Maigret in New York (18 page)

The street was narrow, like all the streets in
the old quar­ter of Les Sables d'Olonne, with uneven cobblestones and pavements so narrow that
you had to step off to let another person pass. The entrance to the corner building was a
magnificent double door, painted a dark, rich, pristine green, with two highly polished brass
knockers of the kind found only on the houses of provincial lawyers or con­vents.

Opposite were parked two long, gleaming cars
which exuded the same aura of spotlessness and comfort. Maigret recognized them, they both
belonged to surgeons.

‘I could have been a surgeon too,' he thought to
himself. And owned a car like that. Probably not a surgeon, but it was a fact that he had almost
become a doctor. He had set out to study medicine and sometimes felt a hankering for the medical
profession. If his father hadn't died three years too soon …

Before mounting the step, he drew his watch out
of his pocket. It showed three o'clock. The same instant, the chapel's slightly shrill peal rang
out, and then came the deeper chimes of Notre-Dame over the rooftops of the town's little
houses.

He sighed and pressed the electric bell. He
sighed because it was absurd to take his watch out of his pocket
at the same time every day. He sighed because it was no less
absurd to arrive on the dot of three, as if the fate of the world depended on it. He sighed
because, in the time it took to wait for the click of the door, which opened automatically,
soundlessly, smoothly, thanks to a well-oiled mechanism, he would, as on the previous days,
become a different man.

Not even a man. His shoulders were still the
broad shoulders of Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, his burly form did not diminish.

From the minute he set foot in the wide, bright
corridor however, he felt like a little boy, the young Maigret who, long ago, in his village in
the Allier, used to walk on tiptoe and hold his breath when, at dawn, his hands frozen and his
nose red, he entered the sacristy to don his choir boy's cassock.

The atmosphere here was reminiscent of those
days. A faint pharmaceutical smell replaced the fragrance of incense, but it was not the
sickening smell of hospitals, it was more complex, more refined, more
exquisite
.
Under­foot was a soft linoleum the equivalent of which he had never seen anywhere. The walls
too, covered with oil paint, were smoother, of a creamier white than elsewhere. Even the
moistness in the air and the purity of the silence had a quality that cannot be found anywhere
other than in a convent.

He instinctively turned to the right and bowed,
like the choir boy walking past the altar, murmuring:

‘Good afternoon, Sister …'

In a neat, light-filled glazed office with a
window on to
the corridor, a nun wearing a cornet
sat in front of a reg­ister. She smiled at him and said:

‘Good afternoon, Monsieur 6 … I telephoned
to ask if you may go up … Our dear patient is improving every day.'

This one was Sister Aurélie. In ordinary life,
she would probably have been a woman in her fifties, but beneath her white headdress, her
caramel-smooth face was ageless.

‘Hello!' she said in a hushed voice. ‘Is that
you, Sister Marie des Anges? … Monsieur 6 is downstairs …'

Maigret did not take offence, did not even grow
impa­tient. Goodness how futile this daily ritual was. They were expecting him upstairs. They
knew he arrived on the dot of three. He was capable of going up to the first floor all by
himself.

But no! They were sticklers for routing. Sister
Aurélie smiled at him, and he looked at the red-carpeted stairs where Sister Marie des Anges
would appear.

She too smiled, her hands lost in the voluminous
sleeves of her grey habit.

‘Would you like to come up, Monsieur 6?'

He knew very well that she would whisper, as if
it were a secret or a sensational piece of news:

‘Our dear patient is improving every day
…'

He walked on tiptoe. He might have blushed if, by
chance, his weight had caused a stair to creak. He even turned away slightly when he spoke, to
disguise the smell of Calvados which he drank every day after his lunch.

The sunlight streamed into the corridor in
slanting rays, as in paintings of saints. He occasionally passed a trolley
on which lay a patient being wheeled to the operating theatre and
whose fixed stare was the only thing he remembered.

Sister Aldegonde invariably came to the doorway
of the vast, twenty-bed ward, as if by chance, as if she had some business there, purely to say
to him in passing, with a pious smile:

‘Good afternoon, Monsieur 6 …'

Then, a little further on, Sister Marie des Anges
pushed open door number 6, and stood aside.

Sitting up in bed with a strange expression on
her pallid face, a woman watched him come in. It was Madame Maigret, who always seemed to be
saying to him:

‘My poor Maigret, how you have changed
…'

Why was he still walking on tiptoe, talking in a
quiet voice that wasn't his, moving cautiously as if in a china shop? He kissed her on the
forehead, spotted the oranges and biscuits on the bedside table and, on the blanket, a piece of
knitting that infuriated him.

‘Again?'

‘Sister Marie des Anges allowed me to do a little
bit.'

There were other rituals, like greeting the old
lady in the other bed. For they had not been able to get a single room.

‘Good afternoon, Mademoiselle Rinquet
…'

She looked at him with her darting, beady little
eyes. His visits enraged her. All the time he was there, her worn-looking face maintained a
surly expression.

‘Sit down, my poor Maigret …'

She was the one who was ill. She was the one who
had needed emergency surgery three days after their arrival in
Les Sables d'Olonne, where they had come to spend their holiday.
But she was calling him ‘my poor Maigret'.

It was much too hot, but nothing on earth would
make him take off his jacket. Sister Marie des Anges popped in from time to time, goodness knows
why, to move a glass of water, bring in a thermometer or some other item. Each time she would
mutter, glancing at Maigret:

‘Excuse me …'

As for Madame Maigret, every day she asked:

‘What have you had to eat?'

But actually, she wasn't so far off the mark.
What else was there for him to do, other than eat and drink? The fact was that he had never
drunk so much in his life.

The day after the operation, the surgeon had
advised:

‘Don't stay longer than half an hour.'

Now it had become a routine, a ritual. He stayed
for half an hour. He had nothing to say. The presence of the bad-tempered spinster inhibited
him. In any case, in nor­mal times, what did he talk about to his wife when he was with her? He
was beginning to ask himself this question. Nothing, in short, was the answer. So why was he
missing her so much all the time?

Here, he did nothing but wait; wait for the half
hour to come to an end. After a few minutes, Madame Maigret picked up her knitting to give an
impression of compo­sure. Since she had to put up with Mademoiselle Rinquet's presence all day
and all night, she treated her with consid­eration. If she spoke, she would hastily add:

‘Isn't that so, Mademoiselle Rinquet?'

Then she winked at Maigret. He guessed what that
meant. Women hate letting their petty anxieties
show, especially Madame Maigret, and there they both were confined to bed.

‘I wrote a card to my sister … Will you be
so kind as to post it for me …?'

He slipped the postcard with a picture of the
convent hospital with its pretty white façade and green door into his left breast pocket.

Now for a stupid detail. Left pocket or right
pocket? That question was to come back to haunt him at eleven o'clock that night.

For years and years, forever in other words, each
of his pockets had always had a clearly defined purpose. In his left trouser pocket, his tobacco
pouch and his handker­chief – so there were always wisps of tobacco in his handkerchiefs. Right
pocket, his two pipes and small change. Left back pocket, his wallet, which was always stuffed
with useless bits of paper and made one buttock look bigger than the other.

He never carried keys on him. Whenever he took
them by mistake, he would lose them. He hardly put anything in his jacket, only a box of matches
in the right-hand pocket.

That is why, when he had newspapers to take away
or letters to post, he slipped them in his left breast pocket.

Had he done so that day? It was likely. He was
sitting by the frosted-glass window. Sister Marie des Anges had come in a couple of times,
darting a furtive glance in his direc­tion each time. She was very young. There wasn't a crease
on her rosy face.

A fool might perhaps have claimed that she was in
love
with him, for she would rush to meet him on
the stairs and become a butterfingers when he was in the room.

He knew very well that there was something else,
some­thing much simpler, more naive and childish.

Like the idea, which had come from her, of
calling him ‘Monsieur 6'. Because he dreaded people's curiosity and didn't like his name being
yelled right, left and centre. He was on holiday, wasn't he, yes or no?

Did he really hate being on holiday? All year
long he would sigh:

‘Oh to have some peace and quiet at last, hours
and hours to fill as I please …'

Hours completely free, days with no commitments,
no meetings. In Paris, in his office at Quai des Orfèvres, that sounded like unimaginable
bliss.

Was he missing Madame Maigret?

No! He knew himself. He complained. He was
grumpy. But deep down, he knew that this holiday would be just like all the others. In six
months, in a year's time, he would be thinking:

‘My goodness! I was so happy at Les Sables
d'Olonne …'

And with hindsight, this hospital where he felt
so ill at ease would seem like a delightful place. He would melt at the memory of Sister Marie
des Anges' candid, blushing face.

Never did he take his watch out before hearing
the little chimes of the chapel bell signalling that it was half past three. He even pretended
not to have heard. Was Madame Maigret taken in? She was the one who had to say:

‘Time's up, Maigret …'

‘I'll telephone tomorrow morning,' he would say, rising to his feet, as if this were something
new.

He telephoned every morning. There was no
telephone in the room, but it was Sister Aurélie, downstairs, who answered:

‘Our dear patient had a very good night
…'

Sometimes she would add:

‘The chaplain will be coming later to keep her
com­pany.'

His life was as highly regulated as that of a
prisoner in Fresnes jail. He hated obligations. He cursed at the thought of having to be
somewhere at a specific time. But in actual fact, he himself had created a schedule that he kept
to more scrupulously than a train its timetable.

At what point in the day could the note have been
slipped into his pocket, his left breast pocket?

It was an ordinary sheet of glazed squared paper,
prob­ably torn out of an exercise book. The words were written in pencil, in a regular
handwriting that looked to him like a woman's.

For pity's sake, ask to see the patient in room 15.

There was no signature. Only those words. He had
slipped his wife's postcard into his left pocket. Had the note been there already? It was
possible. He can't have thrust his hand deep inside his pocket.

But what about later, when he had posted the card
in the letter box by the covered market?

Three little words particularly irritated him:
For pity's
sake
.

Why for pity's sake? If someone wanted to speak
to him, it was perfectly straightforward to do so. He wasn't the pope. Anyone could approach
him.

For pity's sake … That was in keeping with
the cloying atmosphere into which he stepped every afternoon, with the nuns' faint smiles as if
effaced with an eraser, with Sister Marie des Anges' little winks.

No! He shrugged. He found it hard to imagine
Sister Marie des Anges slipping a note into his pocket. Even less Sister Aldegonde, who
contrived to be in the corridor, opposite the public ward, whenever he walked past. As for
Sister Aurélie, she was always separated from him by a window.

That was not quite true. A detail came back to
him. When he had left, she had been outside her office and had shown him to the door.

Why not the elderly Mademoiselle Rinquet, for
that matter? He had brushed past her bed too. And he had passed Doctor Bertrand on the stairs
…

He didn't want to think about it. Besides, it was
of no importance. It was ten thirty at night when he found the note. He had just gone up to his
room at the Hôtel Bel Air. As usual, before undressing he emptied out his pock­ets and placed
the contents on top of the chest of drawers.

As on the previous days, he had drunk a lot.
Through no fault of his own. Not intentionally, but because this was the pattern his life at Les
Sables d'Olonne had taken on.

For example, when he came downstairs at nine in the morning, he
was forced to drink.

At eight o'clock Julie, the smaller and darker of
the two maids, brought him his coffee in bed. Why did he pretend to be asleep when he had been
awake since six o'clock?

Another little habit. Holidays meant lie-ins. He
rose at dawn three hundred and twenty days of the year and more, and each morning he promised
himself:

‘When I'm on holiday, I'm going to catch up on my
sleep!'