The Hotel Majestic by Georges Simenon Page A

tea, smoke cigarettes and go out for fittings. It was natural for a waiter to carry a tray, a chamber-maid to make beds, a liftman to operate a lift . . .
    In short, their functions, such as they were, were clearly defined, settled once and for all.
    But if anyone had asked Maigret what he was doing there, what would he have answered?
    â€œI am trying to get a man sent to prison, or even executed . . .”
    It was nothing. A slight dizziness, probably caused by the over-luxurious, almost aggressively luxurious setting, and the atmosphere in the tea-room . . .
    209 . . . 207 . . . 205 . . . 203 . . . Maigret hesitated for a moment and then knocked. His ear to the door, he could hear a child’s voice saying a few words in English, then a woman’s voice sounding more distant, and, he imagined, telling him to come in.
    He crossed a little hall and found himself in a sitting-room with three windows overlooking the Champs-Élysées. By one of the windows an elderly woman, dressed in a white apron like a nurse, was sitting sewing. It was the nanny, Gertrud Borms, made to look even more severe by the glasses she wore.
    But the superintendent paid no attention to her. He was looking at a boy of about six, dressed in plus-fours and a sweater which fitted snugly round his thin frame. The boy was sitting on the carpet, his few toys round him, including a large toy boat, and cars which were exact replicas of various real makes. There was a picture book on his knee which he was looking at when Maigret went in, and after glancing briefly at the visitor, he bent over it again.
    When he recounted the scene to Madame Maigret, the superintendent’s description went something like this: “She said something like, ‘You we you we we well . . .’
    â€œAnd to gain time, I said very quickly: ‘I hope that I’m correct in thinking this is Monsieur Oswald J. Clark’s suite? . . .’
    â€œShe went on again: ‘You we you we we well,’ or something of the sort.
    â€œAnd meanwhile, I was able to get a good look at the boy. A very big head for his age, covered, as I had been told, with hair of a fiery red. The same blue eyes as Prosper Donge—the colour of periwinkles or of certain summer skies . . . A thin neck . . .
    â€œHe started talking to his nanny, in English, too, looking at me as he did so, and to me it still sounded like: ‘You we you we we well . . .’
    â€œThey were evidently asking themselves what I wanted and why I was standing there in the middle of the room. I didn’t know myself why I was there. There were flowers worth several hundred francs in a Chinese vase . . .
    â€œThe nanny finally got up. She put her work down on the chair, picked up a telephone and spoke to someone.
    â€œâ€˜Don’t you understand any French, little one?’ I asked the child.
    â€œHe merely gazed at me with eyes full of suspicion. A few seconds later, an employee in a tailcoat came into the suite. The nanny spoke to him. He then turned to me.
    â€œâ€˜She wants to know what you want?’
    â€œâ€˜I wanted to see Monsieur Clark . . .’
    â€œâ€˜He isn’t here . . . She says he is probably downstairs . . .’
    â€œâ€˜Thank you very much . . .’”
    And that was that! Maigret had wanted to see Teddy Clark and he had seen him. He went back downstairs thinking about Prosper Donge, shut in his cell at the Santé. Automatically, without thinking, he went on down to the tea-room and, as his beer had not yet been cleared away, he sat down again.
    He was in a state of mind he knew well. It was rather as if he were in a daze, although he was conscious of what was happening round him, without attaching any importance to it, without making any effort to place people or things in time or space.
    Thus he saw a page go up to Ellen Darroman and say a few words to her. She got up and went to a telephone booth, in which she only remained for a few