After that, they also stopped at the area reserved for the boules players, and Maigret solemnly watched two or three games, seeing under the same tree the tall, thin man who only had one arm but was the best thrower.
In another foursome, where the accent of the South could be heard, an elegantly dressed man with a rosy complexion and very white hair played with dignity, and the others called him ‘senator’.
A little further on, the beach began, with the coastguards’ hut and the buoys marking out the bathing area, and there too sat the same people under the same beach umbrellas.
‘Aren’t you bored?’ his wife had asked him on the second day.
‘Why?’ he asked in surprise.
Because he wasn’t bored. He was gradually adapting to a new pace, different habits. He noticed with amazement that he automatically filled his pipe on arriving at the Bellerive Bridge. And he filled another at the Yacht Club where, from the shore, they watched the young boys and girls water-skiing.
‘Don’t you think it’s a dangerous sport?’
‘Why?’
And finally the park, the glasses of water which a member of staff filled for them from the spring and which they sipped slowly. The water was hot and salty. At the Chomel spring, the water tasted strongly of sulphur, and Maigret hastily lit a fresh pipe.
Madame Maigret was astounded to find him so docile, so calm, and sometimes it even worried her.
That was when she found out that in a way he was playing the detective. He studied people, as if he couldn’t help it, noted the slightest details and classified them by category. For example, at their hotel, the Hôtel de la Bérézina, a sort of family guesthouse, he had already identified from their diet those with liver problems and the diabetics.
He tried to guess each person’s story, to imagine them in their everyday life and, sometimes, he got his wife to join in this pastime.
He was fascinated by the two he nicknamed ‘the merry couple’, the plump man who always looked as if he was about to come over and shake his hand, and his little wife who resembled a piece of candy. What could their occupation be? Had they recognized Maigret from seeing his photo in the newspapers?
In actual fact, not many people here recognized him, a lot fewer than in Paris. Admittedly his wife had made him buy a light, almost white, mohair jacket, like the ones worn by men of a certain age in the summer when he was a child.
Even without the jacket, people would probably not have thought it was him. He was certain that those who frowned on glancing at him, or who turned around, said to themselves: ‘Fancy that! He looks just like Maigret …’
But they didn’t think he was Maigret. And, in truth, he was so little like himself!
The other intriguing character … The lady in lilac … She was taking the waters too, only at the Grande Grille, where they saw her every morning. She had her spot, slightly apart from everyone else, close to the newspaper kiosk. Always dignified and aloof, she only took one sip of water at a time, then, after rinsing and wiping her glass, she carefully put it back in its straw case.
Three or four people greeted her. The Maigrets didn’t see her in the afternoons. Did she go to the baths? Had her doctor ordered her to rest?
‘Sedimentation rate, perfect,’ Doctor Rian had declared. ‘Hourly average: 6millimetres … Cholesterol a little high, but within the acceptable range … Urea normal … Serum iron level fairly low, but nothing to worry about … Nor about the uric acid … You’re not allowed to eat game, offal or shellfish … As for your blood count, it is excellent, with a haemoglobin level of 98 …
‘All you need is a thorough cleansing of your system … Do you not feel sluggish or get headaches …? So we’re going to continue with the same regimen for the next few days … Come and see me on Saturday.’
That evening, which was a bandstand concert evening, they didn’t see the lady in lilac leave because they never stayed to the end of the concert but returned early to the France neighbourhood with its empty streets, freshly painted façades and the Hôtel de la Bérézina whose double entrance door was flanked by two shrubs in containers.
They slept in a brass bed and all the furniture was from the turn of the century, like the clawfoot bathtub and the swan-neck taps.
The hotel was well run and quiet, except when the Gagnaires’ son, who was on the first floor, played cowboys and Indians on his own in the garden.
Everyone was asleep.
Day five? Day six? It was Madame Maigret who was the most disoriented at not having to make coffee in the mornings. At seven o’clock, they were served breakfast on a tray, with fresh croissants and the Clermont-Ferrand newspaper, which devoted two pages to Vichy life.
Maigret had got into the habit of reading it from the first line to the last, so as to be informed of every single little local event. He even read the death notices and the classified ads.
‘Three-bed house, bathroom, all mod cons, excellent condition, uninterrupted view over …’
‘Do you intend to buy a house?’
‘No, but it’s interesting. I wonder whether it’s people who regularly take the waters keen to have their own house to spend one month a year in, or whether it’s retired folk from Paris or elsewhere who …’
They got dressed in turn and the owner never failed to greet them at the foot of the red-carpeted staircase with its brass rods. The owner wasn’t from the area but from Montélimar, which could be detected from his singsong accent.
They frittered away the hours … The children’s playground … The boules players …
‘By the way, I saw that there’s a big market every Wednesday and Saturday … We could go and have a look …’
He’d always loved markets, the smell of the fruit and vegetables, the sight of quarters of beef, fish, lobsters still alive …
‘After all, Rian did tell me to walk five kilometres every day …’
His tone was ironic.
‘He has no idea that we chalk up an average of fifteen!’
‘Do you think?’
‘Work it out … We walk for at least five hours … We might not walk at an athlete’s pace, but we still do between three and four kilometres an hour …’
‘I’d never have believed it …’
The glass of water. The yellow chair, and reading the Paris newspapers which had just arrived. Lunch in the all-white dining room where, on some tables, there was an opened bottle of wine labelled with the guest’s name. There wasn’t one on the Maigrets’ table.
‘Did he say you can’t drink wine?’
‘Not in so many words, but I may as well not …’
She couldn’t get over seeing him become a conscientious spa patient and managing to remain good-humoured.
He allowed himself a brief nap, then they resumed their routine, on the other side of the town this time, with the parade of shops and the crowds on the pavements that kept forcing them apart.
‘Have you noticed how many pedicurists and orthopaedists there are?’
‘If everyone walks as much as we do …!’
There was no bandstand concert that evening, but there was one in the gardens of the Grand Casino. The brass band was replaced by string instruments and the music was more solemn, like the faces of the audience.
They didn’t spot the lady in lilac, nor did they come across her walking in the park. But they did run into the merry couple, who were more dressed up than usual and hurrying in the direction of the casino theatre where a comedy was being performed.
The brass bed. Time flew by surprisingly fast, even though they were doing nothing. The croissants, coffee, the sugar lumps wrapped in waxed paper, the Clermont-Ferrand newspaper.
Maigret, in his armchair by the window, smoked his first pipe in his pyjamas, with some coffee still left in his cup, which he eked out as long as possible.
When he let out an exclamation, Madame Maigret appeared from the bathroom in a blue floral dressing gown, toothbrush in hand.
‘What is
it?’
‘Look …’
On the first page devoted to Vichy was a photograph, that of the lady in lilac. She must have been a few years younger and she’d made the effort to give a wan smile for the photographer.
‘What’s happened to her?’
‘She’s been murdered …’
‘Last night?’
‘If it happened last night, it wouldn’t be in today’s papers … The night before …’
‘We saw her at the bandstand …’
‘At around nine o’clock, yes … She went home, two streets from here, Rue du Bourbonnais … I had no idea we were almost neighbours. She took off her stole and her hat, and went into the sitting room, on the left of the hallway—’
‘How was she killed?’
‘She was strangled … Yesterday morning, her lodgers were surprised not to hear any noise coming from the ground floor—’
‘She’s not here to take the waters?’
‘She lives in Vichy all year round … She owns the house and rents out furnished rooms on the first floor.’
Maigret remained seated and his wife knew what an effort that was for him.
‘Do you think it’s a financially motivated murder?’
‘The killer searched the place thoroughly, but doesn’t appear to have taken anything … A few pieces of jewellery and a sum of money were even found in a drawer that had been opened …’
‘She wasn’t—’
‘Raped? No …’
He gazed at the window in silence.
‘Do you know who’s in charge of the investigation?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Lecoeur, who was one of my inspectors and is now head of the Clermont-Ferrand Police Judiciaire … He’s here … He doesn’t have any idea that I am too …’
‘Do you plan to go and see him?’
Maigret didn’t answer straight away.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published in French as Maigret hésite
by Presses de la Cité 1968
This translation first published 2019
Copyright © Georges Simenon Limited, 1968
Translation copyright © Howard Curtis, 2019
GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm
MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos
Front cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes
ISBN: 978-0-241-30420-4
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Maigret Hesitates Page 16
