Maigret

by Georges Simenon

  There could be no possible doubt about it; she had been strangled.

  He went out on the landing again and, his voice harsh and anxious, said, ‘Someone find me a local police officer.’

  Five minutes later, he was phoning from the glazed telephone booth of a nearby bistro.

  ‘Hello? Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, yes … Who’s this on the phone? All right … Tell me, young man, has Cécile come back? … Then go to the public prosecutor’s office … Try to see the public prosecutor himself … Tell him … Are you listening?. … No, I’m staying here. Hello! And tell Criminal Records … If by some miracle Cécile does turn up there … What was that? No, young man, this is no time for silly jokes …’

  When he left the bistro, after drinking a quick glass of rum at the bar, fifty people were stationed outside the apartment building in a formation like a rectangular block of ice cream.

  In spite of himself, he looked around for Cécile.

  Not until five in the afternoon was he to learn that Cécile was dead.

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