Free Chief Inspector Maigret Visits London by Margaret de Rohan

story?’ And Max, the avid reader, was suddenly a little more interested than he’d been before.
    â€˜I can’t remember, but that’s not the important part of what I’m telling you, sweetie.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜When I’d finished reading the story, I said that we should each say a little prayer to God.’
    â€˜I’m not sure I believe in God.’
    â€˜That’s alright, Max. I’m sure He
believes
in you!’
    â€˜That Professor says that God is deluded… ’
    â€˜No, Richard Dawkins says a belief in God is a delusion. At least that’s what I think he says, because I haven’t read his book. If you ask me, he’s the one who is deluded. He’s made Science his god just like Aaron did with the golden calf. Only now they don’t have to melt their jewellery to do it because they have research grants instead. Then everyone bows down and says “clever science, clever scientists, they have all the answers”, when they actually know very little, and can
prove
even less.’
    â€˜What?’ ‘Oh, I was thinking about the story of the golden calf. It’s in the Old Testament. I’ll tell you another day.’
    â€˜A calf made out of gold? That’s impossible,’ Max was incredulous. But he was also interested.
    â€˜Well, of course it wasn’t a real calf, but it was made from real
gold.’
    â€˜Oh. How?’
    â€˜All the people gave Aaron, the priest, their gold jewellery, and he melted it down to make the golden calf. And I can tell you that nothing
good came from that little episode – nothing good at all! But the whole story’s for another time; it’s not important now.’
    â€˜Is that it? Is that what you wanted to tell me?’
    â€˜No, of course not silly, I haven’t finished yet, because I got side-tracked when you mentioned wretched Professor Dawkins! But to return to my original
story
;
we all said an evening prayer to God. I can’t remember who went first, nor can I remember what Celia said, or what I said. But I can remember very clearly what you said, Max. Shall I tell you?’
    â€˜I suppose.’ ‘You said,
‘Dear God, please remember our needs and give us a fine day tomorrow: crème caramel’.
’
    â€˜What? But that doesn’t make sense! Why would I say that, instead of Amen? That’s what we do in Assembly after we’ve said the Lord’s Prayer.’
    â€˜No one knows why you said it, you just did. And you
were
very fond of crème caramel at the time!’
    â€˜I still am,’ he said weakly.
    â€˜I know you are. But I think that how we end our prayers doesn’t matter much to God. It must be what’s in our hearts that’s important. Guess what happened the next day?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜It was the best, the sunniest, the most wonderfully perfect day of the whole two weeks that we were in France. Now what do you think about that?’
    â€˜I don’t know. My head hurts too much to think.’
    â€˜And after that perfect day, when I told the rest of the family what you’d said the night before, we all laughed and said “so that’s how to make sure our prayers are answered: forget the Amen and always end by saying crème caramel”!’
    Then suddenly Granny was serious again. ‘Timmy says that you’ve been saying crème caramel at night. You’ve even been shouting it sometimes. Why would you do that, do you think?’
    There was silence for a long time, so Granny decided to fill the void. ‘Darling, is there any chance you might be blaming yourself for what has happened to Inspector Martin?’
    More silence.
    â€˜Do you think that the bad thing happened to Georges because you said he was a rubbish bowler?’
    There was a different sound now on the other end of the line: it could have been soft tears falling. But then big boys of almost eleven