Maigret's Dead Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

picture him arriving home and perhaps, like
Janvier, kissing his wife, or if not just taking his jacket off and putting on an old one. Then
he would eat.
    â€˜What’s today?’
    â€˜Thursday.’
    â€˜So yesterday was Wednesday. How often do
you eat out? In inexpensive restaurants, the kind where our man would have gone?’
    As he spoke, Maigret slipped the beige raincoat
over the shoulders of the manikin. Yesterday evening, at about this time, certainly not much
later, this gaberdine was still on the back of a living, breathing man who walked into theCaves du Beaujolais, which was just across the way, virtually under their
noses; they had only to look out through the skylight at the opposite bank of the Seine to see
it.
    He was calling Maigret. He was not asking to
speak to just any chief inspector or an inspector or, like those who consider their case to be
very important, the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire.
    It was Maigret he wanted.
    But he had admitted: ‘You don’t know
me …’
    All the same he had added: ‘You used to
know my wife, Nine.’
    Janvier was wondering what his boss was driving
at with all this talk of restaurants.
    â€˜Do you like fish pie?’
    â€˜I love it. It gives me indigestion, but I
eat it whenever I get the chance.’
    â€˜Right! Does your wife make it
often?’
    â€˜No. It’s too much bother. It’s
a dish people don’t often make at home.’
    â€˜So you have it in restaurants whenever
it’s on the menu …’
    â€˜Yes …’
    â€˜And do you find it on menus very
often?’
    â€˜I don’t know really … Let me
see … Sometimes on a Friday.’
    â€˜And yesterday was Wednesday. Get me Dr
Paul on the phone.’
    The doctor, who was writing up his report, was
not surprised by Maigret’s question.
    â€˜Could you tell me if there were truffles
in the fish pie?’
    â€˜Absolutely not
… I would have found fragments …’
    â€˜Thanks for your help. See, Janvier? There
weren’t any truffles in the fish pie! That eliminates expensive restaurants, which usually
include them. I want you to go down to the inspectors’ room. You can get Torrence and two
or three others to give you a hand. The switchboard won’t like it one bit because
you’ll be using all their lines for some time. Call all the restaurants one after the
other, starting with those located in the parts of town where you were making inquiries
yesterday. Find out if any of them had fish pie on their menu last night … Wait …
Try the ones with names having some connection with the south of France first. You’re more
likely to have luck with them.’
    Off Janvier went, not feeling either proud of or
overjoyed with the job he had just been landed with.
    â€˜Have you got a knife, Moers?’
    The morning was wearing on, and Maigret still had
not given up on his dead man.
    â€˜Slide the point of the blade into the slit
in the raincoat … Good … Now don’t move …’
    He lifted the material slightly so that he could
see the jacket underneath.
    â€˜The holes in the clothes don’t line
up … Now try angling the blade differently … A little more to the left … Now
to the right … Try higher … And now lower …’
    â€˜I get your drift.’
    Some of the forensic experts and technicians who
were at work in the enormous lab looked on curiously and exchanged amused glances.
    â€˜They still don’t
line up. There’s a gap of a good five centimetres between the cut in the jacket and the
one in the gaberdine … Bring me a chair … Give me a hand …’
    They sat the manikin down, a manoeuvre that
called for careful handling.
    â€˜That’s it … When a man is
sitting down, leaning against a table, for example, his overcoat may ride up … Try it
…’
    But they failed dismally in their