The Two-Penny Bar by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online

the weather do much for Maigret’s mood. Like all large people he suffered from the heat, and Paris wilted under the hot sun every day until three in the afternoon.
    That’s when the sky clouded over, the air crackled with electricity and the wind began to gust, suddenly raising swirling plumes of dust from the streets.
    By late afternoon it broke: rumbles of thunder, then a deluge of rain pounding the asphalt, seeping through the awnings of the café terraces, forcing people to seek shelter in doorways.
    It was on Wednesday that Maigret, caught in a sudden shower, sought shelter in the Taverne Royale. A man stood up and offered him his hand. It was James, who had been sitting alone at a table, nursing a Pernod.
    The inspector hadn’t seen him before in his weekday clothes. He looked more like a bank clerk now than when he was all dressed up at Morsang, but he still somehow had the air of a circus performer.
    â€˜Care for a drink?’
    Maigret was exhausted. There would be a couple of hours of rain to sit out. Then he would have to go back to the Quai des Orfèvres to catch up with any news.
    â€˜A Pernod?’
    Normally he only drank beer. But he didn’t raise any protest. He drank mechanically. James wasn’t a bad companion, and he had one salient quality: he didn’t talk much!
    He sat there in his cane armchair with his legs crossed, smoking cigarettes and watching the people scuttling past in the rain.
    When a paper boy came by, he bought an evening paper, flicked through it vaguely, then handed it to Maigret, indicating a paragraph with his finger.
Marcel Basso, the murderer of the haberdasher from Boulevard des Capucines, is still at large, despite an extensive search by the police.
    â€˜What’s your opinion?’ Maigret asked.
    James shrugged his shoulders, made a gesture of indifference.
    â€˜Do you think he’s gone abroad?’
    â€˜I don’t think he’ll have gone far … He’s probably lying low in Paris.’
    â€˜Why do you say that?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I think … he must have had a reason for running away … Waiter, two more Pernods!’
    Maigret had three glasses and slipped gently into a state he wasn’t familiar with. He wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t totally clear in the head either.
    He felt agreeably mellow, sitting there on the terrace. He was able to think about the case in a more relaxed manner, almost with a degree of pleasure.
    James talked about this and that, without any hint of urgency. At eight o’clock on the dot he stood up and announced:
    â€˜Time to go! My wife will be expecting me …’
    Maigret was a little annoyed with himself for the time he’d wasted and for allowing himself to drink too much. He had dinner, then went back to his office. Neither the local police nor the Paris force had anything to report.
    The next day – Thursday – he plodded on with the inquiry with the same lack of enthusiasm.
    He waded through files dating back ten years but found nothing relating to the information Jean Lenoir had given.
    He looked through the legal registers. He rang around the hospitals and sanatoriums in the vague hope of finding Victor, Lenoir’s friend with tuberculosis.
    There were lots of Victors, but not the right one!
    By midday, Maigret had a splitting head but no appetite. He had lunch in Place Dauphin, in a little restaurant popular with police officers. Then he phoned Morsang, where policemen had been posted outside the Bassos’ villa.
    No sign. Madame Basso was carrying on with life asnormal with her son. She read all the papers. The villa didn’t have a telephone.
    At five o’clock, Maigret came out of the apartment block on the Avenue Niel. He had come on the off chance of digging something up, but hadn’t found anything.
    Then mechanically, as if he’d already been doing it for years, he headed off to the Taverne Royale, where he was