Maigret and the Spinster by Georges Simenon

unsavory fingers.
    “Last year, I remitted to Juliette five hundred and ninety thousand francs in bills…a profit of five hundred and ninety thousand francs.”
    “And she kept all that money in her apartment?”
    “I have every reason to believe she did, as she had ceased to be able to go out herself and she would never have entrusted her niece with such large sums of money…Oh! I can guess what you’re thinking…I realize that what has happened puts me in a false position…But I give you my word, Chief Superintendent, that you are mistaken…I have never done anyone out of a single penny. Ask any of the people concerned. I don’t have to tell you that they’re not the sort to permit any irregularity to go unpunished. Any one of them will tell you that Monsieur Charles is on the level…Would you care for a refill of tobacco?”
    Maigret declined the proffered tobacco pouch and took his own out of his pocket.
    “No, thanks.”
    “As you prefer…I’m doing my best to give you a truthful account…As Albert would say, I am spilling the beans.”
    This slang expression was accompanied by an odd smile. After all, this was a man who had spent the greater part of his life in the society of the most God-fearing citizens of Fontenay.
    “Juliette had a bee in her bonnet about keeping the nature of her investments secret…She dreaded discovery…Mark you, she never saw a soul, there was nobody to poke his nose into her affairs. All the same, she went to absurd lengths—it was almost touching—to prevent discovery. For the past six months or more, since she first became housebound, I have been under orders to visit her clandestinely in her apartment. You wouldn’t believe the shifts I was put to on the days when I had to call on her.”
    Footsteps on the stairs. The Siveschis had returned. They could be heard talking loudly in Hungarian, and by the time they reached the floor above a regular row had broken out.
    “Every morning, the tenants’ newspapers are delivered to the lodge. The concierge sorts them out and puts them in the appropriate pigeonholes with the mail…I had to contrive to mark Juliette’s paper with a penciled cross when I collected my own. Poor Cécile, who suspected nothing, would come down and fetch her aunt’s paper a few minutes later. That same night, at midnight, I would creep upstairs without making a sound…Juliette would be waiting for me at the door, leaning on her cane.”
    The entire staff of the Police Judiciaire had openly laughed at Cécile for suggesting that furniture and ornaments had been moved during the night!
    “Did the niece sleep through it all?”
    “Cécile? Her aunt saw to it that she did. If you have searched the apartment, as I presume you have, you must have found several bottles of sleeping pills in a drawer. On the nights when Juliette was expecting me, she always made sure that Cécile would sleep very soundly and…Forgive me, I haven’t offered you a drink…What will you have?”
    “Nothing, thank you.”
    “I see…You’re on the wrong track, Chief Superintendent…Of course you don’t have to believe me, but I do assure you that I couldn’t so much as wring the neck of a chicken, and I turn faint at the sight of blood.”
    “Madame Boynet was strangled.”
    At this, the former lawyer seemed momentarily taken aback. He looked down at his bloodless hands.
    “That, too, would be beyond me. Besides, it was not in my own interest to…”
    “Tell me, Monsieur Dandurand, according to your calculations, how much money did Madame Boynet keep in the apartment?”
    “Approximately eight hundred thousand francs.”
    “Do you know where this money was hidden?”
    “She never told me…Knowing her as I did, I presumed that she never let it out of her hands, that it must be somewhere within her reach, and that, in a manner of speaking, she went to bed with her fortune.”
    “And yet none of it has been found. Presumably, she also had papers, the deeds of