Maigret's Holiday

Maigret's Holiday Read Free

Book: Maigret's Holiday Read Free
Author: Georges Simenon
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inspector
…’
    Monsieur Léonard was in slippers and
shirt-sleeves. There were peas, freshly grated carrots, leeks and potatoes in bowls.
Blood from the meats ran on to the deal table, while sole and turbot lay waiting to be
scaled.
    â€˜A little glass of white wine,
inspector?’
    The first of the day. A little drink with
the owner. It was in fact an excellent local wine with a greenish tinge.
    Maigret could hardly go and sit on the beach
among all the mothers. He strolled along the promenade, Le Remblai,pausing from time to time. He gazed at the sea, at the swelling number of brightly
clad figures playing in the waves close to the shore. Then, when he reached the town
centre, he turned right into a narrow street which led to the covered market.
    He wandered from stall to stall as slowly
and methodically as if he had forty people to feed. He stopped in front of the fish,
which were still quivering, then he lingered in front of the shellfish and proffered a
matchstick to a lobster which snatched it with its pincer.
    Second glass of white wine. Because just
opposite was a little café where you went down one step and it was like an
extension of the market, filled with mouth-watering smells.
    Then he walked past Notre-Dame to go and buy
his newspaper. Could he go back up to his room to read it?
    He went back to the promenade and sat at the
terrace of a café, always in the same place. He always dithered too, keeping the
waiter standing there ready to take his order. As if he were going to drink anything
else!
    â€˜A white wine.’
    It had come about by chance. He would
sometimes go for months without drinking white wine.
    At eleven o’clock, he went inside the
café to telephone the hospital, to hear Sister Aurélie say in her syrupy
voice:
    â€˜Our dear patient had an excellent
night.’
    He had organized a series of little halts
where he would sit at set times. In the hotel dining room too, he had his special
corner, by the window, opposite the table of his two elderly neighbours.
    On the first day, after his
coffee, he had ordered a glass of Calvados. Since then Germaine invariably asked
him:
    â€˜Calvados, inspector?’
    He didn’t dare refuse. He felt drowsy.
The sun was scorching. At times the asphalt on the promenade melted underfoot and car
tyres left their imprint on it.
    He went up to his room for a nap, not in the
bed but in the armchair which he had dragged on to the balcony, where he sat with a
newspaper spread over his face.
    For pity’s sake, ask to see the patient in room 15 …
    Anyone seeing him ensconced in his various
favourite spots at different times of day would think he had been there for years, like
the afternoon card players. But it was only nine days since he and his wife had arrived.
On the first evening, they had eaten mussels. It was a treat they had been promising
themselves since Paris: to eat a huge dish of freshly caught mussels.
    They had both been ill. They had kept their
neighbours awake. The next day, Maigret felt better, but on the beach Madame Maigret
complained of vague pains. The second night, she had a fever. They still thought it was
nothing serious.
    â€˜It was silly of me. I’ve never
been able to eat mussels …’
    Then, the following day, she was in so much
pain that they had had to call Doctor Bertrand and he had sent her straight to hospital.
Those few hours had been difficult, chaotic, to-ing and fro-ing, new faces, X-rays,
tests.
    â€˜I assure you,
doctor, it was the mussels,’ repeated Madame Maigret with a wan smile.
    But the doctors were not smiling. They took
Maigret to one side. Acute appendicitis with the risk of peritonitis. His wife needed
emergency surgery.
    He paced up and down the long corridor
during the operation, at the same time as a young man waiting for his wife to give
birth, who had bitten his nails until his fingers bled.
    That was how he had become ‘Monsieur
6’.
    In six days,

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