Read The Carter of ’La Providence’ for Free Online Page A

watery, but making the droplets of water on the reeds sparkle.
    From time to time, Maigret had to get off his bike to get past horses towing a barge. Harnessed side by side, they took up the full width of the towpath and plodded forward, one step at a time, with an effort which made their muscles swell
visibly.
    Two of these animals were being driven by a little girl of eight or ten. She wore a red dress and carried a doll which dangled at the end of one arm.
    The villages were, for the most part, some distance from the canal so that the long ribbon of flat water seemed to unfurl in an absolutely empty landscape.
    Here and there was an occasional field with men bent over the dark earth. But most of it was woods. Reeds a metre and a half or two metres high further added to the mood of calm.
    A barge taking on a cargo of chalk near a quarry sent up clouds of dust which whitened its hull and the toiling men.
    There was a boat in the Saint-Martin lock, but it wasn’t the
Providence
.
    â€˜They’ll have stopped for their dinners in the reach above Châlons!’ the lock-keeper’s wife said as she went, with two young children clinging to her skirts, from one dock-gate to
the other.
    Maigret was not a man who gave up easily. Around eleven o’clock he was surprised to find himself in springlike surroundings, where the air pulsed with sun and warmth.
    Ahead of him, the canal cut a straight line across a distance of six kilometres. It was bordered with woods of fir on both sides.
    At the far end the eye could just make out the light-coloured stonework of a lock. Through its gates spurted thin jets of water.
    Halfway along, a barge had halted, at a slight angle. Its two horses had been unharnessed and, their noses in a feedbag, were munching oats and snorting.
    The first impression was cheerful or at least restful. Not a house in sight. The reflections in the calm water were wide and slow.
    A few more turns of the pedals and the inspector saw a table set up under the awning over the tiller in the stern of the barge. On it was a blue and white checked waxed tablecloth. A woman with fair hair was setting a steaming dish in the middle
of it.
    He got off his bike after reading, on the rounded bows in gleaming polished letters:
Providence
.
    One of the horses, taking its time, stared at him, then twitched its ears and let out a peculiar growl before starting to eat again.
    Between the barge and the side of the canal was a thin, narrow plank, which sagged under Maigret’s weight. Two men were eating, following him with their eyes, while the woman advanced towards
him.
    â€˜Yes, what do you want?’ she asked as she buttoned her blouse, which was part open over her ample bosom.
    She spoke with a singsong intonation almost as strong as a southern accent. But she wasn’t at all bothered. She waited. She seemed to be protecting the two men with the fullness of her brazen flesh.
    â€˜Information,’ said the inspector. ‘I expect you know there was a murder at Dizy?’
    â€˜The crew of the
Castor et Pollux
told us about it. They overtook us this morning. Is it true? It doesn’t hardly seem possible, does it? How could anybody have done such a thing? And on the canal too, where it’s always
so peaceful.’
    Her cheeks were blotchy. The two men went on eating, never taking their eyes off Maigret, who glanced involuntarily down at the dish which contained dark meat and gave off an aroma which startled his nostrils.
    â€˜A kid goat. I bought it this morning at the lock at Aigny … You were looking for information? About us, I suppose? We’d gone long before any dead body was discovered. Speaking of which, anybody know who the poor woman
was?’
    One of the men was short, dark-haired, with a drooping moustache and a soft, submissive air about him.
    He was the husband. He’d merely nodded vaguely at the intruder, leaving his wife to do the talking.
    The other man was