in the
inn. Maigret held the missal in his hands.
âThank you.â
He was in a hurry to examine it. He
walked to the back of the room.
âInspector, sir â¦â
The woman was calling to him. She was
puzzled.
âI was told there was a reward â¦
Not because Ernest â¦â
Maigret held out twenty francs, which
she put carefully in her purse, before dragging her son towards the door, saying
crossly, âAs for you, you young delinquent, just you wait till I get you home
 â¦â
Maigretâs eye met the boyâs.
The glance lasted a matter of seconds. But they both knew that they were
friends.
Perhaps because Maigret himself had once
wanted â without ever owning one! â a gilt-edged missal, containing not only the
ordinary of the mass but all the liturgical texts in two columns, in Latin and
French.
âWhat time will you be back for
lunch?â
âI donât know.â
Maigret was about to go to his room to
examine the missal, but when he remembered the draughts from the roof he chose
instead to take the main road.
It was as he walked slowly towards the
chateau that he opened the bound book with the Saint-Fiacre coat of arms. Or rather
he didnât open it. The missal opened all by itself, at a page where a piece of
paper had been slipped between two pages.
Page 221: âPrayer after
communion.â
The piece of paper was a roughly cut
scrap of newspaper which, at first glance, looked odd, as if it had been badly
printed.
Paris, 1 November. A dramatic
suicide occurred this morning in a flat on Rue de Miromesnil occupied for
several years by the Count of Saint-Fiacre and his Russian girlfriend, a certain
Marie V â¦
After informing his girlfriend
that he was ashamed of the scandal provoked by a member of the family, the count
fired a bullet into his head from a Browning and died a few minutes later
without regaining consciousness.
We have reason to believe that
this was a particularly painful family drama, and that the person in question is
none other than the mother of the unfortunate man.
A goose that had wandered into the path
furiously stretched its gaping beak towards Maigret. Bells rang, and the crowd
shuffled slowly out of the little church
accompanied by the smells of incense and snuffed
candles.
Maigret had shoved the missal into his
pocket, making it bulge, and had stopped to examine the terrible piece of paper.
The crime weapon! A newspaper cutting,
seven centimetres by five!
The Countess of Saint-Fiacre went to
first mass, knelt down in the pew reserved for the members of her family for two
centuries.
She took communion. It was planned. She
opened her missal to read the âprayer after communionâ.
There was the weapon! And Maigret turned
the bit of paper in all directions. He found something not quite right about it. He
looked among other things at the alignment of the letters, and was convinced that it
had not been produced by a rotary press as a real newspaper would have been.
It was a simple galley, hand-printed.
And in fact the sheet bore exactly the same text on the other side.
The murderer hadnât taken the
trouble to refine it, or perhaps he hadnât had time. Would it have occurred to
the countess to turn the page over? Would she not have died first, from shock,
indignation, shame or anguish?
There was a frightening expression on
Maigretâs face: because he had never before seen a crime at once so cowardly
and so skilful.
And whoever had committed the crime had
also called the police!
Assuming that the missal wouldnât
have been found â¦
Yes! That was it! No one was supposed to
find the missal! In which case it would have been impossible to speak of a crime, to
accuse anyone at all! The countess had died of a sudden heart attack!
He suddenly turned on his heel. He
reached