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pleasanter
house. Just big enough so you’ve got everything you want within easy reach and
…’
    In his mind’s eye, Maigret sees the waxed
staircase. Say what you like about Félicie, the way she keeps the house clean is exemplary.
As Maigret’s mother used to say, you could eat off the floor …
    A door on the right, the old man’s bedroom.
A door on the left, Félicie’s bedroom. Beyond Félicie’s bedroom
there’s another quite large room which is a jumble of furniture …
    Maigret furrows his brow. You couldn’t call
it a presentiment exactly, even less an idea. He has a vague feeling that perhaps there’s
something not quite right there.
    â€˜When that young fellow was there
…’ Lepape is saying.
    Maigret gives a start.
    â€˜Do you mean the nephew?’
    â€˜Yes. He lived with his uncle for six
months, maybe more, about a year since. He wasn’t very strong. Seems he’d been
recommended to get some country air, but he couldn’t, being always stuck in Paris
…’
    â€˜What room was he in?’
    â€˜There you have it. That’s the
strangest part of it …’
    Lepape gives a knowing wink. Forrentin is not
best pleased. It’s clear the manager of the estate doesn’t like stories being spread
about the development, which he considers to be his own personal domain.
    â€˜It doesn’t mean a thing,’ he
protests.
    â€˜Maybe it does, maybe it don’t, but
the old man andFélicie … Listen, inspector. You know the house.
To the right of the stairs there’s only one room, Pegleg’s. Opposite there are two,
but you have to go through one to get to the other … Well, when the young fellow arrived,
his uncle gave him his own room, and he moved across the way, that is, on Félicie’s
side. He had the first room and the girl slept in the second, which meant she had to pass
through her employer’s bedroom to get to her own or come out of it …’
    Forrentin objects:
    â€˜So it would have been better to put a
young man of eighteen next to a young woman?’
    â€˜I’m not saying that, I’m not
saying that at all,’ repeats Lepape with a sly look in his eye. ‘I’m not
suggesting anything. I’m just saying that the old man was on Félicie’s side of
the landing while the nephew was shut away on the other. But as to saying that there was
anything going on …’
    Maigret gives that possibility short shrift. Not
that he has any illusions about middle-aged or even old men. Anyway, Pegleg was only sixty and
still sprightly …
    No, it simply doesn’t correspond to the
picture he has formed of him. He feels he is beginning to understand the grouchy loner whose
straw hat he tried on just hours ago.
    It’s not his relationship with Félicie
that bothers him. So what exactly is it? This business of the rooms troubles him.
    He repeats to himself over and over, like a
schoolboy trying to make his lessons stick in his head:
    â€˜The nephew on the right … by himself
… The uncle on the left, then Félicie …’
    Which means the old man has
put himself between the pair of them. Did he want to ensure that the two young people did not
get together behind his back? Was he trying to prevent Félicie wandering off the straight
and narrow? No, because once his nephew had gone he again left her by herself on the other side
of the staircase.
    â€˜Your deal,
patron
!’
    He stands up. He is going up to bed. He is
impatient for it to be tomorrow so he can go back up to the construction set village, see the
houses glowing pink in the sunshine and look at those three bedrooms … And first thing,
he’ll phone through to Paris and tell Janvier to find out what he can about the young
nephew.
    Maigret has paid scarcely any attention to him.
No one saw him in Jeanneville on the morning the crime was committed. He is tall,