Félicie by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online

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playing the saxophone in a Montmartre nightclub?
    Pétillon has seen hard times. He has been
reduced to working nights loading vegetables in Les Halles. He has not always had enough to eat.
Several times he was forced to leave his violin at the pawnshop.
    â€˜Don’t you think it’s odd,
chief, that he should have stayed out all night without setting foot in the Pelican and that now
… You should see him … I think it would be good if you saw him for yourself …
I get the feeling that he’s worried sick, that he’s scared … Maybe if you were
here …’
    But he always gets the same response:
    â€˜Carry on as you are!’
    In the meantime, Maigret, perched on his bike,
shuttles to and fro between the terrace of the Anneau d’Or, wherehe
waits for phone calls, and the pink house, where he calls on Félicie.
    He walks into the house, comes and goes and makes
himself at home. She pretends to pay no attention to him, gets on with the housework, makes her
meals. She has gone shopping every morning at Madame Chochoi’s and bought provisions.
Sometimes she looks straight at the inspector, but he finds it impossible to read any sort of
feeling whatsoever in those eyes.
    She’s the one Maigret wants to scare. From
the start, she has been too sure of herself. It’s impossible that this attitude is not
concealing something and he watches for the moment when she will eventually weaken.
    But the old man was murdered!
    It’s her, she is the one who occupies all
his thoughts, it’s her secret he wants to draw out. He has been prowling round the garden.
He has been in the wine store five or six times and each time has poured himself a glass of the
rosé which has become a habit with him too. He has made a discovery. Dragging a fork
through the layer of leaf-mould which has collected under the hedge, he trawled up a liqueur
glass, the twin of the one he found on that first day on the table in the arbour. He showed it
to Félicie.
    â€˜All you need do now is look for
fingerprints on it,’ she told him disdainfully without being the least disconcerted.
    When he went up to the rooms on the first floor,
she did not follow. He searched every nook and corner of Lapie’s room. He crossed the
landing, entered Félicie’s room and began opening all the drawers. She must have
heard his comings and goings over her head. Had she been afraid?
    And still the weather remains
ideal: the softness of the air, the scents wafting in on the breeze and the song of birds coming
through the open windows.
    And then he manages to find the diary at the back
of Félicie’s wardrobe, among the tangled knot of stockings and underwear. Pegleg had
been quite right to call his housekeeper a cockatoo. Even under her day clothes her taste is for
colours, aggressive pinks and acid-sharp greens, and for lace inserts as wide as a hand even
though they aren’t hand made.
    To get a reaction out of her, Maigret goes down
to the kitchen to run through the pages of her diary for the previous years. Félicie is
busy peelings potatoes, which she then drops into a blue enamel bucket:
    13 January – Why didn’t he come?
    15 January – Plead with him.
    19 January – Tormented by uncertainty. Is she his
wife?
    20 January – Feeling blue.
    23 January – At last!
    24 January. – The ecstasy returns.
    25 January. – Ecstasy.
    26 January. – Still him. His lips. Bliss.
    27 January. – The world is an unkind place.
    29 January. – Ah! Can’t stay here! …
Must get away! …
    From time to time Maigret glances up, while
Félicie pretends to ignore him.
    He tries to be jocular, but his laughter rings as
false as that of the traveller who attempts to take liberties with ahotel
chambermaid and keeps the tone light with suggestive banter.
    â€˜What’s his name?’
    â€˜None of your business.’
    â€˜Married, is he?’
    An