The Late Monsieur Gallet Read Free

Maigret was still dragging himself about like a man doing a difficult and unattractive task.
    Later, he had time to remember the second point of contact at his leisure. It could not be followed by another.
    The village was glaring white in the stormy light of that late afternoon. Chickens and geese crossed the main road, and fifty metres away two men in aprons were shoeing a horse.
    Opposite the town hall, people were sitting at tables on a café terrace, and from the shade of red and yellow striped awnings rose an atmosphere of cool beer, ice
cubes floating in sweet-smelling drinks
and newspapers just arrived from Paris.
    Three cars were parked in the middle of the square. A nurse was looking for the pharmacy. In the town hall itself, a woman was washing down the grey-tiled corridor.
    â€˜Excuse me. The body?’
    â€˜Back there! In the school playground. The gentlemen are over there … you can come this way.’
    She pointed to a door with the word ‘Girls’ over it; it said ‘Boys’ above the other wing of the building.
    Madame Gallet went ahead with unexpected self-assurance, but all the same Maigret thought she was more likely in some kind of daze.
    In the school yard, a doctor in a white coat was smoking a cigarette and walking about like a man expecting something. Sometimes he rubbed his very delicate hands together. Two other people were talking under their breath, near a table with a
body stretched out on it under a white sheet.
    The inspector tried to slow his companion down, but he had no time to get there first. She was already in the yard, where she stopped in front of the table, held her breath and suddenly raised the sheet over the dead man’s face.
    She did not cry out. The two men who were talking had turned to her in surprise. The doctor put on rubber gloves, went over to a door and asked, ‘Isn’t Mademoiselle Angèle back yet?’
    While he took off one of his gloves to light another cigarette Madame Gallet stood there motionless, very stiff, and Maigret prepared to go to her aid.
    She abruptly turned to him, her face full of hatred, and cried, ‘How could this happen? Who dared to …?’
    â€˜Come this way, madame … it is him, isn’t it?’
    Her eyes moving fast now, she looked at the two men, the doctor in white, the nurse who was on her way, waddling.
    â€˜What do we do now?’ she managed to say, her voice hoarse.
    And when Maigret, embarrassed, hesitated to reply, she finally flung herself on her husband’s body, cast a furious glance of anger and defiance at the yard and everyone in it and shouted, ‘I don’t want to! I don’t want
to!’
    She had to be forcibly removed and handed over to the concierge, who abandoned her buckets of water. When Maigret returned to the yard the doctor had a surgical knife in his hand and a mask over his face, and the nurse was handing him a frosted
glass bottle.
    Unintentionally, the inspector kicked a small black silk hat, decorated with a mauve bow and an imitation diamond gemstone.
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    He did not watch the post-mortem. Dusk was near, and the doctor had announced that he had seven guests coming to dinner at Nevers. The two men were the examining magistrate and the clerk of the court. After shaking the inspector’s hand,
the magistrate merely said, ‘As you can see, the local police have begun their investigations. It’s a terribly confused case.’
    The body was naked under the sheet laid over it, and the dismal conversation lasted only a few seconds. The corpse was much as Maigret would have imagined from the photo of the living man: long, bony, with a bureaucrat’s hollow chest, a
pale skin that made his hair look very dark, while the body hair on his chest was reddish.
    Only half his face was still intact; the left cheek had been blown away by a gunshot.
    His eyes were open, but the mid-grey irises looked