‘In short, a decision must be made with all possible speed. Like everyone, even the richest among us, including the Comte d’Avrainville, I bought my new car on the instalment plan. I must make eighteen payments. Mind you, I could have paid cash, but there is no point in tying up one’s capital. The Comte d’Avrainville, of whom I just spoke, purchased his Hispano-Suiza in the same fashion. In short …’
Breathing heavily, Maigret did not move.
‘I cannot do without a car, which is absolutely necessary for me in the exercise of my profession. When you consider that my territory covers everywhere within a thirty-kilometre radius of Arpajon … Now, Madame Michonnet agrees with me on this: we wish to have nothing further to do with a vehicle in which a man has been killed. It is up to the authorities to take the necessary steps and to procure a new car for us, the same model as the other one, and I would like to be of a burgundy colour, which would not affect the price … Mind you, my car was already broken in and running smoothly, and I shall be obliged to—’
‘Is that all you have to tell me?’
‘I beg your pardon!’
That was another expression he often used.
‘I beg your pardon, chief inspector! It’s understood that I am prepared to draw upon all my accumulated knowledge and experience of this locality to assist you, but regarding the urgent matter of this car …’
Maigret brushed his hand over his forehead.
‘Well! I will come to see you soon at your house …’
‘What about the car?’
‘Yours will be returned to you when the investigation has been concluded.’
‘But I just finished telling you that Madame Michonnet and I …’
‘Then do give my regards to Madame Michonnet! Good day, monsieur.’
It was over so quickly that the insurance man had no time to protest. He found himself back on the landing holding his hat, which had been shoved into his hands, and the office boy was calling to him.
‘This way, please! First staircase on the left … Exit’s straight ahead …’
As for Maigret, he locked his door and set water to boil on the stove for some good strong coffee.
His colleagues thought he was working, but he had to be woken up an hour later when a telegram arrived from Antwerp.
Isaac Goldberg, 45, diamond broker, rather well known in the trade. Medium-sized business. Good bank references. Travelled weekly by train or plane to Amsterdam, London and Paris to solicit orders.
Luxurious house Rue de Campine, Borgerhout. Married. Two children, 8 and 12.
Madame Goldberg informed, has taken Paris train.
At eleven in the morning the telephone rang: it was Lucas.
‘Hello! I’m at Three Widows Crossroads. I’m calling you from the garage a little more than a hundred metres from the Andersens’ house. The Danish fellow has gone home. The gate’s locked again. Nothing much to report …’
‘The sister?’
‘Must be inside, but I haven’t seen her.’
‘Goldberg’s body?’
‘At the hospital morgue in Arpajon …’
Maigret went home to his apartment in Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.
‘You look tired!’ was all his wife said in welcome.
‘Pack a bag with a suit and a spare pair of shoes.’
‘Will you be away long?’
There was a ragout in the oven. The bedroom window was open and the bed unmade, to air out the sheets. Madame Maigret hadn’t had time yet to comb out her hair, still set in lumpy little pin curls.
‘Goodbye …’
He kissed her. As he left, she remarked, ‘You’re opening the door with your right hand …’
That was unlike him; he always opened it with his left hand. And Madame Maigret wasn’t shy about being superstitious.
‘What is it? A gang?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Are you going far?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’
But he was already going downstairs and hardly turned around at all to wave to her. Out on the boulevard, he hailed a taxi.
‘Gare d’Orsay … Wait … How much to drive to Arpajon? … Three hundred francs, with the return trip? … Let’s go!’
He almost never did this. But he was exhausted. He could barely fight off the drowsiness stinging his eyelids.
And wasn’t he – just perhaps – a little perplexed, even uneasy? Not so much because of that door he’d opened with his right hand, nor because of that bizarre business of Michonnet’s stolen car turning up in Andersen’s garage with a dead man at the wheel.
It was rather the Danish fellow’s personality that was bothering him.
‘Seventeen hours of grilling!’
Hardened criminals, crooks who’d traipsed through all the police stations in Europe hadn’t stood up to that ordeal.
Maybe that was even why Maigret had let Andersen go.
That didn’t prevent him from falling asleep in the back of the taxi after they’d gone through Bourg-la-Reine. The driver woke him up at Arpajon, in front of the old market with its thatched roof.
‘What hotel do you want?’
‘Take me to Three Widows Crossroads.’
It was uphill along the oil-slicked paving stones of the main road, lined on both sides by billboards advertising Vichy, Deauville, fancy hotels, brands of automotive fuel.
A crossroads. A garage with its five fuel pumps, painted red. To the left, the road to Avrainville, marked with a signpost.
All around, fields as far as the eye could see.
‘This is it!’ announced the driver.
There were only three houses. First, the garage owner’s, a stuccoed affair hastily erected when business was booming. A big sports car with aluminium coachwork was filling up at the pump. Mechanics were working on a butcher’s van.
Across the way, a small villa of millstone grit with a narrow garden, surrounded by a six-foot-high fence. A brass plate: Émile Michonnet, Insurance.
The last house was a good handred metres away. The wall around the grounds hid all but the second storey, a slate roof and a few handsome trees. This building was at least a century old. It was a fine country residence of times gone by, with a cottage for the gardener, outbuildings, poultry houses, a stable and a flight of front steps flanked by bronze torchères.
A small concrete pond had dried up. A wisp of smoke rose straight into the air from a carved chimney cap.
That was all. Beyond the fields, a belfry … farmhouse roofs … a plough abandoned at the edge of some tilled land.
And along the smooth road cars streamed by in both directions, passing one another and honking their horns.
Maigret got out of the taxi with his suitcase and paid the driver, who filled up at the garage before heading back to Paris.
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First publ
ished in French as Le Chien Jaune by Fayard 1931
This translation first published in the USA as Maigret and the Yellow Dog by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1987
First published in Great Britain, under the present title, with minor revisions, in Penguin Classics 2003
This edition, with further minor revisions, published in Penguin Classics 2013
Copyright 1931 by Georges Simenon Ltd
Translation copyright © 1987, 2003, 2013 by Georges Simenon Ltd
GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm
MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-698-15749-1
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The Yellow Dog Page 13
