The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

“You must do as you wish,” she sighed finally, as he was putting his hand to
the doorknob.
And he felt something like a pang at leaving her all alone, aging, anxious, in
the little bedroom into which the setting sun penetrated through the attic
window, casting everywhere, on the painted wallpaper and the counterpane, a
pinkish hue, which looked like the pink of face rouge.
“A white wine, Monsieur Maigret!”
Noise, all of a sudden, movement. The bowls players, who had finished their
game on the square, were crowding around the bar and speaking at the tops of
their voices, with a strong accent. In a corner of the dining room, near the
window, Mr. Pyke was at table opposite Jef de Greef, and the two men were
deeply engrossed in a game of chess.
Beside them on a bench, Anna was sitting smoking a cigarette at the end of a
long cigarette holder. She had dressed. She wore a small cotton dress under
which one felt she was as naked as beneath her sunsuit. She had a well-rounded
body, extremely feminine, so expressly made for caressing that despite oneself
one imagined her in bed.
De Greef had put on a pair of gray flannel trousers and a sailor’s jersey with
blue and white stripes. On his feet he wore rope-soled espadrilles, like
practically everyone else on the island, and that was the first thing the so strict
Mr. Pyke had bought.
Maigret looked around for Lechat but didn’t see him. He was obliged to
accept the glass of wine which Paul was pushing toward him, and the people at
the bar squeezed themselves together to make room for him.
“Well, Inspector?”
They were appealing to him, and he knew that in a few minutes the ice would
be broken. Possibly the islanders had only been waiting since the morning for
this particular moment to make his acquaintance? There was quite a crowd of
them, about ten at the least, most of them in fishermen’s clothes. Two or three
had a more bourgeois look, probably small tenants.
Too bad, whatever Mr. Pyke might think. He had to drink.
“You like our island wine?”
“Very much.”
“But the papers claim you only drink beer. Marcellin said it wasn’t true, that
you didn’t pull a face at a flagon of Calvados. Poor Marcellin! Your health,
Inspector…”
Paul, the patron, who knew how these things develop, kept the bottle in his