“Wait a second . . .” the superintendent told them.
He drew Lucas aside.
“Well?”
“Look . . . You see that sort of narrow shop, between the suitcase shop and the ladies' hairdresser? That's the Jem bureau . . . It's run by a revolting old man whom I couldn't get any information from . . . He wanted to shut the bureau and go off to lunch, pretending it was his lunch hour . . . I forced him to stay . . . He's furious . . . He insists that I've no right without a warrant . . .”
Maigret went into the shop, which was so poorly lit it was almost dark, and cut in two by a dirty wooden counter. Small wooden pigeon-holes, also filthy, lined the walls and these were full of letters.
“I'd like to know . . .” the old man began.
“I'll ask the questions, if you don't mind,” Maigret growled. “You get letters addressed by initials, I believe, which is not allowed by the official poste restante, so your clientele must be a pretty bunch . . .”
“I pay my licence,” the old man promptly objected.
He wore glasses with heavy lenses, behind which darted rheumy eyes. His jacket was dirty and the collar of his shirt frayed and greasy. A rancid smell emanated from his body and filled the whole shop.
“I want to know if you have a register where you note the real name of your clients against the initials . . .”
The man snickered.
“D'you think they'd come here if they had to give their names? . . . Why not ask them for identity papers?”
It was somewhat unpleasant to think of pretty women coming furtively into the shop, which had served as a go-between for so many adulterous couples, and many other shady transactions.
“You got a letter yesterday morning addressed with the initials J. M. D. . . .”
“It's possible. I've already said so to your colleague. He even insisted on checking that the letter was no longer here . . .”
“So, someone came to collect it. Can you tell me when?”
“I've no idea, and even if I had, I doubt if I'd tell you . . .”
“You realize I may come and close down your shop one of these days?”
“Other people have said the same to me, and my shop, as you call it, has been here for the last forty-two years . . . If I counted up all the husbands who've come to shout at me, and who've even threatened me with their sticks . . .”
Lucas had been quite right in saying he was revolting.
“If it's all the same to you, I'll put up the shutters and go and have my lunch . . .”
Where could the old brute possibly have lunch? Surely he hadn't got a familyâwife and children? It seemed far more likely that he was a bachelor, with his special place at some dingy restaurant in the neighbourhood, with his napkin in a ring.
“Have you ever seen this man?”
Maigret refusing to be hustled, produced Donge's photograph again, and curiosity gained the upper hand over the man's ill humour. He bent to peer at it and had to hold it within a few centimetres of his face. His expression didn't change. He shrugged.
“I don't remember seeing him . . .” he mumbled, as if disappointed.
The two women were waiting outside, in front of the narrow shop window. Maigret called Charlotte in.
“And do you recognize her?”
If Charlotte was acting, she was doing it remarkably well; she was looking round as if shocked and embarrassed, which was hardly surprising in such surroundings.
“What is . . . ?” she began.
She was terrified. Why had she been brought here? She looked round instinctively for Gigi, who came in of her own accord.
“How many people are you going to bring in here then?”
“You don't recognize either of them? You can't tell me whether it was a man or a woman who came to collect the letter addressed to J. M. D., or when the letter was collected?”
Without replying, the man seized a wooden shutter and started to hang it in front of the door. There was no option but to beat a hasty retreat. Maigret, Lucas and the two women found themselves outside on the pavement, under the chestnut trees with their new spring buds.
“You two can go now! . . .”
He watched them go off. Gigi had barely gone ten metres before she started violently haranguing her companion whom she was dragging along at a pace little suited to Charlotte's dumpy figure.
“Any news, chief?”
What could Maigret say? He was brooding, anxious. The spring weather seemed to make him irritable rather than relaxed.
“I don't know . . . Look . . . Go and have some lunch . . . Stay in the office this afternoon . . . Tell the banksâin France and Brusselsâthat if a cheque for two hundred and eighty thousand francs has been presented . . .”
He was only a few metres from the Majestic. He went down the Rue de Ponthieu, and into the bar near the staff door of the hotel. They served snacks there and he ordered some tinned cassoulet, which he ate morosely, alone at a little table at the back, near two men who were hurriedly downing a snack before going to the races and who were talking about horses.
Anyone who followed him that afternoon, would have been hard put to it to decide what exactly he was doing. Having finished his meal, he had some coffee, bought some tobacco and filled his pouch. Then he went out of the bar and stood on the pavement for a while, looking around.
He probably hadn't formulated any precise plan of action. He ambled slowly into the Majestic and along the back corridor, and stood by the clocking-on machine, rather like a traveller with hours to wait at a station, putting coins into the chocolate machines.
People brushed past him, mostly cooks, with cloths round their necks, nipping out to have a quick drink at the bar next door.
As he went farther along the corridor, the heat grew more intense, and there was a strong smell of cooking.
The cloakroom was empty. He washed his hands at a basin, for no reason, to pass the time, and spent a good ten minutes cleaning his nails. Then, as he was too hot, he took off his overcoat and hung it in locker 89.
Jean Ramuel was sitting in state in his glass cage. In the still-room opposite, the three women were working at an accelerated pace, with a new cook in a white jacket who had replaced Prosper.
“Who's that?” Maigret asked Ramuel.
“A temp, whom they've engaged until they find someone . . . He's called Monsieur Charles . . . So you've come to take a little stroll round, superintendent? . . . Excuse me a minute . . .”
It was hectic. The luxury clientele ate late, and the chits were piling up in front of Ramuel, waiters were dashing past, all the telephones were ringing at once and the service-lifts were shooting up and down non-stop.
Maigret, still wearing his bowler, wandered about with his hands in his pockets, stopping by a cook who was thickening a sauce as if it fascinated him, watching the women wash up, or peering through the glass partitions into the guests' servants' hall.
He went up the back stairs, as he had done on his first visit, but stopped on all the floors this time, without hurrying, and still looking rather disgruntled. As he went down again, he was joined by the manager, who was out of breath.
“They've just told me you were here, superintendent . . . I don't suppose you've had lunch? . . . May I offer . . .”
“I've eaten, thank you . . .”
“May I inquire if you've any news? . . . I was so taken aback when they arrested that Prosper Donge . . . But are you sure you won't have anything? . . . A brandy, perhaps? . . .”
The manager was growing more and more embarrassed, finding himself on the narrow staircase with Maigret, who obstinately refused to show any reaction. At times the superintendent seemed as slumberous and thick-skinned as a pachyderm.
“I had hoped the press wouldn't get on to the affair . . . You know, for a hotel, what . . . As for Donge . . .”
It was hopeless. Maigret offered him no help as he stumbled on. He had started going downstairs again, and they had now reached the basement.
“A man I would have cited as of exemplary character, only a few days ago . . . Because as you can imagine, we get all sorts in a hotel like this . . .”
Maigret was glancing from one glass partition to another, or as he would say, from one aquarium to another. They finally ended up in the cloakroom, by the famous locker 89, where two human lives had come definitely to an end.
“As for that poor Colleboeuf . . . Forgive me if I'm boring you . . . I've just thought of something . . . Don't you think it would need unusual strength to strangle a man in broad daylight, only a few metres from numerous peopleâI mean so that the victim had no chance to cry out or struggle? . . . It would be possible now, because everyone's rushing about making a din . . . But at half past four or five in the afternoon . . .”
“You were in the middle of lunch, I imagine?” Maigret murmured.
“It doesn't matter . . . We're used to eating when we can . . .”
“Do please go and finish your meal . . . I'm just going . . . I'll just see . . . If you'll excuse me . . .”
And he ambled off down the passage again, opening and shutting doors, and lighting his pipe, which he then allowed to go out.
His steps kept bringing him back to the still-room, and he began to know the occupants' every movement, and muttered between his teeth: “So . . . Donge is there . . . He's there from six o'clock onwards every day . . . Good . . . He had a cup of coffee at home, which Charlotte prepared when she got in . . . OK then . . . When he gets here, I imagine he pours himself a cup as soon as the first percolator's hot . . . Yes . . .”
Did it make any sense?
“He usually takes a cup of coffee up to the night porter . . . Yes . . . In fact, that day, it was probably because it was already after ten past six and Donge still hadn't come up that Justin Colleboeuf came down . . . So . . . Well . . . for that or some other reason . . . Hmm!”
In fact they weren't filling the silver coffee-pots that had been used at breakfast, but little brown glazed pots, each with a tiny filter on top.
“. . . Breakfasts go up all morning, more and more of them . . . OK . . . Then Donge has a bit to eat himself . . . They bring him something on a tray . . .”
“Would you mind moving a little to the right or left, superintendent? . . . You're blocking my view of the trays . . .”
It was Ramuel, who had to oversee everything from his glass cage. He even had to count all the cups leaving the still-room as well, then?
“I'm so sorry to have to ask you . . .”
“Not a bit! Not a bit!”
Three o'clock. The pace slackened a bit. One of the cooks had just fetched his coat to go out.
“If anyone wants me, Ramuel, I'll be back at five . . . I've got to go to the tax office . . .”
Nearly all the little brown coffee-pots had come down again. Monsieur Charles came out of the still-room and went along the passage leading to the street, after having glanced curiously at the superintendent. The women must have told him who he was.
He came back a few minutes later with an evening paper. It was a little after three. The women were washing up at the sink, up to their elbows in hot water.
Monsieur Charles however sat down at his little table and made himself as comfortable as possible. He spread out the paper, put on his glasses, lit a cigarette and began to read.
There was nothing odd about this, but Maigret was staring at him as though thunderstruck.
“Well,” he said, smiling at Ramuel, who was counting his chits, “there's a break now, is there?”
“Until half past four, then it starts up again with the thé dansant . . .”
Maigret went on standing in the corridor for a short while longer. Then suddenly a bell rang in the still-room, Monsieur Charles got up, said a few words into the telephone, reluctantly left his paper and went off along the corridor.
“Where's he off to?”
“What time is it? Half past three? It's probably the storekeeper ringing him to give him his coffee and tea supplies.”
“Does he do that every day?”
“Yes, every day . . .”
Ramuel watched Maigret, who was now calmly wandering into the still-room. He did nothing spectacularâmerely opened the drawer of the table, which was an ordinary deal one. He found a small bottle of ink, a penholder and a packet of writing paper. There were also some stumps of pencils and two or three postal order counterfoils.
He was shutting the drawer when Monsieur Charles came back, carrying some packets. Seeing Maigret bending over the table, he misinterpreted his action.
“You can take it . . .” he said, meaning the newspaper. “There's nothing in it! . . . I only read the serial and the small ads.”
Maigret had guessed as much.
“There it was then . . . Prosper Donge sitting peacefully at his table . . . the three women over there splashing about in the sink . . . He . . .”
The superintendent was looking less and less ponderous and sleepy every minute. With the air of a man who has suddenly remembered that he has an urgent job to do, and without saying goodbye to anyone, he walked rapidly towards the cloakroom, seized his coat, put it on as he came out and a minute later had hurtled into a taxi.
“To the financial section of the Public Prosecutor's Department,” he directed the driver.
A quarter to four. There might still be someone there. If all went well, there was a chance that by tonight . . . before the day was out . . .
He turned round. The taxi had just driven past Edgar Fagonet, alias Zebio, who was walking towards the Majestic.