Free Maigret's Dead Man by Georges Simenon Page B

counter.
    â€˜Picon-grenadine? Export-cassis?’
    â€˜An export.’
    And as if he were trying to identify with the
dead bar-owner, Maigret had served himself a Suze.
    â€˜Who do you reckon could to do the
job?’
    â€˜There’s Chevrier. His parents used
to run a hotel at Moret-sur-Loing, and he helped them until he was called up for his military
service.’
    â€˜Have a word with him this evening so he
can makearrangements. Cheers! He’ll have to find a woman who can
cook.’
    â€˜He’ll manage.’
    â€˜Another?’
    â€˜No thanks. I’d better be
off.’
    â€˜Send Moers to me here at once. Tell him to
bring his bag of tricks.’
    Maigret walked him to the door, glanced out
briefly at the now deserted riverbank, the barrels lined up in rows and the barges moored for
the night.
    It was a small bar no different from many others
you find not in Paris itself but in the suburbs, the typical small café which features in
postcards or cheap prints. The house stood on a corner. It had one storey, a red-tile roof and
yellow walls on which was traced in large brown letters: ‘Au Petit Albert’. And on
each side, with amateurish flourishes: ‘Wines – All Day Snacks’.
    In the yard at the back, under an awning, Maigret
had found half barrels painted green and containing shrubs which in summer would be put outside
on the pavement with two or three tables to make a terrace.
    He had now made himself at home in the empty
building. Since no fires had been lit for several days, the air was cold and damp. Several times
he had cast dubious glances at the large stove in the middle of the bar, which had a chimney
pipe that rose black and gleaming into the air before disappearing through a wall.
    Why not after all, since there was an almost full
bucket of coal?
    Under the same awning at the back he found
kindlingnext to a small axe and a chopping block. There were some old
newspapers in one corner of the kitchen.
    A few minutes later the fire was roaring in the
stove, and the inspector was standing in front of it with his feet firmly planted and his hands
behind his back, in that characteristic pose.
    Basically, Lucas’ old woman was not as
crazy as all that. They had gone to her house. In the taxi on the way, she had talked volubly
all the time, but now and then she glanced at them slyly to gauge the effect she was
producing.
    Her house was less than a hundred metres away. It
was small, just two storeys, what they call a detached house with a small garden. Maigret had
wondered how, given the unalterable fact that her house was on the same side of the street, she
had been able to see what was going on some considerable distance along her pavement, especially
after night had fallen.
    â€˜You didn’t stay out on the pavement
all that time?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Nor on your doorstep?’
    â€˜I was in my house.’
    She was right. The front room, which was
amazingly neat and clean, had not only windows that gave on to the street but a side window
which faced towards the Petit Albert and thus offered a view of a large part of the
street
.
Since there were no shutters, it was only natural that the headlights of a
parked car should have attracted the attention of the old lady.
    â€˜Were you alone here at the
time?’
    â€˜Madame Chauffier was with me.’
    A midwife who lived in a
street a little further along. She had been checked out. It was true. Contrary to what might
have been expected by anyone who had seen the old woman, the inside of the house had the same
domestic look as the houses of all spinsters. There was none of the clutter with which
fortune-tellers normally surround themselves. On the contrary, the plain deal furniture came
straight from Boulevard Barbès, and there was light-brown linoleum on the floor,
    â€˜It was bound to happen,’ she said.
‘Have you seen what’s written above the front of his café?