Maigret by Georges Simenon Page A

waiter roughly aside, grabbed a bottle of white wine and a glass, diluted the wine
     with mineral water, threw back his head and gargled.
    At that hour, there were just a few
     passing customers snatching a hurried coffee. Maigret went and sat by the window,
     but the owner, oblivious of him, tied on a blue apron and turned to a blonde girl
     seated at the till of the cigarette counter.
    He said no more to her than to the
     waiter, opened the cash register, looked at a notebook and stretched, now fully
     awake. His day was beginning, and the first thing he noticed on inspecting his realm
     was Maigret staring placidly at him.
    They had never met, but the owner
still knitted his thick,black eyebrows. He appeared to be racking
     his brains. Unable to place Maigret, he scowled. And yet he could never have
     foreseen that this placid customer was going to sit there for twelve full hours!
    Maigret’s first task was to go
     over to the till and say to the girl:
    ‘Have you got a telephone
     token?’
    The booth was in a corner of the café.
     It only had a frosted glass door, and Maigret, sensing the owner had his eye on him,
     jiggled the handset making a series of loud clicks. Meanwhile, using the pen-knife
     he was holding in his other hand, he cut the cable at the point where it went under
     the floor, so that no one would notice that it had been severed.
    ‘Hello! … Hello! …’ he
     yelled.
    He emerged fuming.
    ‘Is your telephone out of
     order?’
    The owner glanced over at the cashier,
     who looked surprised.
    ‘It was working a few minutes ago.
     Lucien telephoned for some croissants. Didn’t you, Lucien?’
    ‘Barely a quarter of an hour
     ago,’ confirmed the waiter.
    The owner wasn’t suspicious yet,
     but he was still watching Maigret covertly. He went into the booth and tried to make
     a call, persisting for a good ten minutes without noticing the severed cable.
    Impassive, Maigret had returned to his
     table and ordered a beer. He was stocking up on patience. He knew that he was going
     to have to sit on that same chair for hours, in front of that fake mahogany pedestal
     table, confrontedwith the sight of the pewter bar and the glazed
     booth where the girl sold tobacco and cigarettes.
    As he came out of the telephone booth,
     the owner kicked the door shut, walked over to the doorway and sniffed the air of
     the street for a moment. He stood very close to Maigret, who was staring fixedly at
     him. Finally becoming aware of that penetrating gaze, he spun round.
    Maigret didn’t move a muscle. He
     was still wearing his overcoat and hat, as if about to leave.
    ‘Lucien! Run next door and
     telephone for someone to come and repair the phone.’
    The waiter hurried out, a dirty napkin
     over his arm, and the owner himself served two builders who came in, their faces
     clown-like under an almost even layer of plaster dust.
    An atmosphere of doubt hung in the air
     for perhaps another ten minutes. When Lucien announced that the engineer would not
     be coming until the next day, the owner
turned to Maigret again and muttered
     under his breath:
    ‘Bastard!’
    He could have meant the tardy engineer,
     but the insult was chiefly addressed to the customer in whom he finally recognized a
     policeman.
    It was 2.30 and this was the prologue to
     a long, drawn-out performance, which eluded everybody present. The owner’s
     name was Louis. Customers who knew him came and shook his hand, exchanged a few
     words with him. Louis himself rarely served. Most of the time, he stayed in the
     background, behind the bar, between the waiter and the girl on the cigarette
     counter.
    And he watched Maigret over their heads.
     He made nobones about it, and Maigret watched him with equal
     brazenness. The situation could have been comical, for they were both big, broad and
     heavy, and they were trying to outstare each other.
    Neither was a fool, either. Louis knew
     exactly what he was doing when, from time to time, he