The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien by Georges Simenon Page A

at Luzancy.
    A quarter of an hour passed like this,
     and then Jef Lombard returned, his eyes moist with emotion, wiping his hand across
     his forehead and brushing away a stray lock of hair.
    â€˜Please forgive me,’ he
     said. ‘My wife has just given birth. A girl!’
    There was a hint of pride in his voice,
     but, as he spoke, he was looking anxiously back and forth between Maigret and Van
     Damme.
    â€˜Our third child. But I’m
     still as excited as I was the first time! You saw my mother-in-law, well – she had
     eleven and she’s sobbing with joy, she’s gone to give the workmen the
     good news and wants them to see our baby girl.’
    His eyes followed Maigret’s gaze,
     now fixed upon the two men hanging from the church-steeple cross, and he became even
     more nervous.
    â€˜The sins of my youth,’ he
     murmured, clearly uncomfortable. ‘Terrible stuff. But at the time I thought I
     was going to be a great artist …’
    â€˜It’s a church in
     Liège?’
    Jef didn’t answer right away. And
     when he finally did, it was almost with regret.
    â€˜It’s been gone for seven
     years. They tore it down to build a new church. The old one wasn’t beautiful,
     it didn’t even have any style to speak of, but it was very old, with a touch
     of mystery in all its lines and in the little streets and alleys around
     it … They’ve all been levelled now.’
    â€˜What was
     its name?’
    â€˜The Church of Saint-Pholien. The
     new one is in the same place and bears the same name.’
    Still seated on the corner of
     Lombard’s table, Joseph Van Damme was fidgeting as if his nerves were burning
     him inside, an inner turmoil betrayed only by the faintest of movements, uneven
     breathing, a trembling in his fingers, and the way one foot was jiggling against a
     table leg.
    â€˜Were you married at that
     time?’ continued Maigret.
    Lombard laughed.
    â€˜I was nineteen! I was studying at
     the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Look over there …’
    And he pointed, with a look of fond
     nostalgia, to a clumsy portrait in gloomy colours that was nevertheless recognizable
     as him, thanks to the telling irregularity of his features. His hair was almost
     shoulder length; he wore a black tunic buttoned up to his neck and an ample
lavallière
bow tie.
    The painting was flagrantly Romantic,
     even to the traditional death’s-head in the background.
    â€˜If you’d told me back then
     that I’d wind up a photoengraver!’ he marvelled, with helpless
     irony.
    Jef Lombard seemed equally unsettled by
     Van Damme and Maigret, but he clearly had no idea how to get them to leave.
    A workman came for advice about a plate
     that wasn’t ready.
    â€˜Have them come back this
     afternoon.’
    â€˜But they say that will be too
     late!’
    â€˜So what! Tell them I’ve
     just had a daughter …’
    Lombard’s eyes, his movements, the
     pallor of his complexion pocked with tiny acid marks – everything
about him reflected a disturbing confusion of joy,
     anxiety, perhaps even anguish.
    â€˜If I may, I’d like to offer
     you something … We’ll go down to the house.’
    The three men walked back along the maze
     of corridors and through the door where the old woman had spoken to Maigret. There
     were blue tiles in the hall and a clean smell faintly scented, however, with a kind
     of staleness, perhaps from the stuffiness of the lying-in room.
    â€˜The two boys are at my
     brother-in-law’s. Come through here …’
    He opened the door to the dining room,
     where the small panes of the windows admitted a dim, bleak light that glinted off
     the many copper pieces on display everywhere. The furniture was dark.
    On the wall was a large portrait of a
     woman, signed
Jef
, full of awkward passages but imbued with a clear desire
     to present the model