The Saint-Fiacre Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

their
     right, beyond the Notre-Dame pond. They saw a huntsman striding towards the bird he
     had killed, towards which his dog was hurrying.
    â€˜It’s Gautier, the estate
     manager,’ said Maurice. ‘He must have gone hunting …’
    Then all of a sudden he had a fit of
     annoyance, stamped his heel on the ground, pulled a face and nearly sobbed.
    â€˜Poor old thing!’ he
     muttered, his lips pursed. ‘It’s … it’s so wretched! … and that
     little swine Jean who …’
    As if by magic, they saw Jean pacing the
     courtyard of the chateau, side by side with the doctor, who must have been engaged
     in a heated discussion with him, since he was waving his thin arms around.
    They occasionally caught the smell of
     chrysanthemums in the wind.

3. The Altar Boy
    There was no sun to distort the images,
     and no greyness either to blur the outlines of things. Everything stood out with
     sharp clarity: the trunks of the trees, the dead branches, the pebbles and
     especially the black clothes of the people who had come to the cemetery. The whites,
     on the other hand, gravestones or starched shirt-fronts, or the bonnets of the old
     women, looked unreal and perfidious: whites too shockingly white.
    Had it not been for the crisp breeze
     cutting into people’s cheeks, it was almost as if they were under a slightly
     dusty bell-jar.
    â€˜I’ll see you in a
     minute!’
    Maigret left the Count of Saint-Fiacre
     outside the cemetery gate. An old woman, sitting on a little bench that she had
     brought with her, was trying to sell oranges and chocolate.
    Oranges! Fat ones! Unripe! And candied …
     They put your teeth on edge, they rasped your throat but, when he was ten years old,
     Maigret had devoured them anyway, because they were oranges.
    He had turned up the velvet collar of
     his overcoat. He didn’t look at anyone. He knew that he had to turn to the
     left, and that the grave he was looking for was the third one past the cypress
     tree.
    All around, the cemetery was covered with
     flowers. The previous day, some women had washed certain gravestones with a brush
     and soap. The gates had been repainted.
    HERE LIES ÉVARISTE MAIGRET …
    â€˜Excuse me! No
     smoking.’
    The inspector barely noticed that anyone
     was talking to him. At last he stared at the bell-ringer, who was also the
     grave-digger, and put his pipe, still lit, in his pocket.
    He couldn’t think about one thing
     at a time. Memories came flooding in, memories of his father, a friend who had
     drowned in the Notre-Dame pond, the child of the chateau in his beautiful pram …
    People looked at him. He looked at them.
     He had seen these faces before. But back then, that man holding a little boy in his
     arms, for example, the one walking behind a pregnant woman, had been a little boy of
     four or five.
    Maigret had no flowers. The tombstone
     was blackened. He came out grumpily and muttered to himself, making a whole group of
     people turn round: ‘We really need to find the missal!’
    He didn’t want to go back to the
     chateau. There was something about it that disgusted, even infuriated him.
    Certainly, he was under no illusion
     about the men. But he was furious with them for sullying his childhood memories!
     Especially the countess, whom he had always considered as noble and lovely as a
     character in a picture-book …
    And there she was, a batty old lady who
     kept gigolos!
    Not even that! There was nothing honest or
     open about it! The famous Jean was just playing at being a secretary! He
     wasn’t handsome, he wasn’t even all that young!
    And the poor old woman, as her son had
     said, was tormented, torn between the chateau and the church.
    And the latest Count of Saint-Fiacre
     risked arrest for presenting a dud cheque!
    Someone was walking in front of Maigret
     with his gun over his shoulder, and the inspector