The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

partly from her body and clothes, and it was at once discreet and spicy, not at all
disagreeable. This smell had distracted him while she was talking to him.
Another case where Mr. Pyke might have thought Maigret was cheating. The
Chief Inspector had gone up to his bedroom for a moment after dinner to wash
his hands. He had left the door open, and without his hearing the pad of feet on
the floor, Jojo had come in and stood framed in it. How old could she be?
Sixteen? Twenty? She had that look, at once admiring and timorous, of
youngsters who go to the stage doors of theaters to ask for autographs. Maigret
impressed her because he was famous.
“Have you got something to say to me, my girl?”
She had closed the door behind her, which he hadn’t liked, for you never
know what people will think. He was not forgetting that there was an
Englishman in the house.
“It’s about Marcellin,” she went on to say, blushing. “He talked to me one
afternoon when he was very drunk and took his siesta on the café bench.”
Odd! Just now as well, when the Arche was empty, he had seen someone
stretched out on that same bench, a newspaper over his face, taking a short nap.
It was evidently a cool spot. An odd house, even so! As for the smell…
“I thought it might be of some use to you. He told me that, if he wanted, he
could have a pile as big as that.”
“A pile of what?”
“Of bank notes, presumably.”
“A long time ago?”
“I think it was two days before what happened.”
“There wasn’t anyone else in the café?”
“I was alone, polishing the counter.”
“Did you tell anyone about it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He didn’t say anything else?”
“Only: ‘What would I do with it, my little Jojo? It’s so nice here.’ ”
“He never made love to you, never made any proposals?”
“No.”
“And the others?”
“Nearly all of them.”
“When Ginette was here—for she came almost every month, didn’t she?—did