Maigret and the Old Lady Read online

  Everyone agreed that he was a quiet man who spent almost all his time in his workshop, and although the police searched in his past for something dubious, they failed to find anything.

  Of course, there was the business of Fernande. He had met her when she was still on the streets, and it was he who had taken her away from that life. But that was all a long time ago, and there had been nothing against Fernande since then either.

  Torrence had been in Concarneau for four days. At the post office, they had found the original of the telegram, written by hand in capital letters. The postmistress thought she remembered that it was a woman who had handed it in, and Torrence was still searching, drawing up a list of travellers who had recently arrived from Paris, questioning two hundred people a day.

  ‘We’ve had enough of Detective Chief Inspector Maigret’s so-called infallibility!’ Maître Liotard had declared to a reporter.

  And he brought up the fact that there were by-elections coming up in the 3rd arrondissement, which might well have led certain people to start a scandal in the neighbourhood for political ends.

  Judge Dossin was also hauled over the coals, and these attacks, which weren’t always subtle, upset him a great deal.

  ‘So you don’t have the slightest new lead?’

  ‘I’m still looking. There are ten of us looking, sometimes more. We’ve questioned some people twenty times by now. Lucas is hoping to track down the tailor who made the blue suit.’

  As always when the public becomes fascinated by a case, they were receiving hundreds of letters daily. Almost all of them led nowhere and proved to be a waste of time. But everything was scrupulously checked, and they even listened to people who were clearly mad but who claimed to know something.

  At ten to one, Maigret got off the bus at the corner of Boulevard Voltaire, glanced up at the windows of his apartment as he usually did, and was slightly surprised to see that, in spite of the bright sun hitting it full on, the dining room window was closed.

  He climbed the staircase laboriously and turned the handle of the door, which didn’t open. Madame Maigret did sometimes lock the door when she was getting dressed or undressed. He opened it with his own key, found himself surrounded by a cloud of blue smoke and rushed to the kitchen to turn off the gas. In the saucepan, the chicken, the carrot and the onion were nothing but a black crust.

  He opened all the windows, and when Madame Maigret opened the door half an hour later, out of breath, she found him sitting in front of a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Half past one,’ he said calmly.

  He had never seen her in such a state, her hat knocked sideways, her lips trembling.

  ‘Please don’t laugh.’

  ‘I’m not laughing.’

  ‘And don’t tell me off. It was the only thing I could do, and I’d have liked to see you in my place. When I think you’re eating a piece of cheese for lunch!’

  ‘Was it the dentist?’

  ‘I didn’t see the dentist. I’ve been stuck in Square d’Anvers since a quarter to eleven, unable to move.’

  ‘Were you taken ill?’

  ‘Have I ever been ill in my life? No. It’s because of the boy. By the time he started crying and stamping his feet, I was looking at people as if I was a thief.’

  ‘What boy?’

  ‘I told you about the woman in blue and her child, but you never listen to me. The one I met on the bench while I was waiting to see the dentist. This morning, she got up in a hurry, asked me to keep an eye on the boy for a moment and left.’

  ‘And she didn’t come back? What did you do with the boy?’

  ‘She did come back in the end, just a quarter of an hour ago. I had to take a taxi here.’

  ‘What did she tell you when she got back?’

  ‘The amazing thing is she didn’t tell me anything. I was in the middle of the park, stuck there like a weathervane, with the boy screaming loudly enough to alert passers-by.

  ‘At last I saw a taxi stop at the corner of Avenue Trudaine and I recognized the white hat. She didn’t even take the trouble to get out. She half opened the door and signalled to me. The boy ran ahead of me, and I was afraid he’d get run over. He got to the taxi first, and the door was already closing by the time I reached it.

  ‘“Tomorrow,” she called out. “I’ll explain tomorrow. Forgive me …”

  ‘She didn’t say thank you. The taxi was already moving off in the direction of Boulevard Rochechouart, and it turned left towards Pigalle.’

  She fell silent, still out of breath. She took off her hat with such a brusque gesture that it messed up her hair.

  ‘Are you laughing?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Admit it, it makes you laugh. The fact remains, she left her child with a stranger for more than two hours. She doesn’t even know my name.’

  ‘What about you? Do you know hers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know where she lives?’

  ‘I don’t know anything at all, except that I missed my appointment, my lovely chicken is burnt, and you’re eating cheese at the end of the table like a … like a …’

  Then, not finding the word, she started crying and headed for the bedroom to change her clothes.

  THE BEGINNING

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  First published in French as Maigret et la vieille dame by Presses de la Cité 1950

  This translation first published 2016

  Copyright © Georges Simenon Limited, 1950

  Translation copyright © Ros Schwartz, 2016

  GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm

  MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited

  The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted

  Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos

  Front cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-141-98134-5