Free My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon Page B

a sudden, and movement. The boules players, who had finished their game on the square, were crowding round the bar and speaking at the tops of their voices, with strong accents. In a corner of the dining room, near the window, Mr. Pyke was at a table opposite Jef de Greef, and the two men were deeply engrossed in a game of chess.
    Beside them, on the bench, Anna was sitting smoking a cigarette at the end of a long cigarette holder. She had dressed. She wore a little cotton frock under which one sensed she was as naked as beneath her sunsuit. She had a well-rounded body, extremely feminine, so expressly made for caressing that despite oneself one imagined her in bed.
    De Greef had put on a pair of gray flannel trousers and a sailor’s jersey with blue and white stripes. On his feet he wore rope-soled espadrilles, like practically everyone else on the island, and they were the first thing that strict Mr. Pyke had bought.
    Maigret looked round for the inspector, but didn’t see him. He was obliged to accept the glass of wine which Paul was pushing toward him, and the people at the bar squeezed themselves together to make room for him.
    â€œWell, inspector?”
    They were appealing to him, and he knew that in a few minutes the ice would be broken. Probably the islanders had been waiting ever since the morning for this particular moment to make his acquaintance? There was quite a crowd of them, about ten at the least, most of them in fishermen’s clothes. Two or three had a more bourgeois look, probably retired on a modest income.
    Never mind what Mr. Pyke might think. He had to have a drink.
    â€œYou like our island wine?”
    â€œVery much.”
    â€œBut the papers claim you only drink beer. Marcellin said it wasn’t true, that you didn’t pull a face at a jug of calvados. Poor Marcellin! Your health, inspector…”
    Paul, the patron , who knew how these things develop, kept the bottle in his hand.
    â€œIt’s true, he was a friend of yours?”
    â€œI knew him once, yes. He wasn’t a bad fellow.”
    â€œCertainly not. Are the papers right, too, when they say he came from Le Havre?”
    â€œCertainly.”
    â€œWith his accent?”
    â€œWhen I knew him, some fifteen years ago, he hadn’t got any accent.”
    â€œYou hear that, Titin? What have I always said?”
    Four rounds…five rounds…and words being bandied about rather at random, for the sake of saying them, like children throwing balls into the air.
    â€œWhat do you feel like eating this evening, inspector? There is bouillabaisse, of course. But perhaps you don’t like bouillabaisse?”
    He swore that he liked nothing better, and everyone was delighted. It wasn’t the moment to get to know personally the people who surrounded him and formed a rather confused mass.
    â€œYou like pastis as well, the real stuff, which is banned? A pastis all round, Paul! I insist! The inspector won’t say anything…”
    Charlot was sitting on the terrace, with a pastis in front of him, busy reading a paper.
    â€œHave you got any ideas yet?”
    â€œIdeas about what?”
    â€œWell, about the murderer! Morin-Barbu, who was born on the island and hasn’t left it for seventy-seven years, has never heard of anything like it. There have been people drowned. A woman from the North, five or six years back, tried to do away with herself by swallowing sleeping tablets. An Italian sailor, in the course of an argument, stabbed Baptiste in the arm. But a crime, never, inspector! Here even the bad ones become as gentle as lambs.”
    Everybody there was laughing, trying to talk, for what counted was to talk, to say anything, chat over your drink with the famous inspector.
    â€œYou’ll understand better when you’ve been here a few days. What you ought to do is to come and spend your holidays here with your wife. We’d teach you to play boules. Isn’t that right,