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really looked like a big man who was honestly trying to understand.
    â€œObviously you’re not going to say anything that may be used against him.”
    â€œOf course not. Anyhow, I have nothing of the sort to say.”
    â€œAnd yet it’s equally obvious that a man was killed in this basement.”
    â€œThe experts say so, and I’m not clever enough to contradict them. In any case it wasn’t Frans.”
    â€œIt seems impossible that it could have happened without his knowledge.”
    â€œI know what you’re going to say, but I tell you again that he’s innocent.”
    Maigret stood up, sighing. He was glad she hadn’t offered him a drink, as so many people feel obliged to do in such circumstances.
    â€œI’m trying to start afresh at the beginning,” he admitted. “My intention in coming here was to go over the scene again inch by inch.”
    â€œAren’t you going to do so? They’ve turned everything upside down so many times!”
    â€œI don’t feel in the mood for it. I may come back. I expect I’ll have some more questions to ask you.”
    â€œYou know that I tell Frans everything on visiting day?”
    â€œYes, I understand you.”
    He started up the narrow stairs, and she followed him into the workshop, now almost dark, and opened the door for him. Both of them simultaneously noticed Alfonsi waiting at the corner of the street.
    â€œAre you going to let him in?”
    â€œI’m wondering. I’m tired.”
    â€œWould you like me to tell him to leave you in peace?”
    â€œFor tonight in any case.”
    â€œGood night.”
    She said good night too, and he walked heavily toward the former Vice Squad detective. When he came up to him, on the corner, two young reporters were watching them from the window of the Tabac des Vosges.
    â€œBuzz off!”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œNever mind. Because she doesn’t want you bothering her again tonight. See?”
    â€œWhy are you so nasty to me?”
    â€œSimply because I don’t like your face.”
    And turning his back on him, he conformed to tradition by going into the Grand Turenne for a glass of beer.

3
    The sun was still shining brightly, and there was a nip in the air that caused a cloud of vapor at your lips and froze your fingertips. All the same, Maigret had decided to stand outside on the platform of the bus and he was alternately grunting and smiling in spite of himself as he read the morning paper.
    He was early. It was barely half past eight by his watch when he entered the inspectors’ office at the very moment when Janvier, perched on a table, was trying to get down, hiding the newspaper from which he had been reading aloud.
    There were five or six of them in there, mostly the young ones; they were waiting for Lucas to give them their day’s orders. They avoided looking at the chief inspector, and some of them, casting a furtive glance at him, could hardly keep a straight face.
    They had no way of knowing that the story had amused him just as much as it had them, and that it was simply to please them, because they expected it, that he was wearing his grumpy expression.
    A headline was spread across three columns on the front page:

MME MAIGRET’S MISADVENTURE
    The adventure experienced the previous day in the place d’Anvers by the chief inspector’s wife was recounted down to the last detail, and the only thing lacking was a photograph of Madame Maigret herself with the little boy left on her hands in such a cavalier fashion.
    He pushed open the door to call on Lucas, who had read the story too and had good reason to take the matter more seriously.
    â€œI hope you didn’t think I was responsible for it? I was thunderstruck this morning when I opened the paper. Honestly, I didn’t talk to a single reporter. Just after our conversation yesterday I rang Lamballe, of the Ninth Arrondissement, and I had to tell him