Friend of Madame Maigret Read Online Free PDF Page A

morning of February 21, therefore, there must have been in Steuvels’s workshop a suitcase that was no longer there when Lucas went there at five o’clock.
    Yet so far as the neighbors could recollect, Steuvels had not left home that day, and no one had seen Fernande go out with a suitcase or a package.
    Had anyone come to collect any binding work? This had also been “checked.” The Argentinian embassy had sent for a document for which Steuvels had created a sumptuous binding, but it was not bulky and the messenger had it under his arm when he left.
    Martin, the most cultured man at Police Headquarters, had worked for almost a week in the bookbinder’s shop, leafing through his books, studying the work he had turned out during the last few months, getting in touch with his customers by telephone.
    â€œHe’s an amazing man,” was his conclusion. “He has the most select clientele you can imagine. They all have complete confidence in him. What’s more, he works for several embassies.”
    But this angle yielded nothing mysterious either. If the embassies entrusted their work to him it was because he was a specialist in heraldry and owned the stamps for a large number of coats of arms, which enabled him to bind books or documents emblazoned with the emblems of various countries.
    â€œYou don’t look happy, chief. But you’ll see, something will emerge out of all this in the end.”
    And good old Lucas, who never lost heart, pointed to the hundreds of sheets of paper he was blithely accumulating.
    â€œWe found some teeth in the furnace, didn’t we? They didn’t get there all by themselves. And someone handed in a telegram at Concarneau to lure Steuvels’s wife down there. The blue suit hanging in the wardrobe had human bloodstains on it that someone had tried unsuccessfully to remove. Maître Liotard can talk and carry on until he’s blue in the face; he won’t budge me on that.”
    But all this paperwork, so intoxicating to the detective, weighed on the chief inspector, who stared at it with a glaucous eye.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about, chief?”
    â€œNothing, I’m wondering.”
    â€œAbout releasing him?”
    â€œNo. That’s the examining magistrate’s business.”
    â€œOtherwise you’d have him released, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œI don’t know. I’m wondering whether to start the whole case over again from the beginning.”
    â€œJust as you like,” replied Lucas, slightly offended.
    â€œThat doesn’t prevent you from going ahead with your work, far from it. If we wait too long we’ll never get it straight. It’s always the same: once the press interferes, everybody has something to say, and we’re swamped.”
    â€œAll the same I’ve found the taxi driver, just as I’m going to find Madame Maigret’s.”
    The chief inspector filled a fresh pipe, opened the door. There wasn’t a single detective in the next room. They had all gone off somewhere, busily occupied on the Fleming’s case.
    â€œHave you made up your mind?”
    â€œI think so.”
    He didn’t even go into his own office, left the Quai des Orfèvres and immediately hailed a cab.
    â€œCorner of the rue de Turenne and the rue des Francs-Bourgeois.”
    Those words, which you kept hearing from morning to night, were becoming nauseating.
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    The residents of the neighborhood, for their part, had never had such a time. All of them, one after the other, had had their names in the paper. Shopkeepers, workmen, all they had to do was to drop into the Grand Turenne for a drink and they met the detectives, and if they went across the street to the Tabac des Vosges, which was famous for its white wine, they were greeted by the reporters.
    Ten times, twenty times, they had been asked their opinion of Steuvels, of Fernande, and for details about their movements and