The Night at the Crossroads by Georges Simenon

chest.’
    Maigret had stood up. He walked over to the divan with a face so impassive that Else grew uneasy as he approached, and she clutched the neck of her peignoir.
    But he was not looking at her. He was staring at the wall behind the divan, where the snowy landscape painting was now perfectly level.
    Slowly he swung the frame to one side and discovered a niche in the wall, neither large nor deep, where two bricks had been removed. Within the niche were an automatic loaded with six bullets, a box of cartridges, a key and a tube of veronal.
    Else had watched his every move but seemed hardly to react at all. A slight rosiness in the cheeks; her eyes a bit more bright …
    â€˜I would probably have got around to showing you that hiding place myself, chief inspector …’
    â€˜Really?’
    As he spoke he was pocketing the revolver and noting that half the veronal tablets in the tube were gone. He went over to the bedroom door and stuck the key into the lock: it fitted perfectly.
    The young woman had risen from the divan. She no longer cared about covering her chest and moved her hands awkwardly and abruptly as she spoke.
    â€˜What you just discovered confirms what I’ve already told you, but you must understand my position! How could I accuse my brother? … If I had confessed to you, when you first came here, that I have for a long time now
considered him insane, you would have been shocked by my behaviour. And yet, it’s the truth …’
    Her accent, which grew stronger whenever she became emotional, imparted a peculiar quality to every word she said.
    â€˜The revolver?’
    â€˜How can I explain … We left Denmark as paupers, but my brother was convinced that, with his education, he would find a brilliant position in Paris … He did not. And became even more distressingly strange. When he
resolved to bury us out here, I understood that he was seriously ill. Especially as he insisted on locking me in my bedroom every night under the pretext that enemies might attack us! You can imagine my situation, imprisoned within these walls, unable to escape in case of fire, for example,
or any other catastrophe … I couldn’t sleep! I was as frantic as if I’d been underground in a tunnel …
    â€˜One day when he was in Paris, I had a locksmith come to make me a key to the bedroom door. Since I was locked in here, I had to climb out of the bedroom window …
    â€˜Now I could move around freely, but it wasn’t enough. There were days when Carl was half mad … He often talked about destroying us both to avoid complete ruin.
    â€˜I bought a revolver in Arpajon on another day when my brother was in Paris. And as I was sleeping poorly, I got myself some veronal.
    â€˜You see how simple it is! He’s so distrustful … No one is more wary than a deranged man who’s still lucid enough to realize that he is disturbed … I made this hiding place one night.’
    â€˜Is that it?’
    She was surprised by his brutal bluntness.
    â€˜Don’t you believe me?’
    Without answering, he went to the window, opened it,
then the shutters – and was bathed in the cool freshness of the night.
    The road below was like a stream of ink that shone as if by moonlight whenever cars went by. The headlamps would gleam in the distance, perhaps ten kilometres away. Then suddenly there’d be a sort of cyclone, a roaring whoosh of air, a
single red tail light fading into the darkness.
    The petrol pumps were lit up. In the Michonnets’ villa, one light still outlined the silhouette of the insurance agent in his armchair on the pale blind upstairs.
    â€˜Close the window, chief inspector!’
    Maigret turned around. He saw Else shivering, drawing her peignoir tightly around her.
    â€˜Do you understand now why I’m worried? You’ve persuaded me to tell you everything – but I