Maigret in Montmartre (8 page)

“Did there happen to be a middle-aged man in the bar, short and thickset, with grey hair?”

Maigret had deliberately refrained from mentioning Oscar to the journalists, so there had been nothing about him in the papers. But he had questioned Fred on the subject, and Fred might have repeated his questions to the Grasshopper, who…

“I didn’t see anyone like that,” replied the proprietor—a little too emphatically, perhaps.

“You don’t happen to know a man called Oscar?”

“There must be any number of Oscars in the district, but I can’t think of one who fits your description.”

Maigret edged along a couple of paces, to stand beside the Grasshopper.

“Anything to tell me?”

“Nothing in particular, Inspector.”

“Were you at the door of Picratt’s all last night?”

“More or less. I went a little way up the Rue Pigalle once or twice, to hand out cards. And I came here once, to get some cigarettes for an American.”

“You don’t know Oscar?”

“Never heard of him.”

The Grasshopper was not the type to be overawed by the police, or by anyone else. His common accent and street arab manner were no doubt assumed, because they amused the clients.

“You don’t know Arlette’s lover, either?”

“Did she have one? First I’ve heard of it.”

“You never saw anyone waiting outside for her?”

“Sometimes. Clients.”

“Did she go with them?”

“Not always. Sometimes they were hard to shake off and she had to come here to get rid of them.”

The proprietor, who was quite frankly listening, confirmed this with a nod.

“Did you ever come across her in the day-time?”

“In the morning I’m asleep, and in the afternoon I’m at the races.”

“Had she any woman friends?”

“She got on all right with Betty and Tania, but they weren’t close friends. I don’t think she and Tania hit it off too well.”

“Did she ever ask you to get drugs for her?”

“What for?”

“For herself.”

“Not she. She was fond of a glass, and even of several, but I don’t think she ever took drugs.”

“In fact you know nothing about her.”

“Except that she was the most beautiful girl I’ve’ever seen.”

Maigret hesitated, sweeping the grotesque creature from head to foot with an involuntary glance.

“Ever have a date with her?”

“Why not? I’ve got off with plenty of others—clients, some of them, in the mink, not only local tarts.”

“That’s perfectly true,” interrupted the proprietor. “I don’t know what gets ’em, but they swarm round him like flies. I’ve known some—and they weren’t old or ugly either—who’ve come here well into the night and hung about waiting for him for an hour and more.”

The gnome’s wide, rubbery mouth stretched in a complacent, sardonic grin.

“Maybe they’ve their reasons,” he said with a lewd gesture.

“So you went to bed with Arlette?”

“Shouldn’t have said so if I hadn’t.”

“Often?”

“Once, anyhow.”

“Was it her suggestion?”

“She saw I wanted to.”

“Where did it happen?”

“Not at Picratt’s, of course. D’you know the Moderne, in the Rue Blanche?”

This was a house of call with which the police were well acquainted.

“Well, that was where.”

“Was she good?”

“She knew her stuff.”

“Did she enjoy it?”

The Grasshopper shrugged. “ Even when a woman doesn’t enjoy it she pretends to,” he observed, “and the less she’s enjoying herself, the more she feels obliged to pile it on.”

“Was she drunk that night?”

“She was the same as usual.”

“And with the boss?”

“With Fred? Did he tell you about that?”

The gnome paused for thought, and gravely drained his glass.

“That’s no business of mine,” he replied at last.

“Do you think the boss fell for her?”

“Everyone fell for her.”

“You too?”

“I’ve told you all I had to say. D’you want me to set it to music?” inquired the Grasshopper mockingly. “Are you going to Picratt’s?” he added.

Maigret went, without waiting for the Grasshopper, who would soon be at his post. The red sign of the night-club was already alight. The photos of Arlette were still in the showcase. The door and window were curtained, and there was no sound of music.

He walked in, and found Fred, in a dinner-jacket, arranging bottles behind the bar.

“I thought you’d be round,” he said. “Is it true that a Countess has been found strangled?”

It was not surprising that he should have heard, since the thing had happened in his district. Besides, the news might have come over the wireless by now.

Two musicians—one a very young man with shiny black hair and the other, about forty years old, who looked sad and unhealthy—were seated on the platform, tuning their instruments. A waiter was putting final touches to the room. There was no sign of Rose; she must be in the kitchen, or perhaps still upstairs.

The walls were painted red, the lighting was bright pink, and things and people looked rather unreal in the atmosphere thus created. Maigret felt as though he were in a photographer’s dark room. It took him a little time to get used to the place. People’s eyes seemed darker and more gleaming, while the outline of their lips disappeared, the colour sucked out of them by the pink light.

“If you’re staying on, give your coat and hat to my wife. You’ll find her at the far end,” said Fred. “Rose!” he called.

She came out of the kitchen; she was wearing a black satin dress with a little embroidered apron over it. She took away Maigret’s coat and hat.

“You don’t want to sit down yet, do you?”

“Are the women here?”

“They’ll be down any minute. They’re changing. We have no dressing-rooms, so they use our bedroom and wash-place. You know, I’ve been thinking carefully about what you asked me this morning. Rose and I have talked it over. We both feel certain that it wasn’t by listening to clients that Arlette got her information. Come here, Désiré.”

This was the waiter, who was bald except for a ring of hair that encircled his head, and closely resembled the waiter on the poster advertising a well-known brand of
apéritif
. He was no doubt aware of the resemblance and did his best to foster it: he had even grown side-whiskers for the purpose.

“You can talk quite frankly to Inspector Maigret. Were there any clients at table four last night?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you see two men come in together and stay for some time—one of them short, middle-aged and” (with a glance at Maigret) “rather like me?”

“No, sir.”

“Who did Arlette talk to?”

“She was quite a long time with her young man. Then she had a few drinks with the Americans at their table. That’s all. Towards closing time she and Betty sat down together and ordered brandy. It’s entered to her account—you can see for yourself. She had two glasses.”

A dark-haired woman now emerged from the kitchen, looked with a professional eye round the empty room, where Maigret was the only stranger to be seen, went over to the platform, sat down at the piano, and began talking in a low voice to the two musicians. They all three looked across at Maigret. Then she struck an introductory chord, the younger man blew a few notes on his saxophone, the other sat down to the percussion instruments, and a moment later a jazz tune burst upon the air.

“It’s important for people to hear music as they go past the door,” explained Fred. “ It’ll probably be at least half an hour before anyone comes in, but when they do they mustn’t find the place silent, or the men and girls sitting round like wax dummies. What can I offer you? If you’re going to take a table, I’d rather make it a bottle of champagne.”

“I’d prefer a glass of brandy.”

“I’ll give you brandy in your glass and put the champagne bottle on the table. You see, as a general rule, especially at the beginning of the evening, we only serve champagne.”

He took evident pleasure in his work, as though it were his life’s dream come true. Nothing escaped his attention. His wife was already seated on a chair at the far end of the room, behind the musicians, and she, too, seemed to be enjoying herself. They must have looked forward for a long time to setting up on their own, and it was still a kind of game for them.

“I know—I’ll put you at number six, where Arlette and her boy-friend were sitting. If you want to talk to Tania, wait till they play a rumba. Then Jean-Jean takes his accordion and she can leave the piano. We used to have a pianist, but when we took her on and I discovered she could play, I thought we might as well cut down expenses by using her in the orchestra.

“There’s Betty coming down. Shall I introduce her?”

Maigret had already taken his seat in the box, like an ordinary client, and Fred now brought over a sandy-haired young woman in a blue shot-silk dress with spangles.

“This is Inspector Maigret, who’s investigating the murder of Arlette. You needn’t be frightened. He’s O.K.”

The girl might have been pretty if she had not been as tough and muscular as a man. She looked almost like a young man in woman’s dress—so much so that it was embarrassing. Even her voice added to the impression—it was deep and rather hoarse.

“Do you want me to sit here?”

“I should be glad if you would. Will you have something to drink?”

“I’d rather not just yet. Désiré will put a glass in front of me. That’s all that’s needed.”

She seemed tired and worried. It was hard to realize that she was there to attract men, and she did not appear to have much illusion on the point.

“Are you Belgian?” he asked, because of her accent.

“Yes—from Anderlecht, near Brussels. Before I came here I was with a team of acrobats. I began when I was only a kid—my father belonged to a circus.”

“What is your age?”

“Twenty-eight. I got too rusty for that line of work, so I took up dancing.”

“Are you married?”

“I was, to a juggler. He walked out on me.”

“Was it with you that Arlette left here last night?”

“Yes, as usual. Tania lives near the Gare St Lazare, so she goes down the Rue Pigalle. She’s always ready before us. I live practically next door, and Arlette and I used to walk together to the corner of the Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette.”

“She didn’t go straight home?”

“No. That happened sometimes. She’d pretend to turn to the right and then, as soon as I was round the corner, I’d hear her walking on up the street, to get a drink at the
tabac
in the Rue de Douai.”

“Why didn’t she do it openly?”

“People who drink don’t usually like to be seen hurrying off for a last glass.”

“Did she drink a great deal?”

“She had two glasses of brandy with me before we left, and she’d already had a lot of champagne. And I’m pretty sure she’d been drinking even before she got here.”

“Was she unhappy?”

“If so, she never told me about it. I think she was just disgusted with herself.”

Betty was perhaps in the same state of mind, for she said this with a dreary expression, in a flat, indifferent voice.

“What do you know about her?”

Two clients, a man and a woman, had just come in, and Désiré was trying to steer them to a table. Seeing the place was empty, they looked at each other hesitantly, and finally the man said, with an air of embarrassment:

“We’ll come back later.”

“They’ve come to the wrong address,” remarked Betty calmly. “This isn’t the place for them.”

She made an effort to smile.

“It’ll be a good hour before we get going. Sometimes we begin our programme with only three people watching.”

“Why did Arlette take up this job?”

Betty gave him a long look, and then murmured: “That’s what I often asked her. I don’t know. Perhaps she enjoyed it.”

She glanced at the photos on the wall.

“You know what she had to do in her act? They’re not likely to find anyone who can carry it off so well. It looks easy, but we’ve all tried it and I can assure you it takes a bit of doing. Because if it’s done just anyhow, it looks indecent at once. It really has to be done as though one were enjoying it.”

“Did Arlette do it like that?”

“I sometimes wondered whether she didn’t do it because of that! I don’t mean because she wanted the men—very likely she didn’t. But she had to feel she was exciting them, keeping them on tenterhooks. When it was over and she went off into the kitchen—that’s the ‘wings’ of this place, we go through there on our way upstairs to change—she’d open the door a crack and peep out to see what effect she’d produced—just the way actors peep through the hole in the curtain.”

“She wasn’t in love with anyone?”

There was quite a long silence before Betty replied: “Perhaps she was. Yesterday morning I’d have said no. But last night, after her young man left, she seemed upset. She told me she thought she was a fool. I asked her why. She said that if she chose, things could be quite different.”

“‘What things?’ ” I asked her.

“‘Everything! I’m fed up.’ ”

“‘Do you want to leave this place?’ ”

“We were talking quietly, so Fred shouldn’t hear us.

“‘It’s not only this place,’ she said.

“I know she’d been drinking, but I’m certain she meant it.

“‘Has he offered to keep you?’ ” I asked.

“She shrugged her shoulders, and muttered:

“‘It’s no use, you wouldn’t understand.’ ”

“We nearly quarrelled, and I told her I wasn’t so dumb as she seemed to think—I’d been through that kind of thing too.”

At this moment the Grasshopper, with a triumphant expression, ushered in some worthwhile clients—three men and a woman. The men were obviously foreigners; they must be in Paris on business or for a conference, for they looked like important people. As for the woman, they had picked her up goodness knows where—probably on the terrace of a café and she looked rather uncomfortable.

With a wink at Maigret, Fred settled them at number four table, and handed them an enormous wine-list on which every imaginable variety of champagne was set forth. Hardly a quarter of it could have actually been in the cellar, and Fred recommended a completely unknown brand which doubtless showed him a profit of about three hundred per cent.