The Late Monsieur Gallet by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online

mantelpiece.’
    And the same mixture of grief and the grotesque, the dramatic and the petty, was still weighing down on Maigret’s shoulders in this desolate house, where he felt as if he could see Émile Gallet,
whom he had not known alive, wandering in silence, his eyes ashen with his liver trouble, his chest hollow, wearing his poorly cut jacket.
    He had slipped the portrait photo into the pink file. He hesitated.
    â€˜Please forgive me again, madame … I’m leaving, but I’d be glad if your son would come a little way with me.’
    Madame Gallet looked at Henry with an anxiety that she could not repress. For all her dignified manner, her measured gestures, her triple necklace of black stones, she too must be feeling
something
in the air.
    But the young man himself, indifferent to anything of the kind, went to collect his hat with its crape hatband from a hook.
    Their departure seemed more like an escape. The file was heavy. It was only a cardboard folder, and the papers threatened to fall out.
    â€˜Would you like some newspaper to wrap that in?’ asked Madame Gallet.
    But Maigret was already out of the house, and the maid was making for the dining room with a tablecloth and some knives. Henry was walking towards the station, tall and silent, his expression inscrutable.
    When the two men were 300 metres away from the house, and the upholsterers were starting the engine of their van, the inspector said, ‘I only want to ask you for two things: first Éléonore Boursang’s address in Paris, and second your
own, and the address of the bank where you work.’
    He found a pencil in his pocket and wrote on the pink cover of the file he was holding:
Éléonore Boursang, 27 Rue de Turenne. Banque Sovrinos, 117 Boulevard Beaumarchais. Henry Gallet, Hôtel Bellevue, 19 Rue de la Roquette.
    â€˜Is that all?’ asked the young man.
    â€˜Thank you, yes.’
    â€˜In that case I hope you’ll be putting your mind to the murderer now.’
    He did not try to judge the effect of this remark, but touched the brim of his hat and set off back up the central avenue.
    The van passed Maigret just before he reached the station.
    The last fact he picked up that day was by sheer chance. Maigret arrived at the station an hour before the train was due in and found himself alone in the deserted waiting room, in the middle of a swarm of flies. Then he saw a postman with the
purple neck of an apoplectic arrive on a bicycle and put his bags down on the table for luggage.
    â€˜Do you call at Les Marguerites?’ asked the inspector.
    The postman, who had not noticed him, swung round. ‘What did you say?’
    â€˜Police! Do you get a lot of mail to be delivered to Monsieur Gallet?’
    â€˜A lot, no. Letters from the firm the poor gentleman worked for. They always came on a certain day. And then there were newspapers …’
    â€˜What newspapers?’
    â€˜Provincial papers, mostly from the Berry and Cher regions. And magazines:
Country Lifestyles
,
Hunting and Fishing
,
Country Homes
 …’
    The inspector noticed that the postman was avoiding his eyes.
    â€˜Is there a poste restante office in Saint-Fargeau?’
    â€˜How do you mean?’
    â€˜Didn’t Monsieur Gallet get any other letters?’
    The postman suddenly seemed flustered. ‘Well, seeing as you know, and seeing as he’s dead,’ he stammered. ‘And anyway it’s not like I was even breaking the rules … he just asked me not to put some letters
into the box but keep them until he was back, when he went away …’
    â€˜What letters?’
    â€˜Oh, not many … hardly one every two or three months. Blue envelopes, the cheap sort, with the address typed.’
    â€˜They didn’t have the sender’s address on them?’
    â€˜Not the address, no. But I couldn’t go wrong because it said on the back, and that was