The Late Monsieur Gallet Read Free Page B

talking.
    â€˜Now if only he’d had something stolen from him. Then the case would be child’s play. This is Monday … the crime was committed on the night of Saturday into Sunday … it was a holiday. These days, as well as
the travelling showmen, and I distrust them on principle, you see all sorts of people prowling round. You don’t know what the countryside’s like, inspector! You may well be able to find nastier characters here than among the dregs of Paris …’
    â€˜The fact is,’ said Maigret, interrupting him, ‘if it hadn’t been for the holiday the crime would have been discovered at once.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜I mean it was because of the rifle range on the fairground and the firecrackers going off that no one heard
the gunshot. Didn’t you tell me that Gallet didn’t die of the injury to his
head?’
    â€˜So the doctor says, and the post-mortem will confirm that hypothesis. The man got a bullet in his head, but it seems that he could have lived another two or three hours. Directly after the shot, however, he was stabbed in the heart with a
knife, and death was instantaneous. The knife has been found.’
    â€˜How about the revolver?’
    â€˜We haven’t found that.’
    â€˜The knife was in the room with him?’
    â€˜Within a few centimetres of the body, and there are bruises on Gallet’s left wrist. It looks as if, knowing he was wounded, he raised the knife in the air as he made for his attacker, but he was weakened … Then the murderer
grabbed his wrist, twisted it, and ran the blade through his heart. That’s not just my own opinion, the doctor thinks so too.’
    â€˜So if it hadn’t been for the fair, Gallet wouldn’t be dead!’
    Maigret was not trying to indulge in ingenious deductions or startle his provincial colleague, but the idea struck him and now he was thinking it through, curious to see where it would lead him.
    But for all the noise of the wooden carousel horses, the rifle range and the firecrackers, the detonation would have been heard. People from the hotel would have come running, and might have intervened before the knife went into the victim.
    Night had fallen now; all you could see were a few reflections of moonlight on the river and the two lamps at the ends of the bridge. Inside the café, guests were playing billiards.
    â€˜A strange story,’ concluded Inspector Grenier. ‘It’s not eleven yet, is it? My train leaves at eleven thirty-two, and it will take me quarter of an hour to get to the station. I
was saying that if anything had gone missing …’
    â€˜What time do the fairground stalls close?’
    â€˜Midnight. That’s the law!’
    â€˜Which means that the crime was committed before midnight, and that in turn means that not everyone in the hotel will have been in bed.’
    While both officers pursued their own trains of thought, the conversation went on in desultory fashion.
    â€˜Like that false name he gave, Monsieur Clément. The proprietor should have told you … he stayed here from time to time. About every six months, I’d say. It must be ten years ago that he first came here. He always used the
name of Clément, a man of private means, from Orleans.’
    â€˜Did he have a case with him – the kind of thing commercial travellers use for their samples?’
    â€˜I didn’t see anything like that in his room … but the hotel proprietor can tell you. Monsieur Tardivon! Come here a minute, would you? This is Inspector Maigret from Paris, and he’d like to ask you a question. Did
Monsieur Clément usually have a commercial traveller’s case with him?’
    â€˜Containing silverware,’ Inspector Maigret added.
    â€˜Oh no. He always had a travelling bag for his personal things, because he was very careful about looking after himself.