Félicie by Georges Simenon Page B

relieved to learn that it was not visiting time at Beaujon
Hospital because, looking the way she did, she would have caused a sensation. He did, however,
persuade the duty doctor to allow her to look into the room where Jacques Pétillon was
isolated. It was at the end of a long corridor with painted walls, full of stale smells, with
open doors through which they saw beds, cheerless faces and whiteness, far too much whiteness
which in those surroundings became the colour of sickness.
    They were made to wait for some time.
Félicie remained standing with her cargo throughout. A nurse came eventually, and he gave a
start.
    â€˜Give me all that. It will come in useful
for some child … Sh! Mind, no talking. Don’t make a noise …’
    She opened the door no more than a crack, allowed
Félicie only a quick glance into the cubicle shrouded in semi-darkness, where Pétillon
lay stretched out like a corpse.
    When the door closed, Félicie felt obliged
to say:
    â€˜You will save him, won’t you?
Please, please. Do everything you can to save him …’
    â€˜But mademoiselle …’
    â€˜Don’t think of the expense …
Here …’
    Maigret did not laugh, he did not even smile when
he saw her open her bag and take out a thousand-franc note folded up small and give it to the
nurse.
    â€˜If it’s a matter of money, no matter
how much …’
    From that point on, Maigret
stopped making fun of her, and yet she had never been as ridiculous. There was more. As they
walked back along the corridor with Félicie’s black veil billowing opulently, a child
stepped into her path. She leaned down, intending to hug the sick toddler and sighed:
    â€˜Poor darling!’
    Are we not more aware of the sufferings of others
when we are suffering ourselves? A few feet away stood a young, platinum-haired nurse
outrageously squeezed into a uniform which showed every curve. The nurse looked up, almost burst
out laughing and called one of her colleagues who was in one of the side wards so that she could
see the spectacle too.
    â€˜You, mademoiselle, are a birdbrain!’
snapped Maigret.
    And he continued to escort Félicie as
solemnly as if he had been one of the family. She had heard the put-down and was grateful. On
the pavement outside, in the sunshine that filled the street, she seemed to be less tense. She
found being with him very natural, and he used the moment to murmur:
    â€˜You know the whole story, don’t
you?’
    She did not deny it. She looked elsewhere. Her
way of admitting it.
    â€˜Come on …’
    It was now a little before noon. Maigret decided
to turn right towards the luminous, noisy bustle of Place des Ternes, and she followed,
tottering along on heels which were too high.
    â€˜But I’m not going to tell you
anything,’ she breathed after they had gone a few steps.
    â€˜I know
…’
    He knew a great deal now. He did not yet know who
had killed old Lapie. He did not know the name of the man who shot at the saxophone player the
night before, but it would all come to him in its own good time.
    Above all, he knew that Félicie … How
could he put it? In the train, for example, the few passengers who had seen her enfolded in
theatrical mourning had thought she was ridiculous; in the hospital, that much too curvaceous
nurse had not been able to conceal her amusement; the owner of the dance-hall at Poissy had
called her the Parakeet … others called her the Princess, Lapie had come up with the label
Cockatoo, and for some time now even Maigret’s back had been put up by her childish antics
…
    Even now people turned and stared at the odd
couple they formed, and when Maigret opened the door of a small neighbourhood restaurant, which
was still empty at this time of day, he caught the waiter winking at the proprietress, who was
sitting at the till.
    The truth is that Maigret had located the simple
human heartbeat