the surgeon say?’

  They were outside the door of the operating theatre and talking in a low voice. At the other end of the corridor nurses, all carrying something, were ceaselessly coming and going, like ants.

  ‘The bullet missed his heart, but it’s lodged in his right lung.’

  ‘Did Janvier say anything?’

  ‘No. By the time the Police Emergency vehicle got to Rue Lhomond, Janvier had lost consciousness.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll save him, detective chief inspector?’ asked Madame Janvier, who was visibly pregnant and had freckles under her eyes.

  ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t pull through.’

  ‘You see, I was right to sleep badly every time he spent the night out of the house!’

  They lived in the suburbs, in a detached house that Janvier had had built three years before, because it is hard to bring up children in a Paris apartment. He was very proud of his garden.

  They exchanged a few disjointed phrases, glancing anxiously at the door, which still hadn’t opened. Maigret had taken his pipe from his pocket, then put it back, remembering that smoking was forbidden. He was missing it. He had to go down to the courtyard to take a few puffs.

  He didn’t want to ask Lucas what had happened, in front of Madame Janvier. He couldn’t leave them either. Apart from Lucas – his right-hand man – Janvier had always been his favourite inspector. He had had him with him as a very young man, as Lapointe was now, and he still sometimes called him young Janvier.

  At last the door opened. But it was only a red-haired nurse who hurried towards another door without looking at them and came back in the opposite direction holding an object that they couldn’t identify. They hadn’t been able to stop her as she passed and ask her how the operation was going, but all four had looked at her face and all four had been disappointed to be able to read in it nothing but professional diligence.

  ‘I think that if anything bad were to happen to him I would die too,’ said Madame Janvier who, although she had a chair at her disposal, remained standing as they did, shaking, for fear that she might miss a second by getting up just now, when the door finally opened.

  There was a great deal of noise. The two wings of the door parted. A stretcher could be seen. Maigret took Madame Janvier’s arm to stop her from running forwards. He was scared for a moment because, from his perspective, it had looked as if Janvier’s face was covered by a blanket.

  But when the gurney came level with them, he saw that it wasn’t the case.

  ‘Albert …’ his wife cried, suppressing a sob.

  ‘Shh …’ said the surgeon who was taking his rubber gloves off as he arrived.

  Janvier’s eyes were open, and he must have recognized them, because he had a vague smile on his lips.

  He was taken towards one of the rooms, and his wife followed with Lucas and the neighbour, while Maigret, in a window niche, talked to the doctor.

  ‘Will he live?’

  ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t. It will be a long convalescence, as wounds to the lung always are, and there will be precautions to be taken, but he is almost completely out of danger.’

  ‘Have you removed the bullet?’

  The surgeon went back into the operating theatre for a moment and came back with a bit of blood-stained cotton wool containing a piece of lead.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ said Maigret. ‘I’ll send you a receipt for it a little later. He hasn’t spoken?’

  ‘No. He babbled a few words under anaesthetic, but it was vague, and I was too busy to pay attention.’

  ‘When might I be
able to question him?’

  ‘When he’s recovered from the shock, tomorrow, probably about midday. Is that his wife? Tell her not to worry. Not to try and see him before tomorrow. According to the instructions we received, we’ve given him a private room and a nurse. Excuse me, but I’m operating at seven o’clock in the morning.’

  Madame Janvier insisted on seeing her husband on his bed, and they were made to wait in a corridor until he was settled in it, then they were allowed to look in on him quickly.

  In a low voice, Madame Janvier said goodbye to the nurse, who seemed to be in her fifties and looked like a man in drag.

  Outside, they didn’t know what to do. There was no taxi in sight.

  ‘I promise you,’ Maigret said, ‘that everything is fine, that the doctor isn’t at all worried. Come at around midday tomorrow, not before. I’ll be receiving regular updates and will phone them through to you. Think about the children …’

  They had to walk to Rue Gay-Lussac to find a car, and the man with the moustache managed to take Maigret aside.

  ‘Don’t worry about her. You can count on my wife and me.’

  It was only when he was alone with Lucas on the pavement that Maigret wondered whether Madame Janvier had any cash to hand. It was the end of the month. He didn’t want to see her making the journey every day by train and Métro. Taxis are expensive. He would deal with it tomorrow.

  Turning to Lucas at last, he lit the pipe that he had been holding in his hand for a while and asked him:

  ‘What do you think?’

  They were just around the corner from Rue Lhomond and heading towards Mademoiselle Clément’s boarding house.

  The street, deserted at this time of day, was looking its most provincial, with its one- or two-storey houses squashed between tall apartment buildings. Mademoiselle Clément’s house was one of those, with a flight of three steps, flanked by a sign which announced:

  Furnished rooms by the month.

  Two policemen from the Fifth Arrondissement, who were chatting near the door, greeted Maigret.