The Flemish House by Georges Simenon, Georges Simenon; Translated by Shaun Whiteside Page B

killing a young woman.
     But they couldn’t even be sure that she was dead!
    Might she not, weary of her wretched life
     in Givet, be in Brussels, Reims, Nancy or Paris, drinking in some brasserie or other
     with some friends she had met?
    And even if she was dead, had she been
     killed? Discouraged, might she not have been drawn by the muddy river as she left
     the grocery?
    No proof! No clue! Machère would go as
     far as he could, but he wouldn’t find anything, so that one day the public
     prosecutor’s office would decide to close the case.
    So why was Maigret getting drenched on
     this foreign stage?
    Just in front of him, on the other side
     of the Meuse, he saw the factory, whose courtyard was lit only by an electric light.
     Very near the gate, a guardroom with a light.
    Old Piedboeuf had gone to work. What did
     he do there all night?
    And then, without knowing quite why,
     Maigret, hands deep in his pockets, made his way towards the bridge. In the café
     where he had had a hot rum in the morning a dozen sailors and tugboat-owners were
     talking so loudly that they could be heard from the quay. But he didn’t
     stop.
    The wind vibrated the steel girders of
     the bridge which replaced the stone bridge that had been destroyed during the
     war.
    And, on the opposite shore, the quay
     hadn’t even been paved. You had to wade through mud. A roaming dog pressed
     itself against the whitewashed wall.
    A small door was built into the closed
     gate. Andimmediately Maigret saw Piedboeuf pressing his face to
     the glass of the guardroom.
    â€˜Good evening!’
    The man was wearing an old army jacket
     that he had had dyed black. He too was smoking a pipe. And, in the middle of the
     room, he had a little stove whose chimney, after two bends, went into the wall.
    â€˜You know you’re not allowed
     …’
    â€˜To come here at night!
     That’s fine!’
    A wooden bench. A chair with a rush
     seat. Maigret’s overcoat was already starting to steam.
    â€˜Do you stay in this room all
     night?’
    â€˜Excuse me! I have to do three
     rounds of the courtyards and the workshops.’
    From a distance, his big grey moustache
     might have misled. Close up, he was a timid man, ready to collapse at any moment,
     with the keenest sense of his humble condition.
    Maigret intimidated him. He didn’t
     know what to say to him.
    â€˜So, you always live on your own …
     Here at night … In your bed in the morning … And in the afternoon …?’
    â€˜I do the garden!’
    â€˜The midwife’s
     garden?’
    â€˜Yes … we share the vegetables
     …’
    Maigret noticed some rounded shapes in
     the ashes. He prodded them with the tip of the poker and discovered some potatoes in
     their skins. He understood. He imagined the man, all on his own, in the middle of
     the night, eating potatoes and gazing into the void.
    â€˜Does your son never come and see
     you at the factory?’
    â€˜Never!’
    Here too the drops of rain were falling
     one by one outside the door, giving an irregular rhythm to life.
    â€˜Do you really think your daughter
     was murdered?’
    The man didn’t reply straight
     away. He didn’t know where to look.
    â€˜Since the moment that Gérard
     …’
    And suddenly, with a sob in the depths
     of his throat:
    â€˜She wouldn’t have killed
     herself … She wouldn’t have left …’
    It was unexpectedly tragic. The man
     mechanically filled his pipe.
    â€˜If I didn’t think that
     those people …’
    â€˜Do you know Joseph Peeters
     well?’
    And Piedboeuf looked away.
    â€˜I knew he wouldn’t marry
     her … They are rich people … And we …’
    There was a fine electric clock on the
     wall, the only luxury in this cabin. Opposite, a blackboard on which someone had
     written in chalk:
Not hiring
.
    Lastly, near the door, a complicated