Maigret in New York (19 page)

From his room he had a view of the ocean. It was
August. He slept with the windows open. The old, heavy, red-silk curtains did not meet and he
was dragged from his sleep by the sun and the sound of the breakers on the sand.

And then there was the noise from the lady in
number 3, next door, who had four children aged between six months and eight years, who all
slept in her room.

For an hour there was shrieking, wailing, comings
and goings; he could picture her, half-dressed, wearing slippers on her bare feet, her hair
dishevelled, struggling with her tetchy brood, plonking one down in a corner, another on the
bed, slapping the eldest who was crying, looking for the girl's lost shoe, despairing of ever
getting the spirit stove, whose smell seeped under the communicating door to Maigret's bed, to
work so she could heat up the baby's bottle.

As for the elderly couple on his right, that was
another performance. They talked nonstop in a monotone, their voices indistinguishable from one
another, and it almost sounded as if they were reciting psalms.

Maigret had to wait until the bathroom for their floor was free,
listen out for the sound of the sink draining or the toilet being flushed. He had a little
balcony. He lin­gered there in his dressing gown, and the view was really magnificent, the vast,
dazzling beach, the sea dotted with blue and white sails. He saw the first striped beach
umbrel­las being planted, and the first kids arriving in their red swimming costumes.

By the time he went downstairs, freshly shaven,
traces of soap behind his ears, he was on his third pipe.

What was it that prompted him to go behind the
scenes? Nothing. He could, like everyone else, have gone out via the sunlit dining room, which
Germaine, the plump maid with incredible breasts, was busy polishing.

But no. He pushed open the door to the staff
dining room and then that of the kitchen. At that moment, the bespectacled Madame Léonard was
discussing the menu with the chef. Monsieur Léonard would invariably emerge from the wine
cellar. At any hour of the day, he could be seen coming up from the cellar, and yet he was
fairly sober.

‘Beautiful day, inspector …'

Monsieur Léonard was in slippers and
shirt-sleeves. There were peas, freshly grated carrots, leeks and potatoes in bowls. Blood from
the meats ran on to the deal table, while sole and turbot lay waiting to be scaled.

‘A little glass of white wine, inspector?'

The first of the day. A little drink with the
owner. It was in fact an excellent local wine with a greenish tinge.

Maigret could hardly go and sit on the beach
among all the mothers. He strolled along the promenade, Le Remblai,
pausing from time to time. He gazed at the sea, at the swelling
number of brightly clad figures playing in the waves close to the shore. Then, when he reached
the town centre, he turned right into a narrow street which led to the covered market.

He wandered from stall to stall as slowly and
methodi­cally as if he had forty people to feed. He stopped in front of the fish, which were
still quivering, then he lingered in front of the shellfish and proffered a matchstick to a
lob­ster which snatched it with its pincer.

Second glass of white wine. Because just opposite
was a little café where you went down one step and it was like an extension of the market,
filled with mouth-watering smells.

Then he walked past Notre-Dame to go and buy his
newspaper. Could he go back up to his room to read it?

He went back to the promenade and sat at the
terrace of a café, always in the same place. He always dithered too, keeping the waiter standing
there ready to take his order. As if he were going to drink anything else!

‘A white wine.'

It had come about by chance. He would sometimes
go for months without drinking white wine.

At eleven o'clock, he went inside the café to
telephone the hospital, to hear Sister Aurélie say in her syrupy voice:

‘Our dear patient had an excellent night.'

He had organized a series of little halts where
he would sit at set times. In the hotel dining room too, he had his special corner, by the
window, opposite the table of his two elderly neighbours.

On
the first day, after his coffee, he had ordered a glass of Calvados. Since then Germaine
invariably asked him:

‘Calvados, inspector?'

He didn't dare refuse. He felt drowsy. The sun
was scorching. At times the asphalt on the promenade melted underfoot and car tyres left their
imprint on it.

He went up to his room for a nap, not in the bed
but in the armchair which he had dragged on to the balcony, where he sat with a newspaper spread
over his face.

For pity's sake, ask to see the patient in room 15 …

Anyone seeing him ensconced in his various
favourite spots at different times of day would think he had been there for years, like the
afternoon card players. But it was only nine days since he and his wife had arrived. On the
first evening, they had eaten mussels. It was a treat they had been promising themselves since
Paris: to eat a huge dish of freshly caught mussels.

They had both been ill. They had kept their
neighbours awake. The next day, Maigret felt better, but on the beach Madame Maigret complained
of vague pains. The second night, she had a fever. They still thought it was nothing
serious.

‘It was silly of me. I've never been able to eat
mussels …'

Then, the following day, she was in so much pain
that they had had to call Doctor Bertrand and he had sent her straight to hospital. Those few
hours had been dif­ficult, chaotic, to-ing and fro-ing, new faces, X-rays, tests.

‘I assure you, doctor, it was the mussels,' repeated Mad­ame Maigret with a wan smile.

But the doctors were not smiling. They took
Maigret to one side. Acute appendicitis with the risk of peritonitis. His wife needed emergency
surgery.

He paced up and down the long corridor during the
operation, at the same time as a young man waiting for his wife to give birth, who had bitten
his nails until his fingers bled.

That was how he had become ‘Monsieur 6'.

In six days, a man develops new habits, learns to
walk quietly, to smile sweetly at Sister Aurélie, and then at Sister Marie des Anges. He even
learns to give a forced smile to the loathsome Mademoiselle Rinquet.

After which someone takes advantage of the
situation to slip a stupid note into his pocket.

And first of all, who was the patient in room 15?
Madame Maigret would know, for sure. They all knew one another other even though they didn't
meet. They all knew one another's business. She sometimes told her husband the gossip,
discreetly, in a low voice, like in church.

‘Apparently the lady in room 11 who's so kind and
so gentle … poor thing … Come closer …'

She stammered under her breath:

‘Breast cancer …'

Then she glanced over at Mademoiselle Rinquet's
bed and fluttered her eyelashes, indicating that her fellow patient had cancer too.

‘If you could have seen the pretty little girl
they brought into the ward …'

She meant the public ward, for in fact there were three classes,
as for trains: the public ward, which was like the third class, then the two-bed rooms and
finally, the first-class private rooms.

What was the point of worrying about it? All this
was childish. There was really something infantile about the atmosphere in the hospital. Weren't
the nuns rather child­like?

The patients too, with their petty jealousies and
their whispered secrets, the sweets they hoarded like misers and the way they lay listening out
for footsteps in the corridors.

For pity's sake …

Those three words suggested that the note could
only come from a woman. Why would the patient in room 15 need him? He did not intend to take the
note seriously or ask Sister Aurélie's permission to visit someone whose name he did not even
know.

On the beach and in town, the sunshine was
overpower­ing. At certain times, the air literally quivered with the heat and when you suddenly
stepped into a puddle of shade, for a moment you could only see red.

Right! His siesta was over; it was time for him
to fold up his newspaper, put on his jacket, light a pipe and go downstairs.

‘See you later, inspector!'

And so it went on, hellos and goodbyes like
benedic­tions, all day long. Everyone was pleasant, smiling. He was the only one to become
disgruntled. A nice downpour or
an argument with
someone cantankerous would have made him feel better.

The green door and the three o'clock chimes. He
wasn't even capable of not taking his watch out of his pocket!

‘Good afternoon, Sister …'

Why didn't he genuflect, while he was about it?
And now the other one – there was Sister Marie des Anges waiting for him on the stairs.

‘Good afternoon, Sister …'

And Monsieur 6 tiptoed into Madame Maigret's
room.

‘How are you?'

She forced herself to sound cheerful but only
managed a half-smile.

‘You shouldn't have brought me oranges. I still
have some left.'

‘Now, you who know all the patients …'

Why was she signalling to him? He turned towards
Mad­emoiselle Rinquet's bed. The old spinster lay there facing the wall, her head buried in her
pillow.

He asked quietly:

‘Is something wrong?'

‘It's not her … Shh … Come closer
…'

She was being very secretive. It was like being
in a girls' boarding school.

‘Someone died last night …'

She was keeping one eye on Mademoiselle Rinquet,
whose blanket twitched.

‘It was terrible, we could hear the screams
… Then the family arrived … It went on for more than three hours. There were comings
and goings … Several patients
pan­icked
… Especially when the chaplain administered the extreme unction … They turned the
lights out in the corridor, but everyone knew …'

In a whisper, Madame Maigret added, jerking her
head in the direction of her fellow patient:

‘She thinks it's her turn next.'

Maigret didn't know what to say. He sat there,
heavy and clumsy, in a foreign world.

‘She was a young woman … A very pretty
young thing, apparently … in room 15 …'

She wondered why he knitted his bushy eyebrows
and automatically took a pipe out of his pocket which he didn't actually fill.

‘Are you sure it was 15?'

‘Of course … Why? …'

‘No reason.'

He went and sat in his chair. There was no point
telling Madame Maigret about the note, she would immediately become alarmed.

‘What have you had to eat today?'

Mademoiselle Rinquet began to cry. Her face was
hid­den, only her sparse hair could be seen on the pillow, but the blanket was heaving
fitfully.

‘You shouldn't stay too long.'

In his robust state of health, he was visibly out
of place among the sick and the silent, gliding nuns.

Before leaving, he asked:

‘Do you know her name?'

‘Who?'

‘The girl … In number 15 …'

‘Hélène Godreau …'

Only then did he notice that Sister Marie des
Anges was red-eyed and seemed resentful towards him. Was she the person who had slipped the note
in his pocket?

He felt unable to ask her. All this was so far
removed from his normal world, from the dusty corridors of the Police Judiciaire, from the
people he questioned in his office, sitting them down in front of him, his eyes boring into
theirs at length and then bombarding them with harsh questions.

What was more, this was none of his business. A
girl was dead. And then what? Someone had slipped a mean­ingless message into his pocket
…

He continued on his path, like a circus horse. In
short, his days were spent going round in circles exactly like a circus horse. Now, for example,
it was time for the Bras­serie du Remblai. He went there as if going to an important meeting,
whereas in fact he had absolutely no business there.

The café was vast and bright. By the bay windows
over­looking the beach and the sea sat most of the customers whom he did not even bother to
glance at, strangers, hol­idaymakers, who had no routine, whom one did not expect to see at the
same table every day.

At the back, in a spacious corner behind the
billiard table, it was a different matter, with two tables around which sat a group of earnest,
taciturn men, under the eye of a waiter attentive to the slightest signal from them.

They were important men, the rich, the elders.
Some of them had seen the café being built and others had
known Les Sables d'Olonne before the construction of Le
Remblai.

Each afternoon, they gathered to play bridge.
Each afternoon, they shook hands in silence, or exchanged a few short, ritual words.

They had already grown accustomed to the presence
of Maigret, who did not play cards but straddled a chair and watched them play, smoking his pipe
and sipping a white wine.

They usually waved to him by way of a greeting.
Only Monsieur Mansuy, the chief inspector of police, who had introduced him to these men,
stirred himself to get up and shake his hand.

‘Is your wife continuing to improve?'

He answered yes, without thinking. He also added,
without thinking:

‘A girl died last night, at the hospital
…'

He had spoken softly, but even so his voice
boomed, especially in the silence that reigned over the two tables.

He realized from the gentlemen's reaction that he
had committed a blunder. Chief Inspector Mansuy signalled to him not to say any more.