The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien Read Online Free PDF Page B

terrified and screamed, “Louis!”
    â€˜He left, slamming the door so
     hard the glass shattered.
    â€˜That was two years ago. Some
     neighbourhood women saw him around now and again … I went to that factory
     in Belleville, but they told me he didn’t work there any more.
    â€˜Someone saw him, though, in a
     small workshop in Rue de la Roquette where they make beer pumps.
    â€˜Me, I saw him once more, maybe
     six months ago now, through the shop window. Mama is living with me and the child
     again, and she was in the shop … she kept me from running to the door.
    â€˜You swear to me that he
     didn’t suffer? That he died instantly? He was an unhappy, unfortunate man,
     don’t you see? You must have understood that by now …’
    She had relived her story with such
     intensity, and her husband had had such a strong hold on her, that, without
     realizing it, she had been reflecting all the feelings she was describing on her own
     face.
    As in his first impression, Maigret was
     struck by an
unnerving resemblance between
     this woman and the man in Bremen who had snapped his fingers before shooting a
     bullet into his mouth.
    What’s more, that raging fever she
     had just evoked seemed to have infected her. She fell silent, but all her nerves
     remained on edge, and she almost gasped for breath. She was waiting for something,
     she didn’t know what.
    â€˜He never spoke to you about his
     past, his childhood?’
    â€˜No. He didn’t talk much. I
     only know that he was born in Aubervilliers. And I’ve always thought he was
     educated beyond his station in life; he had lovely handwriting, and he knew the
     Latin names of all the plants. When the woman from the haberdashery next door had a
     difficult letter to write, he was the one she came to.’
    â€˜And you never saw his
     family?’
    â€˜Before we were married, he told
     me he was an orphan. Chief inspector, there’s one more thing I’d like to
     ask you. Will he be brought back to France?’
    When Maigret hesitated to reply, she
     turned her face away to hide her embarrassment.
    â€˜Now the shop belongs to my
     mother. And the money, too. I know she won’t want to pay anything to bring the
     body home – or give me enough to go and see him! Would it be possible, in this
     case …’
    The words died in her throat, and she
     quickly bent down to retrieve her handkerchief, which had fallen to the floor.
    â€˜I will see to it that your
     husband is brought home, madame.’
    She gave him a touching smile, then
     wiped a tear from her cheek.
    â€˜You’ve understood, I can
     tell! You feel the same way
I do, chief
     inspector! It wasn’t his fault … He was an unhappy
     man …’
    â€˜Did he ever have any large sums
     of money?’
    â€˜Only his wages. In the beginning,
     he gave everything to me. Later on, when he began drinking …’
    Another faint smile, very sad, and yet
     full of pity.
    She left somewhat calmer, gathering the
     skimpy fur collar tightly round her neck with her right hand, still clutching the
     handbag and the tightly folded newspaper in the other.
    Maigret found a seedy-looking hotel at
     18, Rue de la Roquette, right where it joins Rue de Lappe, with its accordion-band
     dance halls and squalid housing. That stretch of Roquette is a good fifty metres
     from Place de la Bastille. Every ground floor hosts a bistro, every house a hotel
     frequented by drifters, immigrants, tarts and the chronically unemployed.
    Tucked away within these vaguely
     sinister haunts of the underclass, however, are a few workshops, their doors wide
     open to the street, where men wield hammers and blowtorches amid a constant traffic
     of heavy trucks.
    The contrast is striking: these steady
     workers, busy employees with waybills in hand, and the sordid or insolent creatures
     who hang around