Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (44 page)

“
Don’t you want to go back to bed?”

No, he did not. Decidedly
not. He hadn’t the courage.

“Then come to breakfast
in the kitchen. And Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas!... You’re
not angry?”

They were in the dining
room. He surveyed the silver tray on a corner of the table, the steaming cup of
coffee, the golden-brown
croissants.
He put down his pipe and ate a
croissant
to please his wife, but he remained standing, looking out the window.

“It’s snowing.”

It wasn’t real snow. It
was a fine white dust sifting down from the sky, but it reminded Maigret that
when he was a small boy he used to stick out his tongue to lick up a few of the
tiny flakes.

His gaze focused on the
entrance to the building across the street, next door to the warehouse. Two
women had just come out, both bareheaded. One of them, a blonde of about 30,
had thrown a coat over her shoulders without stopping to slip her arms into the
sleeves. The other, a brunette, older and thinner, was hugging a shawl.

The blonde seemed to
hesitate, ready to turn back. Her slim little companion was insistent and
Maigret had the impression that she was pointing up toward his window. The
appearance of the concierge in the doorway behind them seemed to tip the scales
in favor of the little brunette. The blonde looked back apprehensively, then
crossed the street.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing... two women....”

“What are they doing?”

“I think they’re coming
here.”

The two women had stopped
in the middle of the street and were looking up in the direction of the Maigret
apartment.

“I hope they’re not
coming here to bother you on Christmas Day. My housework’s not even done.” Nobody
would have guessed it. There wasn’t a speck of dust on any of the polished
furniture. “Are you sure they’re coming here?”

“We’ll soon find out.”

To be on the safe side,
he went to comb his hair, brush his teeth, and splash a little water on his
face. He was still in his room, relighting his pipe, when he heard the
doorbell. Mme. Maigret was evidently putting up a strong hedgehog defense, for
it was some time before she came for him.

“They insist on speaking
to you,” she whispered. “They claim it’s very important and they need advice. I
know one of them.”

“Which one?”

“The skinny little one, Mlle.
Doncoeur. She lives across the street on the same floor as ours. She’s a very
nice person and she does embroidery for a firm in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. I
sometimes wonder if she isn’t in love with you.”

“Why?”

“Because she works near
the window, and when you leave the house in the morning she sometimes gets up
to watch you go down the street.”

“How old is she?”

“Forty-five to fifty.
Aren’t you getting dressed?”

Doesn’t a man have the
right to lounge in his dressing gown, even if people come to bother him at 8:30
on Christmas morning? Well, he’d compromise. He’d put his trousers on
underneath the robe.

The two women were
standing when he walked into the dining room.

“Excuse me, mesdames...”

Perhaps Mme. Maigret was
right. Mlle. Doncoeur did not blush; she paled, smiled, lost her smile, smiled
again. She opened her mouth to speak but said nothing.

The blonde, on the other
hand, was perfectly composed. She said with a touch of humor: “Coming here wasn’t
my idea.”

“Would you sit down,
please?”

Maigret noticed that the
blonde was wearing a house dress under her coat and that her legs were bare. Mlle.
Doncoeur was dressed as though for church.

“You perhaps wonder at
our boldness in coming to you like this,” Mlle. Doncoeur said finally, choosing
her words carefully. “Like everyone in the neighborhood, we are honored to have
such a distinguished neighbor....” She paused, blushed, and stared at the tray.
“We’re keeping you from your breakfast.”

“I’ve finished. I’m at
your service.”

“Something happened in
our building last night, or rather this morning, which was so unusual that I
felt it was our duty to speak to you about it immediately. Madame Martin did
not want to disturb you, but I told her—”

“You also live across the
street, Madame Martin?”

“Yes, Monsieur.” Madame
Martin was obviously unhappy at being forced to take this step. Mlle. Doncoeur,
however, was now fully wound up.

“We live on the same
floor, just across from your windows.” She blushed again, as if she were making
a confession. “Monsieur Martin is often out of town, which is natural enough
since he is a traveling salesman. For the past two months their little girl has
been in bed, as a result of a silly accident....”

Maigret turned politely
to the blonde. “You have a daughter?”

“Well, not a daughter
exactly. She’s our niece. Her mother died two years ago and she’s been living
with us ever since. The girl broke her leg on the stairs. She should have been
up and about after six weeks, but there were complications.”

“Your husband is on the
road at present?”

“He should be in Bergerac.”

“I’m listening, Mlle.
Doncoeur.”

Mme. Maigret had detoured
through the bathroom to regain the kitchen. The clatter of pots and pans had
resumed. Maigret stared through the window at the leaden sky.

“I got up early this
morning as usual,” said Mlle. Doncoeur, “to go to first mass.”

“And you did go to
church?”

“Yes. I stayed for three
masses. I got home about 7:30 and prepared my breakfast. You may have seen the
light in my window.

Maigret’s gesture
indicated he had not been watching.

“I was in a hurry to take
a few goodies to Colette. It’s very sad for a child to spend Christmas in bed.
Colette is Madame Martin’s niece.”

“How old is she?”

“Seven. Isn’t that right,
Madame Martin?”

“She’ll be seven in
January.”

“So at 8 o’clock I
knocked at the door of their apartment—”

“I wasn’t up,” the blonde
interrupted. “I sometimes sleep rather late.”

“As I was saying, I
knocked. Madame Martin kept me waiting for a moment while she slipped on her négligée.
I had my arms full, and I asked if I could take my presents in to Colette.”

Maigret noted that the
blonde was making a mental inventory of the apartment, stopping occasionally to
dart a sharp, suspicious glance in his direction.

“We opened the door to
her room together....”

“The child has a room of
her own?”

“Yes. There are two
bedrooms in the apartment, a dressing room, a kitchen, and a dining room. But I
must tell you—No, I’m getting ahead of myself. We had just opened the door and
since the room was dark, Madame Martin had switched on the light...”

“Colette was awake?”

“Yes. It was easy to see
she’d been awake for some time, waiting. You know how children are on Christmas
morning. If she could use her legs, she would certainly have got up long since
to see what Father Christmas had brought her. Perhaps another child would have
called out. But Colette is already a little lady. She’s much older than her
age. She thinks a lot.”

Now Madame Martin was
looking out the window. Maigret tried to guess which apartment was hers. It
must be the last one to the right, the one with the two lighted windows.

“I wished her a Merry
Christmas,” Mlle. Doncoeur continued. “I said to her, and these were my exact
words, ‘Darling, look what Father Christmas left in my apartment for you.’”

Madame Martin was
clasping and unclasping her fingers.

“And do you know what she
answered me, without even looking to see what I’d brought? They were only
trifles, anyhow. She said, ‘I saw him.’

‘Whom did you see?’

‘Father Christmas.’

‘When did you see him?’ I
asked. ‘Where?’

‘Right here, last night.
He came to my room.’”

“That’s exactly what she said,
isn’t it, Madame Martin? With any other child, we would have smiled. But as I
told you, Colette is already a little lady. She doesn’t joke. I said, ‘How
could you see him, since it was dark?’

‘He had a light.’

‘You mean he turned on
the electricity?’

‘No. He had a flashlight.
Look, Mama Loraine.’”

“I must tell you that the
little girl calls Madame Martin ‘Mama,’ which is natural enough, since her own
mother is dead and Madame Martin has been taking her place.”

The monologue had become
a confused buzzing in Maigret’s ears. He had not drunk his second cup of coffee
and his pipe had gone out. He asked without conviction: “Did she really see
someone?”

“Yes, Monsieur l’lnspecteur.
And that’s why I insisted that Madame Martin come to speak to you. Colette did
see someone and she proved it to us. With a sly little smile she threw back the
bedsheet and showed us a magnificent doll... a beautiful big doll she was
cuddling and which I swear was not in the house yesterday.”

“You didn’t give your
niece a doll, Madame Martin?”

“I was going to give her
one, but mine was not nearly as nice. I got it yesterday afternoon at the
Galeries, and I was holding it behind me this morning when we came into her
room.”

“In other words, someone
did
come into your apartment last night.”

“That’s not all,” said Mlle.
Doncoeur quickly; she was not to be stopped. “Colette never tells lies. She’s
not a child who imagines things. And when we questioned her, she said the man
was certainly Father Christmas because he wore a white beard and a bright red
coat.”

“At what time did she
wake up?”

“She doesn’t
know—sometime during the night. She opened her eyes because she thought she saw
a light. And there was a light, shining on the floor near the fireplace.”

“I can’t understand it,” sighed
Madame Martin. “Unless my husband has some explanation...”

But Mlle. Doncoeur was
not to be diverted from her story. It was obvious that she was the one who had
questioned the child, just as she was the one who had thought of Maigret. She
resumed:

“Colette said, ‘Father
Christmas was squatting on the floor, and he was bending over, as though he
were working at something.’”

“She wasn’t frightened?”

“No. She just watched
him. This morning she told us he was busy making a hole in the floor. She
thought he wanted to go through the floor to visit the people downstairs—that’s
the Delormes who have a little boy of three—because the chimney was too narrow.
The man must have sensed she was watching him, because he got up, came over to
the bed, and gave Colette the big doll. Then he put his finger to his lips.”

“Did she see him leave?”

“Yes.”

“Through the floor?”

“No, by the door.”

“Into what room does this
door open?”

“Directly into the
outside hall. There is another door that opens into the apartment, but the hall
door is like a private entrance because the room used to be rented separately.”

“Wasn’t the door locked?”

“Of course,” Madame
Martin intervened. “I wouldn’t let the child sleep in a room that wasn’t locked
from the outside.”

“Then the door was
forced?”

“Probably. I don’t know. Mlle.
Doncoeur immediately suggested we come to see you.”

“Did you find a hole in
the floor?”

Madame Martin shrugged
wearily, but Mlle. Doncoeur answered for her.