The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

another, and everyone groups together and starts talking at once.”
It hadn’t happened, perhaps because of the presence of Maigret.
It was hot in spite of the open window. It had become an obsession to listen to
the noises of the house. There were occasional footsteps above his head. As for
Mr. Pyke, he had to go a fourth time to the end of the passage and, each time,
Maigret waited with a sort of anguish for the upheaval caused by the plug before
attempting to go back to sleep. For he must have been sleeping between the
interruptions, not deeply enough to efface his thoughts completely, but
sufficiently to distort them.
Mr. Pyke had played a dirty trick by speaking to him about the Dutchman at
the end of the jetty. From now on the Chief Inspector could only see De Greef in
the light of the peremptory phrases of his English colleague.
However, the portrait which Mr. Pyke had sketched of the young man did not
satisfy him. He, too, was there, with Anna, who must have been sleepy and who,
as time passed, allowed herself to lean more and more on her companion’s
shoulder.
De Greef did not speak to her. He cannot have been in the habit of speaking to
her often. He was the male, the leader, and she had only to follow, to await his
pleasure.
He would look around him. With his very thin face he called to mind a lean
animal, a wild creature.
The others probably weren’t lambs, but indisputably De Greef was a wild
animal. He sniffed like a wild animal. It was a mannerism. He would listen to
what was being said and then he would sniff. That was his only perceptible
reaction.
In the jungle the major would probably have been a pachyderm, an elephant,
or better still a hippopotamus. And Monsieur Émile? Something furtive, with
pointed teeth.
It was absurd. What would Mr. Pyke have thought if he had been able to read
Maigret’s thoughts? True the Chief Inspector had the excuse of having had too
much to drink and being half asleep. If he had foreseen that he would not be able
to sleep he would have accounted for a few more glasses, in order to plunge at
once into a dreamless slumber.
All in all Lechat was a very good man. So good that Maigret would have liked
to have had him in his service. Still a little young, a little excitable. He was
easily agitated, like a shooting dog which runs in all directions around its master.
He knew the Midi already, as he had been in the squad at Draguignan, but he