Free Mr Hire's Engagement by Georges Simenon

now.'
    He put a limp hand in hers.
    'You really do like me a little?' she urged.
    Instead of replying, Mr. Hire opened the door, which he locked behind her.
    Alice galloped down the stairs, crossed the courtyard in a breath of cold air, and arrived in her own room before her excitement had abated. At once she noticed the three sheets of brown paper which now concealed Mr. Hire, gave a satisfied smile, and again took off her blouse and skirt, stretched herself and finally removed her vest. She was winking at herself in the glass. She could imagine a tiny hole in the brown paper and Mr. Hire's eye lurking behind it as it had lurked at the keyhole.
    She loitered, and even decided to wash herself all over, so as to wander naked all the longer in her brightly-lit room. But every now and then her expression changed to one of cold resentment and she snarled, as though uttering a threat:
    'The idiot!'
    But the idiot was not looking through the brown paper. He had remained standing with his hand on the key, leaning against the door, and what he was looking at was his own room, the white-faced alarm- clock on the black mantelpiece, the three-legged stove, the cupboard, the oilcloth and the coffee-pot, last of all his bed, with the unusual hollow in it.
    Eventually, he let go of the key. His hand fell to his side. He heaved a sigh, and that was all, for that evening.
    VI
     
    To the Public Prosecutor, to the Public Prosecutor,
    To the Public Prosecutor,
    'To the Pub . . .'
    Mr. Hire tore his sheet of pink blotting-paper into tiny scraps, threw them into the stove, and stood for a moment watching the flames. He had been working hard. There were always a great many answers to his advertisements on Mondays, for humble people write their letters on Sunday mornings. And this time there had been Saturday's post left over to open.
    All alone in his basement, he had tied up a hundred and twenty parcels, and this had meant three trips to the post office. The exercise did him good. During the third trip he had almost smiled when he caught sight of the discouraged face of the inspector who was trailing him, reflected in a window. It was not the same one as usual, but a little bearded fellow with bad teeth, who had been shivering outside No. 67 all day, with his coat collar turned up.
    'To the Public Prosecutor,'
    'To the . . .'
    'To the . . .'
    The past two hours since he finished his work Mr. Hire had spent doodling on his blotting-paper, scribbling words and crossing them out, and now he suddenly gave up the attempt to find an idea, to think of something clever and subtle, which would turn suspicion aside from the house at Villejuif.
    At a few minutes to seven he made sure that the stove would gently burn itself out, switched off the light, and left the house, with his black briefcase under his arm. The little man was standing at the corner of the street and taking the trouble to pretend he was waiting to meet someone. All the way along the Boulevard Voltaire he kept close to the house-fronts, dodging behind some passer-by whenever Mr. Hire looked round. They must have forgotten to tell him it didn't matter.
    He was undoubtedly married, a father, and unlucky: there was something indefinable about him that told one that. When Mr. Hire went into the restaurant where he lunched every day, with his own napkin in a pigeon-hole, the policeman stayed outside and walked three or four times, a faint, ghostly figure, past the steam-dimmed window.
    There were paper tablecloths, the tables were very small, and the waitresses wore black dresses and white aprons; the menu was written in chalk on a big slate.
    All the time he ate his black pudding and potatoes, Mr. Hire was thinking, racking his brains, and when he looked up it was to say, in an unnatural-sounding voice: 'Some red wine.'
    This had never happened before. Never had he drunk anything except water or café au lait.
      'A carafe?'
    It made a ruby-red splash of colour, with a paler reflection on the