Authors: Georges Simenon
Cécile is Dead (20 page)
âBut suppose someone from the
underworld comes by, from that underworld of which Monsieur Charles has become one of
the luminaries â¦
âAnd suppose he accosts his
acquaintance ⦠“Listen, in that waiting room there's a girl who
mustn't see the inspector today ⦠She doesn't know you. I badly need you to
say something to her
.
”
âDon't forget that Dandurand
knows the corridors of Quai des Orfèvres and the Palais de Justice as well as we do.
â“Find a pretext to get me on
the other side of that glazed door ⦔
âGentlemen, there is no other way
things could have happened, and so ⦠The accomplice doesn't know he's taking
part in a crime, or he might hesitate, and I feel sure
that at the moment he isn't very proud of himself â¦
However, this drama is played out.
â“You wanted to see Detective
Chief Inspector Maigret?”
âI have just passed by ⦠Cécile is
waiting. She confidently follows her improvised guide. And once past the glazed door â¦
Admit it, Dandurand, it happened like that,
because it couldn't have happened
in any other way!
âShe is terrified by the sight of you
⦠The door of the broom cupboard is close ⦠you push her, she resists ⦠Before snatching
the bag that she is defending, you strike her, and then â¦'
âI'm still waiting to hear the
evidence, inspector.'
The lawyer, who had been making copious
notes, lost none of his composure. Lawyers are not staking their own lives in court.
After giving his transatlantic colleague a
very small sign, Maigret murmured, âSuppose I were to replace witnesses by a
letter?'
âA letter from the man who took the
aforesaid Cécile to my client?'
â
A letter from your client
himself, my dear Maître
Planchard.
'
Dandurand was hard as steel.
âI'm waiting for you to let me
see it,' murmured the lawyer.
âAnd I,' sighed Maigret,
âam waiting for it to be found.'
âWhich means that all this is
â¦'
âJust a set of assumptions, yes, I
admit that. ⦠All the same, there was a very good reason for Monsieur Charles to go into
Juliette's bedroom when I wasn't with
him ⦠Specialists have been searching that room since
midday. I don't know whether you've ever had to study the mentality of old
ladies? They are the most distrustful creatures in the world. If she kept most of her
letters in the sitting-room desk, then you may well think that â¦'
Monsieur Dandurand laughed. Everyone looked
at him.
To be honest, at that moment Maigret was
close to thinking that he had lost the game. He was clinging to a single cause for hope.
Hadn't Juliette Boynet said, in one of her letters to Monfils, that if anything
happened to her â¦
The inspector had staked everything on this
one throw of the dice. He wasn't yet ready to believe that in the few minutes
Dandurand had spent alone in that bedroom he â¦
And didn't the fact that he had gone
into the room, had opened the tapestry footstool and touched the bundles of banknotes
without taking them, even if it meant leaving his fingerprints on them, didn't it
mean that he was looking for something that mattered more to him?
Had the old woman been stupid enough to
leave the final document in the apartment?
Suppose Maître Leloup hadn't sent that
telegram to Monfils? Suppose Monfils had been out fishing, out hunting, anywhere but at
home? Suppose â¦
The telephone rang. Maigret positively
pounced on it. âHello? Yes ⦠Ah well. Carry on.'
When he hung up, Spencer Oats saw that there
could be no other solution: the searches in the Bourg-la-Reine apartment building
hadn't come up with any results.
âAllow me to
point out, detective chief inspector, that â¦'
âPoint out anything you like. In the
present situation â¦'
âAll your hypotheses are based on a
letter that doesn't exist, and in those circumstances, my client is legally
entitled to â¦'
The telephone again.
âHello? Good! ⦠Three or four hours? â¦
Yes, he's here ⦠I'll send him round to you â¦' And he turned to
Gérard. âYou'd better go and join your wife. It sounds to me as if
you'll soon be a proud father.'
âDetective chief inspector, I will
continue to point out â¦'
Maigret looked at the lawyer without
replying and winked at the American, who followed him out into the corridor.
âI'm beginning to think,'
he began, âthat this investigation, the one you wanted to take part in ⦠Well, no
doubt I'm going to look a fool, and you will go back to the United States with a
pathetic opinion of my methods ⦠although I'm sure, as I hope you understand,
I'm sure that â¦' And, abruptly changing the subject, Maigret said,
âOh, let's go and have a beer, shall we?'
He led his companion out, casting a gloomy
glance as he passed at the Aquarium, where two or three people were waiting.
They walked past the walls of the Palais de
Justice and plunged into the warm calm of the Brasserie Dauphine, which smelled of beer
drawn from the cask.
âTwo beers, please ⦠big
'uns!'
âWhat do you
mean by “big 'uns”?' asked the American.
âGlasses for regular customers only â
they hold a litre.'
They went back, their stomachs pleasantly
replete, by the same route.
âI could have sworn â¦' muttered
Maigret. âAh, well, too bad! If I have to begin all over again, so be
it!'
Spencer Oats felt as embarrassed as if he
were trying to think up a brand new way of expressing condolences.
âDo you understand? I know that
psychologically I'm right ⦠it's impossible that â¦'
âSuppose Dandurand found the letter
ahead of you?'
âA woman is always more cunning than
her lover,' pronounced Maigret. âAnd old Juliette â¦'
He climbed the dusty staircase, where trails
of moisture were shining. A man was waiting for them, dignified and self-important, with
a briefcase under his arm.
âDetective chief inspector, I hope you
can explain to me â¦' he began.
Maigret's dislike of Maître Leloup had
vanished at once. He flung himself on the lawyer as if he were a long-lost friend with
whom he was now reunited.
âThe telegram? Why didn't he
send it straight to me here? ⦠Quick, let me see it â¦'
âHere you are, but I don't know
that you'll be able to make anything of it, and I'm even wondering whether,
pending further information, I ought not to â¦'
But Maigret had snatched it from
Leloup's hands.
Tell Inspector Maigret only present
received is photo of late aunt stop took frame apart just in case stop contains
letter makes little sense but could be
devastating to third party stop situation re inheritance completely changed since
death of Joseph Boynet not natural so murderer and accomplice unable claim money
stop am doing my duty but ask you entertain reservations your end stop will be in
Paris this evening stop Ãtienne Monfils.
âYou don't think my client
â¦' the lawyer began.
âYour client finds himself in a no-win
situation, Maître Leloup ⦠I never even thought of that! If Joseph Boynet was killed by
his wife and her lover, her fortune automatically reverts to the Boynets and the
Machepieds.'
âBut â¦'
The inspector wasn't listening. He
stood motionless in the middle of the monumental corridor of the Police Judiciaire, from
which he could see the door of his office. Beside him was the glazed partition of the
waiting room, where, one foggy morning â¦
A baby being born somewhere would never know
that the expenses of its birth would be paid for by certain gentlemen whose fingers were
heavily laden with rings. At this time of day, they would be absorbed in the subtleties
of a game of cards at Albert's, the bar in Rue Blanche.
What was Monsieur Charles thinking of as he
talked privately to his lawyer under the discreet surveillance of the mild-mannered
Inspector Torrence?
âNot so stupid after all!' He
jumped at the sound of his own voice, and so did Spencer Oats and Maître Leloup, who
weren't expecting it.
âSorry, I was thinking about the
photograph trick,' he
apologized.
âThe old woman knew her cousin, and she knew provincial life ⦠Well, come on,
gentlemen, let's get down to work.'
And he gave a snort before beginning to
question everyone who had visited the Police Judiciaire on the morning of the crime.
It was one in the morning when a little pimp
abandoned both his extinguished cigarette end and all attempts to deny his involvement.
âAll right, I only wanted to do someone a favour, and I'm the one
who's been done! What am I looking at, inspector? Two years?'
Madame Maigret had already phoned three
times.
âHello? No ⦠don't wait up for
me. I could be home rather late.'
He suddenly felt he could fancy some
sauerkraut with all the trimmings in a brasserie in Montmartre or Montparnasse. Then he
and his American friend took each other on from bar to bar. And what with one thing
leading to another, from one beer to the next, the whole night passed by. Well, Spencer
Oats had to have some stories to tell back home in Philadelphia, didn't he?
And never mind the fact that he, Maigret,
owed Monfils for the idea of taking the photograph frame apart â¦
Donge's Tyre
A car door slamming. That was always the
first noise of the day. The engine still running outside. Charlotte was presumably
shaking the driver's hand. Then the taxi drove away. Footsteps. The key in the
lock and the click of a light switch.
A match was struck in the kitchen, and
the gas stove made a
phjfft
sound as it came on.
Slowly, like someone who has spent all
night standing up, Charlotte climbed the overly new staircase. She came noiselessly
into the bedroom. Another light switch. A bulb came on, with a pink handkerchief
over it as a lampshade and wooden tassels at the four corners of the
handkerchief.
Prosper Donge had not opened his eyes.
Charlotte looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror as she undressed. When she got
down to her girdle and brassiere, she sighed. She was as fat and pink as a Rubens,
but she was obsessive about squeezing herself in. Once naked, she rubbed the flesh
where there were marks.
She had an unpleasant way of getting
into bed, kneeling on it first, which made the base tilt to one side.
âYour turn, Prosper!'
He got up. She quickly huddled into the
warm hollow he had left behind, pulled the blankets up to her eyes and stopped
moving.
âIs it
raining?' he asked as he flushed the toilet.
A vague grunt. It didn't matter.
The water for shaving was ice cold. Trains could be heard passing.
Prosper Donge got dressed. From time to
time, Charlotte sighed, because she couldn't get to sleep while the light was
on. He had one hand already on the doorknob and was stretching his right arm towards
the light switch when he heard a thick voice:
âDon't forget to go and pay
the instalment for the wireless.'
On the kitchen stove, the coffee was
hot, too hot. He drank it standing up. Then, like all those who make the same
gestures at the same time every day, he wrapped a knitted scarf around his neck and
put on his coat and cap.
Finally, he took his bicycle, which was
in the passage, and pushed it outside.
Invariably, at that hour, he was greeted
by a breath of cold, damp air, and there was wetness on the cobbles, even though it
hadn't rained; the people asleep behind the closed shutters would probably
know only a warm, sunny day.
The street, lined with detached houses
and little gardens, sloped steeply downwards. Sometimes, between two trees, the
lights of Paris could be glimpsed, as if at the bottom of a chasm.
It was no longer night, but it
wasn't yet day. The air was mauve. The lights were coming on in a few windows,
and Prosper Donge braked before he got to the level crossing, which was closed. He
had to get across through the gates.
After the Pont de Saint-Cloud, he turned
left. A tugboat
followed by its string
of barges was whistling furiously, asking for the lock gate to be opened.
The Bois de Boulogne ⦠The lakes
reflecting a paler sky, with swans waking up â¦
Just as he reached Porte Dauphine, the
ground suddenly felt harder beneath Donge's wheels. He went a few more metres,
then got off and had a look. His rear tyre was flat.
He looked at his watch. It was ten to
six. He began walking quickly, pushing his bicycle, and there was a slight mist in
front of his lips, while the heat of the effort burned his chest inside.
Avenue Foch ⦠Closed shutters in all the
mansions ⦠A high-ranking officer, followed only by his orderly, was trotting along
the bridle path â¦
Light behind the Arc de Triomphe ⦠He
was hurrying now ⦠He felt really hot â¦
Just at the corner of the
Champs-Ãlysées, a policeman in a cape, standing near the news stand, cried out:
âFlat tyre?'
He nodded. Three hundred metres to go.
The Hotel Majestic, on the left, with all its shutters closed. The street-lamps were
no longer giving out much light.
He turned into Rue de Berri, then Rue de
Ponthieu. A little bar was open. Two buildings further on, a door that passers-by
never noticed, the service entrance of the Majestic.
A man was just coming out. A suit could
be glimpsed under his grey coat. He was bare-headed. He had slicked-back hair, and
Prosper Donge assumed it was the dancer, Zebio.
He could have
glanced into the bar to make sure, but the thought never occurred to him. Still
pushing his bicycle, he entered a long grey passage lit by a single light. He
stopped by the clocking-on machine, turned the wheel, inserted the card into his
number, 67, and as he did so glanced at the little clock on the machine, which
showed ten past six. A click.
It was now an established fact that he
had entered the Majestic at ten past six in the morning, ten minutes later than
usual.
Such, at least, was the official
statement of Prosper Donge, the head coffee maker for the luxury hotel on the
Champs-Ãlysées.
As for what happened next, he claimed
that he had continued to act as he did every morning.
At that hour, the vast basement areas
with their complicated corridors, their multiple doors, their walls painted grey
like the gangways of a freighter, were deserted. Through the glass partitions, all
you could see, here and there, were the dim bulbs with their yellowish filaments
which constituted the night lighting.
Everything had glass partitions, the
kitchens on the left, then the bakery. Opposite, the room known as the
couriers' room, where the higher-ranking staff ate, along with the
guests' private domestics, their chambermaids and chauffeurs.
A bit further along, the dining room for
the lower-grade staff, with its long white wooden tables and its benches like the
kind you find in schools.
Finally,
dominating the basement like the bridge of a ship, a smaller glass cage, where the
bookkeeper sat, the man whose job it was to check everything that came out of the
kitchens.
As he opened the door to the coffee
room, Prosper Donge had the impression that someone was climbing the narrow
staircase that led to the upper floors, but paid no attention. That at least was
what appeared subsequently in his statement.
Just as Charlotte had done on entering
their suburban house, he now struck a match, and the gas made a
phffji
sound under the smallest of the percolators, the one that came on first for the few
guests who got up early.
Only once he had done that did he go
into the locker room. This was quite a large room along one of the corridors. There
were several wash-basins, a greyish mirror and, along the walls, tall, narrow metal
lockers, each bearing a number.
With his key, he opened locker 67. He
took off his coat, scarf and hat. He changed shoes: for his day's work he
preferred elastic-sided shoes, which were softer. He put on a white jacket.
A few more minutes ⦠At half past six,
the basement areas started coming to life â¦
Up above, everything was asleep, apart
from the night porter, who was waiting in the deserted lobby to be relieved.
The percolator hissed. Donge filled a
cup with coffee and set off up the staircase, which was like one of those mysterious
staircases you find backstage in theatres that lead to the most unexpected
places.
When he opened a
narrow door, he found himself in the lobby cloakroom. Nobody would have guessed the
door was there, covered as it was with a large mirror.
âCoffee!' he announced,
placing the cup on the cloakroom counter. âHow's it going?'
âFine!' the night porter
grunted as he approached.
Donge went back downstairs. His three
women, the Three Fat Ladies as they were known, had arrived. They were lower-class
women, all three ugly, one of them old and bad-tempered. They were already washing
cups and saucers in the sink, making a great clatter.
As for Donge, he did what he did every
day, arranged the silver coffee pots in order of size: one cup, two cups, three cups
⦠Then the little milk jugs ⦠the teapots â¦
In the bookkeeper's glass cage, he
glimpsed Jean Ramuel, his hair dishevelled.
âHe must have slept here
again!' he observed.
For three or four nights now, the
bookkeeper, Ramuel, had been sleeping at the hotel rather than going home, which was
somewhere in Montparnasse.
As a rule, that was forbidden. At the
very end of the corridor, near the door concealing the stairs to the lower basement,
where the wines were kept, there was indeed a room with three or four beds. But
theoretically they were reserved for those members of staff who needed a breather
between busy periods.
Donge waved a brief hello to Ramuel, who
responded with a similarly vague gesture.
Next, it was the turn of the head chef,
huge and self-important, who had just returned from Les Halles with a
lorry that parked in Rue de Ponthieu to
be unloaded by his assistants.
By half past seven, at least thirty
people were bustling about in the basements of the Majestic. Bells started ringing,
the dumb waiters came down, stopped and went back up with trays, while Ramuel stuck
white, blue and pink slips on the iron spikes lined up on his desk.
At that hour, the day porter, in his
light-blue uniform, was just taking over the lobby and the mail clerk was sorting
through the mail in his box room. It must be sunny in the Champs-Elysees but, in the
basement, the only thing you were aware of was the rumbling of the buses making the
glass partitions vibrate.
A few minutes after nine â at exactly
9.04, as they were able to establish â Prosper Donge left the coffee room and a few
seconds later entered the locker room.
âI'd left my handkerchief in
my coat!' he stated when he was questioned.
Be that as it may, he now found himself
alone in the room with its hundred metal lockers. Did he open his own? Nobody was
there to witness it. Did he get his handkerchief? It was possible.
There weren't a hundred, but
exactly ninety-two lockers, all numbered. The last five were empty.
Why did it occur to Prosper Donge to
open locker 89, which, not belonging to anyone, wasn't locked?
âI did it without thinking
â¦' he asserted. âThe door was ajar ⦠I never imagined â¦'
What was in this locker was a body which
must have been pushed into it in an upright position and had collapsed in
on itself. It was the body of a woman
of about thirty, very blonde â artificially blonde, in fact â wearing a thin black
woollen dress.
Donge did not cry out. Looking quite
pale, he approached Ramuel's glass cage and bent down to speak through the
opening.
âCome and have a look â¦'
The bookkeeper followed him.
âStay here ⦠Don't let
anyone get too close â¦'
Ramuel rushed upstairs, emerged in the
lobby cloakroom and spotted the porter in conversation with a chauffeur.
âHas the manager
arrived?'
The porter gestured with his chin
towards the manager's office.
Standing by the revolving door, Maigret
was on the point of knocking his pipe against his heel to empty it. Then he shrugged
and put it back between his teeth. It was his first pipe of the morning, the best
one.
âThe manager's expecting
you, sir â¦'
The lobby was not very busy yet. There
was only an Englishman arguing with the mail clerk, and a young girl walking on her
long grasshopper legs, carrying a hatbox, which she was presumably delivering.
Maigret walked into the manager's
office. The manager shook his hand without a word and indicated an armchair. A green
curtain concealed the glass door, but you just had to pull it slightly to see
everything that was happening in the lobby.
âCigar?'
âNo,
thanks â¦'
They had known each other for a long
time. They didn't need many words. The manager was wearing striped trousers, a
dark jacket with edging and a tie that seemed to have been cut out of some stiff
material.
âHere â¦'
He pushed a registration form across the
table.
Oswald J. Clark, industrialist, of
Detroit, Michigan (USA). Coming from Detroit.Arrived 12 February
Accompanied by: Mrs Clark, his
wife; Teddy Clark, 7, his son; Ellen Darroman, 24, governess; Gertrud Borms, 42,
maid.Suite 203.
Phone calls. The manager answered
impatiently. Maigret folded the form in four and slipped it into his wallet.
âWhich one is it?'
âMrs Clark â¦'
âAh!'
âThe hotel doctor, whom I
telephoned immediately after alerting the Police Judiciaire, and who lives nearby,
in Rue de Berri, is downstairs. He says Mrs Clark was strangled between six and six
thirty in the morning.'
The manager was glum. Pointless telling
a man like Maigret that it was a disaster for the hotel and that if there was any
way of hushing the whole thing up â¦
