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  There wasn’t a hint of any of that here. Maigret might as well just have been invited over for a good dinner followed by a hand of bridge. As a helping of roast lark was put on his plate, he was treated to a detailed explanation of how the locals literally fished those birds out of the meadows at night using nets.

  Incidentally, why wasn’t their daughter there?

  ‘My niece Geneviève,’ the examining magistrate had said, ‘is a well-brought-up young lady, the sort you don’t find any more these days except in novels.’

  That wasn’t the opinion of the author or authors of the anonymous letters, nor of most of the locals, who essentially accused her.

  The story was still confused in Maigret’s mind but it jarred so intensely with what he saw before him. According to the rumours going round, the man found dead on the railway track, Albert Retailleau, had been Geneviève Naud’s lover. It was even claimed he came to see her two or three times a week, at night, in her bedroom.

  He was a lad without means, barely twenty. His father, a worker at the Saint-Aubin dairy, had died as the result of a boiler accident. His mother lived on a pension the dairy had been ordered to pay her.

  ‘Albert Retailleau did not commit suicide,’ his friends insisted. ‘He enjoyed life too much. And, even if he had been drunk, as they’re claiming, he wasn’t stupid enough to cross the tracks when a train was coming.’

  The body had been found more than five hundred metres from the Nauds’, roughly halfway between their house and the train station.

  Yes, but now people were alleging that the boy’s cap had been found in the reeds along the canal, much closer to the Nauds’ house.

  And there was another, even more suspect story going round. Someone who had visited the young man’s mother, Madame Retailleau, a week after the death of her son, claimed to have seen her hurriedly hiding a bundle of thousand-franc notes. As far as anyone knew, she had never had such a fortune in her life.

  ‘It’s a pity you’re visiting our part of the world in the depths of winter, inspector … It is so beautiful round here in summer people call it the Green Venice … You’ll have a little more pullet, won’t you? ’

  And what about Cavre? Why had Inspector Cadaver come to Saint-Aubin?

  They ate too much; they drank too much; it was too hot. In a torpor, they went back into the drawing room and sat down with their legs stretched out in front of the crackling fire.

  ‘You must … I know you’re particularly partial to your pipe but surely you’ll have a cigar …’

  Were they trying to pull the wool over his eyes? The idea was laughable. They were good people, nothing more and nothing less. The examining magistrate in Paris must have blown the whole affair out of proportion. And Alban Groult-Cotelle was just a po-faced idiot, one of those vaguely wealthy idlers you find everywhere in the country.

  ‘You must be tired from your journey. When you want to go to bed …’

  Meaning they wouldn’t talk tonight. Because Groult-Cotelle was there? Or because Naud preferred not to say anything in front of his wife?

  ‘Do you take coffee in the evening? No? No herbal tea? Will you excuse me if I go up? Our daughter hasn’t been very well for two or three days and I have to go and see if she needs anything … Young girls are always a little fragile, you know, especially in our climate.’

  The three men smoke. They talk about this and that, even local politics, because there is some story of a new mayor who is at loggerheads with all the right-thinking folk in the area and …

  ‘Well, gentlemen!’ Maigret finally growls with a mixture of amusement and impatience. ‘If I may, I’ll go to bed.’

  ‘You’ll sleep here too, Alban … You’re not going home tonight in this weather …’

  They go upstairs. Maigret’s room is hung with yellow wallpaper, at the far end of the passage. A real trove of childhood memories.

  ‘You don’t need anything? I was forgetting … Let me show you the w.c. …’

  The men shake hands, and then Maigret undresses and gets into bed. He hears noises in the house. From very far off in his half-sleep his ears catch what sounds like the murmuring of voices, but it soon fades away, and the house becomes as quiet as it is dark.

  He falls asleep, or thinks he does. He keeps seeing the dismal face of Cavre, who had to be the most miserable man on this earth, and then he dreams that the apple-cheeked maid who waited on them at dinner is bringing him his breakfast.

  The door has half-opened. He is sure he has heard the door half-open. He sits up, gropes around and finally finds the pear-switch, which is hanging at the head of his bed. The bulb lights up in its frosted-glass tulip-shaped shade and he sees in front of him a girl who has put on a brown woollen coat over her night clothes

  ‘Sshh …’ she whispers. ‘I need to talk to you. Don’t make any noise.’

  And then she sits down on a chair, staring straight ahead like a sleepwalker.

  THE BEGINNING

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  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  First published in French as Signé Picpus by Éditions Gallimard 1944

  This translation first published 2015

  Copyright 1944 by Georges Simenon Limited

  Translation copyright © David Coward, 2015

  GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm

  MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited

  All rights reserved

  The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted

  Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert / Magnum Photos

  Front cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes

  ISBN: 978-0-141-98069-0