Read Online The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online Page B

Damme, import-export commission agent in
     Bremen.
    He was filling out the last form when
     the office boy announced that a man wanted to see him regarding the suicide of Louis
     Jeunet.
    It was late. Headquarters was
     practically deserted, although an inspector was typing a report in the neighbouring
     office.
    â€˜Come!’
    Ushered in, his visitor stopped at the
     door, looking awkward and ill at ease, as if he might already be sorry to have
     come.
    â€˜Sit down, why don’t
     you!’
    Maigret had taken his measure: tall,
     thin, with whitish-blond hair, poorly shaved, wearing shabby clothes rather like
     Louis Jeunet’s. His overcoat was missing a button, the collar was soiled, and
     the lapels in need of a brushing.
    From a few other tiny signs – a certain
     attitude, a way
of sitting down and
     looking around – the inspector recognized an ex-con, someone whose papers may all be
     in order but who still cannot help being nervous around the police.
    â€˜You’re here because of the
     photo? Why didn’t you come in right away? That picture appeared in the papers
     two days ago.’
    â€˜I don’t read them,’
     the man explained. ‘But my wife happened to bring some shopping home wrapped
     in a bit of newspaper.’
    Maigret realized that he’d seen
     this somewhere before, this constantly shifting expression, this nervous twitching
     and most of all, the morbid anxiety in the man’s eyes.
    â€˜Did you know Louis
     Jeunet?’
    â€˜I’m not sure. It
     isn’t a good photo. But I think … I believe he’s my
     brother.’
    Maigret couldn’t help it: he
     sighed with relief. He felt that this time the whole mystery would be cleared up at
     last. And he went to stand with his back to the stove, as he often did when in a
     good mood.
    â€˜In which case, your name would be
     Jeunet?’
    â€˜No, but that’s it,
     that’s why I hesitated to come here, and yet – he really is my brother!
     I’m sure of that, now that I see a better photo on the desk … That
     scar, for example! But I don’t understand why he killed himself – or why in
     the world he would change his name.’
    â€˜And yours is …’
    â€˜Armand Lecocq d’Arneville.
     I brought my papers.’
    And there again, that way he reached
     into his pocket for a grimy passport betrayed his status on the margins of society,
     someone used to attracting suspicion and proving his identity.
    â€˜D’Arneville with a small
d
and an apostrophe?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜You were born in Liège,’
     continued the inspector, consulting the passport. ‘You’re thirty-five
     years old. Your profession?’
    â€˜At present, I’m an office
     messenger in a factory at Issy-les-Moulineaux. We live in Grenelle, my wife and
     I.’
    â€˜It says here you’re a
     mechanic.’
    â€˜I was one. I’ve done this
     and that …’
    â€˜Even some prison time!’
     exclaimed Maigret, leafing through the passport. ‘You’re a
     deserter.’
    â€˜There was an amnesty! Just let me
     explain … My father had money, he ran a tyre business, but I was only six
     when he abandoned my mother, who’d just given birth to my brother Jean.
     That’s where it all started!
    â€˜We moved to a little place in Rue
     de la Province, in Liège, and in the beginning my father sent us money to live on
     fairly regularly. He liked to live it up, had mistresses; once, when he came by to
     drop off our monthly envelope, there was a woman in the car waiting for him down in
     the street. There were scenes, arguments, and my father stopped paying, or maybe he
     began paying less and less. My mother worked as a cleaning woman and she gradually
     went half-mad, not crazy enough to be shut away, but she’d go up to people and
     pour out her troubles, and she used to roam