‘If you don’t mind. After spending a day in the basement of the hotel, I really understand why you want to live in the country … Do you do any gardening?’
‘A little …’
‘Flowers?’
‘Flowers and vegetables …’
Now they were climbing the poorly paved, poorly lit street, pushing their bicycles, and their breaths became warmer, their sentences rarer.
‘Do you know what I discovered prowling around the basement and chatting to this person and that? That at least three people slept in the cellars of the hotel last night. First Jean Ramuel … Apparently – this is quite amusing – apparently he lives with a woman who has a foul temper and periodically throws him out of his own home … Three or four days ago it happened again, and now he’s sleeping at the Majestic … Does the manager allow it?’
‘Strictly speaking, it’s forbidden, but they turn a blind eye …’
‘The professional dancer also slept there … Zebio, as they call him … Strange young man, isn’t he? … Looking at him, he couldn’t be more Argentinian … On the pictures of him that are on display in the ballroom, he has the name Eusebio Fualdès … Then, when you look at his papers, you see that, in spite of his bluish hair, he was born in Lille and his real name is Edgar Fagonet … There was a dinner dance last night, in honour of a film star … He stayed until half past three in the morning … Apparently he’s so poor he prefers to sleep at the hotel rather than pay for a taxi …’
Prosper Donge had stopped not far from a streetlamp and stood there, red-faced, with nervous eyes.
‘What are you doing?’ Maigret asked.
‘I’m here … I …’
Light filtered beneath the door of a millstone house.
‘Would you mind terribly much if I came in with you for a moment?’
Maigret could have sworn that the big, flabby man’s knees were shaking, that his throat was tight, that he was almost dizzy. At last he made an effort and stammered:
‘If you like …’
He opened the door with his key, pushed his bicycle into the passage and announced mechanically, as he must have done every day:
‘I’m home!’
At the far end of the passage there was a glass door, leading to the kitchen, where the lights were on. Donge went in.
‘Let me introduce you …’
Charlotte was sitting back on her chair, warming her feet on the stove and sewing a pink silk slip.
Startled, she took her feet off the stove and looked for her slippers under her chair.
‘Oh, you have someone with you … I beg your pardon, monsieur …’
On the table, a cup that must have contained coffee and a plate on which you could still see cake crumbs.
‘Come in … Sit down … Prosper doesn’t often bring somebody home with him …’
It was hot. The wireless was on, a fine, brand new machine. Charlotte was in her dressing gown, with her stockings rolled down below her knees.
‘A detective chief inspector? What’s going on?’ she asked anxiously when Donge had introduced Maigret.
‘Nothing, madame … I happened to be working at the Majestic today and I made your husband’s acquaintance …’
At the word husband, she looked at Prosper, then laughed.
‘Did he tell you we were married?’
‘I assumed …’
‘Oh, no! … Please sit down … We just live together … I even think we’re more like pals than anything else … Isn’t that right, Prosper? … We’ve known each other for such a long time! … Mind you, if I wanted him to marry me … But, as I keep telling him, what difference would it make? … Everyone I know is perfectly well aware that I used to be a dancer, then a hostess, on the Côte d’Azur … And that, if I hadn’t started putting on weight, I wouldn’t be a lavatory attendant in a nightclub in Rue Fontaine … By the way, Prosper, did you pay the instalment?’
‘All done …’
On the radio, they announced a talk about farming, and as Charlotte switched it off she noticed that her dressing gown was open and closed it with a safety pin. On the stove, an ordinary-looking boiled beef and onion stew was simmering. Charlotte was hesitating about whether to go ahead and lay the table. As for Prosper Donge, he didn’t know what to do, or where to put himself.
‘We could go in the living room …’ he suggested.
‘You’re forgetting there’s no fire … You’ll both freeze! … If you two need to talk, I can go upstairs and get dressed … You see, inspector, the two of us play a kind of hide and seek … When I get back, he leaves … When he gets back, it’s almost time for me to go, and we just have a little while to have a bite to eat together … Even our days off almost never coincide, so when he’s off, he has to cook his own lunch … You will have a drink, won’t you? … Will you serve him, Prosper? … I’m going up …’
Maigret quickly intervened:
‘Oh, no, madame … Please stay … I’ll be going soon … The thing is, a crime was committed at the Majestic this morning … I wanted to ask your … your friend for some information, given that it happened in the basement, when he was almost alone down there.’
It took an effort to continue this cruel game, given that Donge’s face – actually, did he look more like a fish or a sheep? – given that Donge’s face was a picture of pain and anguish. He was trying to stay calm and was more or less succeeding. But at the cost of what inner turmoil?
Only Charlotte suspected nothing and was filling little gold-rimmed glasses with spirits.
‘Was it among the staff that it happened?’ she asked, surprised but not greatly disturbed.
‘In the basement, but not among the staff … That’s the troubling thing about this case … Try to imagine a guest, a wealthy woman, staying at the Majestic with her husband, her son, a nurse and a governess … In a suite that costs more than a thousand francs a day … At six in the morning, she’s strangled, not in her room, but in the basement locker room … In all likelihood, that’s where the crime was committed … What was the woman doing in the basement? … Who could have lured her down there, and how? … Especially at an hour when people of that kind are usually still fast asleep …’
It wasn’t much: a frown, as if a thought had crossed Charlotte’s mind, a thought she immediately rejected. A brief glance at Prosper, who was warming his hands over the stove. They were very white hands, with square fingers, covered in red hairs.
Meanwhile, Maigret continued, pitilessly:
‘It won’t be easy to establish what this Mrs Clark was doing in the basement …’
He held his breath, made an effort to keep still, apparently staring at the oilcloth covering the table. You could have heard a pin drop.
Maigret seemed to be trying to give Charlotte time to dispel her fright. Because she had frozen. Her lips had remained half open, but no sound came out. At last, a vague syllable emerged, which sounded like:
‘Oh! …’
Too bad! It was his job! It was his duty!
‘I wonder if you knew her …’
‘Me?’
‘Not as Mrs Clark, she’s only had that name for just over six years, but as Émilienne, or rather Mimi … She was a hostess in Cannes, at the very time you …’
Poor, fat Charlotte! What a bad actress she was! The way she looked up at the ceiling, as if searching in her memory! With those far too innocent eyes!
‘Émilienne? … Mimi? … No! I don’t think so … Are you sure it was in Cannes?’
‘In a nightclub that in those days was called the Belle Étoile, just behind the Croisette …’
‘That’s amazing … I don’t remember anyone called Mimi … What about you, Prosper? …’
He very nearly choked. Why force him to speak when he had a throat as tight as if caught in a pair of pliers?
‘N … no …’
On the surface, nothing had changed. In the kitchen, there was still that nice smell of small houses where the walls ha
ve a kind of comforting fragrance, and also that familiar smell of meat simmering on a bed of browned onions. The red check oilcloth on the table. Cake crumbs. Like most women with a tendency to put on weight, Charlotte probably gorged on pastries when she was alone!
And the pink silk slip!
Now, all at once, a drama had descended upon them. Nothing you could put your finger on. Anyone coming in would have thought that the Donge household was receiving a friendly visit from a neighbour.
Except that nobody dared say a word. Poor Prosper, his skin riddled with holes like a sieve thanks to smallpox, had closed his periwinkle-coloured eyes and was swaying so much, standing there by the stove, that he looked as if he might suddenly collapse on the tiled floor.
Maigret stood up with a sigh.
‘So sorry to have disturbed you … It’s time I …’
‘I’ll open the door for you …’ Charlotte said quickly. ‘It’s about time I got dressed anyway … I have to be there at ten, and in the evening there’s only one bus an hour … Sometimes I …’
‘Goodnight, Donge …’
‘Good …’
He may have said the rest, but it was inaudible. Maigret found his bicycle outside. The door closed behind him. He very nearly looked through the keyhole, but someone was coming down the street and he had no desire to be caught doing that.
He slowed down as he descended the slope and stopped outside a bistro.
‘Could you keep this bicycle for me? I’ll send someone to pick it up tomorrow morning.’
He drank something, anything, and went to wait for a bus on the Pont de Saint-Cloud. For a good hour, Sergeant Lucas had been phoning everywhere, trying without success to get in touch with his boss.
3. Charlotte at the Pélican
‘Here you are at last, Monsieur Maigret!’
The inspector, standing in the doorway of his apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, couldn’t help smiling, not because his wife had called him Monsieur Maigret, which she often did when she was joking, but because the gust of warmth that hit him in the face reminded him …
He was a long way from Saint-Cloud, and he lived in a very different sphere from that of the false Donge couple … All the same, when he got back he found Madame Maigret sewing, not in the kitchen, but in the dining room, her feet not on a big stove but on a small cast-iron one. And he would have sworn that here too the remains of a few cakes were lying about.
A ceiling light above the round table. On the tablecloth, a big curved soup tureen, a carafe of wine, a carafe of water, napkins in their silver rings. The smell coming from the kitchen was just like that of the boiled beef in the other place …
‘There have already been three phone calls …’
‘From the House?’
That was what he and his colleagues called the Police Judiciaire.
He took off his coat with a contented sigh, and as he warmed his hands for a moment over the stove he remembered that Prosper Donge had done the same thing earlier. At last, he picked up the phone and dialled a number.
‘Is that you, boss?’ came the familiar voice of Lucas at the other end of the line. ‘Are you all right? … Anything new? … Well, I have a few little things to tell you and that’s why I stayed … First, about the governess …
‘Janvier tailed her when she left the Majestic … You know what Janvier says about her? … He reckons that in her country, she couldn’t have been a governess but a gangster …
‘Hello? … Anyway, I’ll quickly run through what happened … She left the hotel not long after you spoke to her … Instead of taking the taxi the doorman had hailed for her, she jumped in a taxi that was cruising, and Janvier had to make a big effort not to lose her …
‘On the Grands Boulevards, she ran down into the metro … Then she pulled that trick of getting off through a different door … Janvier wouldn’t let her give him the slip and managed to follow her to Gare de Lyon … He was afraid she was going to get on a train, because he didn’t have enough money on him …
‘On Platform 4, the Rome Express was about to leave … There were still ten minutes to go … Ellen Darroman looked in all the carriages … As she was turning to leave, looking upset, a tall, very elegant man arrived, carrying a travelling bag …’
‘Oswald J. Clark …’ Maigret said, looking absently at his wife as he listened. ‘She wanted to inform him, obviously …’
‘From what Janvier says, they seem to have met more like good friends than like a boss and his employee … Have you seen Clark? … He’s a tall, slim fellow, well-built, fresh-faced, like a baseball player … They walked up and down the platform, as if Clark was still thinking of leaving in spite of everything … When the train started moving, he hadn’t yet made up his mind and even made a move to jump on the step …
‘Eventually, they left the station and hailed a taxi. A few minutes later, they were at the American embassy on Avenue Gabriel …
‘Then they went to Avenue Friedland, to the office of an American lawyer, an attorney as they call them …
‘The attorney phoned the examining magistrate, and three-quarters of an hour later the three of them arrived at the Palais de Justice and were immediately shown into the magistrate’s office …
‘I have no idea what happened in there, but Judge Bonneau asked for you to phone him as soon as you got back … It seems it’s very urgent …
‘To finish with Janvier’s report, after our three characters left the Palais de Justice, they went to the morgue to formally identify the body … Finally, they went back to the Majestic, and there Clark had two whiskies at the bar with his attorney, while the girl went up to her suite …
‘That’s all, boss … Judge Bonneau seems to be in a hurry to talk to you on the phone … What’s the time? … Up until eight, he’s at home: Turbigo 25-62 … Then he’s at some friends’ place for dinner, but he gave me the number … Wait … Galvani 47-53 …
‘Do you need me any more, boss? … Goodnight, then … Torrence will be on duty tonight …’
‘Can I serve the soup?’ Madame Maigret asked, sighing and giving her dress a shake to remove the bits of thread.
‘Get my dinner jacket ready first …’
As it was after eight, he called Galvani 47-53. It was the number of a young deputy prosecutor. A maid replied, and he heard the sound of forks and loud, cheerful voices.
‘I’ll call monsieur … Who shall I say? … Detective Chief Inspector Négret? …’
Through the open door of the bedroom, he caught a glimpse of the mirrored wardrobe and Madame Maigret taking out his dinner jacket.
‘Is that you, Detective Chief Inspector? … Um … er … You don’t speak English, do you? … Hello, are you still there? … That’s what I thought … What I wanted to say … Um! … It’s about this case, obviously … I think it would be preferable if you didn’t deal … I mean directly … with Mr Clark and his staff …’
A vague smile hovered over Maigret’s lips.
‘Mr Clark came to see me this afternoon with the governess … He’s quite an important figure, with connections in high places … Before his visit, I had a phone call from the American embassy, telling me everything I needed to know about him … You do understand, don’t you? … In the circumstances, we must avoid blunders …
‘Mr Clark had his attorney with him and insisted on my recording his statement …
‘Hello? Are you still there, inspector? …’
‘Of course, your honour! I’m listening …’
In the background, the noise of forks. The conversation had ceased. Doubtless the deputy prosecutor’s guests were listening attentively to the magistrate’s monologue.
‘Let me quickly bring you up to date … Tomorrow morning, my clerk will let you have the text of the statement … Mr Clark was indeed due to go to Rome, then to other capitals on business … For some time now, he’s been engaged to Miss Ellen Darroman …’
‘I beg your pardon, your honour. You did say e
ngaged? I thought Mr Clark was married …’
‘Oh, yes, of course! … But he was planning to get a divorce soon … His wife didn’t know about it yet … So we can say engaged … He took advantage of that trip to Rome …’
‘To first spend one night in Paris in the company of Miss Darroman …’
‘Indeed, yes. But you’re mistaken, inspector, to take that ironic tone. Clark made an excellent impression on me. They do things a little differently in his country. Over there, divorce … Anyway, of his own free will, he gave me a complete rundown of his movements last night … In your absence, I handed it over to Inspector Ducuing to be checked, just in case, but I’m convinced that Clark was telling the truth … In the circumstances, it would be awkward to …’
Which actually meant:
‘We’re dealing with a man of the world, protected by the embassy of the United States. In the circumstances, don’t interfere, because you might upset him with your lack of tact. Concentrate on the people in the basement, the domestics and everyone else. Leave Clark to me!’
‘Very well, your honour! Have a good evening, your honour …’
And, turning to his wife:
‘You may serve, Madame Maigret!’
It was just after midnight. The huge corridor of the Police Judiciaire was empty and dimly lit, as if permeated with a dust-filled fog. Maigret’s polished shoes, which he seldom wore, creaked like those of a boy making his first communion.
In his office, he began by stoking the stove and warming his hands, then, his pipe between his teeth, he opened the door to the inspectors’ office.
Ducuing was there, busy telling Torrence a story that must have been amusing, because both men were in a very good mood.
‘Well, then?’
And Maigret sat down on a corner of the ink-stained wooden table and shook the ash from his pipe on the floor. Here, you could be as slovenly as you liked and tip your hat on to the back of your neck. The two inspectors had had beer sent up from the Brasserie Dauphine, and Maigret was pleased to see that they hadn’t forgotten him.
‘You know, boss, he’s an odd sort, this Clark. I went and had a look at him at the bar of the Majestic, just to get a better idea and fix his description in my head … Seeing him like that, he looks like a businessman and an awkward customer … Well, now that I know how he spent his time last night, I can assure you he’s quite a lad …’
The Cellars of the Majestic Page 3