My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online

presume you won’t be needing me, gentlemen?”
    Standing in the doorway of the dusty room, Maigret and Mr. Pyke looked at one another in some surprise, then looked at Lechat, and finally at Félicien. For on the table, the one used for council meetings and elections, was laid a pine coffin which seemed to have lost something of its brand-newness.
    In the most natural way in the world, Monsieur Jamet said to them:
    â€œIf you’d like to give me a hand, we can shove it into its corner.”
    â€œWhat is this coffin?” Maigret asked, in surprise.
    â€œIt’s the municipal coffin. We are obliged by law to provide burial for destitutes and we’ve only got one carpenter on the island; he’s very old and works slowly. In summer, with the heat, the bodies can’t be kept waiting.”
    He spoke of it as of the most banal thing in the world, and Maigret studied the Scotland Yard man out of the corner of his eye.
    â€œHave you many destitute people?”
    â€œWe’ve got one, old Benoît.”
    â€œSo that the coffin is destined for Benoît?”
    â€œTheoretically. However, last Wednesday it was used to take Marcellin’s body to Hyères. Don’t worry. It’s been disinfected.”
    There were only some very comfortable folding chairs in the room.
    â€œMay I leave you now, gentlemen?”
    â€œJust a moment. Who is Benoît?”
    â€œYou must have seen him, or you soon will: he wears his hair down to his shoulders, with a shaggy beard. Look: through that window, you can see him having his siesta on a bench, near the boules players.”
    â€œIs he terribly old?”
    â€œNobody knows. Nor does he. According to him he’s getting on for a hundred, but he must be boasting. He hasn’t any papers. His real name isn’t known. He landed on the island a very long time ago, when Morin-Barbu, who keeps the café on the corner, was still a young man.”
    â€œWhere did he come from?”
    â€œThat’s not known either. From Italy, for certain. Most of them came from Italy. You can usually tell from their way of speaking whether they come from Genoa or the Naples area, but Benoît has a language of his own; he’s not easy to understand.”
    â€œIs he simple?”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œIs he a bit mad?”
    â€œHe’s as sly as a monkey. Today he looks like a patriarch. In a few days when the summer trippers begin to arrive, he’ll shave his beard and head. He does it every year at the same time. And he starts fishing mordu .”
    Everything had to be learnt.
    â€œ Mordu? ”
    â€œ Mordus are worms with very hard heads which you find in the sand, on the seashore. Fishermen use them in preference to other bait because they stay on the hook. They fetch a high price. All summer Benoît fishes mordu up to his thighs in the water. He used to be a builder, in his young days. It was he that built a good number of the houses on the island. There’s nothing else you want, is there, gentlemen?”
    Maigret hurriedly opened the window to let the close, musty smell out of the room: it could not have been aired except for July 14, at the same time as they brought out the flags and the chairs.
    The chief inspector didn’t know exactly what he was doing there. He had no desire to proceed with the interrogations. Why had he said yes when Inspector Lechat had suggested it to him? Through cowardice, on account of Mr. Pyke? Isn’t it usual, when one starts a case, to question people? Isn’t that the way they do it in England? Would he be taken seriously if he wandered about the island like a man who has nothing else to do?
    However, it was the island which interested him at the moment, and not such and such a person in particular. What the mayor had just been saying, for example, set in motion a whole train of thought, so far still nebulous. These men in their little boats who came and went