The Madman of Bergerac by Simenon Georges

Author:Simenon, Georges [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Crime, Classics, thriller
ISBN: 9780698194113
Amazon: B00OQS4DL4
Goodreads: 25186732
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1932-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

7. Samuel

The two items of news arrived more or less at the same time just before the surgeon’s evening visit.

First of all a telegram from Algiers:

Doctor Rivaud unknown hospitals. Regards. Martin.

Maigret had barely opened it when Leduc came in. He didn’t dare ask his colleague what he was reading.

‘Look at this!’

Leduc glanced at the dispatch, shook his head and sighed, ‘Of course!’, meaning, ‘Of course we can’t expect anything to be straightforward in this case! At every turn we encounter new obstacles! And I’m right to insist that the best thing is for you to come and settle comfortably at La Ribaudière.’

Madame Maigret had gone out. Even though it was getting dark, Maigret did not think to turn on the light. The street lamps in the square were lit and at that hour, he liked looking out at the garland of evenly spaced lights. He knew that the house where the lights would go on first was the second one past the garage and he would then be able to make out the shape of a seamstress under the lamp, always hunched over her work.

‘The police have received some news too!’ muttered Leduc.

He was ill at ease. He didn’t want it to look as though he had come to inform Maigret. Perhaps he had even been asked not to keep the inspector abreast of the progress of the official investigation.

‘News of Samuel?’

‘Correct! First of all, they’ve received his record. Then Lucas, who had dealt with him in the past, telephoned from Paris to give details.’

‘And?’

‘No one knows exactly where he’s from. But there is good reason to believe that he was born in Poland, or in Yugoslavia. Somewhere around there, in any case. A taciturn man, who didn’t talk openly to people about his business. He had an office in Algiers. Guess what he did?’

‘Some tedious specialist activity, I’m sure!’

‘Stamp dealer!’

And Maigret was thrilled, because that fitted perfectly with the individual from the train.

‘A stamp business that was a front for something else, of course! The best part is that it was so clever that the police weren’t aware of it and it took a double murder before … I’m repeating pretty much what Lucas said on the telephone. The office in question was one of the biggest operations producing fake passports and above all false employment contracts. Samuel had accomplices in Warsaw, Vilnius, Silesia, Constantinople—’

By now the night was inky blue. The houses stood out pearly white against the sky. From downstairs came the usual pre-dinner hum of conversation.

‘Strange!’ said Maigret.

It was not so much Samuel’s occupation that he found strange, but the realization that threads that once stretched between Warsaw and Algiers led to the little provincial town of Bergerac. And it was stranger still that a purely local case, a small-town crime, should be connected to the international criminal world.

People like Samuel, he had come across countless times in Paris and elsewhere, and he had always studied them with a curiosity mixed with disquiet, not exactly repulsion, as if they were of a different species from ordinary human beings.

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