Maigret: The Shadow in the Courtyard (1987) (15 page)

Madame Couchet was a lady, and would know how to live like one…

Maigret slowly climbed the stairs and opened the door of the flat in the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

“Guess who’s come?”

Madame Maigret was laying four places on the white tablecloth. On the sideboard, Maigret noticed a bottle of plum brandy.

“Your sister.”

It wasn’t hard to guess, since every time she came from Alsace she brought a bottle of fruit liqueur and a smoked ham.

“She’s gone to do a few errands with André…”

Her husband: a worthy fellow who ran a brickfield.

“You’re looking tired…I hope you’re not going out any more today, are you?”

Maigret did not go out again. At nine o’clock that evening he was playing Pope Joan with his sister and brother-in-law. The dining-room was redolent of plum brandy.

And Madame Maigret kept breaking into fits of laughter because she was no card-player and made the silliest mistakes imaginable.

“You’re sure you’ve not got a nine?”

“Yes, I have…”

“Well then, why don’t you play it?”

To Maigret, it was all as soothing as a warm bath. He had lost his headache.

He had stopped thinking about Madame Martin, who was being carried in an ambulance to St Anne’s Hospital, while her husband sobbed all by himself on the empty staircase.

EOF