Friend of Madame Maigret by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online Page A

too. You were in Sergeant Lucas’s office yesterday when he telephoned the Ninth Arrondissement?”
    â€œI was in the next office, and the door between them was open.”
    â€œWhat time did you talk to your sister?”
    â€œHow do you know I did?”
    â€œAnswer me.”
    â€œShe stops work at five. She waited for me, as she often does, at the Bar de la Grosse Horloge, and we had a drink together before going home.”
    â€œWere you with her all evening?”
    â€œShe went to the pictures with a girlfriend.”
    â€œDid you see her girlfriend?”
    â€œNo. But I know her.”
    â€œThat’s all. You can go.”
    He would have liked to offer a bit more explanation, but someone came to tell the chief inspector that a taxi driver was asking to see him. This was a big, red-faced man of around fifty who must have driven a hackney carriage in his younger days and who, to judge by his breath, had certainly swallowed several glasses of white wine for the good of his stomach before coming in.
    â€œInspector Lamballe told me to come and see you about the young lady.”
    â€œHow did he find out that it was you whose fare she was?”
    â€œI’m usually in the rank in the place Pigalle, and he came over for a word with me last night, the same as he had a word with all of us. It was me who picked her up.”
    â€œWhat time? Where?”
    â€œIt must have been about one o’clock. I was finishing my lunch at a restaurant in the rue Lepic. My cab was outside. I saw a couple leaving the hotel opposite, and the woman immediately made a dash for my taxi. She seemed to be disappointed when she saw the flag was down. Since I’d got as far as my liqueur, I stood up and called across the street to her to wait.”
    â€œWhat was her companion like?”
    â€œA fat little man, very well dressed, like a foreigner. Between forty and fifty, I can’t say exactly. I didn’t look at him much. He was turned toward her and was talking to her in a foreign language.”
    â€œWhat language?”
    â€œI don’t know. I come from Pantin and I’ve never been able to tell one lingo from another.”
    â€œWhat address did she give?”
    â€œShe was jumpy, impatient. She asked me to go to the place d’Anvers first and slow down. She was looking out of the window.
    â€œThen she said, ‘Stop a minute and drive on again when I tell you.’
    â€œShe was beckoning to somebody. A motherly old soul was walking toward us with a little boy. The lady opened the door, pulled the kid in, and ordered me to drive on.”
    â€œDidn’t it look to you like a kidnapping?”
    â€œNo, because she spoke to the lady. Not for long. Just a few words. And the lady seemed more relieved than anything else.”
    â€œWhere did you take the mother and child?”
    â€œFirst to the Porte de Neuilly. There she changed her mind and asked me to drive to the Gare Saint-Lazare.”
    â€œDid she get out there?”
    â€œNo. She stopped me in the place Saint-Augustin. Due to the fact that I got caught in a traffic jam there, I saw her in my mirror hailing another cab, one of the Urbaine’s, but I didn’t have time to get its number.”
    â€œDid you try to?”
    â€œOut of habit. She was really in a state. And it was a bit queer, after taking me all the way to the Porte de Neuilly, to stop me on the place Saint-Augustin just to get into another cab.”
    â€œDid she talk to the child on the way?”
    â€œA sentence or two, to keep him quiet. Is there a reward?”
    â€œMaybe. I don’t know yet.”
    â€œYou see, I’ve wasted my morning.”
    Maigret handed him a note and a few minutes later was pushing open the door of the director of Police Headquarters, where the conference had begun. The department heads were there, grouped round the big mahogany desk, talking quietly about current cases.
    â€œWhat about