Cécile is Dead Read Online Free PDF

his hat and
     coat on, he phoned Madame Maigret.
    â€˜No, I don’t know just when
     I’ll be back. … It’s too complicated to explain … no, no, I’m here in
     Paris!’
    Should he call for some sandwiches to be
     brought in from the Brasserie Dauphine, as usual? But he needed fresh air. Fine rain was
     still falling outside. He preferred the little bar in the middle of the Pont-Neuf, close
     to the statue of Henri IV.
    â€˜Ham,’ he ordered when he got
     there.
    â€˜Are you all right,
     inspector?’
    The waiter knew him. When Maigret’s
     eyelids seemed so heavy, and he had that stubborn look …
    â€˜Work, is
     it?’
    Some of the customers were intent on a game
     of cards near the counter. Others were playing the fruit machine.
    Maigret bit into his sandwich, thinking that
     Cécile was dead. In spite of his heavy overcoat, it sent a cold shiver down his
     spine.

3.
    When someone mused out loud in
     Maigret’s presence about the resignation to their lot of the humble, sick and
     disabled, of the thousands of people who lived reclusive lives in the honeycomb cells of
     the big city, seeing no better prospects ahead of them, he would often shrug his
     shoulders. He knew from experience that human beings will adapt to anywhere they find
     themselves, as soon as they can fill that place with their own warmth, odour and
     habits.
    The concierge’s lodge, where the
     inspector was seated in a creaking wicker chair, measured less than two metres fifty by
     three metres. Its ceiling was low. The glazed door, which had no curtain over it, looked
     out on the darkness of the corridor, for there was no light in the stairwell until a
     tenant turned the time switch on. The lodge contained a bed with a red eiderdown, and on
     the table with its waxed brown tablecloth lay the cold remains of a pig’s trotter,
     part of a white loaf, a knife and a glass with purplish dregs of wine in it.
    Sitting on a chair, Madame
     With-All-Due-Respect was talking to him, her cheek almost welded to her shoulder because
     of her chronic stiff neck, her throat wrapped for warmth in thermal wadding of a nasty
     pink shade that contrasted with her black scarf.
    â€˜No, inspector,
     with all due respect I won’t take the armchair. It was my late husband’s,
     and in spite of my age and all my little aches and pains it wouldn’t feel right
     for me to sit in it myself.’
    There was a musty smell in the room, spiced
     with tom-cat pee. The tom-cat responsible was purring in front of the stove. The
     electric lightbulb, dim with a layer of dust twenty years old, had a red tinge to it. It
     was warm. The sound of rain falling on zinc somewhere could be heard, and now and then
     so could the sound of a car driving fast along the main road, the din of heavy trucks
     passing and the squealing brakes of trams.
    â€˜As I was telling you, with all due
     respect, the poor lady was our owner. Juliette Boynet. Boynet was her late
     husband’s name. And when I say
poor lady
, it’s out of respect for
     the dead, because she was a proper cow, God rest her soul. At least the good Lord
     recently did us the favour of almost depriving her of the use of her legs. It’s
     not that I bear any more malice than the next person, I’m not one to wish my
     neighbours ill, but when she could get about like everyone else life wasn’t worth
     living.’
    At the Bourg-la-Reine police station just
     now, Maigret had been surprised to hear that the dead woman was not yet sixty. In spite
     of her badly tinted hair, her puffy face made her look older, and so did the large eyes
     almost popping out of her head.
Juliette-Marie-Jeanne-Léontine Boynet,
     née Cazenove, aged 59, born in Fontenay-le-Comte, Vendée; profession, none …
    Madame
     With-All-Due-Respect, with her neck awry, her hair in a tight bun like a peach stone,
     the black wool scarf pulled tightly round her