The Hotel Majestic Read online

  The manager picked up the telephone.

  “Hello! Porter? . . . What train did Mr. Clark catch yesterday . . . Suite 203, yes . . . Wasn’t there any luggage to go to the station? He only took a grip? . . . By taxi? . . . Désiré’s taxi? . . . Thank you . . .

  “Did you get that, superintendent? He left at eleven o’clock yesterday morning in a taxi, Désiré’s taxi, which is nearly always parked outside the hotel. He took only one small bag with him . . .”

  “Do you mind if I make a call myself? . . . Hello! Judicial Police, please, mademoiselle . . . Police Headquarters? . . . Lucas? Get over to the Gare de Lyon . . . Check on the trains to Rome from 11 a.m. yesterday . . .”

  He continued giving instructions, while his pipe went out.

  “Tell Torrence to find Désiré’s taxi . . . Yes . . . Which is usually outside the Majestic . . . Find out where he took a fare, a tall thin American he picked up outside the hotel yesterday . . . That’s it . . .”

  He looked for an ashtray in which to empty his pipe. The manager handed him one.

  “Are you sure you won’t have a cigar? . . . The nanny is in a great state . . . I thought it best to tell her . . . And the governess didn’t sleep at the hotel last night . . .”

  “What floor is the suite on?”

  “On the second floor . . . Looking out over the Champs-Élysées . . . Mr. Clark’s room, separated from his wife’s by a sitting-room . . . Then the child’s room, the nanny’s and the governess’s . . . They wanted to be all together . . .”

  “Has the night porter left?”

  “He can be reached by telephone, I know, because I had to contact him one day. His wife is the concierge at a new block of flats in Neuilly . . . Hello! . . . Can you get me . . .”

  Five minutes later they knew that Mrs. Clark had gone to the theatre alone the evening before, and that she had got back a few minutes past midnight. The nanny had not gone out. The governess on the other hand had not dined at the hotel and had been out all night.

  “Shall we go downstairs and have a look?” Maigret sighed.

  The foyer was busier now, but no one had any idea of the drama which had taken place while they were still asleep.

  “We’ll go this way . . . I’ll lead the way, superintendent . . .”

  As he spoke, the manager frowned. Someone was coming through the revolving door, letting in a shaft of sunlight. A young woman in a grey suit came in and, as she passed the post desk, asked in English: “Anything for me?”

  “That’s her, superintendent—Miss Ellen Darroman . . .”

  Fine silk stockings, with straight seams. The well-groomed look of someone who had dressed with care. She didn’t look at all tired, and the brisk February air had brought colour to her cheeks.

  “Do you want to talk to her?”

  “Not yet . . . Wait a minute . . .”

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

  “Don’t let that girl out of your sight . . . If she goes into her room, stand outside the door . . .”

  The cloakroom. The tall mirror turned on its hinges. The superintendent followed the manager down the narrow staircase. A sudden end to all the gilt, potted plants and elegant bustle. A smell of cooking rose to meet them.

  “Does this staircase go to all the floors?”

  “There are two of them . . . leading from the cellar to the attics . . . But you have to know your way around to use them . . . For instance, upstairs, there are little doors exactly the same as the other doors, but with no number on. None of the visitors would ever guess . . .”

  It was nearly eleven o’clock. There were not fifty, but more like a hundred and fifty people now, scurrying about in the basement, some in cooks’ white hats, others in waiters’ coats, or cellarmen’s aprons, and the women, like Prosper Donge’s Three Fatties, doing the rough work . . .

  “This way . . . Careful you don’t get dirty or slip . . . The passages are very narrow . . .”

  Through the glass partitions everyone stared at them, and particularly at the superintendent. Jean Ramuel was busy catching each chit handed up to him as its bearer flew past, and casting an eagle eye over the contents of the trays.

  It was a shock to see the unexpected figure of a policeman standing on guard outside the cloakroom. The doctor—who was very young—had been warned that Maigret was coming, and was smoking a cigarette while waiting.

  “Shut the door . . .”

  The body was lying on the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by the metal lockers. The doctor, still smoking, muttered: “She must have been attacked from behind . . . She didn’t struggle for very long . . .”

  “And her body wasn’t dragged along the ground!” Maigret added, examining the dead woman’s black clothes. “There are no traces of dust . . . Either the crime was committed here, or she was carried, by two people probably, because it would be difficult in this labyrinth of narrow corridors . . .”

  There was a crocodile handbag in the locker in which she had been found. The superintendent opened it, and took out an automatic, which he slipped into his pocket, after checking the safety catch was on. There was nothing else in the bag except a handkerchief, a powder compact, and a few banknotes amounting to less than a thousand francs.

  Behind them the basement was humming like a beehive. The service-lifts shot up and down, bells rang ceaselessly and they could see heavy copper saucepans being wielded behind the glass partitions of the kitchens, and chickens being roasted in their dozens.

  “Everything must be left in place for the Public Prosecutor’s Department to see,” Maigret said. “Who found the body? . . .”

  Prosper Donge, who was cleaning a percolator, was pointed out to him. He was tall, with the kind of red hair usually referred to as carroty, and looked about forty-five to forty-eight. He had blue eyes and his face was badly pockmarked.

  “Has he been here long?”

  “Five years . . . Before that he was at the Miramar, in Cannes . . .”

  “Reliable?”

  “Extremely reliable . . .”

  There was a partition separating Donge and the superintendent. Their eyes met through the glass. And a rush of colour flooded the face of the still-room chef, who like all redheads, had sensitive skin.

  “Excuse me, sir . . . Superintendent Maigret is wanted on the telephone . . .”

  It was Jean Ramuel, the bookkeeper, who had hurried out of his cage.

  “If you’d like to take the call here—”

  A message from Headquarters. There had only been two express trains to Rome since eleven o’clock the day before. Oswald J. Clark had not travelled on either of them. And the taxi driver, Désiré, whom they had managed to contact on the telephone at a bistro where he was one of the regulars, swore he had taken his fare, the day before, to the Hotel Aiglon, in the Boulevard Montparnasse.

  Voices, from the staircase, one of them the high-pitched voice of a young woman protesting in English to a room waiter who was trying to bar her way.

  It was the governess, Ellen Darroman, who was bearing down on them.

  2

  MAIGRET GOES BICYCLING

  Pipe in mouth, bowler on the back of his head, and hands in the pockets of his vast overcoat with the famous velvet collar, Maigret watched her arguing vehemently with the hotel manager.

  And one glance at the superintendent’s face made it clear that there would not be much sympathy lost between him and Ellen Darroman.

  “What’s she saying?” he sighed, interrupting, unable to understand a single word the American woman said.

  “She wants to know if it’s true Mrs. Clark has been murdered, and if anyone has telephoned to Rome to let Oswald J. Clark know; she wants to know where the body has been taken and if . . .”

  But the girl didn’t let him finish. She had listened impatiently, frowning, had thrown Maigret a cold glance and had gone on talking faster than ever.

  “Wha
t’s she saying?”

  “She wants me to show her the body and . . .”

  Maigret gently took the American girl’s arm, to guide her towards the cloakroom. But he knew she would shy away from the contact. Just the kind of woman who exasperated him in American films! A terrifyingly brisk walk. All the kitchen staff were gaping at her through the glass partitions.

  “Do come in,” murmured the superintendent, not without irony.

  She took three steps forward, saw the body wrapped in a blanket on the floor, remained stock still and started jabbering away in English again.

  “What’s she saying?”

  “She wants us to uncover the body . . .”

  Maigret complied, without taking his eyes off her. He saw her start, then immediately recover her composure in spite of the horrifying nature of what she saw.

  “Ask her if she recognizes Mrs. Clark . . .”

  A shrug. A particularly disagreeable way of tapping her high heel on the floor.

  “What’s she saying?”

  “That you know as well as she does.”

  “In that case, please ask her to go up to your office and tell her that I have a few questions to ask her.”

  The manager translated. Maigret took the opportunity of covering the dead woman’s face again.

  “What’s she saying?”

  “She says ‘no.’”

  “Really? Kindly inform her of my position as head of the Special Squad of the Judicial Police . . .”

  Ellen, who was looking straight at him, spoke without waiting for this to be translated. And Maigret repeated his interminable: “What’s she saying?”

  “What’s she saying?” she repeated, imitating him, overcome by unjustifiable irritation.

  And she spoke in English again, as if to herself.

  “Translate what she’s saying for me, will you?”

  “She says that . . . that she knows perfectly well you’re from the police . . . that . . .”

  “Don’t be afraid!”

  “That one only has to see you with your hat on and your pipe in your mouth . . . I’m so sorry . . . You wanted me to tell you . . . She says she won’t go up to my office and that she won’t answer your questions . . .”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll ask her . . .”

  Ellen Darroman, who was lighting a cigarette, listened to the manager’s question, shrugged again and snapped a few words.

  “She says she’s not under any obligation to answer and that she will only obey an official summons . . .”

  At which the girl threw a last look at Maigret, turned on her heel and walked, with the same decisive air, towards the staircase.

  The manager turned somewhat anxiously towards the superintendent, and was amazed to see that he was smiling.

  He had had to take off his overcoat, because of the heat in the basement, but he hadn’t abandoned his bowler or his pipe. Thus accoutred, he wandered peacefully along the corridors, with his hands behind his back, stopping from time to time by one of the glass partitions, rather as if he were inspecting an aquarium.

  The huge basement, with its electric lights burning all day long, did in fact strike him as being very like an oceanographical museum. In each glass cage there were creatures, varying in number, darting to and fro. You could see them constantly appearing and disappearing, heavily laden, carrying saucepans or piles of plates, setting service-lifts or goods-lifts in motion, forever using the little instruments which were the telephones.

  “What would someone from another planet make of it all? . . .”

  The visit from the DPP had only lasted a few minutes, and the examining magistrate had given Maigret a free hand as usual. The latter had made several telephone calls from Jean Ramuel’s bookkeeper’s cage.

  Ramuel’s nose was set so crookedly, that one always seemed to be seeing him in profile. And he looked as though he was suffering from a liver complaint. When his lunch was brought to him on a tray, he took a sachet of white powder from his waistcoat pocket and dissolved it in a glass of water.

  Between one and three o’clock, the pace was at its most hectic, everything happening so fast that it was like seeing a film run off in fast motion.

  “Excuse me . . . Sorry . . .”

  People were constantly bumping into the superintendent, who continued his walk unperturbed, stopping and starting, asking a question now and then.

  How many people had he talked to? At least twenty, he reckoned. The head chef had explained to him how the kitchens were run. Jean Ramuel had told him what the different coloured slips of paper meant.

  And he had watched—still through the glass partitions—the guests’ servants having their lunch. Gertrud Borms, the Clarks’ nanny, had come down. A large, hard-faced woman.

  “Does she speak French?”

  “Not a word . . .”

  She had eaten heartily, chatting to a liveried chauffeur who sat opposite her.

  But what amazed him most of all was the sight of Prosper Donge, all this while, in his still-room. He looked exactly like a large goldfish in its bowl. His hair was a fiery red. He had the almost brick-red complexion redheads sometimes have, and his lips were thick and fish-like.

  And he looked exactly like a fish when he came to press his face up against the glass, with his great, round, bewildered eyes, probably worried because the superintendent hadn’t spoken to him yet.

  Maigret had questioned everyone. But he had hardly seemed to notice Prosper Donge’s presence, although it was he who had discovered the body, and he was therefore the principal witness.

  Donge, too, had his lunch, on a little table in his still-room, while his three women bustled round him. A bell would ring about once a minute to indicate that the service-lift was coming down. It arrived at a sort of hatch. Donge seized the slip of paper on it, and replaced it with the order on a tray, and the lift went up again to one of the upper floors.

  All these seemingly complicated operations were in fact quite simple. The large dining-room of the Majestic, where two or three hundred people would then be having lunch, was immediately over the kitchens, so most of the service-lifts went there. Each time one of them came down again, the sound of music was wafted down with it.

  Some of the guests had their meals in their rooms, however, and there was a waiter on each floor. There was also a grill-room on the same floor as the basement, where there was dancing in the afternoons from about five o’clock.

  The men from the Forensic Laboratory had come for the body, and two specialists from the Criminal Records Office had spent half an hour working on locker 89 with cameras and powerful lights, looking for fingerprints.

  None of this seemed to interest Maigret. They would be sure to inform him of the result in due course.

  Looking at him, you would have thought he was making an amateurish study of how a grand hotel functions. He went up the narrow staircase, opened a door, then immediately closed it again, because it led to the large dining-room, which was filled with the sound of clinking cutlery, music and conversation.

  He went up to the next floor. A corridor, with doors numbered to infinity and a red carpet stretching into the distance.

  It was clear that any of the guests could open the door and make their way to the basement. It was the same as with the entrance in the Rue de Ponthieu. Two car attendants, a porter, and commissionaires guarded the revolving door leading from the Champs-Élysées, but any stray passer-by could get into the Majestic by using the staff entrance and no one would probably have noticed he was there.

  It is the same with most theatres. They are rigidly guarded at the front, but wide open on the stage-door side.

  From time to time people went into the cloakroom in their working clothes. Shortly afterwards they could be seen leaving, smartly dressed, in their hats and coats.

  They were going off duty. The head chef went to the back room for a nap, which he did every day between the lunch and dinner shifts.

  Soon after four
there was a loud burst of music from near at hand in the grill-room, and the dancing began. Prosper Donge, looking exhausted, filled rows of minute teapots, and microscopic milk jugs, and then came anxiously up to the glass partition once more, casting nervous glances in Maigret’s direction.

  At five o’clock his three women went off duty and were replaced by two others. At six he took a wad of bills and a sheet of paper, which was obviously his accounts for the day, to Jean Ramuel. Then he in turn went into the cloakroom, came out in his street clothes and fetched his bicycle, the puncture having been repaired by one of the bellboys.

  Outside it was now dark. The Rue de Ponthieu was congested. Prosper Donge made for the Champs-Élysées, weaving his way between taxis and buses. When he was almost at the Étoile, he suddenly did an about-turn, bicycled back to the Rue de Ponthieu, and went into a radio shop, where he handed over three hundred odd francs to the cashier as one of the monthly instalments which he had contracted to pay.

  Back to the Champs-Élysées. Then on to the regal calm of the Avenue Foch, with only the occasional car gliding silently past. He pedalled slowly, with the air of one who has a long way to go yet—an honest citizen pedalling along the same route at the same time every day.

  A voice from behind, speaking quite close to him: “I hope you don’t mind, Monsieur Donge, if I go the rest of the way with you?”

  He braked so violently that he skidded and almost collided with Maigret on his bicycle. For it was Maigret who was bicycling along beside him, on a bike which was too small for him, which he had borrowed from a bellboy at the Majestic.

  “I can’t think,” Maigret continued, “why everyone who lives in the suburbs doesn’t go by bicycle. It’s so much more healthy and agreeable than going by bus or train!”

  They were entering the Bois de Boulogne. Soon they saw the shimmer of street-lights reflected in the lake.

  “You were so busy all day that I didn’t like to disturb you in your work . . .”

  And Maigret, too, was pedalling along with the regular rhythm of someone who is used to bicycling. Now and then there was the click of a gear.

  “Do you know what Jean Ramuel did before he came to the Majestic?”