Read Online Maigret in Montmartre by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online

practice—perhaps even before he qualified. He must have had his reasons for settling in Montmartre, and it was easy to guess what type of patients he attracted.
    He wouldn’t last long, that was obvious. His goose was cooked already.
    “What do you know about her?”
    “Her name and address, which are on my register. And the fact that she’d been taking drugs for fifteen years.”
    “How old was she?”
    “Forty-eight or forty-nine.”
    Looking at the emaciated body on the bed, at the thin, colourless hair on the head, it was difficult to believe that she had been no older.
    “Isn’t it rather unusual for a morphia addict to drink to excess as well?”
    “It happens sometimes.”
    The doctor’s hands were slightly shaky, as a drunkard’s are apt to be in the morning, and one side of his mouth twitched every now and then.
    “I suppose you tried to cure her?”
    “At first, yes. It was a pretty hopeless case. I made no headway. She would let weeks go by without sending for me.”
    “Didn’t she ever send for you because she’d run out of the stuff and had to get hold of some at all costs?”
    Bloch glanced at the other doctor. No use lying about it the answer was written, as it were, on the body and all over the flat.
    “There’s no need, I imagine, for me to give you a lecture on the subject. An addict who has got beyond a certain point simply cannot, without serious danger, be cut off from the drug. I don’t know where she obtained her supply. I never asked her. Twice, so far as I can remember, I arrived here to find her almost crazy because it hadn’t turned up and, I gave her an injection.”
    “Did she ever tell you anything about her past life—her family, her background?”
    “All I know is that she really was married to a certain Count von Farnheim—I understand he was an Austrian and a great deal older than she. They lived together in a big house on the Riviera; she mentioned that once or twice.”
    “One more question, doctor: did she pay you by cheque?”
    “No—in cash.”
    “And you know nothing about her friends, her relations, or her sources of supply?”
    “Nothing whatever.”
    Maigret let it go at that.
    “Thank you,” he said, “that is all.”
    Once again he felt disinclined to wait until the technical people arrived, and still more reluctant to answer the questions of the journalists who would soon be thronging in: he wanted to escape from this stifling, depressing atmosphere.
    He gave some instructions to Janvier and went off in a taxi to the Quai des Orfèvres, where he found a message asking him to ring up Dr Paul, the official pathologist.
    “I’m just writing my report, which will be with you tomorrow morning,” said the doctor—all unaware that he would have another post-mortem to carry out before his day’s work was over. “But I thought I’d better tell you right away about two points that may have a bearing on your inquiries. The first is that in all probability the girl wasn’t as old as her record makes out. She’s supposed to be twenty-four, but according to the medical evidence she can’t be a day over twenty.”
    “You’re sure of that?”
    “Practically certain. And the second point is that she’d had a child. That’s all I can say. And the person who killed her must have been very strong.”
    “Could it have been a woman?”
    “I don’t think so. If it was, she must have had the strength of a man.”
    “Haven’t you heard about the second crime yet? You’ll be wanted any moment in the Rue Victor-Massé.”
    Dr Paul grumbled something about a dinner engagement, and the two men rang off.
    The early editions of the evening papers had printed Arlette’s photograph, and as usual several telephone calls had been received. Two or three people were waiting in the anteroom. An inspector was attending to them, and Maigret went home to dinner. His wife, having seen the newspapers, was not expecting him.
    It was still raining. He was wet, and went