My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon Page A

speaking to her often. He was the male, the leader, and she had only to follow, to await his pleasure.
    He was watching. With his very thin face he called to mind a lean animal, a wild beast.
    The others probably weren’t lambs, but indisputably de Greef was a wild beast. He sniffed like a wild beast. It was a mannerism. He would listen to what was being said and then he would sniff. That was his only perceptible reaction.
    In the jungle the major would probably have been a pachyderm, an elephant, or better still a hippopotamus. And Monsieur Émile? Something furtive, with pointed teeth.
    It was absurd. What would Mr. Pyke have thought if he had been able to read Maigret’s thoughts? True, the chief inspector had the excuse of having had too much to drink and being half-asleep. If he had foreseen his insomnia he would have accounted for a few more glasses, in order to plunge at once into a dreamless slumber.
    All in all Lechat was a very good man. So good that Maigret would have liked to have had him in his service. Still a little young, a little excitable. He was easily agitated, like a gun dog which runs in all directions around its master.
    He knew the Midi already, as he had been in the squad at Draguignan, but he had only had occasion to visit Porquerolles once or twice; he had only really got to know the island during the last two or three days.
    â€œThe people from the North Star don’t come every evening?”
    â€œAlmost every evening. They sometimes arrive late. Usually, when the sea is calm, they come by moonlight in a dinghy.”
    â€œAre Mrs. Wilcox and the major friends?”
    â€œThey studiously avoid speaking to one another, and each looks at the other as though they didn’t exist.”
    After all, it was understandable. They both had the same background. Both, for one reason or another, had come here to let their hair down.
    The major must have been very embarrassed becoming drunk under the eye of Mrs. Wilcox, for in his country, gentlemen do that among themselves, behind closed doors.
    As for her, in front of the retired Indian Army officer, she cannot have been very proud of her Moricourt.
    They had arrived about eleven o’clock in the evening. As nearly always happens, she was nothing like the idea the chief inspector had formed of her in his mind.
    He had imagined a lady, and she was a redhead—of an artificial red—rather a stout woman on the wane, whose broken voice recalled that of Major Bellam, only it was louder. She was wearing a linen dress, but she had round her neck three strings of pearls which were perhaps genuine, and a large diamond on her finger.
    Straightaway she had singled out Maigret. Philippe must have told her about the chief inspector and from the moment she sat down she hadn’t ceased sizing him up and discussing him in a low voice with her companion.
    What was she saying? Did she, on her side, find him heavy and vulgar? Had she pictured him as a film star? Perhaps she thought he didn’t look very intelligent?
    The two of them were drinking whisky, with very little soda. Philippe waited on her hand and foot and the chief inspector’s attention irritated him; he evidently didn’t like being seen in the exercise of his functions. As for her, she was doing it on purpose. Instead of summoning Jojo or Paul, she would send her beau to change her glass, which she didn’t find clean enough, or made him get up again to go and fetch her some cigarettes from the counter. Another time, God knows why, she sent him outside.
    She had to assert her power over the heir of the Moricourts, and perhaps, by the same token, to show that she was unashamed.
    As they passed, the couple had greeted the young de Greef and his companion. Very vaguely. Rather in the way that masonic signs are exchanged.
    The major, contrary to Maigret’s expectations, had been the first to leave, dignified but uncertain in his bearing, and Mr. Pyke had gone some