The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

technicians.
Maigret had never been able to resign himself to this. Like a hunting dog, he
had to ferret things out for himself, to scratch, sniff the smells.
The first two days Lechat had got through a considerable amount of work and
had handed over to Maigret an account of all the interrogations he had carried
out. The whole island had been put through it, the Morins and the Gallis, the sick
doctor, the priest, whom Maigret hadn’t yet seen, the wives as well.
Maigret would have installed himself in a corner of the dining room, which
was empty all the morning, and he would have zealously studied all these
reports, marking them with a blue or red pencil.
With an uneasy glance, he asked Mr. Pyke:
“Does it happen at the Yard for your colleagues to run about the streets like
novices?”
“I know at least three or four who are never to be seen in their offices.”
So much the better, for he had no desire to remain sitting down. He was
beginning to understand why the people of Porquerolles were always to be found
in the same places. It was instinctive. Despite oneself one was to some extent
affected by the sun, by the landscape. Now, for example, Maigret and his
companion were taking a walk out of doors without any definite direction and
hardly noticing that they were going down toward the harbor.
Maigret was sure that if, by chance, he was obliged to spend the rest of his
days on the island, he would take the same walk every morning and that the pipe
he smoked then would always be the best pipe of the day. The Cormorant, on
the other side of the water at Giens Point, was disgorging its passengers, who
were piling into an old bus. Even with the naked eye one could make out the
boat as a tiny white dot.
The mute would be about to load up some crates of vegetables and fruits for
the mayor, meat for the butcher, and the mailbags. People would embark
perhaps, as Maigret and Mr. Pyke had embarked the day before, and would no
doubt experience the same feeling of vertigo on discovering the underwater
landscape.
The sailors from the big yacht were washing down the deck. They were
middle-aged men who from time to time went for a drink, without mixing with
the locals, at Morin-Barbu’s place.
To the right of the harbor a footpath ran up in the form of a cliff, ending at a
hut with the door open.
A fisherman, sitting in the doorway, was holding a net stretched out with his