The Hotel Majestic Read Free Page A

very young—had been warned that Maigret was coming, and was smoking a cigarette while waiting.
    â€œShut the door . . .”
    The body was lying on the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by the metal lockers. The doctor, still smoking, muttered: “She must have been attacked from behind . . . She didn’t struggle for very long . . .”
    â€œAnd her body wasn’t dragged along the ground!” Maigret added, examining the dead woman’s black clothes. “There are no traces of dust . . . Either the crime was committed here, or she was carried, by two people probably, because it would be difficult in this labyrinth of narrow corridors . . .”
    There was a crocodile handbag in the locker in which she had been found. The superintendent opened it, and took out an automatic, which he slipped into his pocket, after checking the safety catch was on. There was nothing else in the bag except a handkerchief, a powder compact, and a few banknotes amounting to less than a thousand francs.
    Behind them the basement was humming like a beehive. The service-lifts shot up and down, bells rang ceaselessly and they could see heavy copper saucepans being wielded behind the glass partitions of the kitchens, and chickens being roasted in their dozens.
    â€œEverything must be left in place for the Public Prosecutor’s Department to see,” Maigret said. “Who found the body? . . .”
    Prosper Donge, who was cleaning a percolator, was pointed out to him. He was tall, with the kind of red hair usually referred to as carroty, and looked about forty-five to forty-eight. He had blue eyes and his face was badly pockmarked.
    â€œHas he been here long?”
    â€œFive years . . . Before that he was at the Miramar, in Cannes . . .”
    â€œReliable?”
    â€œExtremely reliable . . .”
    There was a partition separating Donge and the superintendent. Their eyes met through the glass. And a rush of colour flooded the face of the still-room chef, who like all redheads, had sensitive skin.
    â€œExcuse me, sir . . . Superintendent Maigret is wanted on the telephone . . .”
    It was Jean Ramuel, the bookkeeper, who had hurried out of his cage.
    â€œIf you’d like to take the call here—”
    A message from Headquarters. There had only been two express trains to Rome since eleven o’clock the day before. Oswald J. Clark had not travelled on either of them. And the taxi driver, Désiré, whom they had managed to contact on the telephone at a bistro where he was one of the regulars, swore he had taken his fare, the day before, to the Hotel Aiglon, in the Boulevard Montparnasse.
    Voices, from the staircase, one of them the high-pitched voice of a young woman protesting in English to a room waiter who was trying to bar her way.
    It was the governess, Ellen Darroman, who was bearing down on them.

2
    MAIGRET GOES BICYCLING
    Pipe in mouth, bowler on the back of his head, and hands in the pockets of his vast overcoat with the famous velvet collar, Maigret watched her arguing vehemently with the hotel manager.
    And one glance at the superintendent’s face made it clear that there would not be much sympathy lost between him and Ellen Darroman.
    â€œWhat’s she saying?” he sighed, interrupting, unable to understand a single word the American woman said.
    â€œShe wants to know if it’s true Mrs. Clark has been murdered, and if anyone has telephoned to Rome to let Oswald J. Clark know; she wants to know where the body has been taken and if . . .”
    But the girl didn’t let him finish. She had listened impatiently, frowning, had thrown Maigret a cold glance and had gone on talking faster than ever.
    â€œWhat’s she saying?”
    â€œShe wants me to show her the body and . . .”
    Maigret gently took the American girl’s arm, to guide her towards the cloakroom. But he knew she would shy away from the contact. Just the kind of woman who