again and not miss me
.
But who is it? Belloir, Van
Damme, Lombard?
Iâll find out when he
tries again. Since accidents do happen, Iâm sending you these notes on the
off chance, so that you will be familiar with the inquiry from the very
beginning.
To see the human side of this
case, look in particular at Mme Jeunet and Armand Lecocq dâArneville, the
dead manâs brother.
And now Iâm going to bed.
Give my best to everybody back there.
Maigret
The fog had faded away, leaving beads of
pearly hoarfrost on the trees and every blade of grass in Square dâAvroy. A
chilly sun gleamed in the pale-blue sky as Maigret crossed the square, and with each
passing minute the melting frost fell in limpid drops to the gravel.
It was eight in the morning when the
inspector strode through the still-deserted Carré, where the folded sandwich boards
of film posters stood propped against closed shutters.
When Maigret stopped at a mailbox to
post his letter
to Sergeant Lucas, he took
a moment to look around him and felt a pang at the thought that somewhere in the
city, in those streets bathed in sunlight, a man was at that very moment thinking
about him, a man whose salvation depended upon killing him. And the man had the
home-ground advantage over the inspector, as he had proved the night before by
vanishing into the maze of alleys.
He knew Maigret, too, and was perhaps
even watching him where he stood, whereas the inspector did not know who he was.
Could he be Jef Lombard? Did the danger
lie in the ramshackle house in Rue Hors-Château, where a woman and her newborn lay
sleeping upstairs, watched over by her loving old mother, while her husbandâs
employees worked nonchalantly among the acid baths, hustled along by bicycle
messengers from the newspapers?
Joseph Van Damme, a bold, moody and
aggressive man, always scheming: was he not lying in wait for the inspector in a
place
where he knew Maigret would eventually appear
?
Because that fellow had foreseen
everything ever since Bremen! Three lines in a German newspaper â and he showed up
at the morgue! He had lunch with Maigret and then beat him to Rheims!
And beat him again to Rue Hors-Château!
Beat the investigator to the newspaper archives!
He was even at the Café de la Bourse!
True, there was nothing to prove that he
was the one who had decided to talk to Maigret. But there was nothing to prove that
he wasnât!
Perhaps it was Maurice Belloir, so cold
and formal, the haughty provincial
grand bourgeois
, who had taken a shot
at him in the fog. Maybe he was the one
whose only hope was to polish off Maigret.
Or Gaston Janin, the little sculptor
with the goatee: he hadnât been at the Café de la Bourse, but he could have
been lying in ambush in the street â¦
And what connected all that to a hanged
man swinging from a church-steeple cross? Or to clusters of hanged men? Or to
forests of trees that bore no fruit but hanged men? Or to an old bloodstained suit
with lapels clawed by desperate fingernails?
Typists were going off to work. A
municipal street sweeper rolled slowly past, its double-nozzle sprayer and brush
roller pushing rubbish into the gutter. At street corners, the local police in their
white enamel helmets directed traffic with their shiny white gauntlets.
âPolice headquarters?â
Maigret inquired.
He followed the directions and arrived
while the cleaning ladies were still busy, but a cheerful clerk welcomed his French
colleague and, upon the inspectorâs request to examine some ten-year-old
police records, but only for the month of February, the man exclaimed in surprise:
âYouâre the second person in twenty-four hours! You want to know if a
certain Joséphine Bollant was in fact arrested for domestic larceny back then,
right?â
âSomeone came here?â
âYesterday, towards
.
But who is it? Belloir, Van
Damme, Lombard?
Iâll find out when he
tries again. Since accidents do happen, Iâm sending you these notes on the
off chance, so that you will be familiar with the inquiry from the very
beginning.
To see the human side of this
case, look in particular at Mme Jeunet and Armand Lecocq dâArneville, the
dead manâs brother.
And now Iâm going to bed.
Give my best to everybody back there.
Maigret
The fog had faded away, leaving beads of
pearly hoarfrost on the trees and every blade of grass in Square dâAvroy. A
chilly sun gleamed in the pale-blue sky as Maigret crossed the square, and with each
passing minute the melting frost fell in limpid drops to the gravel.
It was eight in the morning when the
inspector strode through the still-deserted Carré, where the folded sandwich boards
of film posters stood propped against closed shutters.
When Maigret stopped at a mailbox to
post his letter
to Sergeant Lucas, he took
a moment to look around him and felt a pang at the thought that somewhere in the
city, in those streets bathed in sunlight, a man was at that very moment thinking
about him, a man whose salvation depended upon killing him. And the man had the
home-ground advantage over the inspector, as he had proved the night before by
vanishing into the maze of alleys.
He knew Maigret, too, and was perhaps
even watching him where he stood, whereas the inspector did not know who he was.
Could he be Jef Lombard? Did the danger
lie in the ramshackle house in Rue Hors-Château, where a woman and her newborn lay
sleeping upstairs, watched over by her loving old mother, while her husbandâs
employees worked nonchalantly among the acid baths, hustled along by bicycle
messengers from the newspapers?
Joseph Van Damme, a bold, moody and
aggressive man, always scheming: was he not lying in wait for the inspector in a
place
where he knew Maigret would eventually appear
?
Because that fellow had foreseen
everything ever since Bremen! Three lines in a German newspaper â and he showed up
at the morgue! He had lunch with Maigret and then beat him to Rheims!
And beat him again to Rue Hors-Château!
Beat the investigator to the newspaper archives!
He was even at the Café de la Bourse!
True, there was nothing to prove that he
was the one who had decided to talk to Maigret. But there was nothing to prove that
he wasnât!
Perhaps it was Maurice Belloir, so cold
and formal, the haughty provincial
grand bourgeois
, who had taken a shot
at him in the fog. Maybe he was the one
whose only hope was to polish off Maigret.
Or Gaston Janin, the little sculptor
with the goatee: he hadnât been at the Café de la Bourse, but he could have
been lying in ambush in the street â¦
And what connected all that to a hanged
man swinging from a church-steeple cross? Or to clusters of hanged men? Or to
forests of trees that bore no fruit but hanged men? Or to an old bloodstained suit
with lapels clawed by desperate fingernails?
Typists were going off to work. A
municipal street sweeper rolled slowly past, its double-nozzle sprayer and brush
roller pushing rubbish into the gutter. At street corners, the local police in their
white enamel helmets directed traffic with their shiny white gauntlets.
âPolice headquarters?â
Maigret inquired.
He followed the directions and arrived
while the cleaning ladies were still busy, but a cheerful clerk welcomed his French
colleague and, upon the inspectorâs request to examine some ten-year-old
police records, but only for the month of February, the man exclaimed in surprise:
âYouâre the second person in twenty-four hours! You want to know if a
certain Joséphine Bollant was in fact arrested for domestic larceny back then,
right?â
âSomeone came here?â
âYesterday, towards
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