The Hotel Majestic by Georges Simenon

still didn’t understand. And Maigret said modestly, effacing himself as much as his massive frame would allow: “Harry-the-Squint has had three sentences for house-breaking . . . He’s an ex-bricklayer whose speciality is tunnelling through walls . . .”
    And, with his hand on the door: “Didn’t the burglars in the Rue Saint-Martin get in by the basement by tunnelling through two walls? . . . Goodbye, sir . . .”
    He was in a bad mood, all the same. That letter from Charlotte . . . And looking at him, you would have sworn that it wasn’t only anger, but that he was also a little sad.
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    He could have sent an inspector. But would an inspector have been able to get the feel of the house as well as he could?
    A large, new, luxury building, painted white and with a wrought-iron gateway, in the Avenue de Madrid, by the Bois de Boulogne. The concierge’s lodge to the right of the hall, with a glass door, furnished like a proper reception room. Three or four women dozing on chairs. Visiting cards on a tray. Another woman, whose eyes were red, who opened the door and asked: “What do you want?”
    The door of a further room was open and there was a corpse lying on the bed, hands folded, a rosary clasped in the fingers, with two candles fluttering in the dim light and box-wood in a bowl of holy water.
    They spoke in low tones. Blew their noses. Walked on tiptoe. Maigret made the sign of the cross, sprinkled a little holy water over the body, and stood there for a minute silently contemplating the dead man’s nose, which the candle threw into strange relief.
    â€œIt’s terrible, superintendent . . . Such a good man, without an enemy in the world!”
    Above the bed, in an oval frame, a large photograph of Justin Colleboeuf, in his sergeant-major’s uniform, taken at the time when he still had a large moustache. A croix de guerre with three palms and the military medal were fixed to the frame.
    â€œHe was in the regular army, superintendent . . . When he got to retiring age, he didn’t know what to do to keep himself occupied and insisted on doing work of some kind . . . He was nightwatchman at a club in the Boulevard Haussmann for a while . . . Then someone suggested the job of night porter at the Majestic to him, and he took that . . . You see he was someone who needed very little sleep . . . At the barracks he used to get up nearly every night to go the rounds . . .”
    Her neighbours, or possibly relations, nodded sympathetically.
    â€œWhat did he do in the daytime?” Maigret asked.
    â€œHe got back at quarter past seven in the morning, just in time to put out the dustbins for me, because he didn’t let me do any of the heavy work . . . Then he stood in the doorway and had a pipe while he waited for the postman, and had a little chat with him . . . The postman had been in the same regiment as my husband, you see . . . Then he went to bed till midday . . . That was all the sleep he needed . . . When he’d had lunch, he walked across the Bois de Boulogne to the Champs-Élysées . . . Sometimes he went into the Majestic to say hello to his colleague on duty here during the day . . . Then he had his usual in the little bar in the Rue de Ponthieu and got back at six o’clock, and left again at seven to go on duty at the hotel . . . He was so regular in his habits that people round here could set their clocks by the time when they saw him go by . . .”
    â€œIs it a long time since he gave up wearing a moustache?”
    â€œHe shaved it off when he left the army . . . I thought he looked very funny without it . . . it made him seem less important . . . He even looked smaller somehow . . .”
    Maigret inclined his head once more in the direction of the dead man and crept away on tiptoe.
    He wasn’t far from Saint-Cloud. He was impatient to get there and yet at the same time, for some unknown reason, he was stalling for time.