Free Friend of Madame Maigret by Georges Simenon

the Palais de Justice.
    With his hunched back, his flabby figure, Steuvels was typical of those intellectual craftsmen who read everything that comes their way and have no consuming interest outside their work.
    One of the guards handed him a lighted cigarette, and he thanked him, took a few drags on it with satisfaction, filling his lungs with air and tobacco.
    He must have been easy to handle, because they were treating him kindly, they gave him time to stretch his legs before taking him over to the building, and he for his part seemed not to bear his warders any ill will, showed no rancour, no hysteria.
    There was a slight basis of truth in Maître Liotard’s interview. Normally Maigret himself would have followed his investigation through to the end before turning the man over to the examining magistrate.
    If it had not been for the lawyer, who had appeared on the scene as soon as the first interrogation was over, Maigret would have seen Steuvels several more times, which would have given him a chance to study him.
    He hardly knew him, having been alone with the bookbinder only for ten or twelve hours, at a time when he still knew nothing about him or about the case.
    Rarely had he been confronted with a prisoner so calm, so much in control of himself, without there being any indication that this was an assumed attitude.
    Steuvels would wait for the questions, head down, with an air of trying to understand, and he watched Maigret as he would have watched a lecturer developing complicated ideas.
    Then he would take time to think, answer in a gentle, rather faint voice, in carefully chosen phrases, but without any trace of affectation.
    He did not get impatient like most prisoners, and when the same question came up for the twentieth time he would reply in the same terms, with remarkable equanimity.
    Maigret would have liked to get to know him better but for the last three weeks the man hadn’t belonged to him anymore but to Dossin, who would have him brought up, with his lawyer, twice a week on an average.
    Fundamentally Steuvels must have been a shy man. The odd thing was that the judge was a shy man too. Noticing the initial G. before his name, the chief inspector had once made so bold as to ask him his Christian name, and the tall, distinguished magistrate had blushed.
    â€œDon’t tell anyone or they’ll start calling me the Angel again, as my fellow students did at college and later in law school too. My Christian name is Gabriel!”
    â€œCome on now,” Maigret was saying to Lapointe. “I want you to go and sit in my office and take all messages while you’re waiting for me.”
    He did not go upstairs straight away, wandered about the corridors a bit, his pipe between his teeth, his hands in his pockets, like a man who feels at home, shaking a hand here, another there.
    When he felt sure that the interrogation was under way, he went up to the examining magistrates’ wing and knocked at Dossin’s door.
    â€œMay I?”
    â€œCome in, chief inspector.”
    A man had risen to his feet, small and slim, very slim, too deliberately well dressed, whom Maigret instantly recognized from having seen his photographs in the papers. He was young and put on a pompous manner in order to seem older, affecting a self-assurance which did not match his age.
    Quite handsome, with a sallow complexion and black hair, he had long nostrils which quivered occasionally, and he would stare people in the eye as though determined to make them look away.
    â€œMonsieur Maigret, I suppose?”
    â€œNone other, Maître Liotard.”
    â€œIf it’s me you’re looking for, I’ll be glad to see you after the interrogation.”
    Frans Steuvels, who had remained seated, facing the judge, was waiting. He had merely glanced at the chief inspector, then at the police clerk at the end of the desk, who still had his pen in his hand.
    â€œI’m not looking for you particularly.