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the inspector changed his mind. ‘Take me to Hôtel Majestic …
He screwed up his handkerchief into a ball and stuffed it over his wound. He noted that the bleeding had stopped.
Maigret was an impressive sight.
He held one shoulder higher than the other, but all the same he was being careful to save his strength.
felt as if he was floating on air, and he had to make an effort to get a grip on himself so as to s...
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Maigret was running out of patience. He felt the threat of a dizzy spell coming on.
Eventually he came across a terrified valet. ‘The Mortimers’ suite?’ ‘Downstairs … But … You …’
he caught sight of the Mortimers’ suite and, beside it, the door of the room where Torrence was to be found. He got to the door, walking slightly crabwise, pushed it open … ‘Torrence! …’
He took a few more wobbly steps. And suddenly came to a stop by a settee. A black-leather-shod foot was sticking out from under it.
Torrence, all crumpled up, with his shoulder twisted round as if he’d had his bones broken to make him fit into a small space.
Torrence was dead! Involuntarily Maigret twisted his lips and clenched his fist.
Maigret’s face had hardened. He didn’t cry. That must be something he was unable to do. But his expression was full of such anger and pain as well as astonishment that it came close to looking stunned.
Torrence was thirty years old. For the last five years he had worked pretty much exclusively for Inspector Maigret.
damask table napkin embroidered with the monogram of the Majestic. It still gave off a faint whiff of chloroform.
He scowled bitterly and ironically when he thought of all the regulations, formal procedures and precautions he had to observe to please the examining magistrate.
Did any of that matter? It was Torrence, for heaven’s sake!
On Torrence’s shirt, exactly over the centre of his heart, there was a small brown mark. Smaller than a chickpea! There was just one single drop of blood,
disgusting, but in terms of crime it was the very apex of skill!
he’d learned about it a few months earlier, in an article in a German crime studies journal.
First the chloroform towel, which overpow...
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Then the long needle. The murderer can take his time and find just the right place between the ribs to g...
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A bullet can miss its targets or just wound a man – Maigret was living proof of that. But a needle plunged into the heart of a man already made inert kills him scientifically, with no margin of error.
It didn’t even occur to him to start a proper methodical investigation. It was Torrence lying there! Torrence, who’d been with him on all his cases these last few years! Torrence, a man who needed just one word, a single sign, to understand whatever he meant to say!
‘Police Judiciaire? … Yes … Hello! … Headquarters? … Who is that speaking? … What? … Tarraud? … Listen, my lad … You’re going to run round to the chief’s address … Yes, his home address … Tell him … Tell him to join me at the Majestic … Straight away
One hour later the Superintendent of Criminal Investigation knocked at the door.
‘Shut the door, sharpish,’ Maigret said, with no regard for hierarchy.
He nodded towards the corner of the room where Torrence was lying and put a finger to his lips.
‘Is he dead?’ Maigret’s chin fell to his chest. ‘Could you give me a hand, chief?’
The bullet came out, that’s the main thing. Help me wrap it up tight …’
‘The Baltic gang …’ he explained. ‘They missed me … but they didn’t miss my poor Torrence …’
… With a needle, chief! … They anaesthetized him, then killed him with a needle …’
‘You had to come here … Seeing as it’s one of our own … Not to mention that I didn’t want to make waves …
Keep all mention of it out of the papers … Chief, you do trust me, don’t you?’
‘Now tell me, Maigret … What’s wrong?’ ‘Nothing … I’m quite calm, I swear … I don’t think I’ve ever been so calm … But
now, it’s between them and me … Do you understand? …’
on. The dressing changed Maigret’s appearance, broadening his waist and making his figure less neat, as if he had rolls of fat. He looked at himself in the mirror and screwed up his face ironically. He was well aware that he now looked all soft. He’d lost that rock-solid, hard-cased look of a human mountain that he liked his enemies to see.
‘Yes, we can keep it out of the news … I’ll alert the magistrates … I’ll go to see the prosecutor in person.’ ‘Good! I’ll get on with the job …’
‘Farewell, chief … Don’t let them tell my wife I’ve been hurt …’
During the war comrades in arms had said farewell to him just like that, calmly, with the same unreal gentleness, before going over the top. Those men had never come back!
International gangsters who engage in top-flight scams rarely commit murder.
In America, the home of specialization, these kinds of execution are never carried out by a gang member. Specialists called hit-men are used. Like official executioners, they have their own teams and rates of remuneration.
Keeping quite calm, Maigret put the question another way round:
‘Which member of staff knocked off early last night?’ The operator was taken aback by the question.
Pepito got a call telling him his broth...
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Maigret had them open up the employee records,
Pepito Moretto, Hôtel Beauséjour, 3, Rue des Batignolles.
‘Get me Hôtel Beauséjour on the telephone …’
joined the staff of the Majestic three days before the Mortimer-Levingstons’ arrival. No complaints about his work. He’d begun in the dining room, but then transferred to room service at his own request.
Can you get Pepito Moretto to come to the phone? … Hello! … What was that? … His luggage too? … Three a.m.? …
‘Call me a cab.’ He gave the driver the address of Pickwick’s Bar. ‘You know it closes at 4 a.m.?’ ‘Doesn’t matter.’
