Read Maigret's Holiday for Free Online Page B

…’
    He seemed impervious to irony. He was
probably aware of his reputation as a besotted husband and felt no shame. He made his
way calmly over to the telephone booth. Maigret could see his sharp profile through the
glass sides and felt a growing urge to talk to him.
    How? It was almost as delicate as with the
nuns. Wait until the doctor left, follow him to the door and say:
    â€˜May I walk a little way with
you?’
    Childish. Childish too,
with a man like that, to request a medical consultation.
    Maigret was part of the little group while
remaining an outsider. People were used to seeing him sitting at his usual table.
Occasionally, one of the bridge players would show him his hand. Or someone would ask
him:
    â€˜You’re not too bored here in
Les Sables d’Olonne?’
    But he still remained an onlooker. A bit
like a day boy among the boarders at a school.
    â€˜Is your wife feeling
better?’
    As a matter of fact, had Doctor Bellamy ever
spoken to him directly? He tried in vain to remember.
    He was tired of this holiday which was
throwing him off-balance, making him ridiculously shy. Even Mansuy, because this was his
fiefdom, because later on he would be going back to his police station, had more
composure than him.
    Because a girl was dead, because a nun who
was the picture of piety had slipped a note into his pocket, he was hanging around
Doctor Bellamy the way a schoolboy hangs around the rich kid in the class.
    â€˜Waiter, another white
wine.’
    He didn’t want to look at the doctor
any more. His staring was becoming too obvious. The doctor must be able to tell what was
going on in his mind, understand his reticence, and he was perhaps even laughing at
it.
    The doctor had finished his game. He rose
and went to fetch his hat from the coat stand.
    â€˜Goodbye, gentlemen …’
    He didn’t say ‘See you
tomorrow’, since the next day was the day of the funeral.
    He was about to leave. He
was walking past Maigret. No, he had paused for a moment.
    â€˜Were you about to leave,
monsieur?’
    He hadn’t said
‘inspector’, but ‘monsieur’, perhaps with a hint of
affectation.
    â€˜I was planning to, yes
…’
    â€˜If you’re going in the same
direction as I am …’
    It was strange. He was cordial, but his
cordiality was cold, aloof.
    For the first time in a long while, for the
first time in his life perhaps, Maigret had the feeling that he wasn’t the one
calling the tune, but that he was being manipulated by the other person at will.
    All the same, he followed. Chief Inspector
Mansuy had witnessed the scene with a certain surprise.
    Still calm, controlled, without irony,
Bellamy held the door open for him. The beach spread out in front of them, with its
thousands of children and mothers, and the pastel swimming hats of the bathers against
the blue of the sea.
    â€˜You probably know where I
live?’
    â€˜Your house was pointed out to me and
I admired it.’
    â€˜Perhaps you’d like to see the
interior?’
    It was so direct, so unexpected, that
Maigret was temporarily at a loss for words. Lighting a cigarette with a gold lighter
– a gesture that showed off his beautiful, carefully manicured hands – the
doctor said in a detached tone:
    â€˜I believe you are keen to get to know
me?’
    â€˜I have heard a lot about
you.’
    â€˜People have been talking about me a
great deal in the last two days.’
    Silence did not make him
uncomfortable. He felt no need to talk for the sake of keeping the conversation going.
His gait was sprightly. A few people greeted him, and he returned their greeting,
doffing his hat in the same way to a market woman in a traditional lace headdress as for
a dowager in an open-topped car driven by a liveried chauffeur.
    â€˜You would have come sooner or later,
wouldn’t you?’
    That could mean a lot of things. Perhaps
simply that eventually Maigret