The Methods of Maigret ( PDFDrive )

CHAPTER 7
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Maigret had discovered that afternoon a whole new section of Porquerolles
when, still accompanied by Mr. Pyke, he had walked right across the square for
the first time to pay a visit to the post office. Was there really a musty smell of
incense coming from the church, where the services could not have been very
frequent?
It was the same square as the one opposite the Arche, and yet one would have
sworn that, higher up, the air was hotter and more dense. Small gardens in front
of two or three houses were a riot of flowers and bees. The noises from the
harbor reached them, muted. Two old men were playing bowls, pétanque style,
that is without sending the jack more than a few yards from their feet, and it was
strange to see the precautions they took in bending down.
One of them was Ferdinand Galli, the patriarch of all the Gallis on the island,
who kept a café in this corner of the square, a café which the Chief Inspector had
never seen anyone enter. It must only have been frequented by neighbors, or by
the Gallis of the tribe. His partner was a retired man, natty, completely deaf, and
wore a railway man’s cap, while another octogenarian, sitting on a post-office
bench, watched them sleepily.
For beside the open door of the post office there was a green-painted bench on
which Maigret was to spend a part of his afternoon.
“I wondered if you would come up here in the end!” The postmistress Aglaé
had exclaimed, seeing him come in. “I expected you would need to use the
telephone and wouldn’t want to do it from the Arche, where so many people can
hear what you are saying.”
“Will it take long to get Paris, mademoiselle?”
“With a priority call I can get you through in a few minutes.”
“In that case, get the Police Judiciare for me.”
“I know the number. It was me that put your Inspector through when he called
you.”
He all but asked:
“And did you listen in?”
But she would not be long in revealing this herself.
“Whom do you wish to speak to at the P.J.?”