My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

It was hot, in spite of the open window. It had become an obsession to listen to the noises of the house. Ginette was still not asleep. There were occasional footsteps above his head. As for Mr. Pyke, he had to go a fourth time to the end of the passage and, each time, Maigret waited with a sort of anguish for the racket caused by the flush, before attempting to go back to sleep. For he must have been sleeping between the interruptions, a sleep not deep enough to efface his thoughts completely, but sufficient to distort them.

Mr. Pyke had played a dirty trick on him when he had spoken about the Dutchman at the end of the jetty. From now on the chief inspector could only see de Greef in the light of the peremptory phrases of his British colleague.

However, the portrait which Pyke had sketched of the young man did not satisfy him. He, too, was there, with Anna, who must have been sleepy and who, as time passed, allowed herself to lean more and more on her companion’s shoulder.

De Greef did not speak to her. He cannot have been in the habit of speaking to her often. He was the male, the leader, and she had only to follow, to await his pleasure.

He was watching. With his very thin face he called to mind a lean animal, a wild beast.

The others probably weren’t lambs, but indisputably de Greef was a wild beast. He sniffed like a wild beast. It was a mannerism. He would listen to what was being said and then he would sniff. That was his only perceptible reaction.

In the jungle the major would probably have been a pachyderm, an elephant, or better still a hippopotamus. And Monsieur Émile? Something furtive, with pointed teeth.

It was absurd. What would Mr. Pyke have thought if he had been able to read Maigret’s thoughts? True, the chief inspector had the excuse of having had too much to drink and being half-asleep. If he had foreseen his insomnia he would have accounted for a few more glasses, in order to plunge at once into a dreamless slumber.

All in all Lechat was a very good man. So good that Maigret would have liked to have had him in his service. Still a little young, a little excitable. He was easily agitated, like a gun dog which runs in all directions around its master.

He knew the Midi already, as he had been in the squad at Draguignan, but he had only had occasion to visit Porquerolles once or twice; he had only really got to know the island during the last two or three days.

“The people from the North Star don’t come every evening?”

“Almost every evening. They sometimes arrive late. Usually, when the sea is calm, they come by moonlight in a dinghy.”

“Are Mrs. Wilcox and the major friends?”

“They studiously avoid speaking to one another, and each looks at the other as though they didn’t exist.”

After all, it was understandable. They both had the same background.

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