Inspector Cadaver Read Online Free Page A

gauge the effect of her words, then
got up and listened intently. As she was leaving the room, she added, ‘Do whatever
you want. It’s completely up to you.’
    He still found it hard to believe that scene
was real, in which he had played the humiliating role of a prone extra. He wasn’t
particularly vain but he was still ashamed to have been caught in bed by a young girl,
puffy and bleary-eyed from sleep. Even more demeaning was her attitude; she had barely
taken any notice of him. She hadn’t pleaded, as he might have expected, or thrown
herself at his feet, or burst into tears.
    He recalled her regular features, which
looked a little like her father’s. He couldn’t have said if she was
beautiful but he had an impression of fullness and poise that even her frenzied
declaration hadn’t dispelled.
    ‘I’m pregnant with Albert
Retailleau’s child. If my father finds out, no one will be able to stop me killing
myself …’
    Maigret finished getting dressed,
mechanically lit his first pipe of the day, opened the door and, unable to findthe light switch, groped his way along the passage. He went
downstairs, and at the bottom couldn’t see the faintest glimmer of light but could
hear the sound of a stove being raked. He headed in that direction. A streak of yellow
light filtered under a door in the dining room, and, after knocking quietly, he pushed
it open.
    He found himself in the kitchen.
Étienne Naud was sitting at the end of the table, his elbows on the light wood,
eating a bowl of soup while an old cook in a blue apron dislodged a shower of glowing
embers from her kitchen range.
    Naud was unpleasantly surprised, Maigret
could tell, but only because he had been caught eating his breakfast in the kitchen like
a farm labourer.
    ‘Already up, inspector? You see, I
keep to the old country ways. Whatever time I go to bed, I’m up at five in the
morning. I didn’t wake you, I hope?’
    What was the use of telling him the lavatory
had woken him?
    ‘I won’t offer you a bowl of
soup, because I suppose that …’
    ‘Quite the opposite.’
    ‘Léontine …’
    ‘Yes, monsieur, I heard. Right
away.’
    ‘Did you sleep well?’
    ‘Fairly well. I thought I heard
footsteps in the passage at one point …’
    Maigret said this to see whether Naud had
caught his daughter going back to her room, but his host’s surprise seemed
sincere.
    ‘When was that? In the evening? I
didn’t hear anything.Although, I have to say, it does take a
great deal to wake me when I’m fast asleep. Probably our friend Alban getting up
to go to the w.c. … What do you think of that fellow? Likeable, isn’t he?
Much more cultivated than he lets on. You can’t imagine the number of books he
gets through. He knows everything, simple as that. Too bad he didn’t have better
luck with his wife …’
    ‘He was married?’
    Having marked Groult-Cotelle down as the
epitome of the provincial bachelor, Maigret felt suspicious, as if they had been hiding
something from him or trying to trick him.
    ‘He not only was, he still is. He has
two children, a boy and a girl. The older one must be twelve or thirteen.’
    ‘His wife lives with him?’
    ‘No. She lives on the Côte
d’Azur. It’s rather a painful story that we never refer to round here. Mind
you, she was from a very good family, a Deharme … Yes, like the general.
She’s his niece … A slightly peculiar young woman, she couldn’t seem
to understand that she was living in Saint-Aubin rather than Paris … There were a
few scandals … She used the pretext of a very hard winter to up sticks to Nice and
has never come back. She lives down there with her children … Um … She
doesn’t live alone, of course …’
    ‘Her husband hasn’t sued for a
divorce?’
    ‘That isn’t done
here.’
    ‘Which side is the fortune
on?’
    Étienne Naud looked at him
reproachfully; he would have preferred not to have to go into details.
    ‘She is undoubtedly
very wealthy.’
    The cook had