My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon Page B

wished, for anything in the world, even to appear to be intervening in Maigret’s case. He hadn’t asked him any questions about what had happened in Ginette’s room. Was he under the impression that his colleague was hiding something from him, that Maigret was trying to cheat? Or worse still, after what he had just said about the customs of the French, did he imagine that Maigret and Ginette…?
    The chief inspector grunted:
    â€œShe told me of her engagement to Monsieur Émile. It has to be kept secret, because of old Justine, who would attempt to stop the marriage, even after her death.”
    He noticed that by contrast with the telling phrases of Mr. Pyke his speech was vague, his ideas even vaguer.
    In a few words the Englishman had said what he had to say. From half an hour spent with de Greef, he had formulated definite ideas, not only about the latter, but on the world in general.
    As for Maigret he would have been hard put to it to express a single idea. It was quite different. He sensed something. He sensed a whole heap of things, as he always did at the start of a case, but he couldn’t have said in what form this mist of ideas would sooner or later resolve itself.
    It was rather humiliating. It was a loss of face. He felt himself heavy and dull-witted beside the clear silhouette of his colleague.
    â€œShe’s a strange girl,” he mumbled, in spite of everything.
    That was all he could find to say of someone he had met before, whose whole life story he almost knew, and who had spoken to him openly.
    A strange girl! She attracted him in some ways, and in others she disappointed him, as she had herself sensed perfectly well.
    Perhaps, later on, he would have a definite opinion about her?
    After a single game of chess and a few remarks exchanged over the board, Mr. Pyke had made a definitive analysis of his opponent’s character.
    Was it not as though the Englishman had won the first rubber?

5
    He had thought about the smell straightaway, when he still imagined he was going to go to sleep at once. In actual fact, there were several smells. The principal one, the smell of the house, which one sniffed immediately on crossing the threshold of the café, he had been trying to analyze since that morning, for it was a smell which was unfamiliar to him. It struck him every time as he went in, and, each time, he would dilate his nostrils. There was a basis of wine of course, with a touch of anis , then the kitchen odors. And, since it was a Mediterranean kitchen, with foundations of garlic, red peppers, oil, and saffron, this made it differ from the usual smells.
    But what was the point of worrying about all this? His eyes closed, he wanted to sleep. It was no use calling to mind all the Marseillais or Provençal restaurants where he happened to have eaten, in Paris or elsewhere. The smell wasn’t the same, let it rest at that. All he had to do was sleep. He had had enough to drink to plunge into a leaden sleep.
    Hadn’t he been to sleep, immediately after lying down? The window was open and a noise had intrigued him; he had finally realized it was the rustling of leaves in the trees on the square.
    Strictly speaking, the smell downstairs could be compared with that of a small bar, in Cannes, kept by a fat woman, where he had once been on a case and had idled away many hours.
    The one in the bedroom was unlike anything. What was there in the mattress? Was it, as in Brittany, seaweed, which gave off the iodized smell of the sea? Other people had been in the bed before him, and he thought at odd moments that he could detect the smell of the oil with which women smear themselves before sun-bathing.
    He turned over heavily. It was at least the tenth time, and there was still someone about, opening a door, walking down the passage, and going into one of the lavatories. There was nothing extraordinary about that, but it seemed to him that far more people were going there than there