Jeanne moves out and cuts off contact with Louise

Jeanine Armenieu’s departure turns a shared apartment into a one-sided break: she leaves with her two suitcases while Louise Laboine is out, conceals her destination, and ensures that even the landlady cannot pass on an address. The change is consequential because Louise is soon required to leave the same lodging with nowhere definite to go. Recalled by Madame Marcelle to Maigret, the episode sets Jeanine’s deliberate escape and new circumstances against Louise’s uncertainty and dwindling support.

Background and Decision

By the time Madame Marcelle describes the departure, Jeanine had been gone for about six months. In the months before leaving, she had changed noticeably: she dressed better and more expensively, went to places beyond those she had previously frequented, and sometimes stayed away for two or three days. Flowers arrived for her, as did boxes of chocolates from the Marquise de Sévigné. Madame Marcelle says she understood that something in Jeanine’s life had changed, but her account does not establish who sent the gifts or specify the nature of Jeanine’s new relationship.

The decision was announced one evening, when Jeanine sat down and told Madame Marcelle that she was leaving for good. She said she had nothing against the lodging itself, but could not share an apartment with Louise for the rest of her life. Madame Marcelle joked about whether Jeanine was getting married; Jeanine did not laugh and answered quietly. Her subsequent honeymoon in Italy confirms that she had achieved what she wanted, but the decisive immediate fact is her resolve to leave the shared arrangement rather than continue it.

Departure and Concealment

Jeanine did not intend to tell Louise where she had gone. She explained to Madame Marcelle that she would leave without a word to her friend and would take care that Louise did not discover her destination. Her stated concern was that Louise might otherwise become her responsibility again. The departure was therefore not simply an unannounced move: Jeanine planned to prevent the possibility of Louise following or rejoining her.

She carried out that plan while Louise was out, leaving with two suitcases. She also withheld her new address from Madame Marcelle, explicitly to make sure it would not reach Louise. Jeanine said she would look in from time to time to see whether any letters had arrived, but this did not give Louise a way to contact her. Madame Marcelle had been told that a present would be sent, though none had arrived by the time she spoke to Maigret. The promise of a gift sits beside the practical finality of the move: Jeanine could maintain a possible connection to the landlady while cutting off Louise’s access to her.

Louise Is Left Without a Destination

The contrast becomes concrete when the next month’s rent was due. On the last morning, Louise told Madame Marcelle that she had to leave. The landlady remembered being sorry for her: Louise did not cry, but her lips trembled, and she seemed completely lost. She had only a little blue suitcase and, when asked where she was going, said she did not know. Jeanine had left with two suitcases and a planned destination; Louise faced departure with one small case and no destination she could name.

Madame Marcelle offered to let Louise stay for a few days while she found another tenant. Louise thanked her but declined. The landlady regarded this refusal as characteristic of her, without explaining further what she meant. She watched Louise walk down the street carrying the suitcase and, as Louise turned the corner, felt like calling her back to give her some money. The impulse came too late to alter Louise’s departure. It also marks the limit of Madame Marcelle’s help: she could offer a brief extension and consider giving money, but Louise still walked away without a stated plan.

The Attempt to Reconnect

Louise later returned to the lodging, but not to see Madame Marcelle for her own sake. She asked for Jeanine’s address. Madame Marcelle said she did not have it, and thought Louise probably did not believe her. The exchange shows that Jeanine’s concealment had continued to hold: even when Louise sought a direct route back to her friend, the landlady could not provide one.

Madame Marcelle could only guess why Louise wanted to find Jeanine. She thought Louise might hope to get back into her life or ask her for money, since Louise’s clothes made it apparent that she was having a hard time. Neither possibility is confirmed as Louise’s actual purpose. The episode ends not with a reunion or a definitive account of what Louise sought, but with the request unanswered and the two women’s separation intact. Jeanine’s departure gives her a new life beyond the apartment; for Louise, it removes a familiar connection just as her own lodging is ending.