The Night at the Crossroads Read Online Free PDF Page A

the policemen back to the gate.
    â€˜You’re not going to look at the garage?’
    â€˜Tomorrow …’
    â€˜Listen, chief inspector … This may seem somewhat strange to you … I’d like you to make use of me if I can be helpful in any way. I know that I am not only a foreigner,
but
your prime suspect as well. Yet another reason for me to do my utmost to find the guilty man. Please don’t hold my awkwardness against me.’
    Maigret looked him right in the eye. He saw the sadness in that eye, which slowly turned away. Carl Andersen relocked the gate and went back to the house.
    â€˜What came over you, Lucas?’
    â€˜Something was bothering me … I got back from Avrainville a while ago. I don’t know why, but this crossroads suddenly gave me such a bad feeling …’
    The two men were walking in the dark along one side of the road. There weren’t many cars.
    â€˜I’ve tried to reconstruct the crime in my mind,’ continued Lucas, ‘and the more you think about it, the more bewildering it becomes.’
    They were now abreast of the Michonnet villa, which formed one point of a triangle, the other two of which were the garage and the Three Widows house, all more or less equidistant from one another. Connecting them all, the smooth, shining ribbon
of the road, running like a river between two rows of tall trees.
    No light could be seen over at the Three Widows house. Two windows were illuminated at the insurance agent’s villa, but dark curtains allowed only a thin streak of light to escape, an uneven line, revealing that someone was peeking through
the curtains to look outside.
    Over by the garage: the milk-white globes atop the pumps, plus a rectangle of harsh light streaming from a workshop resounding with hammer blows.
    The two policemen had stopped, and Lucas, who was one of Maigret’s oldest colleagues, explained his reasoning.
    â€˜First thing: Goldberg had to have come here. You saw the corpse in the morgue at Étampes? You didn’t? A man of forty-five, definitely Jewish-looking. A short, stocky guy with a tough jaw, a stubborn brow, curly hair like
sheep’s wool … Showy suit … Nice linen, and monogrammed. Someone used to living well, giving orders, spending freely … No mud, no dust on his patent-leather shoes, so even if he came to Arpajon by train, he did not cover the three kilometres to get here on
foot! My theory is that he arrived from Paris, or maybe Antwerp, by car.
    â€˜The doctor says that his dinner had been completely digested at the time of death, which was instantaneous. And yet a large quantity of champagne and toasted almonds was found in his stomach. No hotel proprietor in Arpajon sold any
champagne on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, and I defy you to find a single toasted almond anywhere in that town.’
    With a screech of rattling iron, a lorry went by at fifty kilometres an hour.
    â€˜Consider the Michonnets’ garage, sir. The insurance agent has had a car for only one year. His first one was an old wreck that he simply kept in the padlocked wooden shed that opens on to the road. He hasn’t had time to have
another garage built, so the new car was stolen from the shed. Someone had to drive it to the Three Widows house, open the gate, then the garage, take out Andersen’s old
heap and leave Michonnet’s car in its place … And to top
it off, stick Goldberg behind the wheel and shoot him dead point-blank. Nobody saw or heard a thing! … 
Nobody has an alibi!
 … I don’t know if you’ve got the same feeling I have about this, but when I was coming back from Avrainville a little while
ago, while it was growing dark, I was completely at sea … I get the sense that there’s something wrong with this case, something weird, almost malignant …
    â€˜I went up to the gate of