The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

He understood now why Ginette had made so much noise in her bedroom. He
heard her opening her door and calling out:
“Pour me out a cup of coffee, Jojo. How much time have I got?”
“Three minutes, madame!”
Just at that moment the sound of a siren was announcing the Cormorant’s
imminent departure.
“I’ll come as far as the landing stage,” the Chief Inspector announced.
In his slippers and with no collar, for he hadn’t time to go up and get dressed.
He wasn’t the only one in that attire. There were little groups in the
neighborhood of the boat, still the same ones as had been there the day before
when the Chief Inspector had landed. They must have attended all the departures
and all the arrivals. Before starting the day, they would come to watch the
Cormorant leaving the harbor, after which, delaying their morning toilet a little
longer, they would have a glass of white wine at Paul’s or in one of the cafés.
The dentist, less discreet than Mr. Pyke, looked hard at Maigret’s slippers, his
uncompleted toilet, and his satisfied smile was saying, without ambiguity:
“I warned you! It’s started!”
Porquerollitis, presumably, in which he himself was steeped to the marrow.
Aloud, he contented himself with asking:
“Sleep well?”
Lechat, already on board, petulant, impatient, went ashore again to have a
word with his chief:
“I didn’t want to wake you up. Isn’t she coming? Baptiste said that if she
doesn’t come at once, they’ll go off without her.”
There were several others making the crossing for Marcellin’s funeral,
fishermen in their Sunday best, the builder, the tobacconist. Maigret couldn’t see
Charlot around, yet he had spotted him just now in the square. Nothing was
moving aboard the North Star. At the moment the dumb sailor was about to cast
off, Ginette appeared, half walking, half running, dressed in black silk with a
black hat and a little veil, leaving a rustling and scented wake behind her. She
was hoisted on board as though by a conjuring trick, and it was not until she was
seated that she saw the Chief Inspector on the jetty and wished him good
morning with a little nod of her head.
The sea was so smooth, so luminous, that when one stared at it for long one
could no longer distinguish, for a moment or two, the shape of things. The
Cormorant described a silver curve on the water. The people waited another