Inspector Cadaver Read Free Page B

locals, who essentially accused
her.
    The story was still confused in
Maigret’s mind but it jarred so intensely with what he saw before him. According
to the rumours going round, the man found dead on the railway track, Albert Retailleau,
had been GenevièveNaud’s lover. It was even claimed he came
to see her two or three times a week, at night, in her bedroom.
    He was a lad without means, barely twenty.
His father, a worker at the Saint-Aubin dairy, had died as the result of a boiler
accident. His mother lived on a pension the dairy had been ordered to pay her.
    ‘Albert Retailleau did not commit
suicide,’ his friends insisted. ‘He enjoyed life too much. And, even if he
had been drunk, as they’re claiming, he wasn’t stupid enough to cross the
tracks when a train was coming.’
    The body had been found more than five
hundred metres from the Nauds’, roughly halfway between their house and the train
station.
    Yes, but now people were alleging that the
boy’s cap had been found in the reeds along the canal, much closer to the
Nauds’ house.
    And there was another, even more suspect
story going round. Someone who had visited the young man’s mother, Madame
Retailleau, a week after the death of her son, claimed to have seen her hurriedly hiding
a bundle of thousand-franc notes. As far as anyone knew, she had never had such a
fortune in her life.
    ‘It’s a pity you’re
visiting our part of the world in the depths of winter, inspector … It is so
beautiful round here in summer people call it the Green Venice … You’ll have
a little more pullet, won’t you?’
    And what about Cavre? Why had Inspector
Cadaver come to Saint-Aubin?
    They ate too much; they drank too much; it
was too hot. In a torpor, they went back into the drawing roomand sat
down with their legs stretched out in front of the crackling fire.
    ‘You must … I know you’re
particularly partial to your pipe but surely you’ll have a cigar
…’
    Were they trying to pull the wool over his
eyes? The idea was laughable. They were good people, nothing more and nothing less. The
examining magistrate in Paris must have blown the whole affair out of proportion. And
Alban Groult-Cotelle was just a po-faced idiot, one of those vaguely wealthy idlers you
find everywhere in the country.
    ‘You must be tired from your journey.
When you want to go to bed …’
    Meaning they wouldn’t talk tonight.
Because Groult-Cotelle was there? Or because Naud preferred not to say anything in front
of his wife?
    ‘Do you take coffee in the evening?
No? No herbal tea? Will you excuse me if I go up? Our daughter hasn’t been very
well for two or three days and I have to go and see if she needs anything … Young
girls are always a little fragile, you know, especially in our climate.’
    The three men smoke. They talk about this
and that, even local politics, because there is some story of a new mayor who is at
loggerheads with all the right-thinking folk in the area and …
    ‘Well, gentlemen!’ Maigret
finally growls with a mixture of amusement and impatience. ‘If I may, I’ll
go to bed.’
    ‘You’ll sleep here too, Alban
… You’re not going home tonight in this weather …’
    They go upstairs. Maigret’s room is
hung with yellowwallpaper, at the far end of the passage. A real trove
of childhood memories.
    ‘You don’t need anything? I was
forgetting … Let me show you the w.c. …’
    The men shake hands, and then Maigret
undresses and gets into bed. He hears noises in the house. From very far off in his
half-sleep his ears catch what sounds like the murmuring of voices, but it soon fades
away, and the house becomes as quiet as it is dark.
    He falls asleep, or thinks he does. He keeps
seeing the dismal face of Cavre, who had to be the most miserable man on this earth, and
then he dreams that the apple-cheeked maid who waited on them at dinner is bringing him
his breakfast.
    The door has half-opened. He is sure he has
heard the door half-open. He