Maigret Takes a Room

by Georges Simenon

  And yet it had gone out all of a sudden. He stopped. And, the more he listened, the more sure he was that someone was listening to him too, someone who, like himself, in the darkness, was holding his breath.

  He went downstairs more quickly and felt around until he felt the kitchen door handle.

  A cup fell on the floor and broke.

  He turned on the switch.

  In front of him, Mademoiselle Clément was standing in her nightdress, her hair held in a kind of net. For a moment it was impossible to read anything on her face but confusion but then, when you might have least expected it, she exploded in a throaty laugh that made her big breasts bounce.

  ‘You scared me,’ she exclaimed. ‘My God, I was scared!’

  The gas was burning in the stove. The kitchen smelled of fresh coffee. There was an enormous ham sandwich on the waxed tablecloth.

  ‘I was so frightened when I heard footsteps that I turned out the light. When the footsteps approached, it made me drop my cup …’

  Fat though she was, her body under her nightdress was still young and appetizing.

  ‘Were you hungry too?’

  He asked, without knowing where to look:

  ‘Did you get up to eat?’

  She laughed again, more briefly, and blushed a little.

  ‘It happens to me almost every night. I know I shouldn’t eat so much, but it’s stronger than me. I’m like that king of France who always had a cold chicken on his bedside table.’

  She took another cup from the dresser.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  He didn’t dare ask her if she happened to have a beer. Without waiting for a reply, she served him.

  ‘Perhaps I should go and put on a dressing gown. If someone surprised us …’

  It was funny, in fact. Maigret had no jacket on. His braces dangled at his side, and his hair was sticking up.

  ‘Will you excuse me for a second?’

  She went into her room and came out again almost immediately, and he noticed that some of her lipstick had been dabbed away, which gave her mouth a very different expression.

  ‘Would you like a piece?’

  He wasn’t hungry. Just thirsty.

  ‘Sit down …’

  She had turned off the gas. The coffee steamed in the cups. The sandwich, on the plate, was golden and crisp.

  ‘Did I wake you, Monsieur Maigret?’

  ‘I wasn’t sleeping.’

  ‘Usually I’m not fearful. I don’t think I’ve ever even locked my door. But after what happened last night I feel less reassured …’

  She bit into the bread. He drank a mouthful of coffee. Then, mechanically, he started stuffing a pipe. Except that his matches were still in his jacket and he got up to take the box above the stove, on the spice shelf.

  At first she ate in great mouthfuls, like a hungry person, then, gradually she chewed more slowly, sometimes casting little intrigued glances at Maigret.

  ‘Has everyone come back?’ he asked.

  ‘Everyone but Monsieur Fachin, the student, who went to see a friend. They club together to buy books. They take it in turn to attend classes, and then they get together to study. It gives them time to earn a living. I had one who was a night watchman in a bank and who only slept for three or four hours in the day.’

  ‘Do you sleep a lot?’

  ‘It depends. I’m more of a big eater than a sleeper. What about you?’

  The last mouthfuls were going down less easily.

  ‘I feel better. Now I can go to bed once and for all. You don’t need anything?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you.’

  ‘Goodnight, Monsieur Maigret.’

  He went back up the stairs. On the first floor he heard the murmur of a half-sleeping child and a regular, rhythmic sound, probably that of the cradle that the mother was rocking from her bed, in the darkness, to stop the baby from waking up completely.

  This time, in spite of the coffee, he fell asleep straight away, a dreamless sleep that seemed very short. The light woke him up, because he hadn’t closed the curtains, and it was 5.30 in the morning when he went and leaned on the window-sill again.

  In the morning light the street was even more deserted than it had been at night, and, because of the cold, Maigret had to put his jacket on.

  The sky, between the rooftops, was a very pale blue, without a cloud, and most of the houses looked gilded. A policeman coming on duty walked with big, regular strides towards the end of the street.

  On the first floor, opposite, they had raised the blind, and Maigret could see right inside the chaotic bedroom, in which a suitcase was open near the window. It was an old make of suitcase, modest and worn, the kind used by travelling salesmen who move around a lot, taking their samples with them.

  A middle-aged man was coming and going, and, when he leaned down, Maigret could see from above that his skull was largely exposed. He could make out his face less clearly.

  He would have said he was fifty-five or more. More, in fact. He was fully dressed, in dark clothes. He finished arranging some white shirts in the upper compartment, then he closed the lid and sat down on it in order to fasten it shut.

  Half of the bed was revealed, a pillow that still bore the indentation of a head.

  For a moment Maigret wondered if there was still someone in the bed, and the answer was immediately supplied by a woman’s arm.

  The man dragged his suitcase, probably to the landing, and leaned over the bed to kiss his wife. Then he came back and, this time, removed a little box from the drawer of the bedside table, took two pills from it, filled a glass with water and held it out to the invisible person.

  He must have made a phone call, because a taxi came up the street and stopped outside the house. Before leaving, the man drew the curtain, and Maigret saw nothing more until the front door finally opened.

  The suitcase was heavy, and the driver left his seat to help his customer.

  Now voices could be heard.

  ‘Gare Montparnasse. And hurry.’

  The door slammed.

  A window opened, on the other side of the street, on the third floor, above Maigret’s head, and a woman in curlers, clutching her mauve bathrobe to her chest, leaned out over the street.

  She spotted the inspector. His face was strange to her, and she looked a little surprised, then took a moment to study him before disappearing into her room.

  All he saw was her hand shaking a duster above the void.

  There were stirrings in the Lotard flat. A tall young red-haired man came in and, following the sound of his footsteps through the house, Maigret knew that it was Oscar Fachin, the student, who went to bed straight away.

  Would Mademoiselle Clément, whom the student had woken when he came back, get back to sleep?

  At 6.30 the Safts got up in turn, and a vague smell of coffee spread through the whole floor.

  Mademoiselle Isabelle didn’t get out of bed until 7.15 and immediately turned on the tap.

  Monsieur Kridelka was still asleep. Monsieur Valentin too. As to Mademoiselle Blanche, there wasn’t a sound from her, and, much later, when everyone had left the house, she must still have been plunged in sleep.

  Maigret had smoked three or four pipes when he decided to wash himself. Monsieur Lotard left, then Monsieur Saft, whom he saw on the pavement with a worn briefcase under his arm.

  He didn’t want coffee, but a glass of white wine, and his thirst was aroused at the sight of the Auvergnat drawing up his shutters and putting out chairs and tables.

  He went down to the ground floor and looked towards the two spyholes, the one in the bedroom and the one in the kitchen-dining room, without seeing Mademoiselle Clément. Admittedly the bedroom spyhole was covered with a dark curtain. She was probably washing herself too.

  The front door was open, and as he passed through it he bumped into a thin woman, with short legs, all dressed in black, who walked resolutely and entered the sitting room as if she was in her own ho
me. She turned to look at him. When he turned too, their eyes met, and she didn’t look down. He even had the impression that she shrugged her shoulders and muttered something under her breath. He noticed without much surprise that she was wearing men’s shoes.

  ‘A little glass of white wine,’ he said to the Auvergnat, whose shirt was the same faded blue as the sky.

  ‘So, nobody killed last night?’

  He saw Mademoiselle Isabelle passing, very fresh-looking, in a navy-blue suit. He stared fixedly at the house, and those who were used to working with him, like Lucas, or like the unfortunate Janvier, would have understood that an idea was running through his head.

  ‘Do you know where Mademoiselle Clément does her shopping?’

  ‘Rue Mouffetard, like everyone here. There are some shops on Rue Gay-Lussac, but it’s more expensive. And on Rue Saint-Jacques the butcher’s isn’t as good.’

  Maigret drank three glasses of a white wine with a greenish tint, then, with his hands in his jacket pockets, walked slowly down the street as if he were already a local. A little old man in front of him was taking his dog for a walk and greeted him the way people in the country greet people they don’t know. Perhaps because he looked so much at home? He returned the greeting with a smile and, a few minutes later, he was walking along the narrow Rue Mouffetard, which was filled with little carts that spread a strong smell of fruits and vegetables.

  Pearls of dew still trembled on the cabbages and lettuces – unless it was the traders who had sprayed them with water to keep them fresh.

  It was the butcher’s shop that he was looking for, and he found it straight away. Behind the white marble counter stood a red-cheeked woman in a bodice laced up to the neck, who still smelled of her village.

  He waited until he was alone with her, allowing two customers who had followed him in to take his place in the queue.

  ‘What will it be?’

  ‘Some information. Mademoiselle Clément, on Rue Lhomond, shops here, isn’t that right?’

  ‘For ten years now.’

  ‘Is she a good customer?’

  ‘It’s not as if she feeds her tenants, like some landladies do. But she’s a regular customer.’

  ‘Does she have a good appetite …?’ he asked, joking.

  ‘She likes her food, yes. Are you staying at her place?’

  ‘Since yesterday.’

  ‘Does she give you your meals?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  She hadn’t taken the trouble to think about the meaning of these questions. Suddenly a thought seemed to strike her.

  ‘Only since yesterday?’

  ‘Yesterday evening …’

  ‘I would have thought you’d been there for several days.’

  He was just opening his mouth when an old woman came in and he decided to leave it. When he found himself back on Rue Mouffetard he was quite cheerful. He had to go into a bar to make a phone call. Then a kind of loyalty to his Auvergnat made him wait until he was on Rue Lhomond, perhaps along with the memory of white wine with an aftertaste of country inn.

  ‘Do you have a telephone?’

  ‘Behind the door at the back.’

  It was nine in the morning. Time for his report at Quai des Orfèvres. The senior officers would be coming into the commissioner’s big office with the wide windows overlooking the panorama of the Seine.

  ‘Hello …! Put me through to Lucas, please …’

  The operator recognized his voice.

  ‘Right away, sir.’

  Then Lucas:

  ‘Is that you, chief?’

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘Vauquelin is writing his report on the assignment you gave him. I don’t think he’s come up with much.’

  ‘Have you heard anything about Janvier?’

  ‘I just called Cochin. He had a restless night, but the doctor assured me that was only to be expected. His temperature is fine. Are you still at Mademoiselle Clément’s? Did you sleep well?’

  There was no mockery in Lucas’ voice, but Maigret was still irritated.

  ‘Are you free? Can you get the car and come to Rue Lhomond? Stop a little way away from the house and wait. No rush. Leave it for at least half an hour.’

  Lucas didn’t dare ask any questions, and Maigret sniffed the smell of cooking that surrounded the telephone, pulled a face when he realized that it was mutton again and went to have one last glass at the bar.

  When he got back to Mademoiselle Clément’s, the woman with the men’s shoes that he had bumped into on his way out obstructed his passage. She had her head down, her bottom in the air and was busy washing the tiles of the corridor with lots of water.

  There was no one in the sitting room, which had already been tidied. Mademoiselle Clément was in the kitchen, wearing a pale-coloured dress, her face fresh, her eyes cheerful.

  ‘Did you go out for your breakfast?’ she asked him. ‘If you’d asked me I’d have made it for you.’

  ‘Do you sometimes give your tenants their meals?’

  ‘Not meals as such. Sometimes I make them coffee in the morning. Or else they come down with their little cafetière and make it themselves.’

  ‘Did you sleep well, after your snack last night?’

  ‘Quite well. And you?’

  There was something slightly aggressive, perhaps slightly tense, about her good mood. But Maigret thought he was wearing exactly the same expression as the previous day. But she probably had antennae. She was busy peeling potatoes.

  ‘Is that your housekeeper working in the corridor?’

  ‘Obviously it’s not someone who comes to do it for fun or exercise.’

  ‘I didn’t see her yesterday.’

  ‘That’s because she only comes four days a week. She has five children and she needs to do her own housework as well. Did you talk to her?’

  ‘No. Is she the one who cleans all the rooms?’

  ‘Not all of them. Except on Friday and Saturday, when she cleans them thoroughly.’

  ‘Your bedroom too?’

  ‘I’m still capable of taking care of my own bedroom, aren’t I?’

  She was still jolly, certainly, but her gaiety was forced, and there was an electric charge between them.

  ‘I would like to visit your bedroom, Mademoiselle Clément.’

  ‘Your inspectors visited it on the first day.’

  ‘The day they didn’t find Paulus in the house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could I trouble you to show it to me again?’

  She shrugged, got up, tipped the peelings off her apron.

  ‘It hasn’t been tidied. It’s true that last night you saw me in my nightdress …’

  Her throaty laugh.

  ‘Come on …’

  She pushed the door and went in ahead of him. The room was dark, because it looked out on to the narrow courtyard. While the sun bathed the façade and gave life to everything it touched, here there was a sense of immobility, of emptiness.

  And yet the room was stylish. The bed was unmade. A pretty toilet bag was arranged on the dressing table, and there were still some blonde hairs in the comb. The lavatory was hidden behind a floral cretonne curtain, and a strong smell of soap floated in the air.

  ‘Have you seen?’

  Maigret had, in fact, seen that there was no cupboard. Indiscreet though the gesture was, he lifted the curtain to the lavatory, while Mademoiselle Clément sighed behind him:

  ‘Now you know what an old spinster’s bedroom is like …’

  On the bedside table there was a cup containing some dregs of coffee and, in the saucer, some croissant crumbs.

  ‘Do you bring your own breakfast to bed?’

  Maigret’s eyes were laughing now, as he looked at the enormous baby whose face was beginning to show an expression of bewilderment.

  ‘You are charming, Mademoiselle Clément. I am sorry to put you to so much trouble, but I must look under your bed.’

  He didn’t have time to bend down. Ou
t from under the bed there emerged a man’s shoes, a pair of trousers, arms and at last an extremely pale face in which two crazed eyes gleamed.

  ‘Get up, Paulus. Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.’

  The young man trembled. When he opened his mouth it was to stammer, tight-throated:

  ‘She didn’t know.’

  ‘What didn’t she know?’

  ‘That I was hiding under her bed.’

  Maigret laughed. His mood was as joyful as that spring morning.

  ‘Did you shave when she wasn’t there?’ he asked, because the young man’s face showed anything but a four-day growth of beard.

  ‘I swear …’

  ‘Listen, Monsieur Maigret …’ Mademoiselle Clément began.

  She laughed in turn. The fact that she was able to laugh perhaps indicated that she didn’t see the affair as too much of a tragedy.

  ‘I deceived you, it’s true. But it didn’t happen as you think. He wasn’t the one who shot your inspector.’

  ‘Were you with him at that moment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In bed?’

  ‘I suspected you were going to say that. Some people just have dirty minds. If he sometimes slept in my bed, I swear that it was when I wasn’t there.’

  ‘It’s true …’ Paulus broke in.

  ‘Whatever you think, I wasn’t the one who brought him into this room. I was quite frightened in the evening when I heard a faint noise under my bed.’

  This time Maigret adopted a more familiar tone when he spoke to young Paulus, as if taking him under his wing.

  ‘Were you up there when the inspectors came?’

  ‘Yes. I was expecting it. I was terrified. I saw them through the window. Since the house only has one door, I went up to the attic.’

  ‘They didn’t search the attic?’

  ‘Yes, they did. I just had time to get out on the roof. I stayed for part of the day, pressed against a chimney.’

  ‘Are you scared of heights?’

  ‘Yes. When I thought the danger had passed, I went back into the house through the skylight and crept downstairs.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to leave?’

  ‘Of course. But I suspected there were still some policemen in the street.’

  He wasn’t ugly, just a bit thin, a little too nervous, and he had a jerky way of talking. Sometimes his speech was so chopped up it sounded as if his jaw was trembling.