Maigret and the Dosser by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-17T15:13:23+00:00

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CHAPTER 5

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Maigret seldom talked to his wife about an enquiry when it was underway. In fact he avoided discussing it with his closest collaborators, to whom he would merely give instructions. This was all part of his way of working, his attempts to understand, to immerse himself gradually in the way of life of people unknown to him the previous day.

“What do you think about it, Maigret?” an examining magistrate would often ask him during a visit from the Public Prosecutors’ Department of the reconstitution of a crime.

His invariable reply was often quoted in the law-courts:

“I never think, monsieur le juge.”

And somebody had added one day:

“He’s soaking it in…”

This was true, in a way; words were too precise for him, so that he preferred to keep silent.

This time it was different, at any rate with Madame Maigret, perhaps because thanks to her sister who lived in Mulhouse, she had lent him a helping hand. As they sat down to lunch he announced:

“This morning I made Keller’s acquaintance…”

She was surprised, not only because he had broached the subject first, but on account of the cheerfulness of his tone. That was not quite the right word, nor was it exactly sprightliness. None the less there was a certain lighthearted good humour in his voice and in his eyes.

For once, the papers were not harrassing him, while the Deputy Public Prosecutor and the examining magistrate had left him in peace. A tramp had been attacked under the Pont Marie and thrown into the flooded Seine, but he had survived as though by a miracle and professor Magnin was astonished at his powers of recovery.

In short it was a crime without a victim, one might almost have said without a murderer, and nobody bothered much about the Doc except perhaps for Big Léa and two or three down-and-outs.

Maigret, however, devoted as much of his time to this affair as to some drama that aroused passionate interest throughout France. He seemed to have made it his personal concern, and from the way he had just announced his interview with Keller, he might have been speaking of somebody that he and his wife had been waiting to meet for a long time.

“Has he recovered consciousness?” asked Madame Maigret, trying not to display an excessive interest.

“Yes and no…He did not utter a word…He merely looked at me, but I’m convinced that he did not miss a word of what I said…The Sister in charge doesn’t share my opinion…She maintains that he is still stupefied by the drugs he’s been given, and that he’s in the state of a punch-drunk boxer…”

As he ate, he looked out of the window and listened to the birds.

“Do you get the impression that he knows who attacked him?”

Maigret sighed, and finally gave a faint self-mocking smile that was uncharacteristic.

“I don’t know…I’d find it hard to explain my impression…”

He had seldom, in all his life, felt as baffled as that morning in the Hôtel-Dieu, nor as passionately interested in any problem.

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