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that the elderly lady lived her entire life in this room, which was her
exclusive preserve, whose door she was reluctant to open.
    ‘Sit down. Please … I hate talking to
someone who remains standing. You may smoke your pipe, if you need to. My husband smoked his
pipe all day long. The smell is not as bad as cigar smoke … So, you had dinner at my
son-in-law’s?’
    Maigret might have found it amusing to hear
himself being treated like a little boy, but that morning, his sense of humour had deserted
him.
    ‘I did indeed have dinner with Ernest
Malik,’ he said gruffly.
    ‘What did he tell you?’
    ‘That you were a mad old woman and that his
son Georges-Henry was nearly as mad as you.’
    ‘Did you believe him?’
    ‘Then, when I was on my way back to
L’Ange, someone, who probably deems my career has been long enough, took a pot-shot at me.
I suppose that the young man was here?’
    ‘Which young man? … You mean
Georges-Henry? I didn’t see him all evening.’
    ‘And yet his father claimed that he was
sheltering here—’
    ‘If you take everything he says as
gospel—’
    ‘You haven’t heard from
him?’
    ‘Not at all, and I’d be very happy
to. In short, what did you find out?’
    Just then he looked at her and wondered, without
knowing why, whether she really wanted him to have found out something.
    ‘You seem to be getting on famously with my
son-in-law Ernest,’ she went on.
    ‘We were in the same class at school in
Moulins, and he insists on calling me by my first name, as if we were still twelve years
old.’
    He was in a foul mood. His head hurt. His pipe
tasted stale and he had been obliged to leave and follow the maid without drinking his coffee,
because there was none ready at L’Ange.
    He was beginning to tire of this family where
people all spied on one another and nobody seemed to be speaking the truth.
    ‘I fear for Georges-Henry,’ she was
murmuring now. ‘He
was so fond of his cousin.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there had been something between them.’
    ‘He’s sixteen.’
    She looked him up and down.
    ‘And do you think that makes any
difference? … I was never so much in love as I was at sixteen and, were I to have done
something stupid, it is at that age that I would have done it. You’d do well to find
Georges-Henry.’
    And he, frosty, almost sarcastic:
    ‘Where do you suggest I look?’
    ‘That’s your job, not mine. I wonder
why his father claimed he had seen him coming here. Malik knows very well that’s not
true.’
    Her voice betrayed a genuine concern. She paced
up and down the room, but each time Maigret made to get to his feet, she repeated:
    ‘Sit down.’
    She spoke as if to herself.
    ‘They’ve arranged a big luncheon
today. Charles Malik and his wife will be there. They have also invited old Campois and that old
stick-in-the-mud Groux. I received an invitation too, first thing this morning. I wonder if
Georges-Henry will be back.’
    ‘You have nothing else to tell me,
madame?’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘Nothing. When you came to Meung yesterday,
you hinted that you refused to believe that your granddaughter had died a natural
death.’
    She stared hard at him, without revealing
anything of her thoughts.
    ‘And now that you’re here,’ she retorted with a
note of anger, ‘are you going to tell me that you find what’s going on
natural?’
    ‘I didn’t say that.’
    ‘Well! Go ahead. Go to this
luncheon.’
    ‘Will you be there?’
    ‘I don’t know. Keep your eyes and
ears open. And, if you are as good as they say you are …’
    She was displeased with him, that was clear. Was
he not being flexible enough, respectful enough of her idiosyncrasies? Was she disappointed that
he hadn’t uncovered anything yet?
    She was on edge and anxious, despite her
self-control. She headed for the door, thus dismissing him.
    ‘I’m afraid those scoundrels really
are cleverer than you!’ she said by way of a parting shot. ‘We’ll see.