Maigret in Montmartre Read Online Free PDF Page A

as though searching her memory.
    “Do you remember where Arlette was before her turn came round for the second time?”
    “Yes, she was with her young man. I even told her she was wasting her time.”
    “Does he often come here?”
    “He’s been two or three times lately. Every now and then a man does stray in like that and fall in love with one of the girls. As I always tell them, it’s all right for once, but they mustn’t let it keep on happening. They were both here, in the third box as you look in from the street—N°6. I could see them from where I stood. He was holding her hands all the time, and talking away to her with the soppy expression they all get when they’re in that mood.”
    “And who was in the next box?”
    “I didn’t see anyone.”
    “Not at any time in the evening?”
    “You can easily make sure. The tables haven’t been wiped yet. If there was anybody at that one there’ll be cigar or cigarette ends in the ash-tray, and the marks left by glasses on the table itself.”
    She sat still, leaving him to go and look.
    “I don’t see anything.”
    “If it had been any other day I wouldn’t be so positive; but Mondays are so slack, we sometimes think it isn’t worth opening. I wouldn’t mind betting we didn’t have a dozen clients in all. My husband will be able to tell you exactly.”
    “Do you know Oscar?” he asked point-blank.
    She didn’t jump, but he had the impression that she became a little reticent.
    “Oscar who?”
    “An elderly man—short, square-shouldered, grey-haired.”
    “I can’t think of anyone like that. The butcher’s name is Oscar, but he’s tall and dark, with a moustache. Perhaps my husband…”
    “Go and fetch him, if you don’t mind.”
    Maigret sat still, in the dark red tunnel of a room with the light grey rectangle of the open door at its far end, like a cinema screen with the dim figures of some old news-reel flickering to and fro across it.
    On the wall opposite him was a photograph of Arlette, in the inevitable black dress which clung to her body so tightly that she seemed more naked than in the indecent photos he had put in his pocket.
    That morning in Lucas’s office he had paid scarcely any attention to her. She was just one of the little night-birds of which Paris held so many. All the same, he had noticed how young she was, and felt that there was something wrong somewhere. He could still hear her weary voice—the voice they all have at daybreak, after drinking and smoking too much. He remembered her anxious eyes; he remembered how he had glanced automatically at her breast; and above all he remembered the smell of human female that emanated from her—almost the smell of a warm bed.
    He had seldom met a woman who gave such a strong impression of sensuality: and that was out of keeping with her worried, childish face and still more out of keeping with the rooms he had just left—with the polished floor, the broom-cupboard, and the meat-safe. “ Fred will be down in a minute.”
    “Did you tell him what I wanted to know?”
    “I asked him if he’d noticed two men. He doesn’t remember them. In fact he feels sure there weren’t two men at that table. It’s N°4. We always refer to the tables by their numbers. At N°5 there was an American who drank almost a whole bottle of whisky, and at N°11 there was a whole party, with women. Désiré, the waiter, will tell you about that, this evening.”
    “Where does he live?”
    “In the suburbs. I don’t know where exactly. He goes home by train every morning from the Gare St Lazare.”
    “What other employees have you?”
    “The Grasshopper, who opens car doors, runs errands, and now and then hands out cards. And the musicians and the girls.”
    “How many girls?”
    “Apart from Arlette there’s Betty Bruce. She’s the one in the left-hand photo. She does acrobatic dances. And Tania, who plays the piano when she’s not dancing. That’s all, at present. Other girls come in, of