The Grand Banks Café by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

7. Like a Family

It was one of those situations which crop up spontaneously from which it is difficult to get free. Marie Léonnec, alone in Fécamp, had been placed under the wing of the Maigrets by a friend and had been taking her meals with them.

But now her fiancé was there. All four of them were together on the beach when the hotel bell announced that it was time for lunch.

Pierre Le Clinche hesitated for a moment and looked at the others in embarrassment.

‘Come on!’ said Maigret, ‘we’ll get them to lay another place.’

He took his wife’s arm as they crossed the breakwater. The young couple followed, not speaking. Or rather, only Marie spoke and did so in a firm voice.

‘Any idea what she’s telling him?’ the inspector asked his wife.

‘Yes. She told me a dozen times this morning, to see if I thought it was all right. She’s telling him she’s not cross with him about anything, whatever it was that happened. You see? She’s not going to say anything about a woman. She’s pretending she doesn’t know, but she did say she’d be stressing the words whatever it was that happened. Poor girl! She’d go to the ends of the earth for him!’

‘Alas!’ sighed Maigret.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing … Is this our table?’

Lunch passed off quietly, too quietly. The tables were set very closely together so that speaking in a normal voice was not really possible.

Maigret avoided watching Le Clinche, to put him at his ease, but the wireless operator’s attitude gave him cause for concern, and it also worried Marie Léonnec, whose face had a pinched look to it.

Her young man looked grim and depressed. He ate. He drank. He spoke when spoken to. But his thoughts were elsewhere. And more than once, hearing footsteps behind him, he jumped as if he sensed danger.

The bay windows of the dining room were wide open, and through them could be seen the sun-flecked sea. It was hot. Le Clinche had his back to the view and from time to time, with a jerk of the head, would turn round quickly and scour the horizon.

It was left to Madame Maigret to keep the conversation going, mainly by talking to the young woman about nothing in particular, to keep the silence at bay.

Here they were far removed from unpleasant events. The setting was a family hotel. A reassuring clatter of plates and glasses. A half-bottle of Bordeaux on the table next to a bottle of mineral water.

But then the manager made a mistake. He came up as they were finishing dessert and asked:

‘Would you like a room to be made up for this gentleman?’

He was looking at Le Clinche: he had spotted a fiancé. And no doubt he took the Maigrets for the girl’s parents.

Two or three times the wireless operator made the same gesture as he had that morning during the confrontation. A rapid movement of his hand across his forehead, a very boneless, weary gesture.

‘What shall we do now?’

The other guests were getting up and leaving.

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