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which had provoked the first scene with his wife and years later would prove the
     cause of his death.
    He had no friends, received no mail. He
     appeared to know Latin and therefore to have received an above-average
     education.
    Back in his office, Maigret drew up a
     request for the German police to release the body, disposed of a few current matters
     and, with a sullen, sour face, once again opened the yellow suitcase, the contents
     of which had been so carefully labelled by the technician in Bremen.
    To this he added the package of thirty
     Belgian thousand-franc notes – but abruptly decided to snap the string and copy down
     the serial numbers on the bills, a list he sent off to the police in Brussels,
     asking that they be traced.
    He did all this with studied
     concentration, as if he were trying to convince himself that he was doing something
     useful.
    From time to time, however, he would
     glance with a kind of bitterness at the crime-scene photos spread out
on his desk, and his pen would hover in
     mid-air as he chewed on the stem of his pipe.
    Regretfully, he was about to set the
     investigation aside and leave for home when he learned that he had a telephone call
     from Rheims.
    It was about the picture published in
     the papers. The proprietor of the Café de Paris, in Rue Carnot, claimed to have seen
     the man in question in his establishment six days earlier – and had remembered this
     because the man got so drunk that he had finally stopped serving him.
    Maigret hesitated. The dead man’s
     shoes had come from Rheims – which had now cropped up again.
    Moreover, these worn-out shoes had been
     bought months earlier, so Louis Jeunet had not just happened to be in Rheims by
     accident.
    One hour later, the inspector took his
     seat on the Rheims express, arriving there at ten o’clock. A fashionable
     establishment favoured by the bourgeoisie, the Café de Paris was crowded that
     evening; three games of billiards were in full swing, and people at a few tables
     were playing cards.
    It was a traditional café of the French
     provinces, where customers shake hands with the cashier and waiters know all the
     regulars by name: local notables, commercial travellers and so forth. It even had
     the traditional round nickel-plated receptacles for the café dishcloths.
    â€˜I am the inspector whom you
     telephoned earlier this evening.’
    Standing by the counter, the proprietor
     was keeping an eye on his staff while he dispensed advice to the billiard
     players.
    â€˜Ah, yes! Well, I’ve already
     told you all I know.’
    Somewhat
     embarrassed, he spoke in a low voice.
    â€˜Let me think … He was
     sitting over in that corner, near the third billiard table, and he ordered a brandy,
     then another, and a third … It was at about this same time of night.
     People were giving him funny looks because – how shall I put this? – he wasn’t
     exactly our usual class of customer.’
    â€˜Did he have any
     luggage?’
    â€˜An old suitcase with a broken
     lock. I remember that when he left, the suitcase fell open and some old clothes
     spilled out. He even asked me for some string to tie it closed.’
    â€˜Did he speak to
     anyone?’
    The proprietor glanced over at one of
     the billiard players, a tall, thin young man, a snappy dresser, the very picture of
     a sharp player whose every bank shot would be studied with respect.
    â€˜Not
     exactly … Won’t you have something, inspector? We could sit over
     here, look!’
    He chose a table with trays stacked on
     it, off to one side.
    â€˜By about midnight, he was as
     white as this marble tabletop. He’d had maybe eight or nine brandies. And I
     didn’t like that stare he had – it takes some people that way, the alcohol.
     They don’t get agitated or start rambling on, but at some point they simply
     pass out cold. Everyone had noticed him. I