wouldn’t mind a bite, after all … Not
before I’ve told you … One moment – yes – I saw my friend again,
yesterday evening … Germain. You remember Germain? Poor
Germain! Imagine a man who’s had an active life, who has followed circuses around the entire
world and who’s nailed to a wheelchair.
‘Admit it, he’d be better off dead … What
am I saying? Never think that I wish him dead. But if I were the one it was going to happen to,
I would rather be dead. That’s what I meant.
‘Well … I was right to claim that Germain
would do anything for me … He’s a man who would give his right arm for others.
‘He doesn’t look like much. He’s grumpy. You’d
think he was a selfish old man. And yet, he spent hours going through his files, looking for
traces of J and J. Look, I’ve got another paper.’
He blanched, turned green, searched through his
pockets in anguish and seemed almost about to burst into tears.
‘I deserve to be …’
Well, no. He deserved nothing, because he had
finally found the document, beneath his handkerchief.
‘It isn’t very clean. But you’ll understand.’
This time it was the programme for a road company
that had toured the American hinterland thirty years earlier. In big letters, the name of a
chanteuse whose photograph graced the cover; then other names: a couple of tightrope walkers, a
comic named Robson, Lucille the Seer and at last, at the very bottom of the list, the musical
cabaret artistes J and J.
‘Take a good look at those names. Robson died in
a train accident ten or fifteen years ago, I forget … Germain was
the one who told me. You remember I mentioned yesterday that
Germain had an elderly lady friend who came to see him every Wednesday? Don’t you find that
touching, hmm? … And you know, there was never anything between the two of them, not a
thing!’
He was getting teary again.
‘I’ve never seen her. It seems she was very thin
and pale in those days, so pale that they called her the Angel. Well! Now she’s so fat that
… We are going to eat, aren’t we? I don’t know if it’s the gin, but I’ve got cramps
… It’s disgusting to ask you for more money … What was I saying? The Angel, Lucile
… Germain’s old friend … Today’s Wednesday. She ought to be at his place at around
five o’clock. She’ll bring a little cake, as she does every week … I swear to you that if
we go, I won’t touch it … because this old woman they called the Angel and who brings a
cake every week to Germain …’
‘Have you told your friend we were coming?’
‘I told him we might … I could come by for
you at half past four … It’s quite far, especially on the subway, because he’s not on a
direct line.’
‘Let’s go!’
Maigret had abruptly resolved not to let his
definitely too-gloomy clown out of his sight and, after he made him eat something, he took him
back to his hotel and put him to bed on the green plush couch.
After that, as he had the previous evening, he
wrote a long letter to Madame Maigret.
6.
Maigret followed his clown up the creaking
staircase and because Dexter, God knows why, felt he ought to walk on his tiptoes, the inspector
found himself doing so too.
The sad man had slept off his gin, however, and
although his eyes were still puffy and his speech a touch thick, he had abandoned his tone of
lamentation for a somewhat firmer voice.
He’d been the one to give the cabbie an address
in Greenwich Village, and Maigret was discovering, in the heart of New York, a few minutes from
its big modern buildings, a tiny city within the city, almost a provincial town, with its houses
no taller than in Bordeaux or Dijon, its shops, its quiet streets where people could stroll, its
inhabitants who seemed not to notice the monstrous city all around them.
‘We’re here,’ Dexter had announced.
Sensing something like fear in the voice of this
man in his grimy raincoat, Maigret had looked his companion straight in the
before I’ve told you … One moment – yes – I saw my friend again,
yesterday evening … Germain. You remember Germain? Poor
Germain! Imagine a man who’s had an active life, who has followed circuses around the entire
world and who’s nailed to a wheelchair.
‘Admit it, he’d be better off dead … What
am I saying? Never think that I wish him dead. But if I were the one it was going to happen to,
I would rather be dead. That’s what I meant.
‘Well … I was right to claim that Germain
would do anything for me … He’s a man who would give his right arm for others.
‘He doesn’t look like much. He’s grumpy. You’d
think he was a selfish old man. And yet, he spent hours going through his files, looking for
traces of J and J. Look, I’ve got another paper.’
He blanched, turned green, searched through his
pockets in anguish and seemed almost about to burst into tears.
‘I deserve to be …’
Well, no. He deserved nothing, because he had
finally found the document, beneath his handkerchief.
‘It isn’t very clean. But you’ll understand.’
This time it was the programme for a road company
that had toured the American hinterland thirty years earlier. In big letters, the name of a
chanteuse whose photograph graced the cover; then other names: a couple of tightrope walkers, a
comic named Robson, Lucille the Seer and at last, at the very bottom of the list, the musical
cabaret artistes J and J.
‘Take a good look at those names. Robson died in
a train accident ten or fifteen years ago, I forget … Germain was
the one who told me. You remember I mentioned yesterday that
Germain had an elderly lady friend who came to see him every Wednesday? Don’t you find that
touching, hmm? … And you know, there was never anything between the two of them, not a
thing!’
He was getting teary again.
‘I’ve never seen her. It seems she was very thin
and pale in those days, so pale that they called her the Angel. Well! Now she’s so fat that
… We are going to eat, aren’t we? I don’t know if it’s the gin, but I’ve got cramps
… It’s disgusting to ask you for more money … What was I saying? The Angel, Lucile
… Germain’s old friend … Today’s Wednesday. She ought to be at his place at around
five o’clock. She’ll bring a little cake, as she does every week … I swear to you that if
we go, I won’t touch it … because this old woman they called the Angel and who brings a
cake every week to Germain …’
‘Have you told your friend we were coming?’
‘I told him we might … I could come by for
you at half past four … It’s quite far, especially on the subway, because he’s not on a
direct line.’
‘Let’s go!’
Maigret had abruptly resolved not to let his
definitely too-gloomy clown out of his sight and, after he made him eat something, he took him
back to his hotel and put him to bed on the green plush couch.
After that, as he had the previous evening, he
wrote a long letter to Madame Maigret.
6.
Maigret followed his clown up the creaking
staircase and because Dexter, God knows why, felt he ought to walk on his tiptoes, the inspector
found himself doing so too.
The sad man had slept off his gin, however, and
although his eyes were still puffy and his speech a touch thick, he had abandoned his tone of
lamentation for a somewhat firmer voice.
He’d been the one to give the cabbie an address
in Greenwich Village, and Maigret was discovering, in the heart of New York, a few minutes from
its big modern buildings, a tiny city within the city, almost a provincial town, with its houses
no taller than in Bordeaux or Dijon, its shops, its quiet streets where people could stroll, its
inhabitants who seemed not to notice the monstrous city all around them.
‘We’re here,’ Dexter had announced.
Sensing something like fear in the voice of this
man in his grimy raincoat, Maigret had looked his companion straight in the
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