Maigret in New York by Georges Simenon Page B

than you would have in a month at the St Regis or the
Waldorf.’
    They had stopped automatically on the front step,
and were both looking at the shop across the street – and at the tailor, old Angelino’s son,
working at his steam press, because the poor do not have time to dwell on their grief.
    A car marked with the police shield was parked a
few metres away.
    ‘I dropped by your hotel. When they told me you’d
left early, I thought I’d find you here. What I didn’t know was that I’d have to plod up to the
fifth floor.’
    One tiny little jab of irony, an allusion to a
certain sensibility – perhaps a certain sentimental streak – that he’d just discovered in this
stocky French inspector.
    ‘If
you had concierges, as we do, I wouldn’t have had to climb all those stairs.’
    ‘You think you wouldn’t have done that
anyway?’
    They got into the car.
    ‘Where are we going?’
    ‘Wherever you want. As of now, it doesn’t matter
any more. I’ll simply drop you off in a more central neighbourhood, less depressing for your
mood.’
    He lit a pipe. The driver pulled away.
    ‘I have some bad news for you, my dear
inspector.’
    Why, in that case, was his voice full of sweet
satisfaction?
    ‘Jean Maura has been found.’
    Maigret turned with a frown and stared at
him.
    ‘You don’t mean that it’s your men who
…’
    ‘Come, now! Don’t be jealous.’
    ‘It isn’t jealousy, but …’
    ‘But?’
    ‘That wouldn’t fit with the rest,’ he said more
softly, as if to himself. ‘No, there’s something wrong there.’
    ‘Well, well!’
    ‘What’s so surprising?’
    ‘Nothing. Tell me what you think.’
    ‘I don’t think. But if Jean Maura has reappeared,
if he’s alive …’
    O’Brien nodded in affirmation.
    ‘I wager they simply found him up in the St Regis
with his father and MacGill.’
    ‘Bravo, Maigret! That’s exactly what happened. In
spite of the personal freedom I spoke to you about, perhaps exaggerating a tad to tease you, we
do have a few small
ways of finding things out,
especially in a hotel like the St Regis. Well, this morning, an extra breakfast was ordered for
Little John’s apartment. Jean Maura was there, settled in the large bedroom adjoining his
father’s bedroom office.’
    ‘He wasn’t questioned?’
    ‘You’re forgetting that we have no reason to
question him. No law, federal or otherwise, requires passengers disembarking from a ship to dash
headlong into their father’s arms, and this father never filed a complaint or notified the
police of his son’s disappearance.’
    ‘One question.’
    ‘If it’s a discreet one.’
    ‘Why does Little John – who pays for an elegant
suite at the St Regis, as you say, a four- or five-room apartment – personally occupy what we’d
call a maid’s room and work at a plain pine table, while his secretary sits enthroned behind a
fancy mahogany desk?’
    ‘Does it really surprise you?’
    ‘A bit.’
    ‘Here, you see, it doesn’t surprise anyone, no
more than it does to know that a certain millionaire’s son insists on living in the Bronx, which
we are now leaving, and on taking the subway every day to his office, when he could easily have
at his disposal as many luxury cars as he wanted.
    ‘That detail you mentioned about Little John is
well known. It’s part of his legend. Every successful man has a legend, and his works very well;
the popular press publications refer to it often.
    ‘The man who has become rich and powerful recreates, at the St Regis, the room of his youthful
beginnings and lives there simply, disdaining the luxury of the other rooms.
    ‘As for knowing whether Little John is sincere or
managing his public relations, that is a different question.’
    For some reason Maigret found himself responding
without hesitation, ‘He is sincere.’
    ‘Ah!’
    Then they were silent for a while.
    ‘Perhaps you would like to learn the pedigree of
MacGill, of whom you do not seem inordinately fond? I