Read Online Friend of Madame Maigret by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online

he answer?”
    â€œNot much. He remembers one old lady in particular; she must be rich and she comes in a limousine with a chauffeur in livery who carries her books in. Also, about a month ago, a very elegant young lady in a mink coat. Wait! I made a point of finding out if she only called once. He says no, she came again a couple of weeks ago, in a blue suit with a white hat. It was a day when the weather was very fine, and the paper apparently carried an article on the chestnut tree in the boulevard Saint-Germain.”
    â€œWe can trace that.”
    â€œThat’s what I thought.”
    â€œSo she went down to the basement?”
    â€œNo. But I’m a bit suspicious. He’s read the article too, that’s obvious, and it’s perfectly possible that he’s making it all up just to get some attention. What do you want me to do?”
    â€œKeep an eye on Alfonsi. Don’t let him out of your sight all day. You’re to make a list of the people he speaks to.”
    â€œHe mustn’t know I’m tailing him?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter much if he does.”
    â€œWhat if he speaks to me?”
    â€œAnswer him.”
    Maigret went out with the smell of Pernod in his nostrils, and his cab dropped him at the Quai where he found Lucas in the middle of lunching off sandwiches. There were two glasses of beer on the desk, and the chief inspector took one of them without compunction.
    â€œTorrence has just phoned. The postmistress thinks she remembers a customer with a white hat, but she can’t swear she’s the one who handed in the telegram. According to Torrence, even if she were dead certain, she wouldn’t say so.”
    â€œIs he coming back?”
    â€œHe’ll be in Paris tonight.”
    â€œCall the Urbaine taxi company, will you? There’s another cab to be traced, possibly two.”
    Had Madame Maigret, who had a fresh appointment with her dentist, left early, as on the other days, in order to spend a few minutes on the bench in the Place d’Anvers garden?
    Maigret didn’t go home to the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir for lunch. Lucas’s sandwiches looked tempting, and he had some sent up from the Brasserie Dauphine for himself.
    This was usually a good sign.

4
    Young Lapointe, red-eyed and scruffy like somebody who has slept on a bench in a third-class waiting room, had given Maigret a look of such distress when the latter had entered the inspectors’ office that the chief inspector had immediately taken him into his own room.
    â€œThe whole story of the Hôtel Beauséjour’s in the paper,” said the young man lugubriously.
    â€œThat’s good! I’d have been disappointed if it hadn’t been.”
    Then Maigret had deliberately begun to talk to him as he would have talked to one of the old hands, to Lucas or Torrence, for instance.
    â€œThere are some people we know practically nothing about, not even whether they’ve really played any part in the case. There’s a woman, a little boy, a rather stout man, and another man who looks a bit seedy. Are they still in Paris? We don’t know. If they are, they’ve probably split up. The woman only has to take off her white hat and get rid of the child and we can’t recognize her any more. You see!”
    â€œYes, chief inspector. I think I understand. But all the same I don’t like to think that my sister saw that fellow again last night.”
    â€œYou can worry about your sister later. Right now you’re working with me. This morning’s newspaper story will alarm them. There are two possibilities: either they’ll lie low, if they’ve got somewhere to lie low, or they’ll look for a safer hiding-place. In any case our only chance is if they do something to give themselves away.”
    â€œYes.”
    Just at that point Judge Dossin telephoned to express his surprise at the newspaper’s disclosures, and Maigret began to