Free Inspector Cadaver by Georges Simenon Page B

‘There are people who spend their
whole lives in one of those streets.’
    Testing the ground with his foot, he was now
making his way along the canal towards the next lighthouse in sight, the light shining
at the Nauds’. Looking out from trains, oncold nights, or in
driving rain, he had seen other equally remote houses. A yellow rectangle of light is
the only sign that they exist. Your imagination races. You speculate.
    And now here he was, entering the realm of
one of those lights. He climbed the steps and, as he looked for the bell, he saw the
door wasn’t shut. He went into the hall, purposely dragging his feet to announce
his presence, but that wasn’t enough to interrupt the monotonous monologue that he
could hear in the drawing room to his left. He took off his wet coat and hat, wiped his
feet on the doormat and knocked.
    ‘Come in. Geneviève, open the
door …’
    He had already opened it. In the drawing
room, where only one of the lamps had been turned on, he found Madame Naud sewing by the
fireplace, a very old woman sitting opposite her, and a young girl who was coming
towards him.
    ‘I’m sorry to disturb you
…’
    The girl looked at him anxiously, not
knowing whether he was going to betray her. He merely bowed to her.
    ‘My daughter, inspector. She has been
so keen to meet you since she’s started feeling better. Let me introduce you to my
mother …’
    So this was Clementine Bréjon, née
La Noue, whom everyone familiarly called Tine. Small and brisk, with a grimacing face
reminiscent of a bust of Voltaire, she stood up and asked in an odd falsetto:
    ‘Well, inspector, have you had your
fill of turning our poor Saint-Aubin on its head? Ten times – no, more! – I
saw you march up and down, and this afternoon I noticedthat you had
gained a recruit … Do you know who’s been acting as the inspector’s
mahout, Louise?’
    Was ‘mahout’ chosen expressly to
emphasize the disparity between the thin Louis and the elephantine Maigret?
    Louise Naud, who had inherited very little
of her mother’s briskness, and whose face was much longer and paler, remained bent
over her sewing, nodding and giving the occasional wan smile to show she was paying
attention.
    ‘Fillou’s son. It was bound to
happen. The boy must have lain in wait for him. I daresay he’s been regaling you
with some fine stories, inspector?’
    ‘Not at all, madame. He simply took me
to one person or other whom I was keen to see and who would otherwise have been
difficult to find. The townspeople on the whole are not particularly talkative
…’
    The girl had sat down and was staring at
Maigret as if hypnotized by him. Madame Naud occasionally looked up from her handiwork
and cast a furtive glance at her daughter.
    The drawing room was just as it had been the
day before, all the objects were in their appointed place, a heavy peace prevailed, and
yet the grandmother’s presence was the only normal thing about it.
    ‘I am an old woman, inspector, so I
can remember another affair like this one, only much more serious, which almost had
Saint-Aubin up in arms. In those days, there was a clog factory that employed fifty men
and women. It was when strikes were breaking out constantly all over France and the
workers would process through the streets over the least little thing …’
    Madame Naud had raised her
head to listen. Maigret saw an expression of barely concealed anxiety on her thin face,
which looked exactly like Examining Magistrate Bréjon’s.
    ‘One of the workers at the clog
factory was called Fillou. He wasn’t a bad fellow but he liked a drink and when he
had been drinking he fancied himself as a public speaker. What did really happen? Well,
one day he went in to see his boss with some complaint or other. Not long afterwards,
the door opened and Fillou came flying out, as if he had been shot by a catapult,
staggered backwards for several metres and then fell into the canal.’
    ‘Was he the father of