Pietr the Latvian (Inspector Maigret)

by Georges Simenon

a letter in which you declared you were going to kill Mortimer and also made an appointment to meet outside the hotel?’ ‘I admit nothing!’ ‘What were you doing at the Majestic?’ ‘I was looking for Madame Goldstein.’

‘So why were you running away with a gun in your hand when I came across you?’

‘Had you ever set eyes on Mortimer?’ ‘No …’ ‘But he went to your lodgings in Rue du Roi-de-Sicile.’

‘Do you know Pietr the Latvian, or Oswald Oppenheim?’ ‘No …’ ‘That does not hold water …’ ‘I don’t give a damn!’

‘I’ve told your father, in Vilna …’ For the first time she tensed up.

Maigret

carried on watching her – with interest, but also with some sympathy. You couldn’t deny she had guts!

And in this case, they had no evidence at all!

Nobody had seen her pull the trigger. Nothing remained of the letter that Pietr had burned.

Maigret played his last card. ‘Pietr’s been seen in Fécamp …’ That got the response he wanted. Anna Gorskin shuddered.

‘So what?’

Anna glanced up at him with her dark eyes. She looked grave, almost tragic.

Maigret was looking without thinking at Anna Gorskin’s ankles and noticed that, as her mother feared, the young woman already had dropsy.

All the same she was a good-looking woman, in a common, feral way. Sitting sideways on the stool,

Her eyes flashed, and she added with an offensive laugh: ‘Unless you’re afraid of bringing her down too! … I’m right, aren’t I? … Ha! Ha! … I don’t matter … I’m just a foreigner … A ghetto girl living from hand to mouth … But she’s different!

She was going to talk. Jealousy had done it. Maigret sensed that he might scare her off if he seemed too interested,

She was having a fit of hysterics! Her

What had been a beautiful woman was now a hideous hag tearing whole

tufts of hair off her head with no thought for the pain.

looked at Maigret without knowing who he was, then fell into a deep slumber. Now and again small spasms ran across the surface of her body.

‘Look at this photograph,’

the Pskov photograph showing the tailor’s white-gabled house, the hoist, the six steps and the seated mother, with the father posing and the two lads in their embroidered sailor collar shirts.

‘That’s in Russia! I had to look it up in an atlas. Not far from the Baltic Sea. There are several small countries in those parts: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia … With Poland and Russia surrounding the...

And on top of that you’ve got Jews spread all over, constituting a separate race. And besides tha...

And the armies of the ultrana...

Maigret took the photograph back from the magistrate, who hadn’t seemed very interested in it. ‘What odd little boys!’ was his only comment.

‘Can you tell me which of the two I’m looking for?’

… And the boys …’

‘Mortimer was born on a farm in Ohio and started out selling shoelaces in San Francisco. Anna Gorskin, who was born in Odessa, spent her early years in Vilna. Mrs Mortimer, lastly, is a Scot who emigrated to Florida when still a child. And the whole lot have ended up a stone’s throw from Notre-Dame-de-Paris.

pointed to the boy in the photograph who was staring admiringly at his brother.

‘What I’ve got to do now is lay my hands on that boy there!’

Inspector Dufour was in the very same nook in the wall where Maigret had kept watch

‘So? …’ Maigret asked as he came upon him in the dark. ‘All going fine, chief.’ He found that rather worrying.

‘Yesterday morning, nothing to report. The maid went to market.

Nobody in or out all night long. Lights out at ten …’

About half an hour ago a young lady came out … She’ll be back shortly … I guess she’s gone to call on someone …’

‘I met Madame Swaan …’

‘At the dockside … Just now … She was going towards the outer pier …’

The pier’s a dead end, so she can’t get very far …’

Maigret

‘You stay here …’ and then took off quite abruptly for the Swaans’ villa,

so he climbed over the low wall, got to the front door, and banged on it with his fist. From inside a terrified voice wailed: ‘Who’s there?’ He could hear children crying as well. ‘Police! Open up!’

‘Madame Swaan?’

It was … madame’s … brother-in-law … He gave me a letter to give to madame …’

time … I never saw him before except in this house.’ ‘… Do you know where he planned to join up with Madame Swaan?’ ‘I don’t know anything!

Maigret rushed out

when he got to Rue d’Étretat,

he turned to the right, sploshed through the mud at the dockside and started running again towards the outer pier.

he made out the figure of a woman. He switched to the other side so as...

he saw it was the face of Madame Swaan, in great distress.