Read Online The Late Monsieur Gallet by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online

tackle, and he took old watches apart!
    At this point Maigret rebelled.
    You don’t tell lies for eighteen years just for that, he thought. You don’t tie yourself to a double life that is so difficult to organize!
    That wasn’t the most disturbing part of it. There are difficult situations in which you can manage to live for several months, even several years. But eighteen years! Gallet had grown old! Madame Gallet had put on weight and assumed an air
of too much dignity! Henry had grown up … he had taken his First Communion, passed his school-leaving exams, come of age, gone to live in Paris, found a mistress …
    And Émile Gallet went on sending himself letters from the firm of Niel, wrote postcards addressed to his wife in advance, patiently copied out fake lists of orders!
    He was on a diet …
    Maigret could still hear Madame Gallet’s voice. He was so deep in his thoughts – thoughts that made his pulse beat faster – that he had let his pipe go out.
    Eighteen years without being detected!
    It was so unlikely. The inspector, who knew the business
of crime, was better aware of that than anyone! But for the murder, Gallet would have died peacefully in his bed, after leaving all his papers in
order. And Monsieur Niel would have been astonished to get an announcement of his death.
    It was so extraordinary that the picture the inspector was constructing for himself made him feel an indefinable anxiety, as if it evoked certain phenomena that shake our sense of reality. So it was pure chance that, as he looked up, the
inspector saw a darker mark on the white wall round the property, opposite the room that was the scene of the crime.
    He went over and saw that the mark was a space between two stones that had recently been enlarged and scuffed by the toe of a shoe. There was a similar mark a little higher up, but less visible. Someone had climbed up the wall, using a branch
that hung down to help him …
    At the very moment when he was about to reconstruct the climb, the inspector swung round. He had the impression that there was an unexpected presence at the end of the road, near the Loire.
    He was just in time to see a feminine figure, tall and quite strong, with blonde hair and the regular, clear-cut profile of a Greek statue. The young woman had begun walking on when Maigret turned round, which suggested that she had previously
been watching him.
    A name sprang to the detective’s mind of its own accord: Éléonore Boursang! Up to this point he had not tried to imagine Henry Gallet’s mistress. Yet he was suddenly as good as certain that this was the lady.
    He quickened his pace and reached the embankment just as she was turning the corner of the main road.
    â€˜Back in a minute!’ he told the hotelier, who tried to stop him as he was passing.
    He ran for a little way while he was out of the fugitive’s sight, to reduce the distance between them. Not only did the woman’s figure suit the name of Éléonore Boursang, she was exactly the woman that a man like Henry would have
chosen.
    But on arriving at the crossroads himself, Maigret was annoyed. She had disappeared. He looked into the dimly lit window of a small grocery store and then into the forge next to it.
    But it did not matter much, since he knew where to find her.

5. The Thrifty Lovers
    The sergeant from the gendarmerie must have formed a seductive idea that morning of the kind of life led by a police officer from Paris. He himself had been up at four in the morning and had already cycled some thirty kilometres, first in the
early-morning cold, then in increasingly hot sunlight, when he reached the Hôtel de la Loire for the periodic check carried out on the register of its guests.
    It was now 10 a.m. Most of the guests were walking beside the water or bathing in the river. Two horse dealers were talking on the terrace, and the hotelier, a napkin in his hand, was making sure that