Cécile est morte

For six months Cécile had been pestering Chief Superintendent Maigret, pitching camp in the waiting room, endlessly patient, to report to him that the furniture in the apartment she shared with her aunt had mysteriously shifted position during the night. So much trouble for so self-effacing a woman to create! Clearly she was a spinster, and this was just the sort of fanciful notion spinsters cling to, to plague chief superintendents who have full case rosters. His colleagues teased him about his "girlfriend"; her unassuming stubbornness got on his nerves; her very lack of any style or…