Maigret in New York by Georges Simenon Page A

honeycomb cells,
that J and J had settled in after arriving in New York; here that Little John, now living in a
luxurious suite at the St Regis, had spent months, perhaps years.
    It would have been hard to concentrate more human
lives in so little space, yet that space was without warmth, a place where more than anywhere
else one had the feeling of hopeless isolation.
    The milk bottles proved it. On the fourth floor,
Maigret stopped short in front of a door, when he
saw eight untouched bottles of milk lined up on the straw mat outside it.
    He was about to question the boy who had decided
to be his benevolent guide when a man of about fifty emerged from the room next door.
    ‘Do you know who lives here?’
    The man shrugged without answering, as if to say
it was no concern of his.
    ‘You don’t know if there’s anyone in there?’
    ‘How would you expect me to know?’
    ‘Is it a man, a woman?’
    ‘A man, I think.’
    ‘Old?’
    ‘Depends on what you mean by that. Maybe my age
… I don’t know. He only moved in a month ago.’
    Nobody cared what nationality he was or where he
came from, and his neighbour, not in the least curious about the bottles of milk, headed down
the stairs, only to look back with a frown at this odd visitor asking bizarre questions. Then he
went on his way.
    Had the tenant of this room gone off on a trip
but forgotten to tell the milkman? It was possible. But those who live in such barracks are poor
people for whom a penny is a penny. Was he behind that door, perhaps? Living or dead, sick or
dying, he could stay there a long time before anyone thought to worry about him.
    Even if the tenant had shouted, called for help,
would anyone have bothered to check?
    A small boy, somewhere, was learning to play the
violin.
It was almost excruciating to hear the same
phrase clumsily and endlessly repeated, to imagine the awkward bowing unable to draw from the
instrument anything but that wretched noise.
    Top floor.
    ‘Excuse me, madame: do you know anyone in the
house who …’
    He heard about an old woman whom no one knew,
supposedly a long-time tenant there and who had died two months earlier while climbing the
stairs with her shopping bag. But she might not have lived there for thirty years …
    In the end it became annoying to be heralded by
this eager kid, who kept scrutinizing him, as if trying to solve the mystery of the stranger who
had turned up unexpectedly in his universe.
    Enough! Maigret could go back downstairs. He
stopped to relight his pipe and continued to sniff the atmosphere around him, imagining a
slender, blond young man climbing those same stairs with a violin case under his arm; another
young man, with already thinning hair, was playing the clarinet near a window, looking out at
the street.
    ‘Hello!’
    Maigret scowled instantly. No doubt startled by
that reaction, the usually subtly smiling O’Brien – for it was the redhead climbing the stairs
to find the inspector – burst into hearty laughter.
    The inspector was masking his feelings, in a way,
and grumbled awkwardly, ‘I thought you weren’t having anything to do with this business.’
    ‘Who says I am?’
    ‘Are you going to tell me you’ve come to visit
relatives?’
    ‘First off, that’s not in the least impossible,
because we all have all kinds of relatives.’
    He was in a good mood. Had he figured out what
Maigret had been seeking there? He had realized, in any case, that his French colleague was
experiencing certain emotions that morning that had touched him in turn, and there was a
friendlier look in his eyes than usual.
    ‘I’m not here to have a battle of wits. It’s you
I’m looking for. Let’s go outside, shall we?’
    Maigret had already gone down one floor when he
changed his mind and went back up a few steps to give a small coin to the little boy, who looked
at it without thinking to say thank you.
    ‘Are you beginning to understand New York? I bet
you’ve learned more about it this morning