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straight for the telephone booth.
    â€œWho’s speaking?”
    â€œJanvier here, chief.”
    â€œAny news?”
    â€œIn accordance with your instructions, the men are already out on the job.”
    These were the five inspectors, each assigned to a different district, who had been detailed to comb all the hardware shops in Paris. As for Santoni, Maigret had instructed him to find out everything he could about Monique Thouret. By now, he must be in the Rue de Rivoli, sniffing round the offices of Geber et Bachelier, Solicitors.
    If Madame Thouret had been on the telephone, Maigret would have rung her in Juvisy, to ask whether, during the past three years, her husband had continued to leave home every morning with his lunch wrapped in a square of black oilcloth.
    â€œI’d be glad if you’d send a car for me.”
    â€œWhere are you?”
    â€œIn the Rue de Bondy. Tell the driver I’ll be waiting opposite La Renaissance.”
    He was on the point of instructing Janvier, who for once was not snowed under with work, to assist with the inquiries among the shopkeepers in the Boulevard Saint-Martin. Inspector Neveu was already on the job, but for work of that sort extra help was always appreciated.
    But he had thought better of it, mainly because he had an urge to return to the district himself.
    â€œAny other instructions?”
    â€œI want photographs sent to all the newspapers. They’ve played down the story so far, and I’d be grateful if they’d keep it that way.”
    â€œI get it. I’ll send you a car right away.”
    Partly because the concierge happened to have mentioned Calvados, and partly on account of the extreme cold, Maigret went into a bar and ordered a glass. Then, with his hands in his pockets, he crossed the boulevard to have another look at the cul-de-sac where Monsieur Louis had been found stabbed.
    So reticent had the newspapers been on the subject of the murder that not a single one of the passers-by stopped to peer at the paving stones, in the hope of finding traces of blood.
    He stood for quite a time gazing into one of the two display windows of the jeweler’s shop. Inside, he could see five or six assistants of both sexes. The jewelery was, for the most part, second-rate stuff. Many of the pieces on view were described as bargain offers . Both windows were crammed with goods: wedding rings, paste diamonds, and possibly one or two genuine ones, alarm clocks, watches, and hideous mantel clocks.
    A little old man, who had been watching Maigret from inside the shop, must have decided that he was a potential customer, since he came to the door with a smile on his face, intending to invite him in. But the chief superintendent thought it was time he took himself off, and a few minutes later he was getting into the Headquarters car.
    â€œRue de Clignancourt,” he said to the driver.
    It was a good deal quieter than the Boulevard Saint-Martin, but this too was a district of small tradespeople, and Mademoiselle Léone’s shop—from the sign above it, he gathered it was called Le Bébé Rose—was so completely eclipsed by a horse-meat butcher’s on one side and a cabmen’s eating place on the other that one would have to be in the know to find it.
    Going into the shop, he could see in the back room an old woman in an armchair, with a cat on her lap. Another, younger woman came forward to meet him. He looked at her with a slight sense of shock. She did not conform to his preconceived notion of what a shorthand typist who had worked for the firm of Kaplan should look like. What was it about her? he wondered. He could not say. Presumably she was wearing felt slippers, as her footsteps made no sound. For this reason, she reminded him a little of a nun, and her deportment also was that of a nun, for she advanced seemingly without moving her body.
    She wore a faint smile, which was not confined to her mouth, but played about all