The Hotel Majestic Read Online Free Page B

fairly steep incline, and Prosper Donge got off his bike.
    â€œAre you coming any farther?” he asked.
    â€œIf you don’t mind. After spending a day in the hotel basement, I can appreciate even more your desire to live in the country . . . Do you do any gardening?”
    â€œA little . . .”
    â€œFlowers?”
    â€œFlowers and vegetables . . .”
    Now they were going up a badly surfaced, badly lit street, pushing their bicycles; their breath came more quickly, and they didn’t talk much.
    â€œDo you know what I discovered while I was nosing about in the basement and talking to everyone I could see? That three people, at least, slept in the hotel basement last night. First, Jean Ramuel . . . It appears . . . it’s rather amusing . . . it appears that he has an impossibly difficult mistress and that she periodically shuts him out of the house . . . For the last three or four days she’s done it again and he’s been sleeping at the Majestic . . . Does the manager know?”
    â€œIt’s not officially allowed, but he turns a blind eye . . .”
    â€œThe professional dancing-partner slept there too . . . the one you call Zebio . . . A strange bloke, isn’t he? To look at, he seems too good to be true . . . He’s called Eusebio Fualdès on the studio portraits in the grill-room . . . Then, when you read his identity papers you discover that he was born in Lille, in spite of his dark skin, and that his real name is Edgar Fagonet . . . There was a dance, yesterday evening, in honour of a filmstar . . . He was there until half past three in the morning . . . It seems that he’s so poor that he decided to sleep at the hotel rather than get a taxi . . .”
    Prosper Donge had stopped, near a lamppost, and stood there, his face scarlet, his expression anxious.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Maigret asked.
    â€œI’m there . . . I . . .”
    Light filtered under the door of a little detached house of millstone grit.
    â€œWould it be a great nuisance if I came in for a moment?”
    Maigret could have sworn that the poor great oaf’s legs were trembling, that his throat was constricted and that he felt ready to faint. He finally managed to stutter: “If you like . . .”
    He opened the door with his key, pushed his bike into the hall, and announced, in what was probably his usual way: “It’s me!”
    There was a glass door at the end of the passage, leading to the kitchen; the light was on. Donge went in.
    â€œThis is . . .”
    Charlotte was sitting by the stove, with her feet on the hob, and was sewing a shrimp-pink silk petticoat, lolling in her chair.
    She looked embarrassed, took her feet off the stove and tried to find her slippers under the chair.
    â€œOh! There’s someone with you . . . Please excuse me, monsieur . . .”
    There was a cup with some dregs of coffee on the table, and a plate with some cake crumbs.
    â€œCome in . . . Sit down . . . Prosper so rarely brings anyone home . . .”
    It was hot. The wireless—a smart new one—was on. Charlotte was in her dressing-gown, with her stockings rolled down below the knee.
    â€œA superintendent? What’s going on?” she said anxiously, when Donge introduced Maigret.
    â€œNothing, madame . . . I happened to be working at the Majestic today, and I met your husband there . . .”
    At the word husband, she looked at Prosper and burst out laughing.
    â€œDid he tell you we were married?”
    â€œI imagined . . .”
    â€œNo, no! . . . Sit down . . . We’re just living together . . . I think we’re really more like friends than anything else . . . Aren’t we, Prosper? . . . We’ve known each other so long! . . . Mind you, if I wanted him to marry me . . . But as I always say to him, what difference would it make? . . . Everyone who knows me knows I was a dancer, and then a nightclub hostess, on the Riviera . . . And that