Free The Hotel Majestic by Georges Simenon Page B

Donge’s emotion. If he hadn’t known he had only drunk a half litre—and had not even finished that!—he would have thought he was drunk. The blood had rushed to his face. His eyes shone—great, protruding eyes. He wasn’t crying, but he drew great sobbing breaths.
    â€œHave you got any children, sir?”
    It was Maigret’s turn to turn away, because it was Madame Maigret’s great sorrow that she hadn’t got children. It was something he tried not to talk about, himself.
    â€œThe magistrate talked all the time . . . According to him, I had done this and that, for such and such a reason . . . But it wasn’t like that . . . After spending all my free time for the whole day prowling along the corridors of the hotel, in the vain hope of seeing my son . . . I didn’t know what I was doing any longer . . . And the telephone ringing all the time, and the serving-lifts, and my three helpers, and the coffee-pots and milk-jugs to fill . . . I sat down in a corner . . .”
    â€œIn the still-room, you mean?”
    â€œYes. I wrote a letter . . . I wanted to see Mimi . . . I remembered that at six o’clock in the morning I was nearly always alone downstairs . . . I begged her to come . . .”
    â€œYou didn’t threaten her?”
    â€œPossibly, at the end of the letter . . . Yes, I must have written that if she didn’t come within three days, I would do what was necessary . . .”
    â€œAnd what did you mean by ‘what was necessary’?”
    â€œI don’t know . . .”
    â€œWould you have killed her?”
    â€œI couldn’t have done it.”
    â€œYou would have kidnapped the child?”
    He gave a pathetic, almost half-witted smile.
    â€œDo you think that would be possible?”
    â€œWould you have told her husband everything?”
    Prosper Donge’s eyes opened wide in horror.
    â€œNo! . . . I swear to you! . . . I think . . . Yes I think that if it had come to the worst, I would have killed her rather than do that, in a moment of anger . . . But that morning, I had a puncture when I got to the Avenue Foch . . . I got to the Majestic nearly quarter of an hour late . . . I didn’t see Mimi . . . I thought that she had come and that, as she couldn’t find me, she had gone back to her suite . . . If I had known her husband had left, I would have gone up by the back stairs . . . But there again, we in the basement know nothing about what’s going on above our heads . . . I was worried . . . That morning, I can’t have seemed myself . . .”
    Maigret suddenly interrupted him.
    â€œWhat made you go and open locker 89?”
    â€œI can tell you why . . . And it proves I’m not lying, at any rate to anyone from the police, because if I’d known she was dead, I wouldn’t have acted as I did . . . It was about a quarter to nine when the waiter on the second floor sent down the order for no. 203 . . . On the slip there was—you can check it, because the management keep them—there was: one hot chocolate, one egg and bacon and one tea.”
    â€œWhich meant?”
    â€œI’ll explain. I knew that the chocolate was for the boy, the egg and bacon for the nurse . . . So there were only two of them there . . . Every other day at that time there was an order for black coffee and toast for Mimi . . . So, I put the black coffee and toast on the tray too . . . I sent the lift up . . . A few minutes later the coffee and toast were sent back . . . It may seem odd to you to attach so much importance to these details . . . But don’t forget that in the basement that’s about all we see of what people are doing . . .
    â€œI went to the telephone.
    â€œâ€˜Hello! Didn’t Mrs. Clark want her breakfast?’
    â€œâ€˜Mrs. Clark isn’t in her room . . .’
    â€œPlease believe me, superintendent . . . The magistrate didn’t believe me . . . I was certain that