Mr Hire's Engagement by Georges Simenon Page B

had been playing skittles.
    It was a slow cooling-down process. Mr. Hire gradually sank to the temperature of the taxi. His tension, his over-excitement, his verve left him, and he buried himself to the nose in the collar of his coat. Without moving from his seat or slowing down, the driver opened the door with one hand and shouted, leaning out a few inches: 'Shall I go by the Porte d'Italie?'
    'Whichever way you like.'
    The door slammed. The window slid down an inch and straight away an icy draught made itself felt.
    'To the Public Prosecutor . . .'
    They drove past the waste ground where the woman had been killed. The driver must have known about it, for he slowed down to stare at the hoarding. As usual, a prostitute was standing at the corner of the street, and she gazed indifferently after the taxi.
    It was difficult to rouse the concierge. When Mr. Hire called his name as he passed in front of the lodge, he heard a bed creak. He went slowly up the four flights of stairs and the light had gone out by the time he reached his own landing.
    On opening his door he frowned, surprised by something unusual. It was not pitch-dark in the room. There was a reddish glow on the floor, a faint crackling, and the air was warm.
    Switching on the light, he saw the fire was lit, and that his coffee-pot stood steaming on the stove. His bed had been turned down. A glass in the middle of the table held four or five flowers, rather melancholy ones, it was true, for Villejuif sells few flowers except those suitable for cemeteries.
    Mr. Hire shut the door behind him and, without waiting to take off his coat, crossed to the window, lifted up a corner of the brown paper. The light in the opposite room was still on. But Alice had fallen asleep. Her book had slipped down on the eiderdown. The girl's eyes were closed, her breast rose and fell to the rhythm of her regular breathing; her head was cradled on one arm, which was bent so that the reddish hair of the armpit could be seen.
    'To the Public Prosecutor .. .'
    He was almost stamping with impatience and helplessness.
    'To the Pub . . .'
    With a furious gesture he ruffled his hair and began to undress, glancing from time to time at the flowers, the bed, the lighted stove.
    Then he went back to the window. Alice had straightened her arm. She was now lying on her back, and had pushed off the eiderdown. Her full, heavy breasts were pointing up through the cotton nightdress.
    The evening before, she had been lying on Mr. Hire's bed. He sat down on it to take off his socks, went barefoot to half-close the stove and removed the piping-hot coffee-pot.
    Finally, after a last sidelong glance, he pulled down the brown paper over the window. His light went out. His bed creaked. Something went clattering through space along the road: this was the express lorry from Lyons, travelling at sixty miles an hour with an eight-ton load. Even after the noise had died away, the cup still quivered on the saucer.
    It was an hour before Mr. Hire's breathing became regular. One hand was hanging out of the bed. Every time he breathed out his lips parted with a 'pfff. ..' and the lower edge of his moustache quivered.
    He was still asleep, as on every other morning, when the girl got up at six o'clock, stopped the ringing of her alarm clock and put her clothes on without washing, her eyes heavy with sleep and a sticky feeling in her mouth, to go and swill out the shop and deliver the milk.
    VII
     
    'B OLDNESS does it!' Mr. Hire kept assuring himself.
    And as he made his way along, he mumbled continually:
    'Sorry . . . Sorry . . .'
    It was raining cats and dogs, and the problem this morning was not how to slip through the crowd, but how to steer an umbrella through the mass of other umbrellas. The umbrella cover was so wet that, once in the tram, Mr. Hire had to hold it at arm's length.
    'Boldness does it!'
    The inspector was sitting opposite him, not the little bearded fellow but the one who was always in the concierge's