Liberty Bar Read online

  ‘I don’t know … I don’t think so …’

  ‘It would be a disgrace! People as rich as they are! But then they are usually the ones who …’

  The old woman was in a genuine state. The worry was eating away at her. She looked at all the old stuff lying about the room and felt a terrible anguish at the thought of losing it.

  And Maigret had his hand on his wallet. All he had to do was open it, take out a little slip of paper and show it to the two women …

  Would they dance for joy? Would the joy be too much for the old woman and be the end of her?

  Millions and millions! Millions they couldn’t yet get their hands on, of course, and that they would have to go to Australia to acquire by means of legal action!

  But they would go! He could picture them sailing off, disembarking from the steamship over there with their noses in the air.

  It wouldn’t be Monsieur Petitfils whose services they would call on, but those of notaries, lawyers, barristers …

  ‘I’ll let you get on … I’ll come by and see you tomorrow …’

  His taxi was waiting at the gate. He sat down without giving an address, and the driver waited, holding the door open.

  ‘Cannes …’ Maigret finally said.

  And it was the same thoughts that passed through his mind:

  ‘Brown was murdered!’

  ‘No dramas!’

  Damn Brown! If the wound had been in his chest, you could have believed that he killed himself to spite everyone. But you don’t stab yourself in the back, for heaven’s sake!

  He was no longer the one who intrigued Maigret. The inspector felt that he knew him as well as if he had been a lifelong friend.

  First of all, William in Australia … A rich, well-brought-up boy, a little shy, living with his parents, marrying someone suitable when the time comes and having children …

  This Brown was fairly similar to Brown Junior … He might experience some vague melancholy or troubling desires, but he no doubt put them down to a passing phase and managed to get them out of his system.

  The same William in Europe … The dykes finally bursting … He could no longer keep everything repressed … He was driven crazy by all the possibilities on offer to him …

  And he became a regular on this boulevard that runs from Cannes to Menton … A yacht in Cannes … Baccarat games in Nice … The lot! … And an overwhelming apathy at the thought of returning back home …

  ‘Next month, maybe …’

  And the following month it was exactly the same!

  So they cut off his allowance. The brother-in-law kept an eye on things. All the Brown family and all their hangers-on defended themselves!

  He was incapable of leaving his boulevard, the sweet atmosphere of the Côte d’Azur, the indulgence, the easiness …

  No more yacht. A small villa …

  In the world of women he had to lower his standards too, and so he ended up with Gina Martini.

  A certain disgust … A need for disorder and listlessness … The villa at Cap d’Antibes is still too bourgeois …

  He discovered the Liberty Bar … Jaja … Sylvie …

  And he continued the legal action, back home, against the Browns who had stayed on the rails, to get under their skin … He used his will to make sure he continued to do so after his death … Whether he was right or wrong was of no concern to Maigret. Yet the inspector couldn’t help comparing the father with the son, Harry Brown, so proper and self-possessed, who knew how to keep things in perspective.

  Harry didn’t like mess! Nevertheless, Harry had troubling needs.

  And he installed a mistress in Cap Ferrat … A very respectable, well-mannered mistress, a widow or divorcee, discreet …

  Even at his hotel no one was supposed to know that he stayed out all night!

  Order … Mess … Order … Mess …

  Maigret was the umpire, as he had the famous will in his pocket!

  He could at any moment allow four women to enter the fray!

  What a singularly extraordinary picture that would make: these four women of William Brown arriving over there. Jaja with her sensitive feet, her swollen ankles, her sagging breasts … Sylvie, who in private can bear to wear nothing but a dressing gown over her skinny body …

  Then the older Martini, with her cheeks caked in make-up! The younger one with her distinctive smell of musk.

  They drove along the famous boulevard. The lights of Cannes were visible ahead.

  ‘No dramas!’

  The taxi pulled up in front of the Ambassadeurs, and the driver asked:

  ‘Where do you want me to take you?’

  ‘Nowhere! Here’s fine.’

  Maigret paid. The casino was lit up. A number of chauffeur-driven cars were arriving, for it was nearly nine in the evening.

  And twelve casinos were similarly lighting up along the stretch between Cannes and Menton! And hundreds of luxury cars …

  Maigret went on foot to the small sidestreet, where he found the Liberty Bar closed. No lights on. No light anywhere except that of the streetlamp shining through the window, throwing a murky light on the zinc counter-top and the fruit machine.

  He knocked and was amazed at the din it made in the small street. Straight away the door behind him opened, the one to the bar across the street. The waiter called out to Maigret.

  ‘Are you looking for Jaja?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who should I say …?’

  ‘The inspector.’

  ‘In that case, I have a message for you … Jaja will be back in a few minutes … She asked me to tell you to wait … If you’d like to come in …’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  He was happier pacing up and down. He didn’t like the look of the handful of customers in the bar across the street. A window opened somewhere. A woman, who had heard the noise, asked timidly:

  ‘Is that you, Jean?’

  ‘No!’

  And Maigret, who had paced the street from one end to the other, repeated to himself:

  ‘Above all, we need to find out who killed William!’

  Ten o’clock … Jaja still hadn’t arrived … Each time he heard footsteps he quivered in anticipation that his wait was coming to an end … But it wasn’t her …

  His horizon was a badly paved street fifty metres long and two metres wide; the illuminated window of one bar, the dark gloom of the other …

  And the old, teetering buildings, their windows that weren’t even rectangular any more.

  Maigret went into the bar across the street.

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  ‘No! Would you like something to drink?’

  And the customers, who had been told who he was, looked at him from head to toe!

  ‘No, thank you!’

  He started walking again, as far as the corner of the street, the border between this shady world and the brightly lit quayside, buzzing with everyday life.

  Ten thirty … Eleven o’clock … The first café round the corner was called Harry’s Bar. That’s where Maigret had phoned from that afternoon when he was with Sylvie. He went in and made for the cabin.

  ‘Could you give me the police? … Hello! … Police? … This is Detective Chief Inspector Maigret … Have the two persons I delivered to you earlier received any visitors?’

  ‘Yes … A large woman …’

  ‘Whom did she see?’

  ‘First the man … Then the woman … We weren’t sure what to do … You didn’t leave any instructions …’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘A good hour and a half … She brought cigarettes and cakes …’

  Maigret hung up, worried. Then, without pausing for breath, he asked for the Provençal.

  ‘Hello! … This is the police … Yes, the inspector you saw earlier … Could you tell me whether Monsieur Brown has received any visitors?’

  ‘A quarter of an hour ago … A woman … Somewhat badly dressed …’

>   ‘Where was he?’

  ‘He was having a meal in the dining room … He took her up to his room …’

  ‘Has she gone?’

  ‘She came down just as you rang.’

  ‘Very fat, quite common-looking?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Was she in a taxi?’

  ‘No … She left on foot …’

  Maigret hung up, sat down in the bar and ordered sauerkraut and beer.

  Jaja saw Sylvie and Joseph … She was given a message for Harry Brown … She is coming back by bus, which would take half an hour …

  He ate and read the newspaper he found lying on the table. There was an item about two lovers who had committed suicide in Bandol. The man was married, in Czechoslovakia.

  ‘Would you like some vegetables?’

  ‘No, thank you! What do I owe you? … No, wait! … Another beer – stout …’

  And five minutes later he was walking down the street again, past the darkened window of the Liberty Bar.

  The curtain would be going up at the casino now. Gala evening. Opera. Dance. Supper. Dancing. Roulette and baccarat …

  Along the whole sixty kilometres. Hundreds of women would be watching the diners. Hundreds of croupiers would be watching the gamblers! And hundreds of gigolos, dancers and waiters would be watching the women …

  And then hundreds of businessmen, like Monsieur Petitfils, with their lists of villas for sale or rent, watching the winter visitors …

  Here and there – in Cannes, Nice or Monte Carlo – a part of town less well lit than the others, with narrow sidestreets, odd, run-down buildings, shadows flitting along the walls, old women and youths, fruit machines and back rooms …

  Still no Jaja! Ten times Maigret started when he heard footsteps. In the end he couldn’t face walking in front of the bar across the road, where the waiter was watching with amusement.

  And during this time, thousands, tens of thousands, of sheep would be munching the Browns’ grass on the Browns’ estate tended by the Browns’ shepherds … Tens of thousands of sheep about to be sheared – because it would be daytime now in the antipodes – the wool loaded on to wagons and shipped in huge cargos …

  And the sailors, ship’s officers, captains …

  And all these ships coming to Europe, the officers checking the thermometers (to ensure the optimum temperature for the cargo), and the brokers in Amsterdam, London, Liverpool, Le Havre, discussing the price …

  And Harry Brown, at the Provençal, receiving cables from his brothers, his uncle and telephoning his agents …

  When he was looking through the paper earlier, Maigret had read:

  The Commander of the Faithful, the leader of Islam, has married his daughter to Prince …

  Followed by:

  Great celebrations in India, Persia, Afghanistan …

  And then:

  A large dinner was mounted in Nice, at the Palais de la Méditerranée, where the eye-catching …

  The daughter of the high priest getting married in Nice … A wedding on the sixty-odd-kilometre boulevard while back home hundreds of thousands of people …

  But still no Jaja! Maigret knew every paving slab and every house front on the street. A little girl with her hair in pigtails was doing her homework next to her window.

  Had the bus had an accident? Did Jaja have to go somewhere else? Was she running away?

  Pressing his forehead to the window of the bar, Maigret could see the cat licking its paws.

  And more snippets remembered from the newspaper:

  It is reported from the Côte d’Azur that S. M., the king of …, has arrived at his property in Cap Ferrat, accompanied by …

  News of the arrest of M. Graphopoulos, who was apprehended in a baccarat room having just won more than five hundred thousand francs by using a false card shoe …

  Then a short sentence:

  The deputy director of police is compromised.

  Good grief! If William Brown succumbed, is some poor guy on two thousand francs a month supposed to be a hero?

  Maigret was furious. He had had enough of waiting! Above all, he had had enough of the atmosphere of this place, which rubbed him up the wrong way.

  Why had he been given a ridiculous order like: ‘No dramas’?

  No dramas? … What if he produced a will, a genuine, incontestable will? … And sent the four women off over there?

  Footsteps … He didn’t even turn round! … A few moments later, a key turned in a lock and a sickly voice sighed:

  ‘Ah, there you are.’

  It was Jaja. A tired Jaja, whose hand shook as it held the key. A Jaja dressed to the nines, mauve overcoat and oxblood-red shoes.

  ‘Come in … Wait … I’ll turn the lights on …’

  The cat purred as it rubbed against her swollen legs. She searched for the light switch.

  ‘When I think about poor Sylvie …’

  Finally, she managed to turn on the light. Now they could see. The waiter in the café across the street had his ugly face glued to the window.

  ‘Come in, please … I’m exhausted … All this emotion …’

  And the door to the back room opened. Jaja went straight to the fire, which was burning red, half closed the damper, moved a pot.

  ‘Sit down, inspector … Just give me time to change and I’ll be with you …’

  She hadn’t yet looked him in the face. With her back turned to Maigret, she repeated:

  ‘Poor Sylvie …’

  And she climbed the stairs to the mezzanine and continued talking as she changed, her voice a little higher-pitched.

  ‘A good girl … If she had wanted to be. But they are the ones who always end up paying the price for others … I’d told her …’

  Maigret had sat down in front of the table, where there were some leftover cheese, pâté de tête, sardines.

  Above his head he could hear the sound of Jaja taking off her shoes and dragging some slippers towards her.

  Then the jig she danced to get her trousers off without sitting down.

  9. Chatter

  ‘All this stress. It’s making my feet swell up …’

  Jaja had stopped walking around and had sat down. She had her shoes off and was massaging her painful feet, with a mechanical movement, as she spoke.

  She was speaking loudly, because she thought Maigret was downstairs, so she was surprised to see him appear at the top of the staircase.

  ‘Ah, there you are … Don’t mind the mess … There’s just so much going on …’

  Maigret would be hard put to say why he had come upstairs. As he had sat listening to his companion, it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t yet seen the mezzanine.

  Now he was standing at the top of the stairs. Jaja continued to rub her feet and she carried on talking, even more volubly:

  ‘Have I even eaten? … I don’t think so … It’s turned me inside out seeing Sylvie in that place …’

  She had slipped on a dressing gown but unlike Sylvie she wore it over her underwear, which was bright pink. A very short slip, trimmed with lace, which contrasted with her flabby white skin.

  The bed was unmade. Maigret thought that, if anyone could see him now, he would have difficulty making them believe that he was here just to talk.

  An ordinary-looking room, less poor than one might have thought. A mahogany bed, very bourgeois. A round table. A chest of drawers. On the other hand, the slop bucket was in the middle of the room and the table was covered with make-up, dirty tissues and pots of cream.

  Jaja sighed as she finally pulled her slippers on.

  ‘I wonder how it will all turn out.’

  ‘Did William sleep here when he …’

  ‘This is the only room I have, apart from the two downstairs …’

  In the corner, there was a divan, its velour upholstery well worn.

  ‘Did he sleep on the divan?’

  ‘It varied … Sometimes it was me …’

  ‘And
Sylvie?’

  ‘With me …’

  The ceiling was so low that Maigret touched it with the top of his hat. The window was narrow, covered by a curtain in green velour. The electric lamp had no shade.

  It didn’t require great powers of imagination to picture normal life in this room: William and Jaja coming upstairs, usually drunk, then Sylvie following on and slipping in next to the fat woman …

  But the mornings? … With the bright light from outside?

  Jaja had never been so chatty. She spoke in a doleful voice, as if looking for pity.

  ‘I bet this all makes me ill … Yes! I can feel it … Just like three years ago, when the sailors had a fight right outside my house … One of them got cut by a razor and …’

  She stood up. She looked around her, searching for something, then forgot what it was she was looking for.

  ‘Have you eaten? … Come … We’ll grab a bite to eat …’

  Maigret went first down the stairs, watched her head to the stove, shovel in some coal, stir a pot with a spoon.

  ‘When I’m on my own I don’t feel up to cooking … And when I think about where Sylvie is at this moment …’

  ‘Tell me, Jaja …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What did Sylvie say to you this afternoon when I was in the bar serving a customer?’

  ‘Oh yes! … I asked her about the twenty grand … She told me she didn’t know, it was some scheme of Joseph’s …’

  ‘And this evening?’

  ‘This evening what?’

  ‘At the police station …’

  ‘The same thing … She was wondering what Joseph had been cooking up …’

  ‘Has she been with this Joseph for long?’

  ‘She’s with him but not with him … They don’t live together … She met him somewhere, probably at the races, in any case not here … He said he could be of use to her, bring her clients … Obviously, the line he is in! … He’s got good manners … But even so, I’ve never liked him …’

  There were some leftover lentils in a pot, and Jaja tipped them on to a plate.

  ‘Want some? … No? … Help yourself to a drink … I don’t feel up to doing anything … Is the front door closed?’

  Maigret was straddling his chair, just like he had that afternoon. He watched her eat. He listened to her speak.

  ‘You know, those people, especially the ones from the casinos, are too tricky for the likes of us … And throughout history it’s always been the woman who gets taken in … If Sylvie had listened to me …’