Free The Flemish House by Georges Simenon, Georges Simenon; Translated by Shaun Whiteside Page B

Joseph’s … He would have been far
     better off in a sanatorium, with his mother …’
    â€˜So your daughter was waiting
     …’
    And Van de Weert smiled.
    â€˜She has loved him since she was
     fourteen or fifteen … Isn’t that lovely? … Was I supposed to stand in their
     way? … Do you have a light? … If you ask my opinion, there isn’t even anything
     to get worked up about … The young woman, who was always a little manhunter, has
     followed a new boyfriend somewhere or other … And her brother took advantage of the
     fact to try and make himself some money …’
    He didn’t ask Maigret’s
     advice. He was sure that his opinion was right. He listened out for vague sounds
     from the waiting room, where his clients were bound to be getting impatient.
    Then Maigret, calmly, and with the same
     innocent expression as the doctor, asked one last question:
    â€˜Do you think that Mademoiselle
     Marguerite is her cousin’s mistress?’
    Perhaps Van de Weert was on the point of
     losing his temper. His forehead turned red. But what prevailed was sadness in the
     face of such incomprehension.
    â€˜Marguerite? … You’re mad! …
     Who could have come up with such a thing? … Marguerite, the … the …’
    And Maigret, who was already holding the
     door handle, left without even smiling. The house smelled of both chemicals and
     cooking. The servant who opened the doorto the clients was as
     fresh as if she had just emerged from a hot bath.
    But outside it was all rain and mud
     again, and passing lorries splashed the pavements.
    It was Saturday. Joseph Peeters was due
     to arrive in the afternoon and spend Sunday in Givet. At the Café des Mariniers they
     were engaged in a passionate discussion because the Department of Roads and Bridges
     had just announced that shipping traffic had resumed between the border and
     Maastricht.
    Except that, given the strength of the
     current, the tugs were asking for fifteen francs a kilometre per ton, rather than
     ten. They had also learned that an arch of the Namur bridge had been obstructed by a
     barge loaded with stones that had broken its mooring and crashed into the pier.
    â€˜Any casualties?’ asked
     Maigret.
    â€˜The wife and her son. The
     bargeman himself was in the bar, and by the time he got to the waterside his boat
     had already taken off!’
    Gérard Piedboeuf passed by on his
     bicycle, coming back from the factory offices. And a few moments later Machère came
     back from the Flemish house, where he had gone to announce the news, rang the
     doorbell of the Piedboeuf house and found himself face to face with the midwife, who
     curtly let him in.
    â€˜So tell me about your indecent
     assault case.’
    On most barges, the accommodation is
     cleaner than most people’s houses. But that was not the case on the
Étoile
     Polaire
.
    The bargeman had no wife. He was helped by
     a lad of about twenty who wasn’t quite right in the head and who had epileptic
     seizures from time to time.
    The cabin smelled like a barracks. The
     man was busy eating bread and sausage and drinking a litre of red wine.
    He was less drunk than usual. He looked
     suspiciously at Maigret, and it was quite a long time before he decided to
     speak.
    â€˜It wasn’t even an assault …
     I’d already slept with the girl two or three times … One evening, in the
     street, I meet her and, because I’ve been drinking, she turns me down … So I
     hit her … She screamed … Some cops happened to be passing by, and I knocked one of
     them down …’
    â€˜Five years?’
    â€˜Nearly. She denied that
     we’d had relations before … Some friends of mine came to court and said we
     had, but they only half believed them … Without the cop, who spent a fortnight in
     hospital, I’d have got off with a year, maybe even