Maigret Goes to School by Georges Simenon & Linda Coverdale

Author:Georges Simenon & Linda Coverdale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

6. The Postmistress’s Funeral

It was not because of the postmistress’s funeral, due to take place that day, that Maigret awakened with a weight on his shoulders. The death of Léonie Birard, in broad daylight, had not distressed anyone or offered any dramatic interest, and in the village and on their farms the people of Saint-André must have been dressing for her burial service as gaily as for a wedding. In fact, Louis Paumelle, out in the courtyard early on in a starched white shirt and black cloth trousers – but no collar or tie – was filling an impressive number of carafes with wine, carafes he set not only behind the counter, but on the kitchen table as well, as if for a village fair.

The men were shaving. Everyone would be in black, as though the entire village were in mourning. Maigret remembered one of his aunts, when he was little, whom his father had asked why she’d bought yet another black dress.

‘You see, my sister-in-law has breast cancer and might die in a few months or a few weeks. It’s so hard on clothes to have them dyed!’

In a village, everyone has so many relatives who can die from one moment to the next that they all spend their lives in mourning clothes.

Maigret was shaving, too.

He saw the morning bus leave almost empty for La Rochelle, even though it was Saturday. Thérèse had brought him up a cup of coffee and his hot water, because she had seen him spend hours the previous evening off in his corner drinking wine, and then, after dinner, shots of brandy.

It was not because he had been drinking the evening before that he had a feeling of tragedy, either. Perhaps, in the end, the reason was simply that he had slept badly. He had spent the night seeing the faces of children, in close-up, as in a film, faces that resembled the Gastin and Sellier boys but were not exactly either one.

He was trying, without succeeding, to remember those dreams. Someone was angry at him, one of the children, he didn’t know which, they were all mixed up together. He kept telling himself that it was easy to recognize them because the teacher’s son wore glasses.

Only, immediately afterwards, he saw Marcel Sellier wearing glasses, too, and when he expressed surprise about it, the boy told him:

‘I only wear them when I go to confession.’

It was doubtless not so tragic for Gastin to be in prison since the police lieutenant did not believe that much in his guilt, nor did the examining magistrate, either. The teacher was better off over there for a few days, instead of in the village or confined to his house. And one witness report, especially that of a child, would not be enough to condemn him.

To Maigret it was more complicated than that. This often happened to him. It could be said that during each new inquiry his humour followed more or less the same curve.

At the beginning, you see the people from the outside.

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