Liberty Bar (5 page)

‘A shame about her health … You
can still see her ribs … William wanted to pay for her to have a month in a
sanatorium, but she refused to go …'

‘Excuse me, did William … and
her …'

It was Sylvie herself who replied,
angrily:

‘Never! It's not true
…'

And Big Jaja explained as she sipped her
coffee:

‘He wasn't that sort of man
… Especially not with her … That's not to say that he didn't
occasionally …'

‘With whom?'

‘Women … Just women he picked
up here and there … But it didn't happen often … He wasn't that
interested …'

‘What time did he leave you on
Friday?'

‘Straight after lunch … It must
have been two o'clock, like today …'

‘And he didn't say where he was
going?'

‘He never spoke about
that.'

‘Was Sylvie here?'

‘She left five minutes before
him.'

‘To go where?' Maigret asked
the girl herself.

And she, still suspicious, replied:

‘What's it to you?'

‘To the harbour?
… Is that where …?'

‘There and other places!'

‘Was there anyone else in the
bar?'

‘No one … It was a hot day
… I had a nap on the chair for an hour.'

Yet William didn't arrive back at
Antibes in his car until after five o'clock!

‘Did he go to other bars like this
one?'

‘No, never. Besides, there are no
other bars like this one.'

Quite so! Maigret himself, who had only
been there for an hour, felt as if he had known it for ever. Maybe because there was
nothing personal. Or maybe because of its relaxed, lazy ambience. You couldn't
summon up the determination to get up and leave. Time flowed by slowly. The hands of the
alarm clock ticked around the pale clock face. And the rectangle of sun at the window
slowly faded.

‘I read the papers … I
didn't even know William's surname … But I recognized the photo
… We cried, Sylvie and me … What on earth was he doing with those two women?
… In our situation, you shouldn't get involved in things like that, should
you? … I expected the police to turn up at any time … When you came out of
the bar across the road, I thought this might be it …'

She spoke slowly. She topped up the drinks.
She drank her alcohol in small mouthfuls.

‘Whoever did it was a nasty piece of
work, because men like William are few and far between … And I should
know!'

‘Did he ever talk to you about his
past?'

She gave a sigh. Hadn't Maigret got
it yet? This was the bar
where nobody talked about the past
!

‘All I can tell you
is that he was a gentleman. A man who was once very rich, and perhaps still was …
I don't know … He had a yacht, a load of servants.'

‘Was he unhappy?'

She sighed again.

‘Can't you understand? …
You've seen Yan … Is he unhappy? … But it's still not the same
thing … Am I unhappy? … It doesn't mean that we don't have a
drink and talk aimlessly and feel a need to cry …'

Sylvie gave her a censorious look. Of
course, she had only been drinking coffee while Big Jaja was already on her third
glass.

‘I'm glad you came, because now
I can be shot of it … Nothing to hide, nothing t0 reproach myself about …
Although with the police, you know it's not that simple … If it had been the
Cannes police, I'm sure they'd have had me locked …'

‘Was William a big
spender?'

Was she exasperated at her inability to
make him understand how it was?

‘He spent money but he didn't
… He gave us cash to buy things to eat and drink … Sometimes he paid the gas
or electricity bill, or else he gave Sylvie a hundred francs to buy some
stockings.'

Maigret was hungry. And there was that
delicious leg of mutton just a few centimetres from his nostrils. There were two slices
lying on the dish. He picked one up with his fingers and ate it as he spoke, as if he
too were now one of the regulars.

‘Did Sylvie bring
her clients back here?'

‘No, never! That would have got us
closed down … There are plenty of hotels in Cannes for that sort of
thing!'

Looking Maigret in the eye, she added:

‘Do you believe it was his women who
…'

At the same moment she turned her head
away. Sylvie stood up so as to see through the net curtain over the door. The outside
door had been opened. Someone walked across the bar, pushed open the other door and
stopped, surprised, when he saw a new face.

Sylvie had got up. Jaja, looking a little
pink in the cheeks, said to the new arrival:

‘Come in! This is the police
inspector who is in charge of William's case …'

And to Maigret:

‘A friend … Joseph …
He's a waiter at the casino.'

That was evident from the white shirt front
and the knot of black tie that Joseph wore under a grey suit and his polished shoes.

‘I'll come back …'
he said.

‘No, come in!'

He didn't look too sure.

‘I just dropped by to say hello
… I've got a tip for the race …'

‘You bet on the horses?'
Maigret asked, half turning towards the waiter.

‘Now and again … Sometimes
clients give me tips … I'd best be off …'

And he beat a retreat,
though not before Maigret got the impression that he gave Sylvie a sign. She sat down
again. Jaja sighed:

‘He'll lose again …
He's not a bad boy …'

‘I have to get dressed!' said
Sylvie as she stood up and noticed that most of her body was exposed by her gaping
dressing gown, quite innocently, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

She went upstairs to the mezzanine, where
she could be heard coming and going. Maigret got the impression that Jaja was listening
to her.

‘She sometimes bets on the horses too
… She's the one who has lost the most with William's death
…'

Maigret stood up suddenly, went into the
bar and opened the outside door. But he was too late. Joseph was walking away briskly,
without turning round. Just then a window opened.

‘What's got into
you?'

‘Nothing … Just a thought
…'

‘Another drink? … You know, if
you like the mutton …'

Sylvie was coming back down already; she
was transformed, now unrecognizable in a navy-blue tailored suit which made her look
younger. Under her white silk blouse her small trembling breasts were quite alluring,
even though Maigret had already seen a fair bit of them. The skirt was tight over her
narrow waist and taut buttocks. A pair of silk stockings had been pulled neatly up her
legs.

‘See you this evening?'

She too kissed Jaja on the forehead, then
turned to
Maigret and hesitated. Did she want to leave without saying
goodbye to him or did she want to hurl an insult? Either way, her look remained hostile.
There was no danger of misreading her attitude.

‘Good day … I presume you have
no further need of me?'

She held herself quite tense. She waited a
moment then set off with a determined step.

Jaja laughed as she refilled the
glasses.

‘Pay no attention … These girls
don't have much sense. Would you like a plate so you can try some of my
salad?'

The empty bar with its solitary front
window looking out on to the street; upstairs, above the spiral staircase, the
mezzanine, no doubt in a mess; the basement window and the courtyard, where the sun was
slowly passing over.

A strange world, at the centre of which
Maigret found himself settled in front of the remains of a fragrant salad in the company
of a large woman who seemed to be propped up on her ample bosom and who sighed:

‘When I was her age, we did things
differently.'

She didn't need to explain further.
He could imagine it quite well, somewhere in the vicinity of Porte Saint-Denis or
Montmartre, in a gaudy silk dress, supervised through the windows of some bar by a
constant companion.

‘These days …'

She had had a glass or two too many. Her
eyes welled up as she looked at Maigret. Her childlike mouth formed a pout that seemed
to indicate impending tears.

‘You remind me of
William … That's where he sat … He too put his pipe down next to his
plate when he ate … He had your shoulders … Do you know you look like
him?'

She managed to wipe her eyes without
crying.

It was that ambiguous rose-tinted hour
when the sultriness of the setting sun dissipates in the coolness of the approaching
night. Maigret left the Liberty Bar like someone leaving a house of ill-repute: hands
deep in pockets, hat pulled down over the eyes.

Nevertheless, after a dozen or so steps, he
felt the need to turn round, as if to make sure that the atmosphere he had left behind
was real.

The bar was real enough, squeezed in
between two houses, with its narrow street-front, painted a hideous brown, and the
letters of its sign in yellow.

Inside the window there was a vase of
flowers and, next to it, a sleeping cat.

Jaja must be sleeping somewhere too, in the
back room, alone with the alarm clock, which was counting the minutes …

At the end of the narrow street normal life
resumed: shops, people dressed in everyday clothes, cars, a tram, a policeman
…

Then, to the right, the Croisette, which at
this time of day looked like one of those watercolour adverts that the Cannes tourist
office puts out in luxury magazines.

It was a mild, pleasant evening …
People walking, in no hurry … Cars gliding by without a sound, as if they
didn't have an engine … And all those light yachts in the
harbour …

Maigret felt tired and sluggish, and yet he
had no desire to return to Antibes. He walked around aimlessly, stopping for no
particular reason, heading off again in no particular direction, as if he had left the
conscious part of himself behind in Jaja's lair, next to the cluttered table
where, at lunchtime, a prim Swedish steward had sat facing Sylvie and her bare
breasts.

For ten years William Brown had spent
several days a month there, in a state of warm lassitude, next to Jaja, who would start
whining after a few drinks and would then go to sleep on her chair.

‘The gentian, of course!'

Maigret was delighted to have found what he
had been looking for for the last half-hour without even realizing it! Since he had left
the Liberty Bar he had been struggling to pin it down, to strip away the surface image
to get to its essence. And he had found it! He remembered what a friend had said when he
had offered him an aperitif:

‘What will you have?'

‘A gentian.'

‘Is that a fashionable new
drink?'

‘It's not a fashion! It's
the drunk's last resort, my friend! You know the gentian. It's bitter.
It's not even that alcoholic. When you've drunk every strong drink under the
sun for the past thirty years, it's the only vice left: only that bitter kick has
what it takes to stimulate the taste buds …'

That was it! A place without vice, without
wickedness!
A bar where you went straight into the kitchen to be
greeted like an old friend by Jaja!

And you drank while she prepared the food.
You went to the neighbouring butcher yourself to find a nice joint. Sylvie would come
down, eyes full of sleep, half naked, and you'd kiss her on the forehead, without
even looking at her meagre breasts.

It wasn't very clean or very light.
Nobody talked much. Conversation meandered somewhat, without conviction, like the people
…

No more outside world, no bustle. Just a
small rectangle of sunlight …

Eating, drinking … Snoozing, then
drinking some more while Sylvie got dressed, pulling her stockings over her legs before
setting off to work …

‘See you later, Godfather!'

Wasn't it exactly the same as his
friend's gentian? Wasn't the Liberty Bar the last port of call, when you had
seen everything, tried everything by way of vices?

Women without beauty, without charms,
without desire, whom you don't desire and kiss on the forehead while giving them a
hundred francs to go and buy some stockings and then ask on their return:

‘How was work?'

Maigret felt a bit oppressed by it all. He
wanted to think about something else. He had stopped before the harbour, where a light
mist was starting to spread out a few centimetres above the surface of the water.

He had gone past the small boats and the
racing yachts. Ten metres away, a sailor was lowering a red flag with a
crescent insignia on a huge white steamship that must have belonged to some pasha or
other.