Inspector Cadaver by Georges Simenon

young
Pockmarks?’ asked Maigret.
    ‘His father, yes. He’s dead now.
At the time, you had to be for or against Fillou or the boss. One side claimed that
Fillou was drunk and acting like a lunatic, and that the clogmaker had been forced to
remove him bodily, the other that it was the boss who was entirely to blame. He was
supposed to have said hateful things about the workers, such as: “I can’t
help it if they keep producing more urchins when they’re drunk on a Saturday night
…”’
    ‘Fillou died, did you say?’
    ‘Two years ago. Of stomach
cancer.’
    ‘Were many people on his side when
this was happening?’
    ‘Not the majority, but his supporters
were the most rabid, and every morning people would find threats written on their doors
in chalk.’
    ‘You mean to say, madame, that the two
cases are alike?’
    ‘I don’t mean to say anything at
all, inspector. You know how old people like to ramble on. In small towns, there is
always a Fillou affair or a Retailleau affair, otherwise lifewould be
too monotonous. There is always a little group that is beside itself with rage
…’
    ‘What was the upshot of the Fillou
affair?’
    ‘Nothing. Silence, of course
…’
    Ah yes, silence, Maigret thought. The little
group of radicals can agitate as much as it likes, the silence is always stronger. He
had come up against that silence all day.
    There was something else he had been feeling
since he had sat down in the drawing room which unsurprisingly made him uneasy.
    Having wandered sullenly and doggedly about
the streets in Pockmarks’ wake from dawn to dusk, he had absorbed some of the
lad’s outraged determination.
    ‘She’s one of them
…’, Louis would have said.
    And being
one of them
, in
Louis’ mind, meant signing up to the conspiracy of silence; joining the group that
didn’t want any fuss, that was bent on living as if everything was for the best in
the best of all worlds.
    Deep down, Maigret sided with the little
group of rebels. He had drunk their health at the Trois Mules. He had disowned the Nauds
by saying he wasn’t working for them. And when the kid doubted him, he had all but
given him his word.
    But Louis still hadn’t been mistaken
when, as he left the inspector, he had looked at him suspiciously, dimly sensing what
would happen when his companion was the enemy’s guest again. That was why he had
tried to take him to the door. He had wanted to fire him up, to steel him against any
weakness.
    ‘If you need me, I’ll be at the
Trois Mules all evening …’
    He would wait in vain. In
the bourgeois hush of that drawing room, Maigret almost felt ashamed to have run around
the streets in the company of a kid and been sent packing by all the people he had got
it into his head to question.
    On the wall there was a portrait that
Maigret had not noticed the night before, a portrait of Examining Magistrate
Bréjon, who seemed to be staring at the inspector as if to say, ‘Don’t
forget the task I entrusted you with …’
    He watched Louise Naud’s fingers as
she sewed and was mesmerized by their jitteriness. Her face was almost serene, but her
fingers revealed a fear bordering on panic.
    ‘What do you think of our
doctor?’ asked the chatty old lady. ‘A character, isn’t he? The
mistake all of you make in Paris is to think that there aren’t any interesting
people in the countryside. If you stayed here just a couple of months … I say,
Louise, isn’t your husband coming home?’
    ‘He telephoned just now to say he
would be late because he had to go to La Roche-sur-Yon. He asked me to apologize to you,
inspector …’
    ‘I owe you an apology, too, for not
having come back for lunch.’
    ‘Geneviève! You should give the
inspector a drink.’
    ‘Well now, children, it’s time I
got going.’
    ‘Stay and have dinner with us, Maman.
Étienne will drive you home when he gets back.’
    ‘Nay, my girl. I don’t need
anyone to drive me home.’
    Her daughter helped her tie the