The Group at the Grand Café by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Georges Simenon
Published: 2011-12-22T05:53:22+00:00

"You have a funny way of putting it…"

"A cigar? A pipe of tobacco?"

"All right! I can see that you don't want to talk about it. When I learned that you were here, I'd imagined that my task would be singularly facilitated…"

Mme Maigret, who came and went from the kitchen to the garden and the garden to the kitchen, where she had a ragoût on the fire, kept shooting anxious looks at her husband. She'd never seen him like this. He was a little like the Maigret of the bad days of autumn, when he was hatching a flu he didn't want to admit to.

"In short," concluded Gabrielli, "I haven't found out anything at all. I can neither suspect the mayor, nor you, nor the blacksmith! I've ordered various inquiries, such as for the revolver, but I don't count much on that, for it's an old weapon like those frequently found in the country. A vagrant? That's always what we say when we don't find anything, and so the gendarmes will pass an unpleasant quarter of an hour with each of the wanderers…"

He still hoped, expected, that Maigret would finally decide to open his mouth. But no, he didn't stumble, didn't even have the curiosity to raise questions!

Mme Maigret, however, came to his aid by coming to ask, "You'll have lunch with us, Superintendent? I have mutton stew and fresh asparagus that a relative sent from the Île de Ré…"

He would have had to have been quite daring to accept this invitation made in spite of the obvious grouchiness of Maigret, who, himself, was not overdoing the courtesy!

"Strange…" Gabrielli thought, leaving empty-handed. "Does he know something? Is it his age which makes him like that? The country life?"

And Mme Maigret, who seldom scolded her husband, allowed herself to declare, "You were hardly polite with that boy. I don't know what's the matter, but I was ashamed of you…"

He made no effort to answer, and poured himself a third glass of white wine.

Was this what he was waiting for since the morning, and was this waiting the cause of his bad mood? In any case, when he heard Angèle's voice asking Mme Maigret if the superintendent were at home, he rose, opened the door, pronounced at once, "Come by here… Come in… Close the door…" He had brought her into the dining room and had left his wife in the kitchen. He smoked his pipe, paced, indicated a chair to his visitor.

"I couldn't come earlier…" she started. "I hoped a little that you would come and that I would find a way to speak to you for a moment." She was calm. Now she seemed to await the questions that Maigret could not avoid posing to her, but the superintendent scraped carefully at a small spot of paint which he had on his sleeve.

"The police haven't asked me anything. But I told myself that you, being from here, were no doubt fully-informed. And so I came so that you could tell me

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