A Crime in Holland by Georges Simenon

time.
    But I’m so proud and happy to belong to a man like you! We must absolutely get away before the holidays because Papa wants me to spend a month in Switzerland and I don’t want to. Otherwise our big project would have to wait till winter.
    I’ve been buying English books. I can say lots of sentences already. Hurry up, do! We’ll have such a lovely time, the two of us. Won’t we? We can’t stay here. Especially now. I think Madame Popinga is giving me the cold shoulder. And I’m still afraid of Cornelius, who is courting me, and I don’t seem able to discourage him. He’s a nice boy and polite, but really stupid.
    And of course he’s not a man, Conrad, not a real man like you: you’ve been everywhere, you know everything.
    Remember, a year ago, I used to try and meet you on the road and you didn’t even look at me!
    And now, maybe I’m going to have your child! Or anyway, it’s possible.
    But why are you being so cool? Don’t you love me as much as before?
    That wasn’t the end of the letter, but Madame Popinga’s voice had died away in her throat and she stopped speaking. She leafed through the pile of correspondence with her fingers. She was looking for something.
    She read out one more sentence from the middle of a letter:
… and I’m starting to think you love your wife more than me, I’m beginning to feel jealous of her and to hate her. If that isn’t the reason, why would you be saying now you don’t want to go away?
    The farmer could not understand the French words, but he was paying such close attention that anyone would have sworn he could guess. Madame Popinga swallowed hard, picked up one last sheet, and read in an even more strained voice:
I’ve heard rumours that Cornelius is more in love with Madame Popinga than with me, and that they are getting on very well. If only that were true! Then we’d be left in peace and you wouldn’t have to feel bad about it.
    The sheet dropped from her hands and floated down on to the carpet in front of Any, who stared at it fixedly.
    There was another silence. Madame Popinga was not weeping. But everything about her was tragic: her contained pain, her dignity, maintained only through incredible effort, the admirable sentiment which had inspired her.
    She had come to defend Conrad! She was waiting for an attack. She would fight if she had to.
    â€˜When did you discover these letters?’ Maigret asked, awkwardly.
    â€˜The day after …’
    She choked. She opened her mouth for a gulp of air. Her eyelids were swollen.
    â€˜â€¦Â after Conrad …’
    â€˜I see.’
    He understood. He looked at her with sympathy. She was not pretty. And yet she had regular features. Her face had none of the flaws that made Any’s so unprepossessing.
    Madame Popinga was a tall woman, well-built, but not fat. A glossy helmet of fine hair framed her delicately pink Dutch face.
    But would he perhaps have preferred it if she had been ugly? Those regular features and her controlled, sensible expression somehow conveyed a total lack of enthusiasm for life.
    Even her smile had to be a sensible, measured smile, her joy a sensible joy, always under control.
    Already at six years old, she must have been a serious child. And by sixteen, much as she was today.
    One of those women who seem born to be sisters, or aunts, or nurses, or widows patronizing good causes.
    Conrad was no longer there, and yet Maigret had never felt him to be so alive as at this moment, with his hearty open face, his greed or rather appetite for life, his shyness, his fear of offending people and his wireless set, with which he fiddled for hours in order to pick up jazz from Paris, gypsy music from Budapest, an operetta from Vienna, or perhaps even faraway boat-to-boat calls on short wave.
    Any approached her sister, as one would someone who is ill and about to collapse. But Madame Popinga went