The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

What for? He was perfectly all right in the kitchen. She was stewing some figs
on the fire, and it smelled good.
He was still searching his mind for the discovery of the day before, uttering
words without thinking, perhaps because he was embarrassed to be alone with
Jojo.
“Hasn’t Monsieur Paul been down?”
“He’s already been at the harbor a good while. He goes every morning to buy
his fish from the boats as they come back.”
She glanced at the clock.
“The Cormorant leaves in five minutes.”
“Hasn’t anyone else been down?”
“Monsieur Charlot.”
“Not with his luggage, I presume?”
“No. He’s with Monsieur Paul. Your friend has gone out too, less than a
quarter of an hour ago.”
Maigret contemplated the square through the open windows.
“He must be in the water. He was wearing a bathing suit, with his sponge bag
under his arm.”
It had something to do with Ginette. But it was also linked in his mind with
Jojo. He remembered that, in his half sleep, he had recalled Jojo at the moment
she was going up the stairs. Now this wasn’t an erotic thought. The legs she
disclosed only came in by the way.
The day before, he had persistently asked Ginette:
“Why have you come?”
And she had lied several times. At first she had said that it was to see him,
because she had learned that he was on the island and had assumed he would
send for her.
A little later she was admitting that she was in a sort of way engaged to
Monsieur Émile. And this meant admitting at the same time that she had come to
clear him, to assure the Chief Inspector that her employer was in no way
concerned with Marcellin’s death.
He hadn’t been so very wrong to have been hard with her. She had yielded
some ground. But she hadn’t yet yielded enough.
He drank his coffee in small sips, standing before the fire. By a curious
coincidence, the cup of common china, but of an old-fashioned design, was
almost a replica of the one he used during his childhood and which he then