The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien Read Online Free Page A

have been literally drenched in blood.
     And finally, certain tears suggest that there may have been a struggle, because in
     various places, for example on the lapels, the weave of the cloth has been torn as
     if it had been clawed by fingernails.
    â€˜The items of clothing B have
     labels from the tailor Roger Morcel, Rue Haute-Sauvenière, in Liège.
    â€˜As for the revolver, it’s a
     model that was discontinued two years ago.
    â€˜If you wish to leave me your
     address, I will send you a copy of the report I’ll be drawing up for my
     superiors.’
    By eight that evening, Maigret had
     finished with the formalities. The German police had handed the dead man’s
     clothes over to him along with the ones in the suitcase, which the technician had
     referred to as clothing B. And it had been decided that, until further notice, the
     body
would be kept at the disposition of
     the French authorities in the mortuary refrigerator unit.
    Maigret had a copy of Joseph Van
     Damme’s public record: born in Liège of Flemish parents; travelling salesman,
     then director of a commission agency bearing his name.
    He was thirty-two. A bachelor. He had
     lived in Bremen for only three years and, after some initial difficulties, now
     seemed to be doing nicely.
    The inspector returned to his hotel
     room, where he sat for a long time on the edge of his bed with the two cheap
     suitcases in front of him. He had opened the communicating door to the neighbouring
     room, where nothing had been touched since the previous day, and he was struck by
     how little disorder the tragedy had left behind. In one place on the wallpaper,
     beneath a pink flower, was a very small brown spot, the only bloodstain. On the
     table lay the two sausage bread rolls, still wrapped in paper. A fly was sitting on
     them.
    That morning, Maigret had sent two
     photos of the dead man to Paris and asked that the Police Judiciaire publish them in
     as many newspapers as possible.
    Should the search begin there? In Paris,
     where the police at least had an address, the one where Jeunet had sent himself the
     thirty thousand-franc notes from Brussels?
    Or in Liège, where clothing B had been
     bought a few years before? In Rheims, where the dead man’s shoes had come
     from? In Brussels, where Jeunet had wrapped up his package of 30,000 francs? Bremen,
     where he had died and where a certain Joseph Van Damme had come to take a look at
     his corpse, denying all the while that he had ever known him?
    The hotel manager
     appeared, made a long speech in German and, as far as the inspector could tell,
     asked him if the room where the tragedy had taken place could be cleaned and rented
     out.
    Maigret grunted his assent, washed his
     hands, paid and went off with his two suitcases, their obviously poor quality in
     stark contrast with his comfortably bourgeois appearance.
    There was no clear reason to tackle his
     investigation from one angle or another. And if he chose Paris, it was above all
     because of the strikingly foreign atmosphere all around him that constantly
     disturbed his habits, his way of thinking and, in the end, depressed him.
    The local tobacco – rather yellow and
     too mild – had even killed his desire to smoke!
    He slept in the express, waking at the
     Belgian border as day was breaking, and passed through Liège thirty minutes later.
     He stood at the door of the carriage to stare half-heartedly out at the station,
     where the train halted for only thirty minutes, not enough time for a visit to Rue
     Haute-Sauvenière.
    At two that afternoon he arrived at Gare
     du Nord and plunged into the Parisian crowds, where his first concern was to visit a
     tobacconist.
    He was groping around in his pockets for
     some French coins when someone jostled him. The two suitcases were sitting at his
     feet. When he bent to retrieve them, he could find only one, and looking around in
     vain for the other, he realized that