Nobody, not even he himself, could say how long it would last, but while it did, there was nothing pleasant about it.
Once, someone who had seen him like that had remarked, not very respectfully:
‘He looks like a big, sick animal!’
7.
In which not only does Maigret feel unwanted, but he is regarded with suspicion
He took the Métro because he had plenty of time and he wasn’t planning to move about a lot tonight. It was almost as if he had deliberately eaten too much, in order to feel even heavier. When he had left Lucas on Place Dauphine, the sergeant had hesitated then had opened his mouth to say something, and Maigret had looked at him expectantly.
‘No, nothing,’ Lucas had decided.
‘Go on, say it.’
‘I almost asked you if it was worth my going to bed.’
Because when the chief was in that mood, it generally meant that it wouldn’t be long before the last act was played out within the four walls of his office.
As if by chance, that almost always happened at night, with the rest of the building in darkness, and sometimes several of them took turns with the person, man or woman, who came in to headquarters as a simple suspect and left, after a shorter or longer time, with handcuffs on their wrists.
Maigret understood what was in Lucas’ mind. Without being superstitious, he didn’t like to anticipate events, and at that moment he had no confidence in himself.
‘Go to bed.’
He didn’t feel hot. He had left home on the morning of the previous day, sure that he would be returning to Boulevard Richard-Lenoir at midday for lunch. Was it just the previous day? It seemed to him that it was much longer since all this had begun.
He came out of the Métro on to the Champs-Élysées. The avenue was brightly lit, and the late-autumn weather was mild enough for there still to be crowds on the café terraces. His hands in his jacket pockets, he turned on to Avenue George-V, where, outside the hotel, a uniformed giant threw him a surprised glance on seeing him pushing the revolving door.
It was the night doorman. The previous day, Maigret had seen the daytime staff. The doorman was clearly wondering what this grumpy-looking man, his suit creased from travelling, who wasn’t a guest of the hotel, was doing here.
There was the same curiosity, the same surprise on the part of the bellboy on duty on the other side of the revolving door and he was on the point of asking him what he wanted.
Some twenty people were scattered around the lobby, most in dinner jackets or evening dress, there were minks and diamonds, and as you walked past them you smelled first one perfume, then another.
As the bellboy wouldn’t take his eyes off him, ready to follow and tackle him if he ventured too far, Maigret preferred to go straight to the desk, where the receptionists in their yellow morning coats were unfamiliar.
‘Is Monsieur Gilles in his office?’
‘He’s gone home. What is it you want?’
He had often noticed, in hotels, that the night staff were less friendly than the day staff. You almost always got the impression that they were second-class staff who resented the whole world for obliging them to live against the grain, to work while everybody else is asleep.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret,’ he said.
‘Do you want to go upstairs?’
‘I probably will. I just want to warn you that I’m planning to walk about the hotel for a while. Don’t worry, I’ll be as discreet as possible.’
‘The keys to 332 are no longer with the porter. I have them here. The suites have been left as they were, at the request of the examining magistrate.’
‘I know.’
He stuffed the keys in his pocket and, embarrassed by his hat, looked for somewhere to put it, finally placed it on an armchair and sat down in another one, just like anybody else waiting for somebody in the lobby.
From there, he saw the receptionist pick up the telephone and guessed that it was to inform the manager of his visit. A few moments later, he was proved right when the receptionist came up to him.
‘I just spoke to Monsieur Gilles on the phone. I’m giving instructions to the staff to let you move around as you wish. Monsieur Gilles does ask, though, that—’
‘I know, I know! Does Monsieur Gilles live in the hotel?’
‘No. He has a villa in Sèvres.’
In order to question the night porter, Lapointe had had to go to Joinville. The barman, Maigret knew, lived even further from Paris, in the Chevreuse Valley, where he cultivated a rather large vegetable garden and raised chickens and ducks.
Wasn’t it paradoxical? The guests paid astronomical sums to sleep as close as possible to the Champs-Élysées, while the staff, at least those who could afford that luxury, escaped to the country as soon as their work was over.
The groups standing, especially the groups in evening dress, were people who hadn’t yet dined and were waiting until everyone had arrived to go to Maxim’s, the Tour d’Argent or some other high-class restaurant. There were some in the bar, too, having a last cocktail before starting on what for them was the most important part of the day: dinner and the period after dinner.
Things must have happened the same way the day before yesterday, with an identical cast of extras. The florist in her booth was preparing buttonholes. The theatre person was handing over tickets to latecomers. The porter was giving directions to those who didn’t yet know where to go.
Maigret had deliberately drunk a calvados after his dinner, just to be contradictory, because he was about to plunge back into a world in which people rarely drank calvados, let alone marc, but rather, whisky, champagne and Napoleon brandy.
A group of South Americans cheered a young woman in a straw-coloured mink coat who came rushing out of one of the lifts, making an entrance worthy of a film star.
Was she pretty? The little countess was also said to be amazing, and Maigret had seen her at close quarters, without make-up, and had even caught her drinking whisky straight from the bottle like a drunk swigging red wine on the river bank.
Why, in the last few moments, had he had the feeling he was on a ship? The atmosphere of the lobby reminded him of his trip to the United States, where an American billionaire – yet another billionaire! – had begged him to come and sort out a case. He remembered what he had been told by the purser one night when they had been the last people in the lounge, after the rather childish games held there were over.
‘Did you know, inspector, that in first class there are three people to serve one passenger?’
It was true: every twenty metres, on the decks, in the lounges, on the gangways, you ran into a member of staff, in a white jacket or a uniform, ready to perform a service for you.
It was the same here. In the rooms, there were three bells, one to summon the head waiter, one the chambermaid, one the valet, and beside each bell — couldn’t all the guests read? – the silhouette of the respective employee.
Outside the door, in the yellowish light of the pavement, two or three doormen, as well as luggage porters in their green aprons, stood to attention, as if at the entrance to a barracks, and in every corner, other men in uniform waited, standing very upright, their eyes staring into space.
‘Believe it or not,’ the purser had continued, ‘the hardest thing on a ship isn’t working the engines, performing a manoeuvre, sailing in rough weather, or getting to New York or Le Havre on time. Nor is it feeding a population equal to that of a sub-prefecture, or keeping the cabins, the lounges and the dining rooms clean. What gives us the most trouble is …’
He had paused.
‘… keeping the passengers entertained. They have to be occupied from the moment they get up to the moment they go to bed, and some don’t go to bed until dawn.’
That was why, as soon as breakfast was over, broth was served on deck. Then the games started, and the cocktails, followed by the caviar, the foie gras, the duckling with orange and the flambé omelettes …
&n
bsp; ‘Most of them are people who’ve seen everything, who’ve amused themselves in every imaginable way, and yet at all costs we have to …’
To stop himself dozing off, Maigret stood up and went in search of the Empire drawing room, which he finally discovered, dimly lit and solemn at this hour, empty apart from a white-haired old gentleman in a dinner jacket asleep in an armchair, his mouth open, an extinguished cigar between his fingers. A little further on was the dining room, and the head waiter standing guard at the door looked him up and down. He didn’t offer him a table. Had he realized that he wasn’t a true guest?
In spite of his reproving look, Maigret glanced into the room, where, beneath the chandeliers, some ten tables were occupied.
An idea, not a very original one to be sure, was forming in his mind. He passed a lift beside which stood a fair-haired young man in olive livery. It wasn’t the lift he had taken with the manager on the morning of the previous day. And elsewhere, he discovered a third one.
Everyone was watching him. The head receptionist hadn’t had time to alert all the staff. He had probably only informed the heads of departments of Maigret’s presence.
Nobody asked him what he wanted, what he was looking for, where he was going, but he only moved away from one set of suspicious eyes to enter another area just as jealously guarded.
His little idea … It wasn’t very specific yet, and yet he had the impression he had made an important discovery. What it amounted to was this: wouldn’t these people – and in this he included the guests of the George-V, those in Monte Carlo and Lausanne, the Wards, the Van Meulens, the Countess Palmieris, all those who led this kind of existence – wouldn’t these people feel lost, helpless, naked somehow, as powerless, clumsy and fragile as babies, if suddenly they were plunged into everyday life?
Would they be able to elbow their way into a Métro carriage, consult the railway timetable, buy their own tickets, carry their own suitcases?
Here, from the moment they left their suites to the moment they settled into an identical suite in New York, London or Lausanne, they didn’t have to worry about their luggage, which passed from hand to hand, almost as if without their knowledge, and they found their things already set out for them. They themselves passed from hand to hand …
What had Van Meulen said about sufficient motive? Someone who has sufficient motive to commit murder …
Maigret was beginning to realize that it wasn’t even about a larger or smaller sum of money. He was even starting to understand those American divorcees who demanded to live the rest of their lives in the manner to which their ex-husbands had accustomed them.
He couldn’t see the little countess going into a bistro, ordering a milky coffee, handling an automatic telephone.
That was the minor aspect of the question, of course. But aren’t the minor aspects often the most important? In an apartment, would Countess Palmieri be capable of adjusting the central heating, lighting the gas stove in the kitchen, boiling herself eggs?
His thought was more complicated than that, so complicated that it lacked clarity.
How many of such people were there in the world, going from one place to another, sure of finding everywhere the same atmosphere, the same diligent attention, the same people, so to speak, who took care of all the little details of existence for them?
A few thousand, probably. The purser of the Liberté had also said to him:
‘You can’t invent anything new to distract them, because they cling to their habits.’
Just as they clung to the same decor. An identical decor, give or take a few details. Was it a way of reassuring themselves, of giving themselves the illusion that they were at home? Even the position of the mirrors in the bedrooms, or of the tie rack, was the same everywhere.
‘It’s pointless to take up our profession if you don’t have a good memory for names and faces.’
It wasn’t the ship’s purser who had said that, but the porter in a hotel on the Champs-Élysées where Maigret had conducted an investigation twenty years earlier.
‘The guests expect to be recognized, even if they’ve only been here once before.’
That, too, probably reassured them. Little by little, Maigret was feeling less harsh towards them. It was as if they were afraid of something, afraid of themselves, of reality, of solitude. They moved around in circles in a small number of places, where they were sure of receiving the same care, the same consideration, eating the same dishes, drinking the same champagne or the same whisky.
It might not have amused them, but once they got into the habit, they would have been incapable of living any other way.
Was that sufficient motive? Maigret was starting to think it was, and as a result, Colonel Ward’s death took on a new meaning.
Someone in his entourage had been – or had felt – threatened with having suddenly to live like everybody else, and had been unable to face it.
But that meant that Ward’s death would have to allow this someone to continue to lead the existence he or she could not bear giving up.
Nothing was known of the will. Maigret still didn’t know with which notary or solicitor it was. John T. Arnold implied that there were several wills, all in different hands.
Wasn’t Maigret wasting his time prowling like this in the corridors of the George-V? Wouldn’t the most sensible thing be to go home to bed and wait?
He went into the bar. The night barman didn’t know him either, but one of the waiters recognized him from his photographs and whispered something to his boss, who frowned. He wasn’t flattered to be serving Detective Chief Inspector Maigret – on the contrary, it seemed to make him nervous.
There were a lot of people, a lot of cigar and cigarette smoke, and only one pipe apart from Maigret’s.
‘What can I get you?’
‘Do you have calvados?’
He couldn’t see any on the shelf, where all the brands of whisky were lined up. The barman nevertheless dug out a bottle and grabbed a huge balloon-shaped tasting glass, as if that were the only kind of glass available here for spirits.
Most people were speaking English. Maigret recognized a woman, a mink stole casually thrown over her shoulders, who’d had dealings at Quai des Orfèvres in the days when she had worked for a minor Corsican pimp in Montmartre.
That was two years earlier. She hadn’t wasted any time: she was wearing a diamond ring on her finger and a diamond bracelet around her wrist. She nevertheless condescended to recognize Maigret and give him a discreet wink.
Three men were sitting around a table at the far end, on the left, near the silk-curtained window, and Maigret asked on the off chance:
‘Isn’t that Mark Jones, the producer?’
‘The fat little man, yes.’
‘Which one is Art Levinson?’
‘The one with very brown hair and tortoiseshell glasses.’
‘And the third man?’
‘I’ve seen him several times, but I don’t know him.’
The barman was answering reluctantly, as if loath to betray his customers.
‘How much do I owe you?’
‘No, it’s all right.’
‘I insist on paying.’
‘Oh, well, it’s up to you.’
He didn’t take the lift, but climbed slowly to the third floor, thinking as he did so that few of the guests probably trod the red carpet on the stairs. He met a woman in black, a notebook in her hand, a pencil behind her ear, who was something in the hotel hierarchy. He assumed, because she had a bunch of keys at her belt, that it was she who supervised the chambermaids on some of the floors and made sure the sheets and towels were distributed.
She turned to look at him, seemed to hesitate, and probably went straight to inform the management of the presence of a curious individual behind the scenes at the George-V.
Because, unwittingly, he found himself suddenly behind the scenes, in a kind of backstage area. He had opened the door through which the woman had come and discovered anot
her staircase, this one narrower and uncarpeted. The walls were no longer so white. A half-open door revealed a cubbyhole cluttered with brooms and a big pile of dirty linen in the middle.
There was nobody about. Nobody on the next floor either, in another room, this one more spacious, furnished with a table and chairs in white wood. There was a tray on the table, with plates, the bones of some cutlets, sauce and a few congealed fried potatoes.
Above the door, he discovered a set of bells, three bulbs of different colours.
In an hour, he saw a lot of things and came across a number of people: waiters, chambermaids, a valet polishing shoes. Most looked at him in surprise, and followed him suspiciously with their eyes. But with one exception, nobody spoke to him.
Perhaps they assumed that if he was here, he had the right to be here. Or did they hurry to phone the management when his back was turned?
He came across a worker in overalls carrying plumbers’ tools, which suggested there were problems with the pipes somewhere in the hotel. The man, a cigarette stuck to his lips, looked him up and down and asked:
‘Looking for something?’
‘No. Thank you.’
The man walked away with a shrug of his shoulders, turned and finally disappeared behind a door.
Uninterested in the two suites he already knew, Maigret climbed higher than the third floor, familiarizing himself with the place. He had learned to recognize the doors that separated the corridors with their spotless walls and thick carpeting from the less luxurious backstage areas with their narrow staircases.
Moving from one side to the other, spotting here a service lift, there a waiter asleep on a chair, or two chambermaids busy telling each other their illnesses, he finally came out on to the roof, surprised to suddenly see the stars above him and the colourful reflected glow of the lights of the Champs-Élysées in the sky.
He stayed there for a while, emptying his pipe, walking around the roof, leaning from time to time over the handrail, watching as the cars glided noiselessly along the avenue, stopped outside the hotel and left again filled with richly dressed women and gentlemen in black and white.
Maigret 51 Maigret Travels Page 11