My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon

same table, near the counter, like a long-married couple waiting for a train in a railway station. Monsieur Émile had ordered his usual tisane, Ginette a greenish liqueur in a minute glass.
    Now and then they would exchange a word or two, in a low voice. Nothing could be heard. Only the movement of their lips could be seen. Then Ginette had risen with a sigh and gone off to fetch a game of checkers from a cabinet under the gramophone.
    They played. One felt that it might have been like that every day, for years on end, that the people would grow old without changing their places, without attempting any actions other than the ones they were to be seen making now.
    No doubt in five years Maigret would find the dentist in front of the same anisette, with an identical smile, at once savage and satisfied. Charlot was working the crane with the movements of an automaton, and there was no reason for that to stop at a given moment.
    The engaged couple moved the men about on the checkerboard, which they contemplated with unreal gravity between each move, and the major emptied glass after glass of champagne, while he recounted stories to Mr. Pyke.
    No one was in a hurry. No one seemed to think that tomorrow existed. When she hadn’t any customer to serve, Jojo went and leaned on the counter and, with her chin on her hand, gazed thoughtfully in front of her. Several times Maigret felt her eyes fixed on him, but the moment he turned his head she would look away.
    Paul, the patron , still in his cook’s attire, went from table to table, and at each he offered a round of drinks. It must have cost him a lot, but it is to be presumed that he made it up in the long run.
    As for his wife, a small person with faded blonde hair, hard-faced, who was scarcely noticed, she had settled down by herself at a table and was doing the day’s accounts.
    â€œIt’s like this every evening,” Lechat had told the chief inspector.
    â€œAnd the islanders, the fishermen I mean?”
    â€œThey hardly ever come after dinner. They go out to sea before daybreak and retire early to bed. At any rate, in the evening, they wouldn’t come to the Arche. It’s a sort of tacit agreement. In the afternoon, the morning as well, everyone mixes. After dinner, the islanders, the real inhabitants, prefer to go to the other cafés.”
    â€œWhat do they do?”
    â€œNothing. I’ve been to see them. Sometimes they listen to the wireless, but that’s fairly unusual. They have a small drink in silence, staring in front of them.”
    â€œIs it always as calm here?”
    â€œIt all depends. Listen. It can happen from one moment to another. It takes a mere nothing, a remark in the air, a round of drinks offered by one person or another, and everyone groups together, and starts talking at once.”
    It hadn’t happened, perhaps because of the presence of Maigret.
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    It was hot, in spite of the open window. It had become an obsession to listen to the noises of the house. Ginette was still not asleep. There were occasional footsteps above his head. As for Mr. Pyke, he had to go a fourth time to the end of the passage and, each time, Maigret waited with a sort of anguish for the racket caused by the flush, before attempting to go back to sleep. For he must have been sleeping between the interruptions, a sleep not deep enough to efface his thoughts completely, but sufficient to distort them.
    Mr. Pyke had played a dirty trick on him when he had spoken about the Dutchman at the end of the jetty. From now on the chief inspector could only see de Greef in the light of the peremptory phrases of his British colleague.
    However, the portrait which Pyke had sketched of the young man did not satisfy him. He, too, was there, with Anna, who must have been sleepy and who, as time passed, allowed herself to lean more and more on her companion’s shoulder.
    De Greef did not speak to her. He cannot have been in the habit of