Maigret and the Ghost by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241304044
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

5. The Room Covered in Graffiti

In that instant, something happened that Maigret would have been incapable of defining, a change of tone, or rather a sort of shift that suddenly lent more weight to gestures, words and attitudes. Did this stem from the presence of the young woman, still draped in her strange costume, or from the atmosphere of the room?

Logs were burning and crackling in the vast white stone fireplace, and the flames seemed to be leaping sprites.

Maigret now understood why the studio curtains that could be seen from Marinette Augier’s windows were nearly always drawn. The studio wasn’t only glazed on one side but two, which made it possible to choose the light required.

These curtains were made of thick, black hessian faded to grey in the wash, and had shrunk, so they no longer closed.

On one side, rooftops were visible as far as Saint-Ouen; on the other, with the sails of the Moulin de la Galette in the foreground, lay Paris in almost its entirety, scored by the boulevards, the wider gap of the Champs-Élysées, the curves of the Seine and the gilt dome of Les Invalides.

It was not this panorama that fascinated Maigret, whose senses were sharpened. It is difficult, when suddenly plunged into an unknown milieu, to grasp it fully, and yet that was what seemed to be happening to him.

Everything struck him at once, the two bare walls, for example, painted a glaring white, the dancing flames in the fireplace in the centre of one wall.

Madame Jonker had been busy painting when the two men had come in. Would it not have been natural for there to be canvases on the walls? And also, as in all artists’ studios, other canvases stacked against each other? But the varnished wooden floor was as bare as the walls.

Near the easel was a box full of tubes of paint on a pedestal table.

On another table further away, a white-wood table, the only everyday object seen so far in the house, was a jumble of pots, tin cans, bottles and rags.

The rest of the furniture comprised two antique cupboards, a chair and an armchair whose brown velvet upholstery had begun to fade.

Something was not quite right. It was only a hunch, but he was on the alert, and the Dutchman’s words only struck him more forcefully. He said, addressing his wife:

‘Inspector Maigret isn’t here to admire my paintings, but, strange as it may seem, to give a lecture on jealousy. He appears surprised that not all women are jealous …’

That could have passed as an unremarkable comment, with a hint of sarcasm. But Maigret understood it as a warning Jonker was giving his wife, and he could have sworn that she acknowledged the message by batting her eyelids.

‘Is your wife jealous, Monsieur Maigret?’

‘I confess, madame, that she has not yet given me the occasion to ask myself the question.’

‘But many women must visit your office?’

Was he mistaken? He thought he detected some sort of signal, but a signal that was for his benefit this time.

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