Maigret's Dead Man by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online Page A

attention anyway. I took a hair sample, as usual. My analysis revealed traces of
lipstick.’
    It was almost laughable, but neither of them was
laughing. A woman had kissed Maigret’s dead man on the head, a woman wearing lipstick.
    â€˜I can add that it’s a cheap make,
and that the woman is probably a brunette, because it’s a dark shade of red
…’
    Was it the previous evening
that a woman had kissed the man with no name? Did it happen at his place when he had gone home
to change his jacket?
    And since he had actually changed, it was because
he wasn’t intending to go out again. A man who goes home for just an hour does not bother
to put on a different jacket.
    In which case, then, he had been called away
unexpectedly … But was it likely that, hunted as he was and sufficiently panicky to go
running around Paris waving his arms about and phoning the police all day, he would have gone
out after dark?
    A woman kissed his hair. Or else she had bent
over him, leaning her face against his cheek. Either way it was a tender gesture.
    Maigret sighed, filled his pipe again and looked
at the clock. It was a few minutes after midday.
    Almost exactly the same time as when, on the
previous day, the man had walked across Place des Vosges while the fountains played.
    Maigret went through the small communicating door
which connected the Police Judiciaire with the Palais de Justice. Lawyers’ robes billowed
in the corridors like great black birds.
    â€˜Let’s go and see the old
baboon!’ sighed Maigret who had never been able to stand Coméliau.
    He knew in advance that the examining magistrate
would greet him with some icy comment which in his eyes would be the most stinging rebuke he
could think of:
    â€˜Ah! I have been waiting for you, Detective
Chief Inspector …’
    Though he would have been
quite capable of saying, like Louis XIV:
    â€˜I almost had to wait …’
    Maigret could not have cared less.
    He had been living with his dead man since half
past two that morning.

3.
    â€˜I am delighted, Maigret, to have got you on
the phone at long last.’
    â€˜Believe me, sir, the pleasure is all
mine.’
    Madame Maigret looked up sharply. She always felt
uneasy when her husband used that quiet, bland voice. When he used it on her she always cried
because she never knew what was coming next.
    â€˜I’ve called you at your office five
times.’
    â€˜And I wasn’t there!’ he
sighed, audibly dismayed.
    She raised a finger, warning him to be careful
and remember that he was speaking to an examining magistrate who moreover had a brother-in-law
who had been a government minister two or three times.
    â€˜I’ve only just been told that you
were unwell.’
    â€˜A little off colour, sir. People always
exaggerate these things. A heavy cold. And I wonder now if it really was as heavy as all
that!’
    It was perhaps the fact that he was at home, in
his pyjamas and wearing his velvety dressing gown, his feet encased in slippers and comfortably
settled in his armchair, that put him in such a playful mood.
    â€˜What surprises me is that you
haven’t let me know who is replacing you.’
    â€˜Replacing me where?’
    Coméliau’s voice
was curt, cool, deliberately impersonal, whereas Maigret’s became increasingly
amenable.
    â€˜I’m talking about the Place de la
Concorde murder. I assume you haven’t forgotten it?’
    â€˜It is constantly in my thoughts. Why, only
this minute I was telling my wife …’
    But she made even more emphatic signs ordering
him not to involve her in the affair. Their apartment was small and cosy. The furniture in the
dining room was all dark oak and dated from the time of Maigret’s marriage. Opposite,
through the net curtains, could be seen in large black letters on a white wall: ‘Lhoste
& Pépin – Makers of Precision Tools’
.
    Every morning and every evening