Maigret Meets A Milord by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-03-17T15:12:51+00:00

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CHAPTER 7

The Pedal

When the Chief-Inspector passed the Southern Cross, whose wash went on stirring the reeds long after she had gone by, the colonel was still at the wheel and Vladimir was standing forward, coiling a rope.

Maigret waited for the yacht at Aigny Lock. The manœuvre was carried out without a hitch, and once the boat had been moored the Russian went ashore to produce her papers and give the lock-keeper a tip.

“This cap is yours, isn’t it?” the Chief-Inspector asked, going up to him.

Vladimir examined the cap, which was now just a dirty rag, then his questioner.

“Thank you,” he said at last, taking the cap.

“Just a moment! Can you tell me when you lost it?”

The colonel was following the scene without betraying the slightest emotion.

“It fell into the water last night,” explained Vladimir, “when I was leaning over the stern, using a boat-hook to clear away some weeds that were fouling the propeller… There was a barge behind us… The woman was kneeling in the dinghy, rinsing her washing… She fished the cap out of the water and I left it on the deck to dry out…”

“In other words, it was on the deck last night?”

“Yes… This morning I didn’t notice it had gone.”

“Was it already dirty yesterday?”

“No. When the woman ashed it out, she dipped it in the soap-suds she was using…”

The yacht was rising jerkily and already the lock-keeper was holding the wheel of the upstream gate with both hands.

“If I remember rightly, it was the Phénix behind you, wasn’t it?”

“I think so… I haven’t seen her again today…”

Maigret gave a wave of the hand and went back to his bicycle while the colonel, as impassive as ever, started up the engine and nodded his head as he passed the lock-keeper.

The Chief-Inspector stood for a while, thoughtfully watching him move away, and disturbed by the amazing simplicity with which things happened on board the Southern Cross.

The yacht continued on its way without troubling about him. At the very most the colonel, from his position at the wheel, put a question to the Russian, who answered with a single phrase.

“Is the Phénix far ahead?” asked Maigret.

“She may be in the Juvigny reach, three miles from here… She doesn’t move as fast as that thing…”

Maigret arrived there a few moments before the Southern Cross, and Vladimir must have seen him, from a distance, questioning the skipper’s wife.

The details were correct. The day before, while she was rinsing her washing, which could be seen, puffed out by the wind, on a wire stretched above the barge, she had fished the seaman’s cap out of the water. A little later the man had given her boy two francs.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon. The Chief-Inspector got back on his bicycle, his head heavy with vague theories. There was some gravel on the tow-path and the tyres crunched over it, sending little pebbles flying on both sides of the wheels.

At Lock 9 Maigret had a good start on the Englishman.

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