‘I beg you to see me as soon as possible.’
‘Are you far from here?’
‘Not very.’
‘It’s urgent?’
‘Quite urgent.’
‘In that case, come right away to my room at the hotel.’
‘Thank you.’
Maigret had smiled at first. Then, upon reflection, he remembered something in the clown’s tone that worried him.
Barely had he returned to lathering his cheeks when the telephone summoned him back into the bedroom, where he hastily wiped his face clean.
‘Hello.’
‘Inspector Maigret?’
A crisp voice, this time, almost excessively so; French with a pronounced American accent.
‘Speaking.’
‘Lieutenant Lewis here!’
‘I’m listening …’
‘My colleague O’Brien informed me that I should get in touch with you as soon as possible. Might we perhaps meet this morning?’
‘Forgive me, lieutenant, for asking you this, but my watch has stopped. What time is it?’
‘Ten thirty.’
‘I would have been glad to come to your office. Unfortunately, a moment ago I agreed to see someone in my hotel room. And it’s possible, even probable, that the meeting will concern something of interest to you. Would you mind coming to see me in my room at the Berwick?’
‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
‘Has there been some new development?’
Maigret was sure that the lieutenant had still been on the phone and heard his question, but he’d pretended not to hear and hung up.
That made two! Now he had only to finish shaving and get dressed. He had just called room service for his breakfast when there was a knock at the door.
It was Dexter. A Dexter whom Maigret, albeit increasingly familiar with this phenomenon, stared at appalled.
Never in his life had he seen a man that pale and so like a sleepwalker set adrift in broad daylight in New York.
The clown was not drunk. Besides, he did not have the weepy expression of his drunken periods. On the contrary, he seemed self-possessed, but in a peculiar way.
To be precise, standing there in the doorway, he looked like those actors in comic films who have just been clubbed on the head yet remain on their feet for a moment, staring in a daze, before collapsing.
‘Inspector …’ he began, speaking with some difficulty.
‘Come in and close the door.’
Then Maigret understood that the man was not drunk, but suffering from a colossal hangover. He remained upright only through a miracle. The slightest movement must have set his brain pitching and rolling, as his face convulsed with pain and his hands groped automatically for the support of the table.
‘Sit down!’
Dexter brushed the idea away. Had he sat down, mightn’t he have lapsed into a coma?
‘Inspector, I am a lousy bum.’
As he spoke, his trembling hand had dug around in his jacket pocket and now placed on the table some folded bills, American banknotes that the inspector stared at in astonishment.
‘There are five hundred dollars here.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Five fat hundred-dollar bills. Brand-new. They aren’t counterfeit, don’t worry. This is the first time in my life I have had five hundred dollars to my name all at one time. Do you understand that? Five hundred dollars all at one time in my pocket.’
The waiter entered with a tray bearing coffee, bacon, eggs, jam. And morbidly hungry Dexter, who had always been ravenous in the way he had always longed to have five hundred dollars at one time – Dexter became nauseated at the sight of food and the smell of bacon and eggs. He looked away, as if about to vomit.
‘Don’t you want to drink something?’
‘Water.’
He drank two, three, four glasses without catching his breath.
‘Forgive me. Afterwards I’ll go to bed. First I had to come and see you.’
His pale brow was beaded with sweat and he clung to the table, which did not prevent his tall, thin body from swaying uncontrollably.
‘You can tell O’Brien, who has always thought of me as an honest man and who recommended me to you, that Dexter is a lousy bum.’
He pushed the money towards Maigret.
‘Take this. Do whatever you want with it. It doesn’t belong to me. Last night … last night …’
He seemed to be collecting himself before tackling the hardest part.
‘… last night I betrayed you for five hundred dollars.’
Telephone.
‘Hello! … What? You’re downstairs? Come up, lieutenant. I’m not alone, but that’s not important.’
And the clown asked, smiling bitterly, ‘The police?’
‘Don’t be afraid. You can talk in front of Lieutenant Lewis. He’s a friend of O’Brien.’
‘They can do what they want with me. I don’t care. Only, I’d like it to be quick.’
He stood there, literally oscillating like a pendulum.
‘Come in, lieutenant. I’m pleased to meet you. Do you know Dexter? No matter, O’Brien knows him. I believe he has some very interesting things to tell me. Would you take a seat in that armchair while he talks and I have my breakfast?’
The room was almost cheerful, thanks to the sunshine slanting through it in a glistening swarm of golden dust.
Maigret, however, was wondering if he had done the right thing in asking the lieutenant to hear what Dexter would say. O’Brien hadn’t lied in saying the previous evening that Lewis was as unlike him as possible.
‘Delighted to make your acquaintance, inspector.’
Only, he said it without smiling. Clearly on duty, he sat down in an armchair, crossed his legs, lit a cigarette and, before Dexter had even opened his mouth, was already pulling a notebook and pencil from his pocket.
He was of middling height, a little below average weight, with an intellectual’s face, like a professor’s, for example: long nose, glasses with thick lenses.
‘You can take down my statement, if necessary,’ Dexter intoned, as if seeing himself already condemned to death.
And the lieutenant, immobile, observed him with cold eyes, his pencil poised for action.
‘It was perhaps eleven at night. I don’t know. Maybe around midnight. Over by City Hall. But I wasn’t drunk, and you can believe me.
‘Two men came over to lean on the bar next to me and I knew right away it was on purpose, they’d been looking for me.’
‘Would you recognize them?’ the lieutenant asked.
Dexter looked at him, then at Maigret, as if asking him to whom he should be speaking.
‘They were looking for me. There are things you just know. I had the feeling they were part of the gang.’
‘What gang?’
‘I am very tired,’ Dexter said carefully. ‘If I am interrupted all the time …’
And Maigret could not help smiling as he ate his eggs.
‘They offered me something to drink, and I knew it was to worm out information. You see, I’m not trying to lie or make excuses. I also knew that if I drank, I was done for, and yet I didn’t refuse the scotches, four or five, I can’t remember now.
‘They called me Ronald, even though I hadn’t told them my name.
‘They took me to another bar. Then to another one, but this time in a car. And in that bar, all three of us went upstairs to a billiard room. No one else was there.
‘I was wondering if they
wanted to kill me.
‘“Sit down, Ronald,” the biggest guy said, after locking the door. “You’re a sorry bastard, aren’t you? You’ve been a sorry bastard all your life. And if you’ve never been able to do anything worth doing, it’s because you’ve always lacked the capital to get started.”
‘You know, inspector, how I am when I’ve been drinking. I told you about that myself. I should never be allowed to drink.
‘I saw myself as a little kid. I saw myself through all the ages of my life, always the poor jerk, always chasing after a few dollars, and I began to cry.’
What kind of notes could Lieutenant Lewis be taking? Because now and then he would write a word or two in his notebook, listening as solemnly as if he were interrogating the most dangerous of criminals.
‘Then, the bigger fellow pulled some bills from his pocket, beautiful new bills, hundred-dollar bills. There was a table with a whisky bottle and some soda water. I don’t know who brought them, because I don’t remember seeing a waiter come in.
‘So he tells me, “Drink, you idiot.”
‘And I did. Then he folded the bills, after counting them in front of me, and stuffed them in the outside pocket of my jacket.
‘“You see, we’re being nice to you. We could have got you a different way, by scaring you, because you’re a scaredy-cat. But poor saps like you, we’d rather buy you. Get it?
‘“And now, spill it! You’re going to tell us everything you know. Everything, you understand?”’
The clown looked at the inspector with his pale eyes and said distinctly, ‘I told everything.’
‘Told what?’
‘The whole truth.’
‘What truth?’
‘That you knew everything.’
The inspector still didn’t really understand and lit his pipe, frowning thoughtfully. What he was actually debating was if he should laugh or take seriously his clown now afflicted with the worst hangover he’d ever seen in his life.
‘That I knew what?’
‘First off, the truth about J and J.’
‘But what truth, goddammit?’
The poor fellow gaped at him in amazement, as if wondering why Maigret was suddenly pretending not to have a clue.
‘That Joseph, the one with the clarinet, was the husband or lover of Jessie. You know perfectly well.’
‘Really?’
‘And that they had a child.’
‘What?’
‘Jos MacGill. I mean, look at the first name: Jos. And the dates fit. I watched you work them out yourself. Maura – Little John – was also in love with her, and jealous. He killed Joseph. Maybe he killed her afterwards. Unless she died of sorrow.’
The inspector was now staring dumbfounded at the clown. And what bewildered him the most was to see Lewis feverishly writing this down.
‘Later, when Little John was making money, he felt remorseful and made provisions for the child, but without ever going to see him. Quite the opposite: he sent him off to Canada with a certain Mrs MacGill. And the boy, who’d taken the old Scotswoman’s name, didn’t know the identity of the person paying for his upkeep.’
‘Go on,’ sighed Maigret. And for the first time, he addressed Dexter with easy familiarity.
‘You know the rest better than I do. I told everything. I had to earn the five hundred dollars, you understand? Because I still had some integrity left, after all.
‘Little John got married, too. Anyway, he had a child whom he had brought up in Europe.
‘Mrs MacGill died. Or else Jos ran away. I don’t know. Perhaps you do, but you didn’t tell me. Only, last night, I pretended you were sure of it.
‘They kept pouring me big glasses of whisky.
‘I was so ashamed of myself – you can believe me if you like – that I preferred to go right to the bitter end.
‘At 169th Street there was an Italian tailor who knew all about it, who’d maybe witnessed the crime.
‘And Jos MacGill wound up meeting him, I don’t know how, probably by accident. And that’s when he learned the truth about Little John.’
Maigret had now reached the point of blissfully smoking his pipe, like a man listening to a child tell some delightful story.
‘Continue.’
‘MacGill had fallen in with some unsavoury characters, like the guys from last night. And together they decided to blackmail Little John.
‘And Little John became frightened.
‘When they discovered that his son was coming over from Europe, they wanted to put still more pressure on the father and they kidnapped Jean Maura when the ship docked.
‘I wasn’t able to tell them how Jean Maura ended up back at the St Regis. Maybe Little John coughed up lots of money? Maybe, since he’s pretty sharp, he learned where they were hiding his son?
‘I assured them that you knew everything.’
‘And that they were going to be arrested?’ asked Maigret, standing up.
‘I don’t remember any more. I think so. And that you also knew that it was them.’
‘Who, “them”?’
‘The ones who gave me the five hundred dollars.’
‘And that they had done what?’
‘Killed old Angelino with the car. Because MacGill had learned that you were going to find out everything. There. You can arrest me.’
Maigret had to turn away to hide his smile, while the lieutenant still looked as solemn as a judge.
‘What did they say to that?’
‘They had me get in a car. I thought it was to go and murder me somewhere in a deserted neighbourhood. That way they could take back the five hundred dollars. They just let me out in front of City Hall and said …’
‘Said what?’
‘“Go get some sleep, idiot!” What are you going to do?’
‘Tell you the same thing.’
‘What?’
‘I said to go get some sleep. That’s all …’
‘I assume I should never come back?’
‘On the contrary.’
‘You still need me?’
‘I might.’
‘Because, in that case …’
And with a longing glance at the five hundred dollars, he sighed.
‘I didn’t keep one cent. I won’t even be able to take the subway home. Today I’m not asking for five dollars like the other days, just one dollar. Now that I’m a lousy bum …’
‘What do you think of all this, lieutenant?’
Instead of laughing heartily, as Maigret felt like doing, O’Brien’s colleague gravely studied his notes.
‘It wasn’t MacGill who had Jean Maura kidnapped,’ he replied.
‘I should say not!’
‘You know this?’
‘I’m convinced of it.’
‘Well, we’re certain of it.’
And he seemed to be scoring a point with this distinction between American certainty and a simple French conviction.
‘Young Maura was taken away by someone who gave him a letter from his father.’
‘I know.’
‘But we – we also know where he took the young man. To a cottage in Connecticut belonging to Maura, but in which he has not set foot for several years.’
‘That’s highly plausible.’
‘It’s certain. We have proof.’
‘And it’s his father who had him brought back to him at the St Regis.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I can guess.’
‘We do not guess. The same person went back two days later to pick up young Mau
ra.’
‘Which means,’ murmured Maigret, puffing on his pipe, ‘that for two days there were reasons why this young man should be out of circulation.’
The lieutenant looked at him with comical astonishment.
‘Coincidentally,’ Maigret pointed out, ‘the young man reappeared only after the death of old Angelino.’
‘From which you deduce?’
‘Nothing. Your colleague O’Brien will tell you that I never deduce. He will doubtless add with a touch of malice that I never think. And you, do you think?’
Maigret asked himself if he hadn’t gone too far, but Lewis, after a moment’s reflection, replied:
‘Sometimes. When I have sufficient factors in hand.’
‘By then, there’s no longer any point in thinking.’
‘What is your opinion of the account Ronald Dexter gave us? The name is Dexter, isn’t it?’
‘I have no opinion. I quite enjoyed it.’
‘It is true that the dates coincide.’
‘I am convinced of it. They also coincide with Maura’s departure for Europe.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That Jos MacGill was born one month before Little John’s return from Bayonne. That on the other hand, he was born eight and a half months after his departure.’
‘So?’
‘So Jos MacGill could just as well be the son of either man. We have a choice, as you see. It’s very useful.’
It was not Maigret’s fault. The scene with the hung-over clown had put him in a good humour, and the lieutenant’s cold-fish attitude was just the thing to keep him there.
‘I’ve ordered a search through all the death certificates of that period that might pertain to Joseph Daumale and Jessie.’
And Maigret, cuttingly: ‘Provided that they’re dead.’
‘Where would they be?’
‘Where are the three hundred or so tenants who lived at that same time in the building on 169th Street?’
‘If Joseph Daumale were alive …’
‘Well?’
‘He would probably have taken care of his son.’
‘On condition that it was his son.’
‘We’d have found him somewhere in the wake of Little John.’
Maigret in New York Page 11