Maigret and the Dead Girl by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Georges Simenon
Published: 1954-12-31T11:00:00+00:00

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6

At dinner Madame Maigret began to talk about their neighbor’s little girl, who had paid her first visit to the dentist that day, and had said… What was it she had said? Maigret, without realizing that he was not listening properly, sat watching his wife, whose voice flowed on with a pleasant musical sound, and finally she broke off to ask him:

“Aren’t you amused?”

“Oh yes—it’s very funny.”

His mind had been far away. It happened to him now and then. At such times he would look at people, with heavy, staring eyes, and those who didn’t know him well couldn’t tell that in his eyes they were only a kind of wall or back cloth.

Madame Maigret did not try again, and set about doing the dishes, while he sank into his armchair and opened the evening paper. Once the washing up was finished, silence descended on the apartment, broken only by the sound of crackling paper as a page was turned, and twice the rain could be heard falling outside.

About ten o’clock, seeing him carefully fold the paper, she hoped for a moment they were going to bed; but her husband took a magazine from a pile nearby, and began reading that. So she went on sewing, making a remark now and again, not to let the silence seem too empty. It didn’t matter whether he answered or not, or merely grunted: it was more homely.

The people in the apartment above had turned off the radio and gone to bed.

“You’re waiting for something?”

“I may get a telephone call.”

Féret had promised to look up Louise’s mother as soon as she got back from Monte Carlo and ask her some more questions. He might be delayed by another job. The evening before the battle of flowers they would be pretty busy down there.

After a time Madame Maigret noticed that her husband no longer turned the pages. His eyes were still open, however. She waited a long time before suggesting:

“What about going to bed, all the same?”

It was after eleven o’clock. Maigret made no objection, carried the telephone into the bedroom, plugged it in, and stood it on his bedside table.

They undressed and took turns in the bathroom, going through their usual nightly routine. When they were in bed, Maigret put out the light and turned to kiss his wife.

“Good night.”

“Good night. Do try to get to sleep.”

His thoughts were still revolving around Louise Laboine and the other people who had emerged, one by one, from the background, to form a kind of procession escorting her. The only difference was that now all these people were becoming indistinct and fantastic, and that in the end they got mixed up and began to play one another’s parts.

Later still, Maigret dreamed he was playing chess. But he was so tired, and the game had been going on so long, that he began to confuse the various pieces, mistaking queen for king, bishops for knights, and forgetting where he had moved his castles. This was all very distressing, because the Chief was watching him.

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