The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

going up too, Inspector?”
Jojo was a small dark servant girl dressed in black, with a broad smile and
small pointed breasts.
The whole house smelt of bouillabaisse and saffron oil. Upstairs, where there
was red flooring as in the bar, there were only three or four rooms and they had
in fact reserved the best for the Chief Inspector, the one with one window
looking onto the square and the other onto the sea. Ought he to offer it to Mr.
Pyke? It was too late. They had already indicated another door for the latter.
“Is there anything you want, Monsieur Maigret? The bathroom is at the end of
the corridor. I think there’s some hot water.”
Lechat had followed him up. It was natural. It was normal. But he didn’t ask
him in. It seemed to him that it would be a sort of discourtesy toward his English
colleague. The latter might imagine they were hiding something from him, that
they weren’t letting him in on the whole case.
“I’ll be down in a few minutes, Lechat.”
He would have liked to find a kindly word for the Inspector, who was looking
after him with such care. He seemed to recall that at Luçon his wife had come
into the picture a lot. Standing in the doorway, he asked in a friendly and
familiar manner:
“How is the worthy Madame Lechat?”
And the poor fellow could only stammer:
“Didn’t you know? She left me. It’s eight years ago now since she left.”
What a gaffe! It all came back to him suddenly. If people talked so much
about Madame Lechat at Luçon, it was because she deceived her husband for all
she was worth.
In his bedroom he did nothing except take off his coat, wash his hands, teeth,
and face, stretch in front of the window, and lie on his bed for a few minutes to
try out the springs. The furnishing was antiquated, agreeable, with always the
good smell of southern cooking which pervaded every corner of the house. He
hesitated about whether to go down in shirt sleeves, for it was hot, but decided
that it would look too much like a holiday and put on his coat again.
When he arrived downstairs there were several people at the bar, mostly men
in fishermen’s clothes. Lechat was waiting for him in the doorway.
“Would you like a stroll, Chief?”
“We’d better wait for Mr. Pyke.”
“He’s already gone out.”