Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

11. Arrivals and Departures

Pietr glanced through a few newspapers, paying particular attention to the Revaler Bote, from Tallinn. There was only one out-of-date issue at the Majestic. It had probably been left behind by another guest.

He lit another cigar at a few minutes to eleven, went across the lobby and sent a bellhop to fetch his hat.

Thanks to the sun falling on one side of the Champs-Élysées, it was quite mild.

Pietr went out without his coat, with just a grey homburg on his head, and walked slowly up to the Arc de Triomphe like a man out for a breath of fresh air.

Maigret kept fairly close behind, making no effort to remain unseen. As the dressing on his wound made moving about uncomfortable, he did not appreciate the walk.

• • •

At the corner of Rue de Berry he heard a whistle that wasn’t very loud and took no notice of it. Then another whistle. So he turned round and saw Inspector Dufour performing a mystifying dumb show so as to let him know he had something to tell him.

Dufour was in Rue de Berry, pretending to be fascinated by a pharmacist’s window display, so his gesticulations appeared to be addressed to a waxwork female head, one of whose cheeks was covered with a meticulous simulation of eczema.

‘Come over here … Come on! Quickly …’

Dufour was offended and indignant. He’d been prowling around the Majestic for an hour, using every trick of the trade – and now his chief was ordering him to break cover all at once!

‘What’s happened?’

‘The Jewish woman …’

‘She went out?’

‘She’s here … And since you made me cross over, she can see us, right now …’

Maigret looked around.

‘Where from?’

‘From Le Select … She’s sitting inside … Look! The curtain’s moving …’

‘Carry on watching her …’

‘Openly?’

‘Have a drink at the table next to hers, if you like.’

At this point in the game there was no point playing hide-and-seek. Maigret walked on and caught up with Pietr in a couple of hundred metres. He hadn’t tried to take advantage of Maigret’s conversation with Dufour to slip away.

And why should he slip away? The match was being played on a new pitch. The two sides could see each other. Pretty much all the cards were on the table now.

Pietr walked up and down the Champs-Élysées twice over, from Étoile to the Rond-Point and back again, and by then Maigret had grasped his character, entirely.

He had a slender, tense figure that was fundamentally more thoroughbred than Mortimer’s, but his breeding was of a kind particular to Northern peoples.

Maigret was already familiar with the type. He’d met others of the same ilk in the Latin Quarter during his days as a medical student (though he never completed the course), and they had baffled the Southerner that he was.

He had a particular recollection of one such, a skinny, blond Pole whose hair was already thinning at the age of twenty-two. He was the son of a cleaning lady, and for seven years he came to lectures at the Sorbonne without any socks, living on one egg with a slice of bread a day.

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