Read Lock No. 1 for Free Online Page B

really sure why. There were no customers. The landlord and his wife,
     a small, prettyish brunette who had not got round to making herself presentable,
     were standing at the bar, eating stew. Light was reflected in the tumblers of red
     wine.
    â€˜Back already?’ exclaimed
     Fernand, wiping his mouth.
    Maigret had been adopted. He
     hadn’t even needed to say who he was.
    â€˜I hope at least you haven’t
     been tormenting that little girl. Beer again? Irma go and fetch up a cold
     beer.’
    He looked out of
     the window, not on the canal side, but in the direction of the bar across the
     road.
    â€˜Poor old Gassin’s going to
     make himself ill over this business. Mind you, it’s no joke falling in the
     water in the dark and suddenly feeling somebody dragging you down to the bottom
     …’
    â€˜Has he gone back on
     board?’
    â€˜No, he’s over
     there.’
    And the landlord nodded to the other
     bar, where, in the midst of four men who were still drinking, Gassin was clearly
     visible, waving his arms about, completely drunk.
    â€˜That’s what he does, goes
     from one bar to the other.’
    â€˜It looks like he’s
     crying.’
    â€˜Yes, he is. He must be on at
     least his fifteenth aperitif this morning, not counting the tots of rum.’
    The landlord’s wife brought the
     ice-cold beer. Maigret sipped it slowly.
    â€˜Does his daughter have
     boyfriends?’
    â€˜Aline? No, not her!’
    Fernand spoke as if the very idea that
     Aline could wander off the straight and narrow was the most absurd thing in the
     whole world. All the same, the fact was that Maigret had seen her feeding a baby,
     her own or another, but either way she was no less a young mother who had been
     frightened by his fatherly gesture and had locked herself in the small cabin.
    He felt uneasy at the thought of the old
     man, dead drunk, crying into his glass, and of the baby lying in its cradle.
    â€˜Do they travel around
     much?’
    â€˜Twelve
     months of the year.’
    â€˜Don’t they have any paid
     hands?’
    â€˜It’s just them. Aline
     handles the helm as well as any man.’
    Maigret had seen those northern canals:
     straight, verdant banks, poplars lining long lanes of flat water, locks in the
     middle of nowhere, their crank handles rusting, the poky lock buildings bright with
     hollyhocks and ducks splashing in the eddies created by the sluices.
    He imagined the
Golden Fleece
slowly champing at the ribbon of water hour after hour until it reached some distant
     unloading quay, with Aline steering, the baby in its cradle, more likely than not
     out on the deck, near the helm, and the old man on the towpath driving his
     horses.
    An old drunk, a crazy girl and a babe in
     arms.

4.
    When, at six the next morning, Maigret
     got off the number 13 tram and headed for the lock, Émile Ducrau was already on the
     unloading wharf, a sailor’s cap on his head and a heavy cane in his hand.
    As on previous days, thanks to the joys
     of spring, there was in the air, in the early-morning life of Paris, a child-like
     playfulness. Certain objects, certain people, the milk bottles on doorsteps, the
     woman in her white apron setting out her dairy stall, the lorry returning from Les
     Halles, scattering its last remaining cabbage leaves in its wake, were so many
     emblems of peace and exuberance.
    Could not the same have been said of the
     Ducraus’ maid, framed in a window of the tall house, its façade now gilded by
     the sun, as she shook out dusters into empty space? Behind her, in the semi-darkness
     of the living room, the barely perceptible figure of Madame Ducrau came and went, a
     cotton scarf tied round her head.
    On the second floor, the blinds remained
     closed, and the mind’s eye could imagine, striped with bands of sunlight, the
     bed occupied by Rose, the languid mistress, asleep with arms folded and armpits