Maigret

Georges Simenon was
born on 12 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne,
Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.

Simenon always resisted identifying
himself with his famous literary character, but acknowledged that they shared an
important characteristic:

My motto, to the extent that I have
one, has been noted often enough, and I've always conformed to it.
It's the one I've given to old Maigret, who resembles me in certain
points … ‘understand and judge not'.

Penguin is publishing the entire series
of Maigret novels.

PENGUIN CLASSICS

‘I love reading Simenon. He makes me
think of Chekhov'

– William Faulkner

‘A truly wonderful writer … marvellously
readable – lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates'

– Muriel Spark

‘Few writers have ever conveyed with such
a sure touch, the bleakness of human life'

– A. N. Wilson

‘One of the greatest writers of the
twentieth century … Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the
ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his
stories'

–
Guardian

‘A novelist who entered his fictional
world as if he were part of it'

– Peter Ackroyd

‘The greatest of all, the most genuine
novelist we have had in literature'

– André Gide

‘Superb … The most addictive of writers …
A unique teller of tales'

–
Observer

‘The mysteries of the human personality
are revealed in all their disconcerting complexity'

– Anita Brookner

‘A writer who, more than any other crime
novelist, combined a high literary reputation with popular appeal'

– P. D. James

‘A supreme writer … Unforgettable
vividness'

–
Independent

‘Compelling, remorseless,
brilliant'

– John Gray

‘Extraordinary masterpieces of the
twentieth century'

– John Banville

Maigret struggled to open his eyes,
frowning, as if distrustful of the voice that had just shouted at him, dragging him
out of a deep sleep:

‘Uncle!'

His eyes still closed, he sighed, groped
at the sheet and realized that this was no dream, that something was the matter,
because his hand had not encountered Madame Maigret's warm body where it
should have been.

Finally he opened his eyes. It was a
clear night. Madame Maigret, standing by the leaded window, was pulling back the
curtain while downstairs someone was banging on the door and the noise reverberated
throughout the house.

‘Uncle! It's me!'

Madame Maigret was still looking out.
Her hair wound in curling pins gave her a strange halo.

‘It's Philippe,' she
said, knowing full well that Maigret was awake and that he was turned towards her,
waiting. ‘Are you going to get up?'

Maigret went downstairs first, barefoot
in his felt slippers. He had hastily pulled on a pair of trousers and shrugged on
his jacket as he descended the staircase. At the eighth stair, he had to duck to
avoid hitting his head on the beam. He usually did so automatically, but this time
he forgot
and banged his forehead. He groaned and swore as he
reached the freezing hall. He went into the kitchen, which was a little warmer.

There were iron bars across the door. On
the other side, Philippe was saying to someone:

‘I won't be long.
We'll be in Paris before daylight.'

Madame Maigret could be heard padding
around upstairs. Maigret pulled open the door, surly from the knock he had just
given himself.

‘It's you!' he
muttered, seeing his nephew standing in the road.

A huge moon floated above the leafless
poplars, making the sky so light that the tiniest branches were silhouetted against
it while, beyond the bend, the Loire was a glittering swarm of silvery spangles.

‘East wind!' thought Maigret
mechanically, as would any local on seeing the surface of the river whipped up.

It is one of those country habits, as is
standing in the doorway without saying anything, looking at the intruder and waiting
for him to speak.

‘I hope I haven't woken Aunt
up, at least?'

Philippe's face was frozen stiff.
Behind him the shape of a G7 taxi stood out incongruously against the white-frosted
landscape.

‘Are you leaving the driver
outside?'

‘I need to talk to you right
away.'

‘Come inside quickly, both of
you,' called Madame Maigret from the kitchen where she was lighting an oil
lamp.

She added to her nephew:

‘We haven't got electricity
yet. The house has been
wired, but we're waiting to be
connected to the power supply.'

A lightbulb was dangling from a flex.
People notice little details like that for no reason. And when they are already on
edge, it is the sort of thing that can irritate them. During the minutes that
followed, Philippe's eyes kept returning to that bulb, which served no purpose
other than to emphasize everything that was antiquated about this rustic house, or
rather everything that is precarious about modern comforts.

‘Have you come from
Paris?'

Maigret was leaning against the chimney
breast, not properly awake yet. The presence of the taxi on the road made the
question as redundant as the lightbulb, but sometimes people speak for the sake of
saying something.

‘I'm going to tell you
everything, Uncle. I'm in big trouble. If you don't help me, if you
don't come to Paris with me, I don't know what will become of me.
I'm going out of my mind. I'm in such a state I even forgot to give my
aunt a kiss.'

Madame Maigret stood there, having
slipped a dressing gown over her nightdress. Philippe's lips brushed her cheek
three times, performing the ritual like a child. Then he sat down at the table,
clutching his head in his hands.

Maigret filled his pipe as he watched
him, while his wife stacked twigs in the fireplace. There was something strange in
the air, something threatening. Since Maigret had retired, he had lost the habit of
getting up in the middle of the night and he couldn't help being reminded of
nights spent beside a sick person or a dead body.

‘I don't
know how I could have been so stupid!' Philippe suddenly sobbed.

He poured out his tale of woe in a
sudden rush, punctuated by hiccups. He looked about him like a person seeking to pin
his agitation on something, while, in contrast to this outburst of emotion, Maigret
turned up the wick of the oil lamp and the first flames leapt up from the
fireplace.

‘First of all, you're going
to drink something.'

The uncle took a bottle of brandy and
two glasses from a cupboard that contained some leftover food and smelled of cold
meat. Madame Maigret put on her clogs to go and fetch some logs from the
woodshed.

‘To your good health! Now try to
calm down.'

The smell of burning twigs mingled with
that of the brandy. Philippe, dazed, watched his aunt loom silently out of the
darkness, her arms filled with logs.

He was short-sighted and, seen from a
certain angle, his eyes looked enormous behind his spectacle lenses, giving him the
appearance of a frightened child.

‘It happened last night. I was
supposed to be on a stakeout in Rue Fontaine—'

‘Just a moment,' interrupted
Maigret, sitting astride a straw-bottomed chair and lighting his pipe. ‘Who
are you working with?'

‘With Chief Inspector
Amadieu.'

‘Go on.'

Drawing gently on his pipe, Maigret
narrowed his eyes and stared at the lime-plastered wall and the shelf with copper
saucepans, caressing the images that were so
familiar to him. At
Quai des Orfèvres, Amadieu's office was the last one on the left at the end of
the corridor. Amadieu himself was a skinny, sad man who had been promoted to
divisional chief when Maigret had retired.

‘Does he still have a drooping
moustache?'

‘Yes. Yesterday we had a summons
for Pepito Palestrino, the owner of the Floria, in Rue Fontaine.'

‘What number?'

‘Fifty-three, next to the
optician.'

‘In my day, that was the Toréador.
Cocaine dealing?'

‘Cocaine initially. Then something
else too. The chief had heard rumours that Pepito was mixed up in the Barnabé job,
the guy who was shot in Place Blanche a fortnight ago. You must have read about it
in the papers.'

‘Make us some coffee!' said
Maigret to his wife.

And, with the relieved sigh of a dog who
finally settles down after chasing its tail, he leaned his elbows on the back of his
chair and rested his chin on his folded hands. From time to time, Philippe removed
his glasses to wipe the lenses and, for a few moments, he appeared to be blind. He
was a tall, plump, auburn-haired boy with baby-pink skin.

‘You know that we can no longer do
as we please. In your day, no one would have batted an eyelid at arresting Pepito in
the middle of the night. But now, we have to keep to the letter of the law.
That's why the chief decided to carry out the arrest at eight o'clock in
the morning. In the meantime, it was my job to keep an eye on the fellow
…'

He was getting bogged down in the dense
quiet of the room, then, with a start, he remembered his predicament and cast around
helplessly.

For Maigret, the few
words spoken by his nephew exuded the whiff of Paris. He could picture the
Floria's neon sign, the doorman on the alert for cars arriving, and his nephew
turning up in the neighbourhood that night.

‘Take off your overcoat,
Philippe,' interrupted Madame Maigret. ‘You'll catch cold when you
go outside.'

He was wearing a dinner-jacket. It
looked quite incongruous in the low-ceilinged kitchen with its heavy beams and
red-tiled floor.

‘Have another drink—'

But in a fresh outburst of anger
Philippe jumped up, wringing his hands violently enough to crush his bones.

‘If only you knew,
Uncle—'

He was on the verge of tears, his eyes
stayed dry. His gaze fell on the electric lightbulb again. He stamped his foot.

‘I bet I'll be arrested
later!'

Madame Maigret, who was pouring boiling
water over the coffee, turned around, saucepan in hand.

‘What on earth are you talking
about?'

And Maigret, still puffing on his pipe,
opened his nightshirt collar with its delicate red embroidery.

‘So you were on a stakeout
opposite the Floria—'

‘Not opposite. I went
inside,' said Philippe, still on his feet. ‘At the back of the club
there's a little office where Pepito has set up a camp bed. That's where
he usually sleeps after closing up the joint.'

A cart rumbled past on the road. The
clock had stopped. Maigret glanced at his watch hanging from a nail above the
fireplace. The hands showed half past four. In the
cowsheds, milking
had begun and carts were trundling to Orléans market. The taxi was still waiting
outside the house.

‘I wanted to be clever,'
confessed Philippe. ‘Last week the chief yelled at me and told me—'

He turned red and trailed off, trying to
fix his gaze on something.

‘He told you—?'

‘I can't
remember—'

‘Well I can! If it's
Amadieu, he probably came out with something along the lines of: “You're
a maverick, young man, a maverick like your uncle!”'

Philippe said neither yes nor no.

‘Anyway, I wanted to be
clever,' he hastily went on. ‘When the customers left, at around 1.30, I
hid in the toilet. I thought that if Pepito had got wind of anything, he might try
and get rid of the stuff. And do you know what happened?'

Maigret, more solemn now, slowly shook
his head.

‘Pepito was alone. Of that
I'm certain! Suddenly, there was a gunshot. It took a few moments for it to
dawn on me, then it took me a few more moments to run into the bar. It looked
bigger, at night. It was lit by a single lightbulb. Pepito was lying between two
rows of tables and as he fell he'd knocked over some chairs. He was
dead.'

Maigret rose and poured himself another
glassful of brandy, while his wife signalled to him not to drink too much.

‘Is that all?'

Philippe was pacing up and down. And
this young man,
who generally had difficulty expressing himself,
began to wax eloquent in a dry, bitter tone.

‘No, that's not all!
That's when I did something really stupid! I was scared. I couldn't
think straight. The empty bar was sinister, it felt as if it was shrouded in
greyness. There were streamers strewn on the floor and over the tables. Pepito was
lying in a strange position, on his side, his hand close to his wound, and he seemed
to be looking at me. What can I say? I took out my revolver and I started talking. I
yelled out some nonsense and my voice scared me even more. There were shadowy
corners everywhere, drapes, and I had the impression they were moving. I pulled
myself together and went over to have a look. I flung open a door and yanked down a
velvet curtain. I found the switchbox and I wanted to turn on the lights. I pushed
the switches at random. And that was even more frightening. A red projector lit the
place up. Fans started humming in every corner. “Who's there?” I
shouted again.'

He bit his lip. His aunt looked at him,
as distressed as he was. He was her sister's son and had been born in Alsace.
Maigret had wangled him a job at police headquarters.

‘I'd feel happier knowing he
was in the civil service,' his mother had said.

And now, he panted:

‘Please don't be angry with
me, Uncle. I don't know myself how it happened. I can barely remember. In any
case, I fired a shot, because I thought I saw something move. I rushed forwards and
then stopped. I thought I heard footsteps, whisperings. But there was nothing but
emptiness. I would never have believed the place was so
big and
full of obstacles. In the end, I found myself in the office. There was a gun on the
table. I grabbed it without thinking. The barrel was still warm. I took out the
chamber and saw that there was one bullet missing.'

‘Idiot!' groaned Maigret
between clenched teeth.

The coffee was steaming and
Madame Maigret, sugar bowl in hand, stood there not knowing what
she was doing.

‘I had completely lost my mind. I
still thought I could hear a noise over by the door. I ran. It was only later that I
realized I had a gun in each hand.'

‘Where did you put the
gun?'

Maigret's tone was harsh. Philippe
stared at the floor.

‘All sorts of things were going
through my mind. If it was a murder, people would think that since I'd been
alone with Pepito—'