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thin and shy
and hasn’t amounted to much good but he doesn’t seem cut out to be a murderer.
    According to the reports Maigret has received,
his mother, Lapie’s sister, married a violinist who played in the brasseries in their part
of town. He died young. To raise her son, she found a job as cashier in a shop selling fabrics
in Rue du Sentier. She also died, two years ago.
    A few months after her death, Lapie took the
young man in. They did not get on. It was only to be expected. Jacques Pétillon was a
musician like his father, and Pegleg was not the sort who could put up with hearing a violin
being scraped or a saxophone being blown under his roof.
    So now, to earn a crust, Jacques Pétillon
works as a saxophonist in a club in Rue Pigalle. He lives in a sixth-floor furnished room in Rue
Lepic.
    Maigret falls asleep in a
feather bed, into which he sinks, and mice dance all night above his head. The place smells
pleasantly of the country, of straw, of mildew too, and cows wake him by lowing, the morning bus
stops outside the Anneau d’Or, and Maigret breathes in the aroma of coffee with a little
drop of something in it.
    Now this business of the bedrooms … But
first phone Janvier …
    â€˜Hello … Rue Lepic … Hôtel
Beauséjour … bye for now …’
    He trudges up the hill towards Jeanneville, whose
roofs seem to grow directly out of vast fields of waving oats. As he plods on in this fashion, a
curious change comes over him. He quickens his step, he keeps watching out for the windows of
Cape Horn to appear, he … Yes, he is eager to catch up with Félicie, already he is
picturing her in her kitchen with those sharp features, turning that nanny-goat forehead in his
direction, giving him as frosty a reception as possible with an indefinable look from those
transparent pupils.
    Was he missing her already?
    He understands, he senses, he is certain that
Pegleg needed his closest enemy as much as the glass of wine he would go into the store room and
pour himself, as much as the air he breathed, as the games of cards every evening and his
arguments with his partners over a three-card trick or a trump.
    From a distance he spots Lucas, who is kicking
his heels at the end of the alley. He couldn’t have been very warm during the night. Then,
through the open window of herroom, he makes out dark hair, now held in
place by a kind of turban, and a bustling figure giving the bedclothes a good shake.
Someone
has seen him,
someone
has recognized him,
someone
must
already be thinking the kind of welcome which that
someone
intends to give him.
    He smiles. He can’t help it. That’s
Félicie for you!

3. Secrets in a Diary
    â€˜Hello? Is that you, sir? …
It’s Janvier …’
    A sweaty sort of day. It’s not just because
the weather is stormy that at times Maigret’s face breaks out in a faint rash of
perspiration and his fingers tremble with impatience. It reminds him of when he was a boy and
feeling scared when he found himself in a place where he shouldn’t have been, knowing full
well that he didn’t belong there.
    â€˜Where are you?’
    â€˜I’m in Rue des Blancs-Manteaux
… In a watch-maker’s shop … I’m phoning from there … Our guy is in
a nasty-looking bistro across the road … He looks as if he’s waiting for somebody or
something … He’s just finished another glass of spirits …’
    Then a silence. Maigret knows exactly what the
young inspector will say next.
    â€˜I’m wondering, chief, if it
wouldn’t be better if you came back …’
    It’s been going on all morning, and all
morning Maigret has been saying no.
    â€˜Just carry on as you are. Phone the minute
there’s anything new.’
    He wonders if he might be wrong, if this is
really the way he should be conducting the investigation, but hecan’t
bring himself to leave, something is