The Two-Penny Bar by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Published: 2015-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

So he stood there calm as you like, demanding to be paid 30,000 francs! And he was right when he said they would soon have to release him!

‘Let him out tonight at around one o’clock. Tell Sergeant Lucas to follow him and not to let him out of his sight.’

And Maigret clenched his teeth round the stem of his pipe. Victor knew, and he only had to say one word. Now Maigret was stuck with having to concoct theories out of diverse, and sometimes contradictory, evidence.

He hailed a taxi and barked at the driver:

‘To the Taverne Royale!’

James wasn’t there. Eight o’clock came and he still hadn’t turned up. The doorman at the bank confirmed that he had left at five as usual.

Maigret had a meal of choucroute, then phoned his office around 8.30.

‘Has the prisoner asked to see me?’

‘Yes. He says he’s given the matter more thought and he’s willing to come down to 25,000. That’s his final offer. And he wants it put on the record that a man in his condition shouldn’t be fed bread without butter and be forced to stay in a cell where the temperature never gets above sixteen degrees.’

Maigret put down the receiver. He went for a short walk in the Boulevards, then caught a taxi to Rue Championnet, where James lived. His block was enormous, like a barracks. It contained small apartments inhabited by office workers, commercial travellers and small investors.

‘Fourth, on the left.’

There was no lift, so the inspector slowly climbed the stairs, catching a whiff of cooking or hearing children’s voices from behind the doors on each landing.

James’s wife answered the door. She was dressed in a pretty royal-blue dressing gown – it wasn’t particularly luxurious, but it didn’t look that cheap either.

‘You wish to speak to my husband?’

The entrance hall was barely wider than a dining-table. On the walls were pictures of sailing-boats, bathers, young men and women in sporting garb.

‘It’s for you, James!’

She pushed open a door, ushered Maigret through and sat back down in her armchair next to the window, where she picked up her crochet.

The other apartments in the block were still decorated in the style of the last century, with their Henry II and Louis-Philippe furniture.

This apartment, however, felt more like Montparnasse than Montmartre. It owed more to the decorative arts in style, but seemed to be the work of an amateur.

Plywood partitions had been erected at odd angles, and most of the furniture had been removed to make way for shelving painted in bright colours.

The carpet was in a single colour, a rather lurid green. The lampshades were meant to resemble parchment.

It all looked smart and fresh, but seemed to lack solidity; you felt that the walls might give way if you leaned on them and that the paintwork was not quite dry.

Above all, especially when James stood up, you felt that the apartment was too small for him, that he was boxed in and had to be careful not to bash into things when he moved around.

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