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holding him back, though he’d been hard put to say
what exactly.
    And a very strange case it’s turning out to
be! Fortunately, the papers aren’t interested in the death of Pegleg. He has murmured to
himself at least twenty times so far:
    â€˜But the old man was murdered!’
    As if the crime has taken a back seat, as if he
couldn’t help being sidetracked by something else – and that something is
Félicie!
    The landlord of the Anneau d’Or has loaned
him a bike. On it, Maigret looks like a performing bear. It allows him to come and go as he
pleases, from Orgeval to the village and from the village to Orgeval.
    The weather continues fair and bright. It seems
impossible to imagine the landscape here other than lit by spring sunshine, with flowers
blooming all along low walls and round the edges of vegetable patches, and pensioners gardening
and looking up idly as the inspector or Sergeant Lucas, whom Maigret has kept with him, pass
by.
    Though he doesn’t say so, Lucas also thinks
that this is a strange kind of investigation. He finds walking up and down outside Cape Horn
extremely tedious. What is he actually supposed to be doing? Watching Félicie? All the
windows in the house are open. All her movements are visible. She’s done her shopping as
usual. She knows the sergeant is following her. Is the chief afraid she will disappear
again?
    Lucas wonders if this is the case but
doesn’t dare say so to Maigret. Instead, he keeps it to himself and smokes one pipe after
another. Every now and then, for want ofsomething better to do, he kicks a
stone with the toe of his shoe.
    Since that morning, however, the focus of their
inquiries seems to have shifted. The first phone call came from Rue Lepic. Maigret, who was
sitting outside on the terrace of the inn next to a laurel bush in a green-painted planter, was
expecting it.
    Maigret has already settled into a routine. He
settles into a routine wherever he goes. He has arranged with the woman in the post office that
she should call him through the window the minute there is a phone call for him from Paris.
    â€˜That you, sir? … It’s Janvier
… I’m phoning from a bar on the corner of Rue Lepic …’
    Maigret pictures the sloping street, women with
handcarts selling fruit and vegetables, housewives in slippers, the colourful bustle of Place
Blanche and, between two shop fronts, the entrance to the Hôtel Beauséjour, where he
had once made inquiries about another case.
    â€˜Jacques Pétillon got back home at six
this morning, completely done in. He collapsed on to his bed fully dressed. I went to the
Pelican, the club where he works. He hadn’t shown up there all night. What do I do
now?’
    â€˜Hang on there … Follow him if he
goes out.’
    Is the nephew really as innocent as he looks?
Would it be better if Maigret, instead of hanging around Félicie, concentrated his efforts
on him? He can guess that this is what Janvier thinks. And it is this view that Janvier slips
into his second phone call:
    â€˜Hello … It’s Janvier …
Our man has just gone into thetobacconist’s in Rue Fontaine …
He looks washed out … He seems nervy, anxious … He kept looking over his shoulder as
if he was afraid of being followed, but I don’t think he spotted me …’
    So, Pétillon has had only a few hours’
sleep and here he is, on the move again. The tobacconist’s in Rue Fontaine is used mainly
by shady characters.
    â€˜What’s he doing now?’
    â€˜He’s not speaking to anyone …
He’s keeping an eye on the door. … Looks like he’s waiting for someone
…’
    â€˜Carry on.’
    Meanwhile, Maigret has received a little more
information about old Lapie’s nephew. Why did he never manage to work up any interest in
the boy who wanted to become a serious performer and has ended up earning just enough to live