Maigret and the Spinster Read Online Free PDF

home…It would take too long to explain…Of course not…I shan’t be leaving Paris.”
    He considered ordering sandwiches, as he so often did, from the Brasserie Dauphine. But he felt he needed air. It was still drizzling outside. He decided to go to the little bar opposite the statue of Henri IV, in the middle of the Pont Neuf.
    He ordered a ham sandwich.
    “How are things, Chief Superintendent?”
    The waiter knew Maigret. He recognized the significance of those drooping eyelids and that set face.
    “Having trouble?”
    A game of
belote
was in progress at a table near the bar. Other customers were playing the pinball machines.
    Maigret bit into his sandwich, and thought: Cécile is dead. In spite of his heavy overcoat, it sent a shiver down his spine.

THREE
    M aigret had been known to shrug when people expressed amazement at the resignation of the poor, the sick, and the handicapped, the thousands upon thousands of solitary men and women without hope, each confined to a separate little cell in the big city. He knew from experience that man could adapt to any environment, once it was filled with his own warmth and his own familiar smells and habits.
    The lodge where he was now sitting, in a creaking cane armchair, was barely eight feet by ten in area. The ceiling was low. The uncurtained glass door opened onto a dark hall, for the only light on the stairs was operated by a time switch near the front door. A bed with a red eiderdown. On the table, the glutinous remains of a pig’s trotter, crumbs on the brown oilcloth cover, a knife, dregs of bluish wine in a glass.
    Seated opposite, Madame “Saving-Your-Presence” was speaking, her cheek practically welded to her shoulder as a result of chronic arthritis of the neck, her throat wrapped in thermogene wool, the ugly pink edge of which showed above her black shawl.
    “No, Chief Superintendent…Saving your presence, I won’t sit in the armchair…It belonged to my late husband, and, in spite of my age and all my little aches and pains, I wouldn’t wish to take the liberty!”
    A smell of stale cat’s urine. The cat, a tom, was stretched out in front of the stove, purring. The electric light bulb, dimmed by twenty years’ accumulation of dust on the shade, emitted a reddish glow. From somewhere came the sound of rain dripping into a zinc bucket, and every few seconds, the roar of a car speeding along the highway, or the rumble of a truck, or the screeching of streetcar brakes.
    “As I was saying, saving your presence, the poor lady was our landlord. Juliette Boynet was her married name. And when I say ‘poor lady,’ Chief Superintendent, sir, it’s out of respect for the dead, because she was a real bitch, God rest her soul. What’s more, it was something to be grateful for, when the good Lord, a few months ago, deprived her of the use of her legs, up to a point. It’s not that I want to be spiteful, but when she could get around like the rest of us, life just wasn’t worth living…”
    When he had checked with the Bourg-la-Reine police station, Maigret had been astonished to learn that the dead woman was not yet sixty, for in spite of her crudely dyed hair, she had looked older, with her bloated face and big, bulging eyes.
    Juliette Marie Jeanne Léontine Boynet née Cazenove, aged fifty-nine, born at Fontenay-le-Comte, Vendée, housewife.
    With her twisted neck, her hair screwed up in a meager little bun, her black woolen shawl tightly drawn over a scrawny bosom—the very thought of the old concierge’s withered breasts caused him to shudder!—Madame “Saving-Your-Presence” gloatingly savored her words as earlier she had savored her pig’s trotter, pausing at intervals to direct a glance at the glass door.
    “As you see, this is a quiet house…At this hour everyone, or nearly everyone, is at home.”
    “How long has Madame Boynet been the owner of the building?”
    “Since it was built, I should think…Her husband was a building contractor. He