Maigret Afraid by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Georges Simenon
ISBN: 9780156551427
Publisher: Harvest
Published: 1952-12-31T11:00:00+00:00

6

When he realized it was Sunday, he began to dawdle. Even before this, he had been playing a secret game from his early childhood. He occasionally played it still, in bed beside his wife, taking care that she should guess nothing. And she would be taken in, saying, when she brought him his cup of coffee:

“What were you dreaming of?”

“Why?”

“You were smiling in your sleep.”

This morning, at Fontenay, before opening his eyes, he felt a ray of sunshine passing through his eyelids. He didn’t merely feel it. He had the impression of seeing it through the fine skin, which was tingling, and, probably because of the blood circulating there, it was a sun redder than the one in the sky, glorious, as in a painting.

He could create a whole world with this sun, showers of sparks, volcanoes, cascades of melted gold. He simply had to keep his eyelids moving lightly like a kaleidoscope, using his lashes as a grid.

He heard pigeons cooing on a cornice above his window, then bells ringing from two directions at once, and he could imagine the steeples pointing up into the sky, which was surely an unclouded blue today.

He went on with his game, all the while listening to the noises in the street, and it was then, from the echo that lingered after footsteps, from a certain quality of the silence, that he recognized it was Sunday.

He hesitated some time before stretching out his arm to reach his watch on the bedside table. It showed half past nine. In Paris, on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, if spring had at last reached there too, Madame Maigret would certainly have opened the windows and tidied the room, in dressing gown and slippers, while a stew would be simmering on the stove.

He promised himself he would telephone her. Since there were no telephones in the bedrooms, he would have to wait until he went down, and call her from the telephone booth.

He pressed the electric bell. He thought the chambermaid looked neater, jollier than on the day before.

“What would you like to eat?”

“Nothing. I want a lot of coffee.”

She had the same curious way of looking at him.

“Shall I run you a bath?”

“Not until I’ve finished my coffee.”

He lit a pipe, went to open the window. The air was still sharp – he had to put on his dressing gown – but little waves of warmth could already be felt. The façades of houses and the roads had dried out. The street was deserted, except now and again for a family going by in their Sunday best, a country woman holding a bunch of mauve lilacs in her hand.

The life of the hotel must have slowed down, for he had to wait a long time for his coffee. He had left the two letters he had received the night before on the bedside table. One of them was signed. The handwriting was as neat as on an engraving, in black ink like India ink.

Are you aware that the widow Gibon was the midwife who delivered Madame Vernoux of her son Alain?

It may be useful to know.

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