The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

had only had occasion to visit Porquerolles once or twice; he had only really got
to know the island during the last two or three days.
“Do the people from the North Star come over every evening?”
“Almost every evening. They sometimes arrive late. Usually, when the sea is
calm, they come by moonlight in a dinghy.”
“Are Mrs. Wilcox and the major friends?”
“They studiously avoid speaking to one another, and each regards the other as
though he were a transparent corpse.”
After all, it was understandable. They both had the same background. Both,
for one reason or another, had come here to let their hair down.
The major must have been very embarrassed becoming drunk under the eye of
Mrs. Wilcox, for in his country gentlemen do that among themselves behind
closed doors.
As for her, in front of the former Indian army officer, she cannot have been
very proud of her Moricourt.
They had come toward eleven o’clock in the evening. As nearly always
happens, she was nothing like the idea the Inspector had formed of her in his
mind.
He had imagined a lady, and she was a redhead—of an artificial red—rather a
stout woman on the wane, whose broken voice recalled that of Major Bellam,
only it was more sonorous. She was wearing a linen dress, but she had around
her neck a string of pearls which were perhaps genuine, and a large diamond on
her finger.
She had singled out Maigret immediately. Philippe must have told her about
the Chief Inspector, and from the moment she sat down she hadn’t ceased sizing
him up and discussing him in a low voice with her companion.
What was she saying? Did she, on her side, find him heavy and vulgar? Had
she pictured him as a film star? Perhaps she thought he didn’t look very
intelligent?
The two of them were drinking whisky, with very little soda. Philippe waited
on her hand and foot and the Inspector’s attention irritated him; he evidently
didn’t like being seen in the exercise of his functions. As for her, she was doing
it on purpose. Instead of summoning Jojo or Paul, she would send her beau to
change her glass, which she didn’t find clean enough, or made him get up again
to go and fetch her some cigarettes from the counter. Another time, God knows
why, she sent him outside.