Free Cécile is Dead by Georges Simenon Page A

them, cars
     were driving along the Route Nationale 20. Inside the church, the priest was giving the
     last congregation his blessing at high speed, and the double doors opened for the next
     funeral service.
    â€˜Et ne nos inducas in tentationem
     …’
    The master of
     ceremonies, in his cocked hat, was walking up and down his procession, herding them like
     a sheepdog.
    â€˜Sed libera nos a malo …’
    â€˜Amen!’
    The new party of mourners went into the
     church before the last party had finished going out. There was room for only one of the
     coffins, Juliette Boynet’s, under the catafalque. Cécile’s was placed on the
     paving stones behind it, and the priest went on chanting.
    â€˜Libera nos Domine …’
    Shoes shuffled on the floor, chairs were
     pushed back. Fresh air flooded in through the open door, beyond which the sunny street
     could be seen. Gérard, in the front row, kept turning his head. Was it Maigret he was
     looking for? Charles Dandurand’s companions were acting very correctly, putting
     100-franc notes in the collection. Berthe, in her cherry-red hat, was keeping an eye on
     her brother as if she were afraid he would do something stupid.
    â€˜Pater noster …’
    Everyone jumped, because a news agency
     photographer had had no compunction about using a magnesium flash.
    Maigret, buttoned up in his big overcoat
     with its velvet collar, his shoulder against a stone pillar, was moving his lips as if
     in prayer. Perhaps he was indeed praying for poor Cécile, who had waited so long for him
     in the Aquarium at the police headquarters on Quai des Orfèvres?
    For the last three days he had been inclined
     to snap at anyone who ventured to speak to him as he walked along
the corridor of the Police Judiciaire building, a bulky,
     almost threatening figure, mulling over angry thoughts as he chewed the stem of his
     pipe.
    â€˜Is something the matter?’ the
     commissioner had asked him the day before.
    His only reply had been a glance so heavy
     with meaning that it signified more than any verbal response.
    â€˜Don’t worry, old friend,’
     said his boss. ‘Once you begin to unravel the case …’
    The stained glass windows showing the four
     evangelists were set aflame by the sunlight, and Maigret, for no real reason, fixed his
     gaze on St Luke in particular, whom the artist had shown with a brown, square-cut
     beard.
    â€˜Et ne nos inducas in tentationem
     …’
    Was another party of mourners waiting
     outside, making the priest rattle off his absolution so fast? The horse that
     wasn’t used to funeral ceremonies kept whinnying, and the sound echoed under the
     vaulted roof like a cheerful call to life.
    Why, without telling her aunt, had Cécile
     ordered a second key to the door of the apartment two weeks earlier? And had she given
     that key to her brother? Because if so …
    He could still see her, sitting motionless
     in the waiting room, her handbag on her lap, capable of staying there for hours in the
     same position.
    Maigret remembered saying, ‘Either she
     followed someone she knew, someone she trusted, or she was made to think that she was
     being taken to see me …’
    Her brother?
    Troubled, the
     inspector looked away from Gérard, who was staring at him, and whom Berthe was trying to
     calm down with her hand on his arm.
    â€˜This way, gentlemen. Hurry up,
     please.’
    There was a great commotion at the cemetery
     too. The mourners had soon crossed the part of it full of family vaults and stone tombs.
     They reached the new plots, clay rectangles with wooden crosses above them. The hearses
     could get no further here. The two coffins were carried on biers, and had to go in
     Indian file along the narrow paths.
    â€˜When may I see you,
     inspector?’
    â€˜Where are you staying?’
    â€˜At the Hôtel du Centre, on Boulevard
     Montparnasse.’
    It was