Free Maigret in New York by Georges Simenon Page A

rectangle that he
slipped inside his wallet with a sigh. Then he turned to the sad clown.
    ‘Have you eaten?’
    ‘Well, I had a hot dog not long ago. But if you
want me to keep you company …’
    And that allowed the inspector to discover
another unexpected aspect of his unusual detective. So thin that, even in the smallest sizes,
clothes hung loosely on him, Dexter possessed a stomach of outstanding capacity.
    Hardly had he sat down at the counter of a
cafeteria than his eyes gleamed like those of a man starving for days and he murmured, pointing
to some ham-and-cheese sandwiches, ‘May I?’
    He was asking permission to eat not one sandwich,
but the whole stack, and while he proceeded to do so, he kept looking nervously around as if in
fear someone would come and put a stop to his meal.
    He ate without drinking. Huge mouthfuls
disappeared into his astonishingly elastic mouth, and each mouthful pushed the previous one down
without causing him the least discomfort.
    ‘I’ve already found something …’ he managed
nevertheless to say.
    And with his free hand, he reached into a pocket
of his trenchcoat, which he had not taken the time to remove. He placed a folded paper on the
counter. While the inspector unfolded it, he asked, ‘Would you mind if I order something hot? It
isn’t expensive here, you know …’
    The
paper was a handbill of the kind actors once hawked to the audience after their
performances.
    Get your photos of the artistes here!
    And Maigret, who in those days had been a
devotee of the Petit Casino at the Porte Saint-Martin, could still hear the eternal refrain.
    ‘Each one costs me ten centimes!’
    It wasn’t even a postcard like the ones the
important acts splurged on, but a simple sheet of poster paper, now a faded yellow.
J and J, the celebrated musical cabaret
artistes who have had the honour of playing before all the crowned heads of Europe and the Shah
of Persia.
    ‘I must ask you not to get it too dirty,’ said the
clown as he tackled his bacon and eggs. ‘He didn’t give it to me, it’s only a loan.’
    It was laughable, the idea of lending a paper
like that when no one would have bothered to pick it up off the street …
    ‘He’s a friend of mine … Well, someone I’ve
known a long time, who used to be a circus ringmaster. It’s a lot harder than people think, you
know. He was a ringmaster for over forty years, and now he never leaves his armchair, he’s very
old … I went to see him last night because he hardly sleeps at all any more.’
    He had his mouth full the whole time he was
talking
and was gazing longingly at the sausages
someone nearby had just ordered. He would be getting some of those, no question, and probably
one of those enormous cakes lacquered with a livid icing that turned Maigret’s stomach.
    ‘My friend didn’t know J and J personally …
He was strictly a circus man, you understand? But he has a unique collection of posters,
programmes and newspaper articles about circus and vaudeville families. He can tell you that
such and such an acrobat, who is now thirty years old, is the son of a particular trapeze
artiste who married the granddaughter of the bottom strong man in a pyramid act who got himself
killed at the Palladium in London in 1905.’
    Maigret listened with one ear and studied the
photograph on the slick yellow paper. Could one call it a photograph? The reproduction, a coarse
photo-engraving, was so bad that you could hardly distinguish the faces.
    Two men, both young, both thin. The biggest
difference between them was that one had very long hair. He was the violinist, and Maigret was
convinced that he had become Little John.
    The other, with sparser hair and, even though
young, already going bald, wore glasses; rolling his eyes, he was blowing into a clarinet.
    ‘Of course, go ahead and order some sausages,’
Maigret said before Ronald Dexter even opened his mouth.
    ‘You must think I’ve been hungry all my