Liberty Bar (10 page)

Maigret stood up impatiently and, to
forestall any potential trick on the part of the two women – the customer could be a
messenger from Joseph, for example – he decided to go into the bar himself.

‘What do you want?'

The man seemed so taken aback that, in
spite of his bad mood, Maigret almost burst out laughing. He was a middle-aged fellow,
dull complexion, grey hair, who no doubt had crept furtively through the sidestreets in
pursuit of some dream of unbridled sex, only to have the surly Maigret pop up behind the
bar!

‘A bock …' he stammered,
letting go of the slot-machine handle.

Behind the curtain, the inspector could
see the two women in a huddle. Jaja was asking questions, and Sylvie was replying
wearily.

‘There's no beer!'

At least, Maigret couldn't see any
within reach!

‘Then whatever you like … A
port maybe …'

Maigret poured some liquid or other in the
first glass he could find. The man barely sipped it.

‘How much?'

‘Two francs.'

Maigret alternately observed the street,
still bathed in
warm sunshine, the small bar opposite, where he could
see moving shapes, and the back room, where Jaja had sat down again.

The customer left, wondering what sort of
place he had landed up in, and Maigret returned to the back room and sat down astride
his chair.

Jaja's demeanour had changed
somewhat. Earlier, she had looked worried, and it was obvious she didn't know what
to think. Now, her anxiety seemed more focused. She looked at Sylvie pensively, a look
of pity with a barb of rancour. She seemed to be saying: ‘It's a fine mess
that you have got yourself into! It won't be easy to find a way out of
it!'

She said out loud:

‘You know, inspector … Men can
be strange …'

Her words lacked conviction, and she knew
it. As did Sylvie, who shrugged her shoulders.

‘He saw her at the funeral this
morning and he must have desired her … He is so rich that …'

Maigret sighed, lit another pipe and let
his gaze wander to the window.

There was an ominous atmosphere in the
room. Sylvie was keeping her mouth shut for fear of making things worse. She
wasn't crying, wasn't moving, just waiting for who knows what.

Only the small alarm clock kept working,
pushing its black hands, which seemed too heavy for it, laboriously round its pale clock
face.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock
…

Jaja was not made for such dramas. She got
up and went to fetch a bottle of alcohol from the cupboard. As if nothing
were going on, she filled three glasses and slid one across to
Maigret, another to Sylvie, without saying a word.

The twenty thousand francs were still on
the table, next to the handbag.

Tick tock, tick …

And so it went on, for an hour and a half!
An hour and a half of silence, interspersed only by Jaja's sighs. As she drank,
her eyes became glassy.

Occasionally some children would play and
shout out in the street. At other times there was the insistent sound of a tram bell
somewhere in the distance. The door of the bar opened. An Arab poked his head through
the gap and called out:

‘Peanuts?'

He waited a moment then, receiving no
response, closed the door again and left.

It was six o'clock before the door
opened again, and this time the stir it created in the back room suggested that this was
the moment Maigret had been waiting for. Jaja was about to get up to run to the bar, but
a look from him stopped her in her tracks. Sylvie turned her head away, feigning
indifference.

The second door opened. Joseph came in. He
saw Maigret's back first of all, then the table, the glasses, the bottle, the open
handbag, the banknotes.

The inspector turned round slowly, and the
new arrival, quite motionless, merely muttered:

‘Damn!'

‘Close the door … Take a seat
…'

The waiter closed the door, but he
didn't sit. He scowled,
looked annoyed, but he didn't lose
his cool. Quite the opposite: he went up to Jaja and kissed her on the forehead.

‘Hello …'

Then he did the same to Sylvie, who
didn't raise her head.

‘What's going on?'

From that moment Maigret realized that he
was on the wrong track. But, as always in such situations, he pressed on even more
stubbornly as he felt himself become more entangled.

‘Where have you come
from?'

‘Guess!'

And he took a wallet from his pocket and
took out a small card, which he handed to Maigret. It was an identity card, the sort
given to foreigners resident in France.

‘I was late … I went to renew
it at the Préfecture …'

The card did indeed bear today's
date, the name: ‘Joseph Ambrosini, born Milan, profession: hotel
employee'.

‘Did you meet Harry
Brown?'

‘Me?'

‘Did you meet him for the first time
last Tuesday or Wednesday?'

Joseph looked at him, smiling, as if to
say: ‘What are you on about?'

‘Come on, Ambrosini. I assume you
will not deny that you are Sylvie's lover …'

‘Depends what you mean by that
… Something happened …'

‘No! No! You are what is
euphemistically known as her “protector” …'

Poor Jaja! She had never
been so unhappy in her life. The alcohol was skewing her view of the situation. Every
now and again she opened her mouth to try to make some conciliatory remark, and it was
obvious what she was trying to say: ‘Come on, everyone! Let's make up! Is it
really worth all this strife? Let's all have a drink together and
…'

As for Joseph, it was obvious that this
wasn't his first run-in with the police. He was guarded. He remained cool,
didn't overplay his hand.

‘Your information is incorrect
…'

‘And I suppose you don't know
anything about these twenty thousand francs?'

‘I guess Sylvie must have earned it
… She's a good-looking girl …'

‘Enough!'

Maigret was on his feet again. He was
pacing up and down in the small room. Sylvie was looking at her feet. Joseph, however,
never lowered his gaze.

‘Will you have something?'
asked Jaja, for whom this was just another opportunity to have a drink.

Maigret couldn't quite make his mind
up. He stood there for a while, in front of the alarm clock, which was showing a quarter
past six. When he turned round, he said:

‘Very well! You two will accompany
me … I am arresting you!'

Ambrosini didn't flinch, but merely
murmured, with the faintest hint of irony:

‘As you wish!'

The inspector put the twenty
thousand-franc notes in his pocket and handed Sylvie her hat and bag.

‘Do I need to cuff
you, or will you give me your word …'

‘I won't try to escape.
Let's go!'

Jaja was sobbing in Sylvie's arms.
The latter was trying to free herself. They had great trouble preventing the fat woman
from following the group into the street.

Lights were coming on. It was that mild
hour of the day again. They passed near the street where the Hôtel Beauséjour was. But
Joseph didn't glance in that direction.

At the police station the day shift was
clocking off. The secretary was in a hurry to get Maigret to sign the forms.

‘Lock them up separately … I
will probably come by this evening to see them …'

Sylvie had sat on a bench at the back of
the office. Joseph was rolling up a cigarette, which a uniformed officer snatched from
his hands.

And Maigret went off without saying a
word, turning only once towards Sylvie, who wasn't looking at him. He shrugged and
muttered:

‘Too bad!'

Wedged into his seat, he didn't
even notice that the bus had become crowded and an old woman was standing next to him.
Turned towards the window, watching the headlights of the cars as they swept past, he
smoked furiously. The old lady had to bend over and murmur:

‘Excuse me, sir …'

He looked like he was emerging from a
dream. He jumped to his feet, not knowing where to tip out his burning embers, and was
in such a kerfuffle that the young couple behind him burst out laughing.

At seven thirty he went
in through the revolving door of the Provençal and found Inspector Boutigues sitting in
an armchair in the lobby, where he was chatting to the manager.

‘Well?'

‘He's upstairs …'
replied Boutigues, who seemed troubled.

‘Did you tell him
…?'

‘Yes … He didn't seem
surprised … I was expecting more of a protest …'

The manager lingered a while to ask a
question, but as soon as he opened his mouth Maigret hurried to the lift.

‘Shall I wait for you?'
Boutigues called after him.

‘If you like …'

He knew well this mental state he had been
in for the last two or three hours! And he was in a rage, as he always was in such
situations! But that didn't mean he was incapable of reacting …

That confused feeling of making a blunder
… He had had that feeling since he had met Sylvie at the door of the hotel
…

And yet something was impelling him to
forge ahead!

Worse than that, he was charging forwards
all the more passionately since he wanted to persuade himself that he was right!

The lift went up smoothly on well-oiled
wheels. And Maigret repeated to himself the order he'd been given:

‘No dramas!'

That's why he was in Antibes! To
prevent any dramas, any scandal!

At any other time he
would have gone into Brown's suite without his pipe. Now he lit it deliberately.
He knocked on the door and went straight in. The scene was exactly the same as the day
before:

Brown pacing up and down, impeccably
dressed, instructing his secretary, answering the telephone and trying to dictate a
cable to Sydney.

‘May I see you for a
moment?'

No sign of anxiety! Here was a man
completely at ease in all the situations life threw at him. He didn't even falter
that morning while seeing his father off in such extraordinary circumstances. The
presence of the four women didn't seem to unsettle him in the slightest.

And that afternoon, coming out of that
shady hotel, he didn't seem at all bothered. He didn't even flinch.

He continued with his dictation. At the
same time he placed a box of cigars on the pedestal table opposite Maigret and pushed
the electric bell.

‘Take the telephone into the
bedroom, James.'

And to the butler who came in:

‘A whisky!'

How much of this attitude was posturing
and how much was real?

‘A good education,' mused
Maigret. ‘He must have gone to Oxford or Cambridge …'

It was an old grudge by a former student
of Collège Stanislas. One tempered by a certain admiration.

‘Take your typewriter with you,
please, mademoiselle.'

But no! Brown saw that the typist was
encumbered by her notepad and pencils. He took the heavy typewriter
himself and carried it into the adjoining room, then locked the door.

Then he waited for the butler to bring the
whisky and indicated that the drink should be served to Maigret.

Only when they were alone did he pull out
his wallet from his pocket and take from it a stamped piece of paper which he glanced at
before handing to the inspector.

‘Read this … Do you understand
English?'

‘Not very well.'

‘It's the piece of paper I
paid twenty thousand francs for this afternoon at the Hôtel Beauséjour.'

He sat down, a gesture of relaxation.

‘I should first of all explain a few
small things … Do you know Australia at all? … A shame … My father,
before he got married, owned a very large estate … as large as a French
d
é
partement
… After his marriage, he was the largest sheep
breeder in Australia, because my mother brought an estate of comparable size as her
dowry …'

Harry Brown spoke slowly, taking great
care not to use superfluous words, to be clear.

‘Are you a Protestant?'
Maigret asked.

‘My whole family are. And my
mother's too!'

He wanted to continue. Maigret interrupted
him:

‘Your father didn't study in
Europe, did he?'

‘No! It wasn't the done thing
at the time … He only came here after his marriage … Five years after, when
he already had three children …'

Too bad if Maigret had got it wrong! In
his mind's eye he saw all this as a set of images: he sketched out a mansion,
huge but austere, in the middle of the estate. And serious people who
resembled Presbyterian ministers.

William Brown, who took over from his
father, got married, had children and occupied himself purely with running the business
…

‘One day he had to come to Europe,
because of a trial …'

‘On his own?'

‘Yes, he came on his own!'

It was so simple! Paris! London! Berlin!
The Côte d'Azur! And Brown realized that a man with his colossal fortune in this
glittering new world, full of temptations, was like a king!

‘And he never returned home!'
Maigret sighed.

‘No! He wanted to …'

The trial dragged on. The people with whom
the sheep farmer was in contact took him out to places where he could have fun. He met
women there.

‘For two years he kept postponing
his return …'

‘Who was running the business back
home?'

‘My mother … And her brother
… We received letters from locals who said …'