Friend of Madame Maigret Read Free

course. The paper had finished up on the desk of Maigret, who, skeptical, hadn’t bothered one of his veteran inspectors with it, but had sent little Lapointe, a young man who was itching to distinguish himself.
    Lapointe had discovered that there was indeed a bookbinder in the rue de Turenne, a Fleming resident in France for more than twenty-five years, Frans Steuvels. Posing as a sanitary inspector, the detective had been through his premises and returned with a detailed plan.
    â€œSteuvels works in the shop window, so to speak, chief inspector. The rear of the workshop, which gets darker as you move farther away from the street, is cut off by a wooden partition behind which the Steuvelses have fixed up their bedroom.
    â€œA staircase leads to the basement, where there is a kitchen, then a small room, where they have to keep the light on all day, which serves as a dining room, and lastly a cellar.”
    â€œWith a furnace?”
    â€œYes. An old model that doesn’t seem to be in very good shape.”
    â€œDoes it work?”
    â€œIt wasn’t going this morning.”
    It was Lucas who had gone to the rue de Turenne at about five o’clock in the afternoon for an official investigation. Fortunately he had taken the precaution of bringing along a warrant, because the bookbinder claimed the inviolability of his home.
    Detective Sergeant Lucas had been on the point of going away empty handed, and there were those who almost resented his partial success now that the case had turned into a nightmare for Police Headquarters.
    Sifting the ashes at the very back of the furnace, he had come upon two teeth, two human teeth, which he had immediately taken to the laboratory.
    â€œWhat kind of man is he, this bookbinder?” asked Maigret, who at this point was only remotely connected with the case.
    â€œHe must be about forty-five. He’s red-haired, pock-marked, with blue eyes and a very gentle expression. His wife, although she’s younger than he is, never takes her eyes off him as if he were a child.”
    It was now known that Fernande, who had become famous in her turn, had come to Paris as a domestic servant and later had walked the pavement for several years along the boulevard de Sébastopol.
    She was thirty-six, had been living with Steuvels for ten years, and three years ago, for no apparent reason, they had been married at the Mairie of the Third Arrondissement.
    The laboratory had sent in its report. The teeth were those of a man of about thirty, probably fairly fat, who must still have been alive until a few days before.
    Steuvels had been brought into Maigret’s office, amicably, and the grilling had begun. He had sat in the green plush armchair facing the window that overlooked the Seine, and that evening it was pouring with rain. Throughout the ten or twelve hours the interrogation had lasted, they had heard the rain beating against the window panes and the gurgling of water in the gutter. The bookbinder wore spectacles with thick lenses and steel rims. His abundant, rather long hair was shaggy, and his tie was crooked.
    He was a cultured man, who had read a lot. He remained calm and deliberate; his delicate ruddy skin flushed easily.
    â€œHow do you explain the fact that human teeth have been found in your furnace?”
    â€œI don’t explain it.”
    â€œYou haven’t lost any teeth recently? Nor your wife?”
    â€œNeither of us. Mine are false.”
    He had taken his plate out of his mouth, then put it back with a practiced movement.
    â€œCan you give me an account of how you spent the evenings of February 16, 17, and 18?”
    The interrogation had taken place on the evening of the twenty-first, after the visits of Lapointe and Lucas to the rue de Turenne.
    â€œDo those dates include a Friday?”
    â€œThe sixteenth.”
    â€œIn that case I went to the Saint-Paul Cinema in the rue Saint-Antoine, as I do every Friday.”
    â€œWith