The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin Read online

  The sound of a car engine. Steps on the stairs. And Génaro’s voice, protesting:

  ‘You’ll have my consul to deal with! This is preposterous! I’m a respectable club owner. And there are fifty customers on my premises, right now.’

  When he entered the room, he looked questioningly at Victor.

  Victor was magnificent.

  ‘We’re done for!’ he said simply.

  The dancer, half naked under her revealing dress, surveyed her room, shrugging her shoulders in resignation.

  ‘Just answer my questions, mademoiselle. In the course of that evening, did Graphopoulos ask you to come to his hotel room?’

  ‘I didn’t go!’

  ‘So he did ask you, then. Therefore he must have told you that he was staying in the Hôtel Moderne, in room 18?’

  She gazed at the floor.

  ‘Chabot and Delfosse, sitting at a nearby table, might have overheard. What time did Delfosse get here that night?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I was asleep. Maybe about five in the morning.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He asked me to go away with him. He wanted to take a boat for America. He said he was rich.’

  ‘And you refused?’

  ‘I was sleepy. I told him to come to bed. But that wasn’t what he wanted, so I asked him why he was so jumpy, whether perhaps he’d done something wrong.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He begged me to let him hide a wallet in my room.’

  ‘And you pointed to the wardrobe, on top of which there was already a briefcase.’

  She shrugged again and sighed:

  ‘Too bad for them.’

  ‘Well?’

  No answer. Delfosse senior was looking haughtily and suspiciously around.

  ‘I should very much like to know—’ he began.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough, Monsieur Delfosse. I would simply ask you to be patient for a moment.’

  This was in order to pack his pipe.

  11. The New Recruit

  ‘Let’s start with Paris! With Graphopoulos, a man who comes to ask for police protection, then the next day tries to throw off the inspector assigned to him. Remember what I told you, Delvigne? Something to do with either the mafia or espionage. Well, it’s espionage! Graphopoulos is rich and at a loose end. Cloak-and-dagger stuff tempts him, as it does other people of his type. During his trips abroad, he meets some kind of secret agent, and tells him that he too would like to opt for a life full of mystery and the unexpected. “Secret agent!” Words that make so many idiots daydream. They think the job just consists of … Well, never mind. Graphopoulos is determined. And the man he approaches doesn’t think he ought to turn away a potentially interesting recruit.

  ‘But what the general public doesn’t know is that newcomers undergo some kind of initiation. Our Greek is intelligent and wealthy, and he travels a lot. But does he have the necessary savvy and discretion?

  ‘So he is offered a first mission: he has to go to Liège and steal some documents from a nightclub. This is one way to test his nerve. It’s a make-believe mission. They just send him to other agents working for the same outfit, who will judge whether our man fits the bill. And Graphopoulos is afraid. He had imagined espionage very differently. He’d seen himself walking into palaces, asking ambassadors questions, being invited into every tinpot European court. He doesn’t dare refuse. But he asks the police to watch over him. Then he tells his chief that he is being followed by the police: “I’ve got a French police inspector tailing me. I’d better not go to Liège, had I?” “Never mind that, just get yourself there!”

  ‘And now he really panics. He tries to evade the surveillance he asked for. He books a seat on a plane for London, buys a train ticket for Berlin and finally gets off here at the Guillemins station. The Gai-Moulin! That’s the club he’s supposed to go to. He doesn’t realize that the owner is a member of the spy ring, that he’s been notified, that this is simply a test, and what’s more, that there aren’t any documents at all in the club for him to steal.

  ‘A dancer sits down at his table. He asks her to come to his room later that night, because he likes his pleasures. As almost always happens, his libido is heightened by danger. At least, then he won’t be on his own. As a little earnest of things to come, he lets her have his cigarette-case, which she had admired. He watches the people around him. He doesn’t know anything. Or rather he only knows one thing. He has to manage to get himself shut into the club after hours, so that he can look for the documents he’s supposed to find.

  ‘Génaro has been warned, so he watches him with a smile. Victor, who also belongs to the ring, is obsequious and ironic as he pours his champagne.

  ‘And by chance, someone overhears the address he gives Adèle: Hôtel Moderne, room 18. And at this point we have to move to a different story.’

  Maigret looked at Monsieur Delfosse, and at him alone.

  ‘You’ll have to pardon me, but now I’m going to talk about you. You’re a rich man. You have a wife, a son, mistresses. You lead a life of pleasure, without suspecting that your young son, who is fragile and highly strung, is trying in his own little circle to imitate you. He sees money being splashed out all around him. You give him at once too much money and not enough. For years now, he’s been stealing from you and he even robs his uncles as well! When you’re away, he drives your car. And he has mistresses, too. In short, in every sense of the word he’s a spoiled daddy’s boy. No, don’t argue. Wait till you hear …

  ‘He needs a friend, a confidant. He drags Chabot along with him. One day, they’re both broke. They have debts all along the line. And they decide to rob the till at the Gai-Moulin. It happens to be the night Graphopoulos is there. Delfosse and Chabot hide on the cellar steps, when they are assumed to have left. Without Génaro’s knowledge? It doesn’t matter, but I doubt it. He really is an exemplary secret operator. He owns a club. He is duly licensed, as he said just now. He has other people working for him. And he feels all the safer since he acts as a police informer.

  ‘He knows perfectly well Graphopoulos is planning to hide inside the club. He locks up and leaves with Victor. Next day, all he has to do is report back to his chiefs about how the Greek handled it.

  ‘You see, it’s all getting a bit complicated. We might say that that evening became the night when everyone was fooled.

  ‘Graphopoulos has been drinking champagne to give himself courage. And now he’s alone inside the Gai-Moulin, in the dark. He still has to find the documents he’s supposed to take. But he hasn’t made a move before a door opens. A match is struck. He’s terrified. He was probably terrified to start with anyway. He doesn’t have the guts to attack. He pretends to be dead instead. Then he sees his enemies. A couple of kids who are even more scared than he is, and who take to their heels!’

  Nobody moved in the room. Nobody seemed to be breathing. All their faces showed the strain, as Maigret went on:

  ‘Graphopoulos, alone again, keeps trying to find the documents requested by his new paymasters. Chabot and Delfosse are so panic-stricken that they bolt down some mussels and chips and then say goodbye to each other in the street.

  ‘But Delfosse is haunted by a memory. Hôtel Moderne, room 18. The words he overheard. That stranger looked as if he was rich. And the young man badly needs money for all the wrong reasons. To get into a hotel at night is child’s play. The room key will still be on the hook. And since Graphopoulos is dead, he won’t be coming back!

  ‘So he goes to the hotel. The night porter is nodding off and doesn’t challenge him. He gets upstairs, and searches the traveller’s suitcase. Then he hears steps in the corridor, the door opens.

  ‘And it’s Graphopoulos himself! Who is supposed to be dead! Delfosse is so terrified that without thinking, he hits him with all his might, in the shadows, with his cane, the cane with the gold pommel belonging to his father, which he had borrowed as us
ual that evening.

  ‘He’s beside himself, hardly responsible for his actions. He takes the wallet, and flees. Perhaps he checks its contents under a street lamp. He sees thousands of francs, and has the idea of getting Adèle to run away with him, Adèle whom he’s always fancied.

  ‘To live the high life abroad! With a woman! Like a real man! Like his father!

  ‘But Adèle is fast asleep. She has no desire to go. He hides the wallet in her room, because he’s scared. He doesn’t suspect that for months, or perhaps for years, Génaro and Victor have been using the same hiding place for the documents they handle for their spy ring. Because she’s part of it! They’re all in it!

  ‘Delfosse has only kept the Belgian banknotes, two thousand francs’ worth, from the wallet. The rest, in French currency, is too compromising.

  ‘Next day, he reads the papers. The victim, his victim, has been found not in the hotel, but in a public park. He can’t understand this. He’s on tenterhooks. He finds Chabot again and drags him along with him. He pretends he’s robbed his uncle to explain the two thousand francs he’s carrying. He has to get rid of them somehow. So he gets Chabot to do it, because he’s a coward. Worse than a coward, actually. Rather there’s something pathological about it. In his heart, he envies his friend for not sharing the guilt. He’d like to compromise him. Without daring to do it openly.

  ‘Hasn’t he always held something against his friend? Envy, hate, rather complex feelings. Because Chabot’s hands are clean, or at least they were. Whereas young Delfosse is plagued by disturbing desires. That must be the explanation for their strange friendship, and the need Delfosse feels to be constantly accompanied by his sidekick.

  ‘He kept on going round to Chabot’s house to haul him out. He couldn’t stand to be alone. And he got his friend entangled in his compromises, his little thefts within the family that will never come to court.

  ‘But Chabot doesn’t come back from the washroom: he’s been arrested. Delfosse doesn’t try to find out what’s happened to him. He starts drinking. He needs someone else to drink with him. Because if there’s one thing he can’t stand it’s being on his own. He gets drunk, goes home with the dancer, and falls asleep.

  ‘At dawn, he panics again, at the situation he’s in. He probably sees the police inspector in the street outside. He doesn’t dare touch Graphopoulos’s money on top of the wardrobe. There are only French notes there, too easy to identify. So he prefers to rob Adèle.

  ‘What is he hoping for at this stage? Nothing. And from now on, everything he does fits that logic.

  ‘He realizes dimly that he isn’t going to escape from the law. But he dares not give himself up. Ask Chief Inspector Delvigne where the police go to look – nine times out of ten successfully – for criminals like this. In some seedy bar! Delfosse needs a drink, noise, girls. He picks a bar near the station at random. He tries to get the waitress to go upstairs with him. When she refuses, he drags in a girl from the street. He pays for drinks all round. He flashes his banknotes about, gives them away. He’s frantic. When he’s arrested, he tells totally preposterous lies. He lies hopelessly. He tells lies just for the sake of it, like a vicious child. He’s prepared to say anything, give a mass of detail. Another characteristic which seems to fit the profile.

  ‘But then they tell him the murderer has been arrested. (That was me, by the way!) He’s allowed to go home. And he learns a little later that the assassin has killed himself, after confessing.

  ‘Does he guess it’s a trap? He may have done, at some level. But now he is in any case driven by the need to suppress any evidence of his involvement. That’s why I invented this little game, which may have seemed childish. There were two ways of driving Delfosse to confess: the one I’ve used, or else leaving him alone for hours in the dark, which he fears as much as he does being alone. He’d have broken down and confessed anything you like, even adding extra details.

  ‘I realized he was guilty the moment I learned that the two thousand francs didn’t come from the chocolate shop. After that, everything he said and did only strengthened my opinion. It’s a banal case, in spite of its morbid nature and apparent complexity.

  ‘But I still needed to get to the bottom of something else: the other case, the Graphopoulos case. Consequently, there were other people guilty of something. The announcement of my death, that is the death of the supposed murderer, brought them out of their holes. Delfosse came to get the compromising wallet. Victor came to look for—’

  Maigret looked slowly round those present.

  ‘How long has Génaro been using your lodgings to hide dangerous papers, Adèle?’

  She shrugged her shoulders with indifference, a woman who had long been expecting disaster to strike.

  ‘Years! It was Génaro that brought me here from Paris, where I was starving.’

  ‘Do you confess, Génaro?’

  ‘I will speak only in the presence of my lawyer.’

  ‘Ah, you too, like Victor?’

  Delfosse senior said nothing: his head was lowered, his eyes fixed on his cane, the very cane that had killed Graphopoulos.

  ‘My son isn’t responsible for his actions,’ he murmured suddenly.

  ‘I’m aware of that!’

  And as the father looked at him, both embarrassed and disturbed, Maigret said:

  ‘You’ll tell me now he has inherited from you certain flaws liable to reduce his sense of responsibility—’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Look at yourself and him in the mirror!’

  And that was all. Three months later, Maigret was at home in Boulevard Richard-Lenoir going through his mail, which the concierge had just brought up.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ asked Madame Maigret, who was shaking a rug from the open window.

  ‘A card from your sister, saying she’s going to have a baby.’

  ‘Another one!’

  ‘And a letter from Belgium.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Nothing very fascinating. My friend, Chief Inspector Delvigne, says he’s going to send me a pipe in the post, and is giving me news of some sentences that have been passed.’

  And he read out in an undertone:

  ‘Génaro got five years’ hard labour, Victor three, and the girl Adèle was acquitted, for lack of evidence.’

  ‘Who are those people?’ asked Madame Maigret. For all that she was married to a detective chief inspector of the Police Judiciaire, she had kept all the innocence of a true daughter of rural France.

  ‘They’re of no interest. These men ran a nightclub in Liège. It didn’t have many customers, but it was the hub of a spy ring.’

  ‘And “the girl Adèle”?’

  ‘She was the dancer at the club. Run-of-the-mill dancer.’

  ‘And you knew her?’

  There was suddenly a hint of jealousy in Madame Maigret’s voice.

  ‘I went to her room, just the once.’

  ‘Well, well.’

  ‘Now you’re talking like Monsieur Delvigne himself! I did go to her place, but in the company of about half a dozen other people.’

  ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘She’s not bad. The youngsters were mad about her.’

  ‘Just the youngsters?’

  Maigret opened another letter with a Belgian stamp.

  ‘Here we are, here’s a photo of one of them.’

  And he held out a snapshot of a young man, whose thin shoulders looked even more frail in his uniform. The background was the funnel of a steamer.

  … and I’m taking the liberty of sending you a photograph of my son, who left Antwerp this week on board the SS Élisabethville, bound for the Congo. I hope that the tough life in the colonies …

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘One of the youngsters who was in love with Adèle.’

  ‘Did he commit a crime?’

  ‘He drank some glasses of port in a nightclub where he would have done better never to set foot.’

&nbs
p; ‘Was he her lover?’

  ‘Absolutely not! The nearest he came to it was that he once watched her getting dressed.’

  And Madame Maigret concluded:

  ‘Men! They’re all the same!’

  Under the pile of letters was a black-edged envelope which Maigret did not show his wife.

  … in his eighteenth year, fortified by the sacraments of the church, René-Joseph-Arthur Delfosse passed away at the Clinique Sainte-Rosalie …

  The Clinique Sainte-Rosalie in Liège is a nursing home for rich patients with mental disorders. At the bottom of the card, three words: Pray for him.

  And Maigret recalled Monsieur Delfosse, with his wife, his factory, his mistresses. And Graphopoulos, who had wanted to play secret agents, because he had nothing to do and thought it would be glamorous, like in spy novels.

  A week later, in a nightclub in Montmartre, a woman smiled at him over the empty glass which the management had placed on his table for convention’s sake.

  It was Adèle.

  ‘I promise you, I had no idea what they were actually getting up to. Got to live, haven’t you?’

  And naturally, she was ready to ‘get up to something’ all over again.

  ‘I got sent this picture of the kid. You know he was an office-boy or something?’

  From a powder-stained handbag she produced a snapshot. The same one Maigret had received. Of a lanky boy, not yet grown-up, who looked frail in his over-large uniform, and who was trying for the first time to look brave under the pith helmet. No doubt a third copy was being shown round in Rue de la Loi to the lodgers, Mademoiselle Pauline and Monsieur Bogdanowski.

  ‘He looks so grown up, don’t you think? If only he doesn’t catch a fever!’

  And now other young men were frequenting the Gai-Moulin, which was back in business under new management.

  1. Saturday with Monsieur Basso

  A radiant late afternoon. The sunshine almost as thick as syrup in the quiet streets of the Left Bank. And everything – the people’s faces, the countless familiar sounds of the street – exuded a joy to be alive.

  There are days like this, when ordinary life seems heightened, when the people walking down the street, the trams and cars all seem to exist in a fairy tale.