Lock No. 1 by Georges Simenon

home straight away?’
    Before he left, Detective Chief
     Inspector Maigret explained to the commissioner:
    â€˜I’d forgotten we were
     moving house today. The removal van came for the furniture yesterday. My wife has to
     be in the country to see to it.’
    The commissioner
     shrugged, and Maigret, who noticed, stopped in the doorway.
    â€˜What are you thinking,
     chief?’
    â€˜That you’ll be just like
     all the rest, by which I mean that within a year you’ll be back to work, only
     this time it will be for a bank or some insurance company.’
    That evening, in the gathering dark, the
     office had a gloominess about it, a pervasive melancholy which both men pretended
     not to notice.
    â€˜You have my word that I
     won’t!’
    â€˜I’ll see you tomorrow.
     Remember, no slip-ups with Ducrau. He’s bound to have two or three members of
     the Assembly in his pocket.’
    Maigret took a taxi and a few minutes
     later was in his apartment in Rue Richard-Lenoir. His wife was rushing around. Two
     rooms were empty and in the others assorted bundles were piled high on the
     furniture. Something was simmering, not on the cooker which had already gone, but on
     a spirit stove.
    â€˜And you really can’t come
     with me? Well, you’ll just have to get the train tomorrow evening then. We
     have to decide where the furniture will go.’
    Not only was it not possible for him to
     go with her, Maigret didn’t want to. It certainly gave him an odd feeling to
     come back to their ravaged home, which they were about to leave for ever, but odder
     still was the sight of certain objects which his wife was packing up to take away
     and the running commentary which she kept up as she busied around.
    â€˜Have you seen those folding
     chairs they delivered?
What’s the
     time now? Madame Bigaud herself phoned about the furniture. She says the weather is
     wonderful and the cherry trees are white with blossom. The goat she told us about
     isn’t for sale, but the owner will give us a kid if there is one this
     year.’
    Maigret, who smiled approvingly, was not
     in the mood.
    â€˜Eat up!’ cried Madame
     Maigret from the next room. ‘I’m not hungry.’
    Neither was he. He picked at his food.
     Then he took the bulky, awkward items downstairs – there were even garden tools!
     They filled a taxi.
    â€˜Gare d’Orsay.’
    On the platform, he kissed his wife at
     the door of her carriage and at about eleven o’clock found himself alone by
     the Seine, feeling cross about something or somebody.
    A little further along, on Quai des
     Célestins, he walked past Ducrau’s offices. There were no lights showing. The
     slanting illumination from a gas lamp made the brass plates gleam. And all along the
     riverbanks boats were lying indolently on the water.
    Why had the chief said that to him? It
     was stupid! Maigret genuinely longed for the countryside, peace and quiet, books …
     He was exhausted.
    Yet he could not for the life of him
     keep his thoughts on what his wife had talked about. He tried to remember what she
     had said about the goat and various other things. But actually all he wanted now was
     to watch the swarm of lights on the opposite side of the Seine.
    â€˜I wonder where Ducrau is at this
     time of night. Did
he go home in the end,
     despite hating all the “carnival”? Is he having dinner, elbows on the
     table, in an expensive restaurant or in some truck-drivers’ café? Is he
     trailing from one bawdy-house to another, wearing his mourning for his son on his
     sleeve?’
    They had found nothing on Jean Ducrau,
     zero! There are people like that, individuals about whom no one has anything to say.
     Two inspectors had been on his case. They had made inquiries in the Quartier Latin,
     in the École de chartes and around Charenton.
    â€˜A delightful young man, a little
     withdrawn, has poor