Free The Yellow Dog by Georges Simenon Page B

short, fat men in any city. And you know what I heard him tell his deputy – talking low but hoping, I
think, I’d overhear? Verbatim: “Watch the inspector take off on this false scent. He’ll go to Brest and leave us to deal with the real murderer!”’
    Maigret walked another twenty paces in silence. In the square, the market stalls were being dismantled.
    â€˜I almost told him that …’
    â€˜That what?’
    Leroy blushed and turned his head away. ‘Exactly! I don’t know … I, too, get the feeling that you don’t think it’s really important to catch the drifter.’
    â€˜How’s Mostaguen doing?’
    â€˜Better. He can’t think of any reason he was attacked … He asked his wife’s pardon, pardon for staying so late at
the café. Pardon for being half drunk. He was in tears and swore
he’d never touch another drop of alcohol.’
    Fifty metres from the Admiral Hotel, Maigret stopped to look at the harbour. Boats were coming in, dropping their brown sails as they rounded the breakwater, sculling slowly along.
    At the base of the Old Town’s walls, the ebb tide was uncovering banks of mud studded with old pots and other rubbish.
    A faint suggestion of sun showed through the almost solid cloud cover.
    â€˜Your impression, Leroy?’
    The officer grew uneasy again. ‘I don’t know … I think if we had that fellow … Remember that the yellow dog has disappeared again. What could the man have been up to in the doctor’s house? There must have been
some poisons there. I deduce from that—’
    â€˜Yes, of course. But I don’t go in for deductions.’
    â€˜Still, I’d be curious to see that drifter up close. From the footprints, he must be a giant—’
    â€˜Exactly.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜Nothing.’
    Maigret lingered; he seemed delighted by the view of the little harbour: Cabélou Point to the left, with its pines and rocky headlands, the red-and-black tower, the scarlet buoys marking the channel out to the Glénan Islands, which were
indistinguishable in the grey light.
    Leroy still had a good deal to say. ‘I telephoned Paris to get information on Goyard; he lived there for a long time.’
    Maigret looked at him with affectionate irony, and, stung to the quick, Leroy recited briskly: ‘The information
is either very good or very bad. I got hold of a fellow who’d been a sergeant in
the Vice Squad back then and had known him personally. It seems he dabbled a bit in journalism, first as a gossip columnist. Then he was the manager of a small theatre. Next he ran a cabaret in Montmartre. Went broke twice. For two years he was editor in chief of a provincial newspaper – at
Nevers, I believe. Finally, he ran a nightclub. “A fellow who knows how to stay afloat” – that’s what the sergeant said … True, he also said, “Not a bad guy. When he eventually saw that all he’d ever do was eat through his money or make trouble for
himself, he decided to reimmerse himself in small-town life.”’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜So I wonder why he would fake that attack. I went back to look at the car. There are bloodstains, and they’re real. If he was actually attacked, why wouldn’t he have sent some message, since now he’s walking around
Brest?’
    â€˜Very good!’
    Leroy looked sharply at Maigret to see if he was teasing. No. The inspector was gazing seriously at a gleam of sunlight far out at sea.
    â€˜As for Le Pommeret—’
    â€˜You have a line on him?’
    â€˜His brother came to the hotel to speak to you. He couldn’t stay. He had nothing but bad things to say about the dead man. As far as he was concerned, his brother was an absolute good-for-nothing. Interested only in women and hunting.
And he had a mania for running up bills and for