The New Investigations of Inspector Maigret by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141995601
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2022-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

4

It was a typical tradesman’s cottage, with its carved oak dresser, a gingham oilcloth on the table and ugly pink and mauve things won at a fairground serving as vases.

‘Have a seat,’ mumbled the woman, automatically wiping the table in front of Maigret.

And Benoît took a bottle from the dresser, four small glasses which he filled without saying a word, while Lecoin sat astride a chair facing backwards, resting his elbows on the back.

‘Did you suspect something?’ he asked, looking Maigret in the eyes.

‘Yes, for two reasons: number one, because we heard only a man’s shouts, which was strange given that there was a girl at the scene and that, had she been in difficulty, she was a good enough swimmer to stay afloat for a while and call for help. And then, after an accident like that, a person doesn’t drive twenty kilometres to inform the gendarmerie when there’s a telephone close by. The windows of the inn were lit up. It was impossible not to think of—’

‘That’s right,’ admitted Lecoin. ‘He was the one who wanted—’

‘He’d climbed into the lorry, of course?’

It was too late to back down. Besides, the two men had made their decision while the woman looked relieved. She was the one who urged:

‘It’s best to tell him everything. It’s not for two measly thousand-franc notes that we have to—’

‘Joseph will explain,’ said her husband.

And after downing the contents of his glass, Lecoin began:

‘Let’s say that everything happened just as it did last night. You were right. In spite of the rain and my defective windscreen wiper, I have good eyesight and good enough brakes not to crash into a stationary vehicle on the road. So I stopped one and a half metres from it. I thought it had broken down and I got down to lend a hand. That was when I saw a distraught young man who asked me if I wanted to earn two thousand francs—’

‘By helping him to push the car into the water?’ Maigret broke in.

‘He could probably have pushed it in by himself. That’s what he was trying to do when I arrived. But what he wanted most was to be driven somewhere that no one would ever find out about. I think that if it had been only him, I’d never have agreed. But there was the girl—’

‘Was she still alive?’

‘Of course! To persuade me, he told me that they weren’t being allowed to marry, that they loved each other, and they wanted to fake a suicide to stop anyone from trying to find them and separate them. I don’t like those kinds of scheme, but if you’d seen that poor kid in the rain … In short, I helped push the car into the Loing. The two youngsters hid in my lorry. They asked me to shout for help, for the sake of credibility, which I did. That way, people would think that the pair of them had died. Then all I had to do was drive them to Montargis.

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