It had begun in the winter. Once evening fell, Maigret was at a loss as to what to do with himself. He’d barely managed to keep himself entertained for a month, twiddling the knobs on his wireless set, and it took him no longer than half an hour to read three newspapers.
Then he would leave the dining room, where he was in the habit of sitting, and go for a little stroll into the kitchen.
‘Haven’t you finished yet?’ he’d ask his wife. ‘What are you doing?’
He went out, came back, went out and came back again, unable to comprehend what work could keep a woman busy in the kitchen all day long, and in the end Madame Maigret had said to him:
‘You don’t know what to do with your hulking frame. Why don’t you play cards with the men at the Grand Café?’
Maigret had resisted for weeks, months almost. Admittedly, he knew everyone in Meung-sur-Loire, where he had retired. He wasn’t ashamed of being retired, tending his garden and tinkering in his shack on the riverbank. He sometimes went into the Grand Café, the most modern café, near the bridge, had a beer or, occasionally, a pastis.
Even so, deep down, it felt like a kind of defeat when, at the insistence of Madame Maigret, he sat down at the manille table with its promotional card mat and asked, like a novice:
‘What are we playing for?’
‘The drinks, as usual … Clever devil that you are, you won’t often be taking out your wallet …’
He had decided to play once, in passing. But the next day, the men sent a boy to let him know that they were waiting for him.
Gradually, he adopted his partners’ special jargon, became part of their club and was truly ‘one of the men at the Grand Café’. Angèle never asked what they were drinking, she knew in advance. Now he was also one of the men who, when it was time to write down the score, never failed to sigh:
‘So, Angèle! Still no tokens …? Do you eat them or what?’
It was a tyranny and in the end he couldn’t say whether it was pleasant or unpleasant. In the winter, when the paths were muddy, Maigret gladly put on his varnished clogs to walk to the bridge and, during the grape harvest, then for another month, they drank little bottles of young white wine.
December and January, sometimes February, saw rounds of hot toddies and mulled wine, and spring called for aniseed-flavoured aperitifs, which gave way in summer to the local white wine, served chilled.
‘Thirty-six …’
‘If you say thirty-six, you’ve got forty … I say “little spread” …’
‘Forty-one …’
‘To what?’
The other three were on familiar terms, calling each other by their first names or more often by their profession.
‘Your turn, butcher!’
The butcher came in his work clothes, sometimes wearing his bloodstained apron. He lost more frequently than the others, got yelled at because he made mistakes, and paid without ever complaining, happy to be there, it seemed, to be admitted to that sacrosanct place, the circle that was the crème de la crème of Meung-sur-Loire.
Sometimes his boy would come to fetch him because a customer needed to speak to him across the road, in his shop whose red shutters were visible from the café. He always found someone to hold his cards for him, and the others would take advantage of it to add points to his score or play some other trick on him.
‘Your turn, Citroën …!’
That was the mechanic, who took the game seriously and always won, but was harsh when a partner made a mistake.
The third of those who could be described as the mainstays was Maigret, whom they all called inspector and only dared to tease timidly.
The fourth player was interchangeable. When the mayor, who was a vet, didn’t show up, Urbain, the owner of the Grand Café, took his place, unless the farrier happened to be there.
At five minutes to five, the butcher was to be seen standing in his doorway, waiting for the signal. Maigret would arrive, sucking his pipe, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
Opposite the Grand Café was another, the Commerce, more cramped and darker, which made it a second-class establishment too unremarkable to ever appear in the local news.
‘Go and fetch your father, boy … Tell him we’re waiting for him …’
And the farrier’s, or the mechanic’s or the vet’s kid would leave his friends for a moment to go and shout at his door:
‘Papa …! The men at the Grand Café want you …’
‘Tell them I’m on my way …’
There was talk of politics, of course, but only after the game, when it finished early, or when the butcher won and was called a fascist.
As for women, there were none to speak of. The owner’s wife, Madame Urbain, was sad and pale as a leek, always busy with countless medicinal cures for her digestion, and confiding details of the functioning of her organs to anyone and everyone, which people found off-putting.
Then there was Angèle, the waitress, who was twenty.
‘A pretty little dish,’ the mechanic had said to Maigret, ‘but Urbain keeps an eye on her …’
‘Ah! He’s …’
‘Shhh …!’
Was it true? Wasn’t it true? Maigret had taken no notice and he didn’t agree with the mechanic. He found Angèle to be a determined-looking young woman with shifty eyes. But the others were probably only interested in the particularly buxom contents of her blouse.
During the game, people came in for a drink and sat behind the players for a while, nodding their heads in approval or shaking them in disapproval, but, all things considered, they were just small fry.
‘The men at the Grand Café’ were the four or five manille players, the men for whom, from half past four, tables were wiped and for whom, every two weeks, because Maigret had once remarked that the cards were sticky, the owner bought a new deck with gilt corners.
Was it possible to imagine that, in such a haven of French rural tranquillity, Maigret would find himself at the heart of a drama, not in a professional capacity and not even, as had happened in the past, accidentally and from a distance?
And just imagine his situation, as a former detective chief inspector of the Police Judiciaire, when the news spread throughout the town:
‘One of the men at the Grand Café has committed a murder!’
It was in April, the sun was still shining in the street and on the bridge when the card game started, and it was dark when it ended.
It must have been at the beginning of the month, because the butcher had gone to the Vendée the day before and come back that same evening. Once a month, he would go to Luçon. He had explained – and Maigret hadn’t taken any particular interest in the ins and outs of butchering – that he leased some marshland in the Vendée for fattening up animals, which he bought scrawny …
The fact remains that he had alighted from his van, because he only ever drove around in a van. He was wearing, as he always did on all these trips, his hunting outfit, with brown leather boots and corduroy plus-fours over which nothing would have stopped him wearing his butcher’s apron.
It was only after the event that people recalled those tiny details, because in the heat of the moment no one thought anything of it, given that it was an evening like any other, with a pretty sunset over the sandbanks of the Loire.
But Maigret remembered having said to himself: ‘Odd that he doesn’t pop into his shop for a moment …’
Because, through the bow windows of the Grand Café, you could see, almost opposite, the shutters and marble counters of the butcher’s shop, where the butcher had not set foot on alighting from his van.
It was the period of aniseed-flavoured aperitifs, which Angèle served everyone without asking, except for the farrier, who drank Vittel with strawberry cordial all year round.
The vet was there, short, bearded and moustachioed, all a-fidget, complaining like no one else when he lost and instantly lewd when the conversation turned to women. He was the only one to make suggestive remarks aloud to Angèle, which seemed to confirm the farrier’s theory. Maigret had noticed that when that happened, although Urbain’s commercial instinct made him bite his tongue, he was still aggrieved.
In short, the players were paired up, after some dithering as to who would partner whom.
‘Play!’ the mayor-cum-vet said to Urbain.
‘No way! You play!’ answered the owner of the Grand Café.
The wireless was on in the background, but it was so much part of the atmosphere that no one was listening. The Urbains’ son, aged two, was crawling about near the stove, and Madame Urbain, more out of sorts than ever, was embroidering a cushion for her sitting room, where no one ever set foot.
‘Thirty-six …’
‘Thirty-seven …’
‘Fifty-six …’
The setting sun slanted in, illuminating the ginger hairs on the face of the mayor-cum-vet, and Maigret mused that the little man could have made a very presentable faun.
‘If he were a doctor, I wouldn’t send my wife to him’ was one of the thoughts going through his mind.
Next to him was the butcher, taciturn and probably tired from his trip, because he’d had bad weather in the morning. Besides, he was worried, which he didn’t keep to himself for long.
‘I have to go and see the notary …’ he announced while playing.
‘Tonight?’ retorted the farrier, whose skin was speckled with black. ‘Do you think he’ll wait for you?’
‘I’ll go to his home … I have before … I don’t like keeping money in the house …’
‘That’s clever! If you’d played the seven of hearts instead of the ace of clubs, I’d have got rid of my ace of diamonds and he’d have been done for … Angèle …!’
She came over. No one paid any attention.
‘Bring me an ice cube, would you?’
Urbain was sitting just behind Maigret, as usual, and since he could see two players’ hands, he was constantly shaking his head in disapproval.
‘You, stop giving the game away …’
‘Never, mayor …’
Had they even heard the butcher’s words? Gradually, as the tokens (they’d had to ask for counters, as they did every night!) piled up in front of the players, the air turned blue, then the lamps were lit, and the street through the windows was nothing but a black hole, although one light bulb could be seen, that of the butcher’s shop.
‘What do you want the notary for? Are you after Jules’ house?’
‘Why? Are you?’
‘Not me … But I know someone …’
Maigret, who was privy to what they were talking about, was still taking no interest in the conversation. He hoped to achieve a grand spread, which he was a lot more excited about.
‘Do you know what the Belgian plans to do with it?’
‘I heard something about it … A cinema …!’
‘Gentlemen, back to the game,’ protested the farrier, who had called forty-six.
‘Grand spread!’ Maigret ventured at last.
He’d done it. This was the first time he’d managed it in months.
‘Five points each,’ he said to the others.
‘Is it true you’re keen to buy it?’ repeated the vet.
‘Not at all …’ sighed the butcher, slightly embarrassed.
‘You should tell me if you are … I promised the Belgian there’d be no bids … It’s in everyone’s interest to have a cinema …’
The game resumed. Maigret thought he saw the pharmacist and the doctor come in to play billiards in the other room, but they never stopped to mix with the manille players.
‘Twenty-six!’
‘If you’re passing, I’ll pass …’
They threw down their cards. Angèle served the second round, because it was a ritual to drink two rounds, since they played two games. Why, as she leaned over the table, did Maigret look at Urbain? And why did he have the impression that the latter was sad, as if after a lovers’ tiff?
‘Of course!’ he said to himself. Yesterday had been Angèle’s day off and she’d been to Orléans again. If he really was her lover, he must be jealous of her weekly outings …
Another game! There was no time to think. Just that aniseed taste in his mouth from the aperitif and one pipe after another.
Madame Maigret was admirable – she needed no one to be happy and was able to spend the entire day in her kitchen or doing her laundry, alone with her thoughts! But did she actually think?
Now, now! He didn’t want to be unkind. But there were days, like this one, when the atmosphere of the Grand Café was particularly gloomy and when he felt like a dog on a chain. Had he left Quai des Orfèvres to come and play cards with these good fools? They didn’t even give him five minutes’ respite and, if he was late, that horrid kid with a shrill voice – the son of the vet, a redhead like his father – came and yelled at the garden gate:
‘The men at the Grand Café are waiting for you …!’
Here we go! Already he had no more good cards! He never did have a decent hand! Apart from his grand spread …
‘What is it?’ Urbain asked his wife, who was calling him.
And he went over to her. They spoke in hushed voices. Maigret thought that poor Urbain had married a very unpleasant woman, although his affair with Angèle, if he was having one, couldn’t always be much fun.
But that’s life in the provinces, when you take the narrow view, be it in the Loire, the Cher or the Rhône. Only tiny details change.
In the South, Maigret would have been playing boules and in Lille, skittles …
‘You’ve lost, my friend!’ said the mayor, rising and wiping his moustache, which was always damp, like that of a Barbet dog.
As for saying exactly in what order they left … The butcher and Maigret were the two losers. Maigret had gone over to the bar, where he’d counted his change and given Angèle a one-franc tip … The others only gave ten centimes, but, since he had got into the habit, too bad …
One detail, however … When he came to pay, the butcher had first of all taken out his wallet, showing how fat it was, so fat that one-thousand-franc notes were sticking out, and had complained:
‘You see, I must go to the notary’s …’
The doctor and the pharmacist, both of them young, one fair-haired and the other dark, were still playing billiards and, in the evenings, they would meet up with their wives to play bridge.
‘Good night, inspector!’
‘Good night, everybody …!’
What else …?
Maigret walked along the dark street, his hands in his pockets. There was still a light on inside the grocer’s, but the lamps in the window displays were switched off. He had to follow the street until the third gas lamp, then turn right. He was almost there when the butcher drove past him, stopped and waited.
It was utterly out of the ordinary. Maigret thought the butcher must have something he wanted to tell him.
‘Do you think I can call on the notary when his office is closed?’
‘Well … Given that he knows you …’
‘Very well …! Good night …’
Maigret remembered it well. The van was painted a mottled green. He saw the rear light fade into the night. Meanwhile, he turned right, as usual, and was soon pushing open his front door with a familiar gesture and sniffing, as he did every evening, the aromas of food cooking.
There was wild rabbit, which was rare at that time: a landowner in Cléry had organized a beat the previous day to exterminate the hundreds of rabbits that were causing serious damage.
‘Did you win?’
‘I lost.’
‘Don’t you think you lose more often than is fair? Might the others be cheating?’
Dear Madame Maigret, who was suspicious even of the men at the Grand Café!
‘Of course not … Not to mention that it costs me exactly four francs fifty every evening …’
‘So long as you’re having fun for your money …’
That was the point. He wasn’t having fun, but he couldn’t have explained it to her. It had become a compulsion, a necessity, in other words a need that came over him at a set time and of which he was close to feeling ashamed, like a cocaine addict or an inveterate drinker.
‘Any news?’
‘None … When we play, we barely speak …’
‘Do you know what I’ve heard?’
‘How would I know?’
‘That Angèle, the little waitress at the café, was pregnant and that she got rid of it …’
‘I didn’t notice anything …’
‘Of course not! It’s not even three months … She told the pharmacist’s maid who …’
After the wild rabbit and the frangipane tart (one of Madame Maigret’s specialities), he read the local newspaper and the Paris newspaper, sitting in the same armchair as he had for three years now, beside the stove, even in summer when it was not alight.
All of a sudden, like a thunderclap, the narrow street was full of people, voices, there was someone thumping on the door, banging the knocker.
‘Inspector … Quick …! Inspector …!’
It was the farrier, the man who only drank strawberry-flavoured Vittel and who, that evening, seemed drunk. He was with people Maigret knew by sight, and children were weaving in and out of the adults’ legs.
‘The butcher’s been killed!’
‘What?’
‘You must come … The mayor’s phoning the gendarmerie …
‘His van was found by the side of the road, with a burst tyre … And he’d been shot in the chest …’
‘But where …? Where did it happen?’
‘Just outside Meung … A few minutes, for certain, after he left us … The coal merchant noticed the van when he was driving past in his truck. The headlights were still on … He took the butcher home …’
‘Of course!’
In other words, everything had already been touched. But, as Maigret was about to get angry, he felt a jolt of rebellion.
‘This is none of my business … You say you’ve informed the gendarmerie …?’
‘Don’t you understand?’
‘What don’t I understand?’
‘Don’t you remember what he told us this evening, about what he had in his pocket … People will say … They’ll claim …’
Naturally! They would investigate the regulars at the Grand Café, it was inevitable! And there weren’t many of them!
‘What about you, when did you see him for the last time?’ asked the farrier.
‘Just before the crossroads … He stopped for a second …’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘He spoke to me …’
‘Oh …!’
No! Not that! It was already enough that a murder had been committed in Maigret’s immediate circle, but they’d better not start suspecting him!
‘Please come … Everyone’s at sixes and sevens … His wife claims it was a trap …’
‘What trap?’
‘She won’t say …’
Maigret fetched his hat and, since he couldn’t find the old fedora he wore in the country, he put on his bowler hat, which was sort of symbolic.
‘I’ll be back in a minute!’ he promised his wife as he used to do in the old days, when he left for an investigation that sometimes kept him away for a week.
She understood so well that she advised:
‘Don’t forget your key …’
‘No need … I’ll be back …’
He felt silly, walking in the street with the farrier on his left, surrounded by ten, fifteen onlookers, not to mention the horde of brats. The better informed kids explained:
‘He’s an ex-policeman … He’ll be doing the investigation … Just wait …!’
In the main street, there were shadows on the pavements, on the doorsteps, a gathering outside the butcher’s shop, opposite the Grand Café.
‘Look! Here come the gendarmes …’
And indeed, three of them had arrived, on a motorbike and sidecar, and, emboldened by their uniforms, they dismounted purposefully in the midst of the bystanders.