Maigret's Holiday by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-07-28T14:20:12+00:00

6.

Maigret rang the hospital doorbell even though the time was not quite two thirty; he didn’t take his watch from his pocket and didn’t listen out for the sound of the bells ringing.

Sister Aurélie looked at him in almost reproachful surprise and was reluctant to pick up her telephone. He gave her a perfunctory smile which only flitted across his frowning, rather stubborn expression for a split second.

‘I haven’t come to see my wife,’ he stated. ‘I should like to speak with the mother superior first.’

‘Are you sure, Monsieur 6, that it is the mother superior you need to see? It’s the bursar sister who deals with all matters concerning the patients and the hospital in general, as well as any complaints …’

‘Would you kindly inform the mother superior that Detective Chief Inspector Maigret wishes to speak to her?’

Sister Aurélie decided not to argue and, while she telephoned, he stared at the overly smooth walls, the too highly polished stairs, with a sort of resentment.

‘Someone will come to fetch you,’ said the nun.

‘Thank you very much.’

He paced up and down the entrance hall, his hands behind his back, furious in advance at the thought he would be kept waiting. On turning round, he was utterly flabbergasted to see before him a nun he did not know waiting for him.

‘Would you like to follow me, monsieur?’

Not up the stairs. At the back of the entrance hall, they went through a nail-studded oak door into another realm, even more cocoon-like, more silent than the hospital. The nuns must be wearing felt- or rubber-soled shoes, for their footsteps were completely silent. Twice, as they made their way through a maze of corridors, he looked over his shoulder on hearing behind him the vague swish of voluminous robes, the sway of rosaries, perhaps the air being displaced. The nuns sweeping around made him think of bats.

He glimpsed a chapel with artificial flowers on the altar. Then he was shown into a visitors’ room where black chairs with crimson velvet seats lined the walls.

‘Our Reverend Mother will be with you right away …’

Again that swishing of skirts, the clicking of rosary beads, the air being displaced by winged cornettes.

‘Monsieur …?’

He shuddered, because the other nuns had only been mere nuns, whereas this one, even though she wore the same habit and, like the others, kept her hands hidden inside her wide sleeves, was a woman, a woman whose age and social milieu he could have fathomed.

Tall and slim, classy, she directed the calm gaze of her grey eyes at him.

‘I haven’t come to see you about my wife, Sister …’

He suspected he should have said Reverend Mother or something like that, but those words stuck in his throat.

‘I wish to speak to Sister Marie des Anges for a few moments …’

Whereas he had thought she would be taken aback, she looked at him with the same imperturbable calm, and he was already beginning to detest her.

‘You know, monsieur, that the rules—’

‘Forgive me, Sister, but there’s no question of rules today.

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