Read Maigret in Montmartre for Free Online

Fred was delighted or annoyed at the publicity he was liable to receive.
    “Anyhow, I’ll do all I can to help you. I suppose I’d better open as usual this evening? If you like to drop in, you can question all the others.”
    When Maigret got back to the Rue Notre-Dame de Lorette, the police car was no longer there, and an ambulance was just taking away the girl’s body. A few idlers were hanging round the door, but not as many as he had expected.
    Janvier was in the concierge’s lodge, making a telephone call. He rang off just as Maigret came in, and said:
    “The report from Moulins has come through already. The Leleu couple—father and mother—are still living there, with their son, who’s a bank clerk. As for Jeanne Leleu, their daughter, she’s small, snub-nosed, dark-haired, left home three years ago, and hasn’t given a sign of life since. Her parents aren’t in the least interested.”
    “The description doesn’t fit at a single point, does it?”
    “No. She’s two inches shorter than Arlette, and she isn’t likely to have had her nose straightened.”
    “No phone calls about the Countess?”
    “Nothing at all. I’ve questioned all the tenants in Building B. There are a great many of them. The fat, fair-haired woman who watched us go upstairs is cloak-room attendant in a theatre. She makes out she isn’t interested in what goes on in the house, but she did hear someone go past a few minutes before the girl got home.”
    “So she heard the girl go up? How did she know who it was?”
    “Says she recognized the footstep. In actual fact she spends her time peering through the crack of her door.”
    “Did she see the man?”
    “She says she didn’t, but that he came upstairs slowly, as though he were very heavy or had a weak heart.”
    “She didn’t hear him go down again?”
    “No.”
    “She’s quite sure it wasn’t one of the tenants from higher up the house?”
    She knows the step of all the tenants. I saw Arlette’s neighbour, too—a waitress: I had to wake her up, and she hadn’t heard a thing.”
    “Is that all?”
    “Lucas phoned to say he was back in the office, waiting for instructions.”
    “Finger-prints?”
    “Only ours and Arlette’s. You’ll get the report sometime this evening.”
    “You haven’t got an Oscar among your tenants?” Maigret asked “the concierge, on the off chance.
    “No, Inspector. But once, a long time ago, I took a telephone message for Arlette. It was a man speaking, with a provincial accent, and he said: ‘Will you tell her Oscar is waiting for her at the usual place’.”
    “About how long ago was that?”
    “A month or two after she came to live here. It struck me particularly, because it was the only message that ever came for her.”
    “Did she get any letters?”
    “One from Brussels, now and then.”
    “A man’s writing?”
    “No, a woman’s. And not an educated one.”
    Half an hour later, Maigret and Janvier were on their way upstairs at the Quai des Orfèvres, after stopping for a pint at the Brasserie Dauphine.
    Maigret was hardly inside his office when young Lapointe rushed in, red-eyed, and agitated.
    “I’ve got to speak to you at once, sir.”
    Turning away from the cupboard where he had been hanging up his coat and hat, Maigret looked at the young man and saw that he was biting his lips and clenching his fists, to keep himself from bursting into tears.

THREE
    H e spoke between clenched teeth, with his back to Maigret and his face almost pressed against the window-pane.
    “When I saw her here this morning, I wondered why she’d been brought in. Sergeant Lucas told me the story while we were on our way to Javel. And now I get back to the office, only to hear that she’s dead.”
    Maigret, who had sat down, said slowly:
    “I’d forgotten for the moment that your name was Albert.”
    “After what she’d told him, Sergeant Lucas ought not to have let her go off by herself, without any protection at all.”
    He