The Cellars of the Majestic by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141980676
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2015-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

‘Do you mind if I take this letter away with me?’

It was Charlotte who intervened. ‘Let him, Gigi … The way things are right now …’

Then, as she saw Maigret to the door:

‘Tell me, do you think I could get permission to go and see him? … He’s allowed to get his meals brought in from outside, isn’t he? … Do you think you could …?’

Turning red, she held out a thousand-franc note.

‘If he could also receive a few books … He’s always spent all his spare time reading! …’

The rain. The taxi. The streetlamps coming on. The Bois, which Maigret had crossed on a bicycle, riding in concert with Donge.

‘Could you drop me at the Majestic?’

Seeing Maigret cross the lobby without a word, the porter anxiously offered his services and helped him off with his hat and coat at the cloakroom. Through the gap in the curtain, the manager had also seen him. Everybody knew Maigret. Everybody was watching him.

To the bar? Why not? He was thirsty. But he was drawn by the muted sounds of music. Somewhere in the basement, a band was playing a sluggish tango. He walked down a thickly carpeted staircase and entered a blue-lit room. Female guests were eating cakes at little tables. Others were dancing. A waiter came to greet him.

‘Bring me a glass of beer …’

‘The thing is …’

Maigret looked at him in such a way that he obeyed, scribbling something on a slip … The slips that … Maigret followed the peregrinations of this one with his eyes … At the far end of the ballroom, to the right of the band, there was a kind of hatch in the wall …

On the other side of it were the glass cages, the coffee room, the kitchens, the sinks, the couriers’ room, and finally, near the clocking-in machine, the locker room with its hundred metal lockers.

Someone was watching him, he could feel it, and he spotted Zebio, who was dancing with a middle-aged woman draped in jewellery.

Was it an illusion? It seemed to Maigret that Zebio was indicating something to him with his eyes. He looked and had a little shock on seeing Oswald J. Clark dancing with his son’s governess, Ellen Darroman.

They both seemed quite indifferent to everything around them. They were in a state of rapture, like young lovers. Solemn, barely smiling, they thought themselves alone on the dance-floor, alone in the world, and when the music stopped they stood motionless for a moment before heading back to their table.

Maigret noticed then that Clark was wearing a thin strip of black cloth on the lapel of his jacket, which was his way of observing mourning.

In his pocket, Maigret’s hand touched Mimi’s letter to Gigi. He had an overwhelming desire to …

But hadn’t the examining magistrate forbidden him to deal directly with Clark, who was too grand a gentleman, no doubt, to be grappling with a policeman?

A slow foxtrot replaced the tango. A foamy glass of beer followed the same path the waiter’s slip had followed earlier, but in the opposite direction.

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