My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon Page B

so.”
    â€œBecause you drink a lot, on board, don’t you?”
    â€œAt times. I presume it’s allowed?”
    â€œWas Marcellin at your table when he started talking about me?”
    â€œProbably. I don’t remember exactly. He was telling stories, as usual. Mrs. Wilcox liked to hear him tell stories. He talked about his years in a penal settlement.”
    â€œHe never went to a penal settlement.”
    â€œIn that case, he invented it.”
    â€œTo amuse Mrs. Wilcox. So he talked about prison. And I was brought into the story? Was he drunk?”
    â€œHe was never entirely sober, especially in the evening. Wait. He said he had been convicted because of a woman.”
    â€œGinette?”
    â€œMaybe. I seem to recall the name. It was then, I think, that he claimed that you had looked after her. Someone murmured: ‘Maigret—he’s just a copper like the rest of them.’ Forgive me.”
    â€œNot at all. Carry on.”
    â€œThat’s all. At that he started singing your praises, saying you were a friend of his and that for him a friend was sacred. If I remember rightly, Charlot teased him and he became even more worked up.”
    â€œCan you tell me exactly how it finished?”
    â€œIt’s difficult. It was late.”
    â€œWho was the first to leave?”
    â€œI don’t know. Paul had closed the shutters a long time before. He was sitting at our table. We had a final bottle. I think we left together.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe major left us in the square to go back to his villa. Charlot, who sleeps at the Arche, stayed behind. Mrs. Wilcox and I went off to the landing stage, where we had left the dinghy.”
    â€œDid you have a sailor with you?”
    â€œNo. We usually leave them on board. There was a strong mistral blowing and the sea was choppy. Marcellin offered to take us.”
    â€œSo he was with you when you set off.”
    â€œYes. He stayed on shore. He must have gone back to the hut.”
    â€œIn short, you and Mrs. Wilcox were the last people to see him alive?”
    â€œApart from the murderer.”
    â€œDid you have difficulty getting back to the yacht?”
    â€œHow did you know?”
    â€œYou told me the sea was rough.”
    â€œWe arrived soaking wet, with six inches of water in the dinghy.”
    â€œDid you go straight to bed?”
    â€œI made some grog to warm us up, after which we played a game of gin rummy.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œIt’s a card game.”
    â€œWhat time was this?”
    â€œAround two in the morning. We never go to bed early.”
    â€œYou didn’t hear or see anything unusual?”
    â€œThe mistral prevented us from hearing anything.”
    â€œAre you thinking of coming to the Arche this evening?”
    â€œProbably.”
    â€œThank you.”
    Maigret and Mr. Pyke remained alone together for a moment or two, and the chief inspector gazed at his colleague with large, sleepy eyes. He had the feeling that it was all futile, that he ought to have tackled it differently. For example, he would have liked to be on the square, in the sunshine, smoking his pipe and watching the boules players, who had started a big match; he would have liked to roam about the harbor watching the fishermen repairing their nets; he would have liked to know all the Gallis and the Morins whom Lechat had just touched on in conversation with him.
    â€œI believe that in your country, Mr. Pyke, investigations are carried out in a very orderly fashion, aren’t they?”
    â€œIt all depends. For example, after a crime committed two years ago near Brighton, one of my colleagues stayed eleven weeks in an inn, spending his days fishing and his evenings drinking ale with the locals.”
    That was exactly what Maigret would have liked to do, and what he was not doing on account of this very Mr. Pyke! When Lechat came in, he was in a bad temper.
    â€œThe