garden.
On board the ship as well, he was almost always
the first passenger out pacing the deck, while the crew busily swabbed it down and polished the
brass railings.
His first morning in New York, however, because
he had drunk too much with Agent O’Brien, he got up at eleven.
The second day, in his room at the Berwick, he
woke early, as usual. But precisely because it was too early, because he could tell the streets
were empty even though the curtains were still closed, he decided to go back to
sleep. And he did, deeply. When he opened his eyes again, it was
past ten. Why did he behave like those people who have worked all week and whose great joy on
Sunday is to laze around? He dawdled. He took for ever to eat his breakfast. He went to the
window in his dressing gown to smoke a first pipe and was astonished not to see Bill in the
street.
True, the boxer-detective had needed sleep as
well. Had he arranged for a replacement? Were there two men relaying each other on Maigret’s
trail?
He shaved carefully and spent still a little more
time organizing his things.
Well, it was on all those particular minutes,
wasted so trivially, that a man’s life depended.
At the moment when Maigret was going down to the
street, there was – strictly speaking – still time. Bill was definitely not there, and the
inspector noticed no one who seemed assigned to follow him. An empty cab drove by. He raised his
arm automatically. The driver did not see him, and, instead of looking for another cab, Maigret
decided to walk for a while.
That is how he discovered Fifth Avenue and its
luxury stores. He stopped at their windows, lingered a long time in contemplation of some pipes,
then decided to buy one, even though Madame Maigret ordinarily gave him one for special
occasions and his birthday.
One more silly, preposterous detail: the pipe was
quite expensive. Leaving the store, remembering the taxi fare from the previous evening, Maigret
resolved to economize the same amount that morning.
That
is why he took the subway, in which he lost considerable time before finding the right corner at
Findlay Avenue.
The sky was a hard, luminous grey. The wind was
still blowing, but no longer as fiercely. Maigret turned at the corner of 169th Street and
immediately sensed disaster.
About two hundred metres down the street a crowd
was gathered outside a door and, although he did not know the area well and had seen it only at
night, he was almost certain the place was the Italian tailor’s shop.
Moreover, everything or almost everything on the
street and in the neighbourhood was Italian. The children seen playing on the doorsteps had
black hair and those sharp-eyed faces, those long tanned legs of street urchins from Naples or
Florence.
The names over most of the shops were Italian,
and their windows were full of mortadella sausages, pasta and salt-preserved meats from the
shores of the Mediterranean.
The inspector quickened his pace. Twenty or
thirty people were clustered on the tailor’s threshold, which a policeman was defending against
invasion, and a pack of more or less scruffy brats swarmed around them all.
The whole thing smacked of an accident, a sordid
tragedy that explodes abruptly in the street and etches the faces of passers-by with dismay.
‘What happened?’ he asked a fat man in a bowler
hat standing on tiptoe at the back of the crowd.
Although he had used English, the man simply
examined him curiously before turning away with a shrug.
Maigret heard snatches of talk, some in English, some in
Italian.
‘… just as he was crossing the street
…’
‘… for years and years, every morning at
the same time, he’d take his walk … Fifteen years now I’m in the neighbourhood and I
always saw him …’
‘… his chair’s still there …’
Through the shop window they could see the steam
clothes-press with a suit still laid out on it and, closer, next to the plate glass, a
straw-bottomed chair with a rather low seat,
On board the ship as well, he was almost always
the first passenger out pacing the deck, while the crew busily swabbed it down and polished the
brass railings.
His first morning in New York, however, because
he had drunk too much with Agent O’Brien, he got up at eleven.
The second day, in his room at the Berwick, he
woke early, as usual. But precisely because it was too early, because he could tell the streets
were empty even though the curtains were still closed, he decided to go back to
sleep. And he did, deeply. When he opened his eyes again, it was
past ten. Why did he behave like those people who have worked all week and whose great joy on
Sunday is to laze around? He dawdled. He took for ever to eat his breakfast. He went to the
window in his dressing gown to smoke a first pipe and was astonished not to see Bill in the
street.
True, the boxer-detective had needed sleep as
well. Had he arranged for a replacement? Were there two men relaying each other on Maigret’s
trail?
He shaved carefully and spent still a little more
time organizing his things.
Well, it was on all those particular minutes,
wasted so trivially, that a man’s life depended.
At the moment when Maigret was going down to the
street, there was – strictly speaking – still time. Bill was definitely not there, and the
inspector noticed no one who seemed assigned to follow him. An empty cab drove by. He raised his
arm automatically. The driver did not see him, and, instead of looking for another cab, Maigret
decided to walk for a while.
That is how he discovered Fifth Avenue and its
luxury stores. He stopped at their windows, lingered a long time in contemplation of some pipes,
then decided to buy one, even though Madame Maigret ordinarily gave him one for special
occasions and his birthday.
One more silly, preposterous detail: the pipe was
quite expensive. Leaving the store, remembering the taxi fare from the previous evening, Maigret
resolved to economize the same amount that morning.
That
is why he took the subway, in which he lost considerable time before finding the right corner at
Findlay Avenue.
The sky was a hard, luminous grey. The wind was
still blowing, but no longer as fiercely. Maigret turned at the corner of 169th Street and
immediately sensed disaster.
About two hundred metres down the street a crowd
was gathered outside a door and, although he did not know the area well and had seen it only at
night, he was almost certain the place was the Italian tailor’s shop.
Moreover, everything or almost everything on the
street and in the neighbourhood was Italian. The children seen playing on the doorsteps had
black hair and those sharp-eyed faces, those long tanned legs of street urchins from Naples or
Florence.
The names over most of the shops were Italian,
and their windows were full of mortadella sausages, pasta and salt-preserved meats from the
shores of the Mediterranean.
The inspector quickened his pace. Twenty or
thirty people were clustered on the tailor’s threshold, which a policeman was defending against
invasion, and a pack of more or less scruffy brats swarmed around them all.
The whole thing smacked of an accident, a sordid
tragedy that explodes abruptly in the street and etches the faces of passers-by with dismay.
‘What happened?’ he asked a fat man in a bowler
hat standing on tiptoe at the back of the crowd.
Although he had used English, the man simply
examined him curiously before turning away with a shrug.
Maigret heard snatches of talk, some in English, some in
Italian.
‘… just as he was crossing the street
…’
‘… for years and years, every morning at
the same time, he’d take his walk … Fifteen years now I’m in the neighbourhood and I
always saw him …’
‘… his chair’s still there …’
Through the shop window they could see the steam
clothes-press with a suit still laid out on it and, closer, next to the plate glass, a
straw-bottomed chair with a rather low seat,
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