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

there was no point in alerting the police.
    One detail, in any case, reassured him.
     The remaining suitcase had its two keys tied to the handle with a small string. That
     was the suitcase containing the clothing.
    The thief had
     carried off the one full of old newspapers.
    Had he been simply a thief, the kind
     that prowl through stations? In which case, wasn’t it odd that he’d
     stolen such a crummy-looking piece of luggage?
    Maigret settled into a taxi, savouring
     both his pipe and the familiar hubbub of the streets. Passing a kiosk, he caught a
     glimpse of a front-page photograph and even at a distance recognized one of the
     pictures of Louis Jeunet he had sent from Bremen.
    He considered stopping by his home on
     Boulevard Richard-Lenoir to kiss his wife and change his clothes, but the incident
     at the station was bothering him.
    â€˜If the thief really was after the
     second suit of clothes, then how was he informed in Paris that I was carrying them
     and would arrive precisely when I did?’
    It was as if fresh mysteries now hovered
     around the pale face and thin form of the tramp of Neuschanz and Bremen: shadowy
     forms were shifting, as on a photographic plate plunged into a developing bath.
    And they would have to become clearer,
     revealing faces, names, thoughts and feelings, entire lives.
    For the moment, in the centre of that
     plate lay only a naked body, and a harsh light shone on the face German doctors had
     done their fumbling best to make look human again.
    The shadows? First, a man in Paris who
     was making off with the suitcase at that very moment. Plus another man who – from
     Bremen or elsewhere – had sent him instructions. The convivial Joseph Van Damme,
     perhaps? Or perhaps not! And then there was the person who, years ago, had worn
     clothing B … and the one who, during the struggle, had bled all over him.
     And the person who had
supplied the 30,000
     francs to ‘Louis Jeunet’ – or the person from whom they had been
     stolen!
    It was sunny; the café terraces, heated
     by braziers, were thronged with people. Drivers were hailing one another. Swarms of
     people were pushing their way on to buses and trams.
    From among all this seething humanity,
     here and in Bremen, Brussels, Rheims and still other places, the hunt would have to
     track down two, three, four, five individuals …
    Fewer, perhaps? Or maybe more …
    Maigret looked up fondly at the austere
     façade of police headquarters as he crossed the front courtyard carrying the small
     suitcase. He greeted the office boy by his first name.
    â€˜Did you get my telegram? Did you
     light a stove?’
    â€˜There’s a lady here, about
     the picture! She’s in the waiting room, been there for two hours
     now.’
    Maigret did not stop to take off his hat
     and coat. He didn’t even set down the suitcase.
    The waiting room, at the end of the
     corridor lined with the chief inspectors’ offices, is almost completely
     glassed-in and furnished with a few chairs upholstered in green velvet; its sole
     brick wall displays the list of policemen killed while on special duty.
    On one of the chairs sat a woman who was
     still young, dressed with the humble care that bespeaks long hours of sewing by
     lamplight, making do with the best one has.
    Her black cloth coat had a very thin fur
     collar. Her hands, in their grey cotton gloves, clutched a handbag made, like
     Maigret’s suitcase, of imitation leather.
    Did the inspector
     notice a vague resemblance between his visitor and the dead man?
    Not a facial resemblance, no, but a
     similarity of expression, of social
class
, so to speak.
    She, too, had the washed-out, weary eyes
     of those whose courage has abandoned them. Her nostrils were pinched and her
     complexion unhealthily dull.
    She had been waiting for two hours and
     naturally hadn’t dared change seats or even move at all. She looked at