The Cellars of the Majestic

by Georges Simenon

  Within five minutes, they had learned that Mrs Clark had gone to the theatre by herself the previous evening and had got back a few minutes after midnight. The nurse hadn’t gone out. As for the governess, she hadn’t dined at the hotel and hadn’t been back all night.

  ‘Shall we go downstairs and have a look?’ Maigret sighed.

  There were more people in the lobby by now, but none of them suspected the drama that had taken place while everyone was asleep.

  ‘We’ll go this way … Would you please follow me, inspector? …’

  As he said this, the manager frowned. The revolving door was moving. A young woman in a grey tailored suit came in at the same time as a ray of sunlight. Passing the mail clerk, she asked in English:

  ‘Anything for me?’

  ‘That’s her, inspector, Miss Ellen Darroman …’

  Fine, well-fitting silk stockings. The prim and proper look of someone who has taken great care over her grooming. No trace of fatigue on her face but, on the contrary, a pink glow caused by the brisk air of a fine February morning.

  ‘Do you want to talk to her?’

  ‘Not just yet … One moment …’

  Maigret walked over to an inspector he had brought with him, who was standing in a corner of the lobby.

  ‘Don’t let that young woman out of your sight … If she goes into her suite, stand outside the door …’

  The cloakroom. The big mirror swung open on its hinges. Maigret and the manager found themselves on the narrow staircase. All at once, there was no more gilt, no more pot plants, no more elegant bustle. A kitchen smell rose from below.

  ‘Does this staircase serve all the floors?’

  ‘There are two like this … They go from the lower basement to the attics … But you have to know the place well to use them … On each floor, for example, there’s just a little door like all the others, without a number, and it would never occur to any of the guests …’

  It was nearly eleven. Now there were no longer just fifty, but more like a hundred and fifty people swarming about the basement, some in white chefs’ hats, the others in waiters’ uniforms or cellarmen’s aprons, and the women, like Prosper Donge’s Three Fat Ladies, doing the heavy work …

  ‘This way … Make sure you don’t slip or dirty your clothes … The corridors are narrow …’

  Through the glass partitions, everybody was watching the manager and above all the inspector. Jean Ramuel continued grabbing the slips he was being passed, almost in mid-air, and checking the contents of the trays at a glance.

  The jarring element was the unexpected figure of a policeman standing guard outside the locker room. The doctor, who was very young, had been informed of Maigret’s arrival and was smoking a cigarette as he waited.

  ‘Close the door …’

  The body was there, on the floor, surrounded by all the metal lockers. The doctor, still smoking, murmured:

  ‘She must have been grabbed from behind … She didn’t struggle for long …’

  ‘And the body wasn’t dragged along the floor!’ Maigret added, examining the dead woman’s dark clothes. ‘There’s no trace of dust … Either she was killed here, or she was carried here, most likely by two people, because it’d be difficult in this maze of narrow corridors …’

  In the locker where she had been discovered, there was a crocodile-skin handbag. Maigret opened it and took out an automatic revolver, which he slipped into his pocket after checking the safety catch. Nothing else in the bag apart from a handkerchief, a compact and a few banknotes that amounted to no more than a thousand francs.

  Behind them, the hive was buzzing. The dumb waiters kept going up and down, bells rang endlessly, and, behind the glass partition of the kitchens, you could see heavy copper saucepans being handled and dozens of chickens being put on the spit.

  ‘Everything has to be left where it is until the examining magistrate gets here,’ Maigret said. ‘Who was it who found …?’

  He was pointed in the direction of Prosper Donge, who was cleaning one of the percolators. He was a tall man with red hair, the kind of red hair that is called carrot-coloured. He might have been about forty-five or forty-eight. He had blue eyes and a pockmarked face.

  ‘Have you employed him for long?’

  ‘Five years … Before that, he was at the Miramar in Cannes …’

  ‘Reliable?’

  ‘As reliable as could be …’

  A glass partition separated Donge and Maigret. Through the glass, their eyes met, and the blood rushed to Donge’s cheeks: like all redheads, he had delicate skin.

  ‘Excuse me, sir … Detective Chief Inspector Maigret is wanted on the telephone …’

  It was Jean Ramuel, the bookkeeper, who had just emerged from his cage.

  ‘If you’d like to take the call here.’

  A message from the Police Judiciaire. Since eleven o’clock the previous day, there had been only two express trains for Rome. Oswald J. Clark had caught neither. As for the driver, Désiré, who had been reached by phone in a bistro where he was a regular, he stated that he had driven his previous day’s fare to the Hotel Aiglon on Boulevard Montparnasse.

  Voices on the staircase, including a young woman shrilly protesting in English to a valet who was trying to bar her way.

  It was the governess, Ellen Darroman, who was charging straight at them.

  2. Maigret Goes Cycling

  His pipe between his teeth, his hands in the pockets of his huge overcoat with its legendary velvet collar, his bowler hat pushed back a little on his head, Maigret watched as she shouted vehemently at the manager.

  You just had to observe the inspector to sense that it wasn’t going to be easy to establish a rapport between him and Ellen Darroman.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ he sighed, interrupting her, unable to understand a word.

  ‘She’s asking if it’s true that Mrs Clark has been murdered, and if anyone has phoned Rome to inform Oswald J. Clark; she wants to know where the body has been taken and if …’

  But the girl didn’t let him finish. She had listened impatiently, with knitted brows, then given Maigret a withering glance, and now was starting up again, even angrier than before.

  ‘What’s she saying?’

  ‘She wants me to take her to see the body and …’

  Maigret gently took hold of the girl’s arm in order to show her to the locker room, even though he knew she would jump when he touched her. Just the kind of woman who exasperated him in American films! With something alarming about the dreadfully precise way she moved! Through the glass partitions, all the basement staff were staring at her.

  ‘Please come in,’ Maigret said with a touch of irony.

  She took three steps, looked down at the form that lay covered with a blanket on the floor, stood quite still for a moment, then spoke again in her language.

  ‘What’s she saying?’

  ‘She’s asking for the body to be uncovered …’

  Maigret did so, without taking his eyes off her. He saw her give a shudder, then immediately regain her composure in spite of the genuine horror of the spectacle.

  ‘Ask her if she recognizes Mrs Clark …’

  A shrug of the shoulders. A particularly unpleasant way of striking the floor with her high heels.

  ‘What’s she saying?’

  ‘That you know as well as she does …’

  ‘In that case, please ask her to come up to your office and tell her I have a few questions to ask her.’

  The manager translated. As he did so, Maigret covered the dead woman’s face.

  ‘What’s she saying?’

  ‘She says no.’

  ‘Really? Please inform her that I am the head of the Special Branch at the Police Judiciaire …’

  Ellen, who was looking him in the eyes, spoke without waiting for the translation of these words. And again Maigret muttered his constant:

  ‘What’s she saying?’

  ‘What’s she saying?’ she r
epeated, aping him, seized with an irritability that was hard to explain.

  And, again, she said something in English, as if talking to herself.

  ‘Translate what she’s saying. Would you mind?’

  ‘She’s saying that … that she knows perfectly well you’re with the police … that …’

  ‘Don’t be afraid!’

  ‘That one just has to see your hat on your head and your pipe in your mouth … I’m sorry … You asked me to translate … She says she won’t come to my office and she won’t answer your questions …’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ll ask her …’

  Ellen Darroman, who was lighting a cigarette, listened to the manager, shrugged her shoulders once again and said a few words.

  ‘She says she isn’t accountable to anybody and that she’ll only obey an official summons …’

  With that, the girl threw a last look at Maigret, turned on her heels and, walking just as determinedly as before, headed for the stairs.

  The manager turned somewhat nervously to the inspector and was quite surprised to see that he was smiling.

  The heat of the basement had forced him to take off his coat, but he hadn’t abandoned either his bowler hat or his pipe. He was strolling calmly along the corridors, hands behind his back, stopping every now and again in front of one of the glass partitions, rather as he would have stopped in front of a fish tank.

  That was pretty much the impression made on him by that vast basement, where the lights were kept on all day long: an aquarium. In each glass cage, creatures moved about, mostly in large numbers. You saw them coming and going, bearing burdens, cooking pots or piles of plates, setting dumb waiters or goods lifts in motion, constantly picking up little implements that were actually telephones.

  ‘A savage brought from deepest Africa witnessing all this …’

  The examining magistrate had only been there for a few minutes and, as usual, had given Maigret free rein. Maigret had made two or three phone calls from the cage of the bookkeeper Jean Ramuel.

  Ramuel’s nose was so crooked, you always had the feeling you were looking at his profile. In addition, he clearly suffered from a liver ailment. Sure enough, when he was brought his lunch on a tray, he began by taking a sachet of white powder from his waistcoat pocket and dissolving it in a glass of water.

  The busiest time was between one and three; the pace so fast that you had the impression you were watching a film speeded up.

  ‘Sorry … Excuse me …’

  People kept bumping into Maigret but, unperturbed, he continued his leisurely stroll, constantly stopping and starting, occasionally asking a question.

  How many people had he spoken to? Twenty, at least. The head chef had explained the workings of the kitchens. Jean Ramuel had told him what the different coloured slips stood for.

  He had, again through a glass partition, watched the higher-ranking staff have lunch. Gertrud Borms, the Clarks’ nurse, had come downstairs. A strong, hard-faced woman.

  ‘Does she speak French?’

  ‘Not a word …’

  She had eaten copiously, chatting to a liveried chauffeur sitting opposite her.

  And the most extraordinary thing, during all that time, was to see Prosper Donge in his coffee room. He looked literally like a large goldfish in a bowl. His hair was bright red, he had the almost brick-like complexion of some redheads, and his lips were as thick as those of a fish.

  Like a fish too, from time to time he would come and stick his face right up against the glass partition and look out wide-eyed, doubtless flabbergasted that the inspector hadn’t yet said a word to him.

  Maigret had spoken to everyone. And yet he had barely seemed to notice Prosper Donge, even though Donge, being the person who had found the body, was the principal witness!

  Donge ate at a little table in his coffee room, while his three women bustled around him. A bell rang constantly, announcing the dumb waiter, which would appear in an opening like that of a ticket office. Donge would grab the slip that was on it, replace it with a tray bearing the order, and then the dumb waiter would rise towards one floor or other of the hotel.

  All these apparently complicated comings and goings were actually quite simple. The great dining room of the Majestic, where two or three hundred people must have been at table right now, was located directly above the kitchens, and that was where most of the dumb waiters rose to. Every time one of them came down, you heard a snatch of music.

  Some guests, though, had their meals in their suites, and there was a waiter on each floor. There was also, on the same level as the basement, a grill room which, at about five in the afternoon, became a ballroom.

  The men from the morgue had come to fetch the body, and two forensic specialists had worked on locker 89 for half an hour with strong lights and cameras, looking for fingerprints.

  None of that seemed to interest Maigret. He would be informed of the results in due time, after all.

  Anyone seeing him might have thought he was carrying out an amateur study of the workings of a luxury hotel. He walked up the narrow staircase and opened a first door, which he closed again immediately, because he found himself in the great dining room, noisy with clattering forks, music and conversations.

  He climbed some more. A corridor, numbered doors stretching to infinity, an enormously long red carpet.

  In other words, any guest could open that door and thus gain access to the basement. It was like the entrance on Rue de Ponthieu. Two doormen, a porter and a few bellboys guarded the revolving door on the Champs-Élysées, but any passer-by could get into the Majestic through the service entrance, and it was unlikely that anyone would have been disturbed by his presence.

  It was the same with most theatres, heavily guarded on one side, but wide open on the side of the stage door.

  From time to time, people entered the locker room in their work clothes. Soon afterwards, you saw them come back out, well dressed, with their hats on their heads.

  There was a constant changeover of staff. The head chef went and took a nap in the room at the back, as he did every day between the lunch rush and the dinner rush.

  Starting at four, the music struck up, loud and close this time, because it came from the ballroom. Prosper Donge, looking overcome, kept filling rows of tiny teapots and microscopic milk jugs, then coming to the glass partition and throwing an anxious glance from a distance at Maigret.

  At five, his three women left and were replaced by two others. At six, he went and took a bundle of slips and a sheet of paper, which was probably a summary, to Jean Ramuel. Then he in turn went to the locker room, came out again in his city clothes and picked up his bicycle: he’d had one of the bellboys repair the tyre.

  Outside, night had fallen. Rue de Ponthieu was swarming with people. Weaving his way between the taxis and the buses, Prosper Donge headed for the Champs-Élysées. Just before he reached the Étoile, he suddenly did an about-turn, rode back to Rue de Ponthieu and went into a shop selling wirelesses and related articles, where he paid three hundred and something francs at the till as his monthly instalment.

  The Champs-Élysées again. Then, without transition, the stately calm of Avenue Foch, the few cars passing in silence, as if gliding by. He rode slowly, like a man who has a long way to go, a solid citizen taking the same route at the same time every day.

  A voice near him, a little way behind:

  ‘Do you mind, Monsieur Donge, if I go part of the way with you?’

  He braked so abruptly that he swerved and almost knocked into Maigret’s bicycle. For it was Maigret riding beside him, on a bicycle that was too small for him, which he had borrowed from one of the bellboys at the Majestic.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Maigret went on, ‘why everybody who lives in the suburbs doesn’t do the journey by bicycle. It’s so much healthier and more pleasant than going by bus or tram!’

  They had reached the Bois de Boulogne. Soon they saw the reflections of the electric
streetlamps on the lake.

  ‘You were so busy all day, I didn’t want to disturb you while you were working …’

  And Maigret too was pedalling with the steadiness of a man who is used to it. From time to time, you could hear the soft clicking of the free wheel.

  ‘Do you know what Jean Ramuel did before he started working at the Majestic?’

  ‘He was an accountant for a bank … The Atoum Bank in Rue Caumartin …’

  ‘Hmm! … The Atoum Bank … That doesn’t sound too good … Don’t you think he looks a little shady?’

  ‘He’s in very poor health …’ Prosper Donge murmured.

  ‘Careful … You’re going to mount the pavement … There’s another question I’d like to ask you, if you don’t consider it indiscreet … You’re in charge of the coffee room … I’m just wondering how you came to choose a profession like that … What I mean is … I don’t have the impression it’s a vocation, that at a particular moment, when you’re fifteen or seventeen, you say to yourself: “I’m going to make the coffees in a big hotel …”

  ‘Careful … If you keep swerving like that, you’ll end up being knocked down by a passing car … What’s that you say? …’

  Donge explained, in a glum voice, that he had been in care as a child, that until the age of fifteen he had lived on a farm on the outskirts of Vitry-le-François. Then he had moved to the town and worked in a café, first as a messenger boy, then as a waiter.

  ‘After my military service, I wasn’t in good health and I wanted to live in the South … I was a waiter in Marseilles and Cannes. Finally, at the Miramar, they said I didn’t have the right kind of look to serve the customers … I looked unappealing, that was what the manager said … I was put in the coffee room … I stayed there for several years and then accepted the position at the Majestic …’

  They crossed the Pont de Saint-Cloud. After turning two or three corners along the little streets, they came to the bottom of quite a steep slope, and Prosper Donge got off his bicycle.

  ‘Are you going any further?’ he asked.