The Hotel Majestic by Georges Simenon

too . . . He used to spend all his free time reading . . .”
    Rain. A taxi. The streetlamps coming alight. The Bois de Boulogne which Maigret had crossed on his bike, side by side with Donge.
    â€œPut me down by the Majestic, will you?”
    The porter followed him a little anxiously as he crossed the foyer without speaking, and took Maigret’s coat and hat in the cloakroom. The manager had also seen him, through the crack in his curtains. Everyone knew Maigret—followed him with their eyes.
    The bar? Why not? He was thirsty. But he was attracted by a muffled sound of music. Somewhere in the basement a band was softly playing a tango. He went down a staircase carpeted with thick carpet, into a bluish haze. People were eating cakes at little tables. Others were dancing. A waiter came up to the superintendent.
    â€œBring me a half, please . . .”
    â€œWe don’t . . .”
    Maigret gave him a look and he hurriedly scribbled something on a chit . . . The bills which . . . Maigret watched where it went . . . At the back of the room, to the right of the band, there was a sort of hatch in the wall . . .
    On the other side were the glass cages, the still-room, the kitchens, the sculleries, the guests’ servants’ hall, and, right at the end, near the clocking-on machine, the cloakroom with its hundred metal lockers.
    Someone was watching him—he could feel it—and he noticed Zebio dancing with a middle-aged woman covered in jewels.
    Was it an illusion? It seemed to Maigret that Zebio’s look was trying to tell him something. He turned and saw with a shock that Oswald J. Clark was dancing with his son’s governess, Ellen Darroman.
    They both seemed utterly oblivious of their surroundings. They were caught up in the ecstasy of new-found love. Solemn, hardly smiling, they were alone on the dance-floor, alone in the world, and when the music stopped they stood there without moving for a minute before going back to their table.
    Maigret then noticed that Clark was wearing a thin band of black material on the lapel of his jacket—his way of wearing mourning.
    The superintendent’s fist tightened on Mimi’s letter to Gigi which was in his pocket. He had a terrible desire to . . .
    But hadn’t the magistrate told him not to get involved with Clark, who was no doubt too much of a gentleman to grapple with a policeman?
    The tango was followed by a slow foxtrot. A frothy half followed the route the waiter’s order had taken previously—in the opposite direction. The pair were dancing again.
    Maigret suddenly got up, forgot to pay for his drink, and hurried to the foyer.
    â€œIs there anyone in Suite 203?” he asked the porter.
    â€œI think the nanny and the boy are up there . . . But . . . If you’d like to wait while I telephone . . .”
    â€œNo, please don’t do that . . .”
    â€œThere’s the lift, on your left, sir.”
    Too late. Maigret had made for the marble staircase and was slowly starting up the stairs, grunting as he went.

7
    â€œWHAT’S HE ON ABOUT?”
    Maigret was assailed for a moment by a strange thought, which however he soon forgot. He had reached the second floor of the Majestic and stopped for a moment to get his breath back. On his way up he had met a waiter with a tray, and a bellboy running up the stairs with a bundle of foreign newspapers under his arm.
    On this floor there were smartly dressed women getting into the lift, who were probably going down to the thé dansant. They left a trail of scent behind them.
    â€œThey are all in their proper places,” he thought to himself. “Some behind the scenes and the others in the lounges and foyer . . . The guests on one side and the staff on the other . . .”
    But that wasn’t what was bothering him, was it? Everyone, round him, was in his allotted place, doing the right thing. It was normal, for instance, for a rich foreign woman to have