Free A Man's Head by Georges Simenon

assume that this gentleman also works for the police?’

6. The Inn at Nandy
    Madame Maigret sighed but said nothing when, at seven next day, her husband left her after drinking his coffee without even noticing that it was scalding hot.
    He had got home at one in the morning in uncommunicative mood. He went out again in a dogged frame of mind.
    As he trudged through the corridors of the Préfecture, he was very aware in the colleagues he met, not just the inspectors but the office clerks too, of a sense of curiosity, even admiration tinged, perhaps, with a hint of commiseration.
    But he shook their hands as perfunctorily as he had kissed his wife on the forehead, and the moment he was in his office he began poking the stove before stretching his overcoat, which was heavy from the rain, across a couple of chairs.
    Then unhurriedly, and drawing gently on his pipe, he spoke into the phone: ‘Get me Montparnasse police station.’
    Mechanically he tidied the papers littering his desk.
    â€˜Hello? … Who is that? Ah, the duty sergeant. This is Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Police Judiciaire. Have you let Radek go? … Say again? … An hour ago? … Did you make sure that Inspector
Janvier was there to tail him? … Hello … speaking … He didn’t sleep a wink? He smoked all his cigarettes? … Thanks … No! There’s no point … If I need more information, I’ll come round …’
    From his pocket he took the Czech’s passport, which he had kept: a small, greyish document embossed with the national emblem of Czechoslovakia. Almost every page was covered with stamps and visas.
    According to the visas, Jean Radek, aged twenty-five, born at Brno, father unknown, had resided in Berlin, Mainz, Bonn, Turin and Hamburg.
    His papers described him as a medical student. His mother, Élisabeth Radek, had died two years earlier. Her profession was given as ‘servant’.
    â€˜What do you live on?’ Maigret had asked the previous evening in the office of the inspector in charge of Montparnasse police station.
    The prisoner had replied with that jarring smile:
    â€˜Can I ask impertinent questions too?’
    â€˜Just answer the question.’
    â€˜When my mother was alive she used to send enough for me to carry on with my studies.’
    â€˜What, out of a servant’s wages?’
    â€˜Yes. I’m an only child. There’s nothing she wouldn’t have done for me. Does that surprise you?’
    â€˜She’s been dead for two years … Since then?’
    â€˜Some distant relatives have been sending me small sums from time to time. And there are compatriots living in Paris who help out as and when … And sometimes I am asked to do translation work.’
    â€˜And file copy for
Le Sifflet
?’
    â€˜I don’t understand.’
    He had said this with an explicit irony which could be interpreted as: ‘Keep going! You haven’t pinned me down yet!’
    Maigret had chosen to leave it there. There was no sign of Joseph Heurtin anywhere around the Coupole, nor of Sergeant Lucas. They had both vanished once more into Paris, one in the footsteps of the other.
    â€˜Hôtel Georges V,’ Maigret had barked to the taxi-driver.
    He had walked in just as William Crosby, wearing a dinner jacket, was changing a 100-dollar banknote at the hotel’s foreign exchange desk.
    â€˜Are you looking for me?’ he had asked when he noticed the inspector.
    â€˜No … unless you happen to know a man named Radek?’
    People were walking in, through and out of the Louis XIV lobby. The clerk had counted out 100-franc notes, which were pinned together in bundles of ten.
    â€˜Radek …?’
    Maigret was looking directly into the eyes of the American, who did not flinch.
    â€˜No … but you could ask Mrs Crosby.