Free The Two-Penny Bar by Georges Simenon

because of him the entire Seine-et-Oise force was on a state of
alert.
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ he said to the doctor. ‘Nothing worse than a puncture. The rest of the car is intact. It’s a good machine … the clutch is a little sticky, perhaps …’
    â€˜Did Basso ask you yesterday to pick up his wife and child?’
    â€˜You know very well I can’t answer questions like that, my dear Maigret.’
    â€˜And I don’t suppose you will tell me where you dropped them off?’
    â€˜I’m sure if you were in my shoes …’
    â€˜I’ll give you credit for one thing, something even a professional criminal wouldn’t have thought of.’
    James was modestly surprised.
    â€˜What’s that?’
    â€˜The racetrack. Having delivered Madame Basso safely, you didn’t want the police to find the car straight away. And since there were roadblocks everywhere, you thought of the racetrack. You could have driven round and round for
hours.’
    â€˜I’d always fancied having a go at it, you know.’
    But the inspector wasn’t listening. He dashed over to the doctor, who was attempting to fit the spare tyre.
    â€˜I’m sorry, the car stays put until we receive the order to release it.’
    â€˜What? But this is
my
car! I haven’t done anything …’
    It was no use protesting. The car was put into a lock-up, and Maigret took away the key. The policeman awaited instructions. James smoked a cigarette. Victor was still watching the racing-cars.
    â€˜Take him away,’ said Maigret, indicating Victor, ‘and put him in a cell.’
    â€˜What about me?’ James asked.
    â€˜Do you still have nothing to say to me?’
    â€˜Not really. Put yourself in my shoes!’
    Maigret sulkily turned his back on him.
    Maigret was delighted when it began to rain on the Monday. The grey weather chimed in better with his mood and the tedious tasks of the day.
    Among them, he had to write a report on the events of the day before, in which he had to justify his deployment of the officers under his command.
    At eleven o’clock, two officers from Criminal Recordscame to collect him from his office, and all three of them took a taxi to the racetrack, where Maigret was able to do little except watch his colleagues at work.
    They knew that the doctor had clocked up only sixty kilometres since buying the car. The dial now showed 210 kilometres. They reckoned that James must have done about fifty kilometres at the racetrack.
    That left about a hundred kilometres to account for. The distance between Morsang and Montlhéry was barely forty kilometres by the most direct route.
    Using this information, they were able to mark a circle on a route map showing the maximum area the car could have reached.
    The two experts worked meticulously. They carefully scraped the tyres, gathered up the dust and other debris and examined it under a magnifying glass, putting some of it aside for further analysis.
    â€˜Fresh tar,’ one of them said.
    And the other examined a special map provided by the transport department, looking for places within their circle where there were current roadworks. There were four or five, all in different directions. The first expert said:
    â€˜Chalk deposits.’
    Now they consulted a military map. Maigret walked up and down glumly, smoking his pipe.
    â€˜No calcareous soil in the Fontainebleau area, but between La Ferté-Allais and Arpajon …’
    â€˜I’ve found some grains of wheat in the tread …’
    And so the evidence accumulated. The maps became covered in blue and red lines.
    At two o’clock they rang the town hall at La Ferté-Allais to find out whether any firm in the town was currently using Portland cement in such a way that some of it could have found its way on to the road. They didn’t
get their answer until three o’clock:
    â€˜There’s building work going on at