Inspector Cadaver Read Free

was
enfolding him ever more tightly in its embrace.
    The passageway was broad, with grey
flagstones and walls panelled to head height in dark wood. The hall light was encased in
a coloured glass lantern. A broad oak staircase with a red carpet and heavy, well-waxed
banisters led upstairs. The whole house, in fact, was permeated with a rich smell of
wax, of food on the simmer, and a hint of something else, something bittersweet that
struck Maigret as the smell of the countryside.
    What was most remarkable was the sense of
peace, a peace that seemed eternal. It felt as if the furniture and all the objects in
that house had been in their appointed placefor generations, as if the
occupants themselves in their daily round observed meticulous rituals designed to ward
off the unexpected.
    ‘Do you want to go up to your room for
a moment before dinner? It’s just a family home. We won’t stand on
ceremony.’
    The master of the house pushed open a door,
and two people rose simultaneously to their feet in a snug, hushed drawing room.
    ‘May I introduce Detective Chief
Inspector Maigret … My wife …’
    She had the same self-effacing air as
Examining Magistrate Bréjon, the same mannerliness that comes from a particular
middle-class education, but for a second Maigret thought he sensed something harder,
sharper in her gaze.
    ‘I’m so sorry my brother has put
you to trouble in weather like this.’
    As if the rain affected his trip in any way,
or was a significant part of it!
    ‘May I introduce a family friend,
inspector: Alban Groult-Cotelle, whom my brother-in-law no doubt mentioned to you
…’
    Had the examining magistrate mentioned him?
Perhaps he had. Maigret had been so preoccupied with the ridged green lampshade.
    ‘Delighted to meet you, inspector. I
am a great admirer of yours …’
    Maigret felt like replying, ‘I’m
not,’ as he detested people of Groult-Cotelle’s sort.
    ‘Will you help us to
the port, Louise?’
    The bottle and glasses were laid out on a
coffee table. Low, diffused lighting. Few clear-cut lines, none at all, even. Antique
armchairs, most of them upholstered in tapestry. Carpets in neutral or faded colours. A
log fire in the fireplace and, in front, a cat, stretching itself.
    ‘Do sit down … Groult-Cotelle
has dropped in for a neighbourly dinner …’
    The latter gave an affected bow each time
his name was pronounced, like a grandee who, in the company of simple folk, archly makes
a point of being as formal as in high society.
    ‘The family is so kind as to keep a
regular place for me at their table, old recluse that I am …’
    Recluse, yes, and no doubt a bachelor into
the bargain. Heaven knows why you could tell, but you could. A pretentious, ineffectual
character, full of quirks and eccentricities and heartily pleased to be so too.
    It must have irked him not to be a count or
marquis, or even have a ‘de’ in front of his name, but at least he had his
mannered Christian name, Alban, which he loved to hear on people’s lips, followed
by that surname with its double barrels and hyphen.
    In his forties, he was tall and slim, a
combination he no doubt thought made him look aristocratic. Sprucely turned out, he
nonetheless had a dusty air, which, like his dull skin and already receding hairline,
struck Maigret as a sign he wasn’t married. He wore elegant clothes in distinctive
shades that seemed as if they had never been new, but equally, as if they would never
grow old or wear outeither, the sort of clothes that form an integral
part of a person’s character and are worn religiously like a uniform. From then
on, Maigret would always see him in the same greenish, regulation country
gentleman’s jacket, with the same horseshoe tiepin on a white cotton piqué
tie.
    ‘Your journey wasn’t too tiring,
inspector?’ asked Louise Bréjon, handing him a glass of port.
    Ensconced in an armchair, which the lady of
the house must have been worried would give way beneath him, Maigret