Friend of Madame Maigret by Georges Simenon Page A

about the hat.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œShe may already have had it, but thought it looked enough like the other white hats being worn this season by shopgirls. She takes off her jewelery, of course! But there’s one thing she would have a lot of trouble getting used to: ready-made shoes. Having your shoes made to measure by the best shoemakers makes your feet delicate. You’ve heard me groaning often enough to know that women have sensitive feet by nature. So the lady keeps her own shoes, thinking no one will notice them. That’s where she’s wrong, because as far as I’m concerned, that’s the first thing I look at. Usually it happens the other way round: you see pretty, well-dressed women, with expensive frocks or fur coats, wearing cheap shoes.”
    â€œDid she have expensive shoes?”
    â€œMade to measure, I’m sure. I don’t know enough about it to say what shoemaker they came from. No doubt some women could have told.”
    He took time after dinner to pour himself a little glass of prunelle and to smoke almost a whole pipe.
    â€œAre you going to Claridge’s? You won’t be too late?”
    He took a cab, got out opposite the luxury hotel on the Champs-Élysées, and walked over to the hall porter’s office. It was the night porter by this time, whom he had known for years, and this was a good thing because night porters invariably know more about the guests than those on the day shift.
    His arrival in a place of this type always produced the same effect. He could see the clerks at the reception desk, the assistant manager, and even the lift boy raising their eyebrows and wondering what was up. Scandals are unpopular in a luxury hotel, and the presence of a chief inspector from Police Headquarters rarely bodes any good.
    â€œHow are you, Benoît?”
    â€œNot too bad, Monsieur Maigret. The Americans are beginning to show up.”
    â€œIs Countess Panetti still here?”
    â€œIt’s at least a month since she left. Would you like me to check the exact date?”
    â€œDid her family go with her?”
    â€œWhat family?”
    It was the slack time. Most of the guests were out, at the theater or at dinner. In the golden light the pages stood about, with their arms dangling, near the marble columns and observed the chief inspector, whom they all knew by sight, from a distance.
    â€œI never knew she had any family. She’s been stopping here for years now . . . and . . .”
    â€œTell me, have you ever seen the countess in a white hat?”
    â€œCertainly. She received one a few days before her departure.”
    â€œDid she also wear a blue suit?”
    â€œNo. You must have got them mixed up, Monsieur Maigret. The blue suit is her maid, or her companion if you prefer it, in any case the young lady who travels with her.”
    â€œYou’ve never seen Countess Panetti in a blue suit?”
    â€œIf you knew her you wouldn’t ask me that.”
    Just on the off chance, Maigret handed him the photographs of the women picked out by Moers.
    â€œAnyone there who looks like her?”
    Benoît looked at the chief inspector, flabbergasted.
    â€œAre you sure you’re not mistaken? You’re showing me photographs of women under thirty, and the countess isn’t much less than seventy. Look, you’d better find out what your colleagues in the Society Section have got on her, because they must know her.
    â€œWe get all kinds, don’t we? Well, the countess is one of our most unusual guests.”
    â€œIn the first place, do you know who she is?”
    â€œShe’s the widow of Count Panetti, the munitions and heavy industry man in Italy.
    â€œShe lives all over the place, Paris, Cannes, Egypt. I think she spends some time every year in Vichy, too.”
    â€œDoes she drink?”
    â€œShall we say she uses champagne instead of water? I wouldn’t be surprised if she brushed