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…
    He nearly smiled, however, because he
     was looking at the trousers that Anna was still holding.
    It was unexpected, ridiculous or moving,
     those heroic lines in the dark setting of a student’s room.
    Joseph Peeters, long and thin, badly
     dressed, with his fair hair that no cream could tame, his disproportionately large
     nose, his short-sighted eyes …
    O my handsome betrothed …
    And that portrait of a provincial girl,
     diaphanously pretty!
    It wasn’t the prestigious context
     of Ibsen’s play. She wasn’t proclaiming her faith to the stars! Like a
     good middle-class girl she copied out some lines at the bottom of a portrait.
    I wait for you here …
    And she really had waited! In spite of
     Germaine Piedboeuf! In spite of the child! In spite of the years!
    Maigret felt vaguely awkward. He looked
     at the table covered with a green blotting pad, with a brassinkwell that must have been a present, and a Galalith pen holder.
    Mechanically, he opened one of the
     drawers of the side-table and saw, in a cardboard box without a lid, some amateur
     photographs.
    â€˜My brother has a
     camera.’
    Some young people in students’
     caps … Joseph on his motorbike, his hand on the throttle lever ready for a fast
     start … Anna at the piano … Another girl, thinner and sadder …
    â€˜That’s my sister
     Maria.’
    And suddenly there was a little passport
     photograph, as gloomy as all portraits of that kind, because of the brutal contrast
     of black and white.
    A girl, but so frail, so small that she
     looked like a child. Big eyes took up the whole of her face. She wore a ridiculous
     hat and seemed to be looking with fear at the camera.
    â€˜Germaine, isn’t
     it?’
    Her son looked like her.
    â€˜Was she sick?’
    â€˜She had tuberculosis. She
     wasn’t very healthy.’
    Anna was! Tall and well built, she
     seemed in a perfect mental and physical equilibrium. At last she set the trousers
     down on the counterpane.
    â€˜I’ve just been to her house
     …’
    â€˜What did they say? They must have
     …’
    â€˜I only saw a midwife … and the
     little boy …’
    She didn’t ask any questions, as
     though out of modesty. There was something discreet about her demeanour.
    â€˜Is your bedroom next
     door?’
    â€˜Yes … My bedroom, which is also
     my sister’s …’
    There was a connecting door, which
     Maigret opened. The other room was brighter, because its windows looked out on to
     the quay. The bed was already made. It wasn’t untidy in the slightest, not so
     much as a piece of clothing on the furniture.
    Only two nightdresses neatly folded on
     the two pillows.
    â€˜You’re
     twenty-five?’
    â€˜Twenty-six.’
    Maigret wanted to ask a question. He
     didn’t know how to do it.
    â€˜You’ve never been
     engaged?’
    â€˜Never.’
    But that wasn’t entirely what he
     had wanted to ask. She impressed him, particularly now that he had seen her room.
     She impressed him as an enigmatic statue might have done. He wondered if her
     unappealing flesh had ever trembled, if she was anything but a devoted sister, a
     model daughter, a mistress of the house, a Peeters, if, in the end, beneath that
     surface, there was a woman!
    And she didn’t look away. She
     didn’t hide. She must have felt that he was studying her figure as much as her
     features but she didn’t so much as blink.
    â€˜We never see anyone apart from
     our cousins, the Van de Weerts …’
    Maigret hesitated, and his voice
     wasn’t entirely natural when he said:
    â€˜I’m going to ask you to do
     an experiment for me. Willyou go down to the dining room and play
     the piano for me until I call you. For as long as possible, the same piece as on the
     third of January … Who was playing?’
    â€˜Marguerite. She sings and
     accompanies herself.