Cécile is Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

happen, or she discovered her aunt’s body when she
     got up at about six thirty in the morning. I know from her alarm clock that she rose at
     that time. And she didn’t tell anyone. She came straight here.’
    â€˜How strange!’
    â€˜Not if we assume that she knew the
     murderer. She wanted to tell me about it in person; she didn’t trust the police in
     Bourg-la-Reine. And the proof that she knew him is that she was killed to keep her from
     talking.’
    â€˜Suppose you had seen her as soon as
     you got in this morning?’
    Maigret blushed, something that he very
     seldom did. ‘Well, yes … There’s something I’ve missed … Perhaps the
     murderer wasn’t able to move freely at that moment … Or else he didn’t know
     yet …’ He suddenly looked as if he were hunting something down. ‘No, it
     doesn’t hold water,’ he growled.
    â€˜What doesn’t hold
     water?’
    â€˜What I’m saying. If the old
     lady’s killer had turned up at the Aquarium …’
    â€˜Aquarium?’
    â€˜Sorry, sir, that’s what the
     officers call the waiting room. If he’d turned up there, Cécile wouldn’t
     have followed him. So someone else came. Someone she didn’t know, or someone she
     trusted …’
    The ever-stubborn Maigret looked at the dark
     little heap that had fallen against the wall of the broom cupboard, among the brushes
     and buckets.
    â€˜It was someone she didn’t
     know,’ he suddenly decided.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜She might have followed someone she
     knew outside, but not in here. I might as well tell you I was expecting her to be found
     in the Seine or on waste land somewhere. But …’
    He took a couple of steps, bent to get
     through the low doorway of the cupboard, struck a match and then another, gently nudged
     the corpse.
    â€˜What are you looking for,
     Maigret?’
    â€˜Her bag.’ It was as
     characteristic of her as her comical green hat, a voluminous bag like an attaché case
     that Cécile always held on her lap like something precious when she was in the
     Aquarium.
    â€˜It’s gone.’
    â€˜From which you conclude …?’
    Here Maigret, forgetting the hierarchy of
     rank and letting his nerves get the better of him, snapped, ‘Conclude! Conclude!
     Are
you
able to come to any conclusions?’
    He noticed that the blond officer who had
     been posted at the door a few paces away turned his head, and then Maigret began
     again.
    â€˜I apologize, sir, but you’ll
     agree that anyone can go in and out of this place just as they like. Someone could have
     gone into the waiting room and …’
    His nerves were all on edge. He clenched the
     stem of his pipe, which had gone out, between his teeth. ‘Not to mention that damn
     door that should have been bricked up ages ago.’
    â€˜If you’d seen the girl when
     …’
    Poor Maigret was a sad sight: tall and
     strong, solid as a
rock to all outward
     appearances, bending his head to look at that pile of soft clothes at his feet, that
     heap of inert matter, mopping his face with his handkerchief yet again.
    â€˜Well, what are we going to do?’
     asked the commissioner, hoping to change the subject.
    Were they going to let the public know that
     a crime had been committed on the premises of the Police Judiciaire, or rather in a kind
     of passage linking the police headquarters to the law courts?
    â€˜There’s one thing I’d
     like to ask, sir. Could Lucas take over the case of the Poles …?’
    Perhaps it was hunger. Maigret hadn’t
     eaten since breakfast. And he had drunk three small shots of spirits, which had given
     him an appetite.
    â€˜Yes, if you like.’
    â€˜Close that door, will you?’
     Maigret told the officer. ‘And stay on guard. I’ll be back right
     away.’
    From his office, and keeping