Maigret and the Hotel Majestic by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Georges Simenon
ISBN: 9780156551335
Google: cZ2MPQAACAAJ
Amazon: 0156551330
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: 1991-09-30T11:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 7. “What’s He Saying?”

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For a moment, Maigret was assailed by a strange thought, which, however, soon escaped him. He had reached the second floor of the Majestic and stopped for a moment to get his breath back. On his way up he had met a waiter with a tray, and a bellboy running up the stairs with a bundle of foreign newspapers under his arm.

On this floor there were smartly dressed women getting into the elevator, probably on their way to the tea dance. They left a trail of perfume behind them.

“They are all where they belong,” he thought to himself. “Some behind the scenes and the others in the lobby and tearoom. The guests on one side and the staff on the other… ”

But that wasn’t what was bothering him, was it? Everyone all around him was in his allotted place, doing the right thing. It was normal, for instance, for a rich foreign woman to have tea, smoke cigarettes, and go out for fittings. It was natural for a waiter to carry a tray, a chambermaid to make beds, an elevator man to operate an elevator.

In short, their functions, such as they were, were clearly defined, settled once and for all.

But if anyone had asked Maigret what he was doing there, what would he have answered?

“I am trying to get a man sent to prison, or even executed.”

It was nothing. A slight dizziness, probably caused by the overluxurious, almost aggressively luxurious setting, and the atmosphere in the tearoom.

Room 209… 207… 205… 203… Maigret hesitated for a moment and then knocked. His ear to the door, he could hear a child’s voice saying a few words in English, then a woman’s voice sounding more distant, and, he imagined, telling him to come in.

He crossed a little hall and found himself in a sitting room with three windows overlooking the Champs-Elysées. By one of the windows an elderly woman, in a white uniform like that of a nurse, was sitting and sewing. It was the nursemaid, Gertrud Borms, made to look even more severe by the glasses she wore.

But the Superintendent paid no attention to her. He was looking at a boy of about six, dressed in plus fours and a sweater that fitted snugly around him, including a large toy boat, and cars that were exact replicas of various real makes. There was a picture book on his knee, which he was looking at when Maigret came in, and after glancing briefly at the visitor, he bent over it again.

When he recounted the scene to Madame Maigret, the Superintendent’s description went something like this:

“She said something like:

“ ‘You we you we we well…’

“And to gain time, I said very quickly:

“I hope that I’m correct in thinking this is Monsieur Oswald J. Clark’s suite?

“She went on again:

“ ‘You we you we we well,’ or something of the sort.

“And meanwhile I was able to get a good look at the boy. A very big head for his age, covered, as I had been told, with hair of a fiery red.

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