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now walking
     along the winding edge of the sea.
    â€˜Another pair that aren’t
     married, for sure!’ said a voice at a table where three women were busy doing
     crochet work.
    â€˜Why couldn’t they wash
     their dirty linen somewhere else? It’s not setting the children a very good
     example.’
    The two silhouettes joined at the
     water’s edge. Their words were no longer audible. But the way they stood and
     moved made it easy to guess what was going on.
    The man pleaded and threatened. The
     woman refused to give an inch. At one point he grabbed her by the wrist, and it
     seemed as if they would come to blows.
    Instead, he turned his back on her and
     walked away quickly towards a street nearby, where he started the engine of a small
     grey car.
    â€˜Waiter! Another beer!’
    Then Maigret noticed that the young
     woman had left her handbag on the table. Imitation crocodile-skin, full to bursting,
     brand new.
    Then a shadow coming towards him on the
     ground. He looked up and got a front view of the owner of the handbag, who was
     coming back to the terrace.
    The inspector gave a start. His nostrils flared
     slightly.
    He could be wrong, of course. It was
     more an impression than a certainty. But he could have sworn he was looking at the
     person in the headless photo.
    Cautiously, he took the photo out of his
     pocket. The woman had sat down again.
    â€˜Well, waiter? Where’s my
     lemonade?’
    â€˜I thought … The gentleman said
     …’
    â€˜I ordered lemonade!’
    It was the same slightly fleshy line of
     the neck, the same full but firm breasts, the same voluptuous buoyancy …
    And the same style of dressing, the same
     taste for very glossy silk in loud colours.
    Maigret dropped the photo in such a way
     that the woman at the next table could not fail to see it.
    And see it she did. She stared at the
     inspector as though she were trawling through her memories. But if she was
     disconcerted, her feelings did not show in her face.
    Five minutes, ten minutes went by. Then
     there was the distant thrum of an engine. It grew louder. It was the grey car
     heading back to the terrace. It stopped, then set off again, as though the driver
     could not make up his mind to drive away and not come back.
    â€˜Gaston!’
    She was on her feet. She waved to the
     man. This time she grasped her bag firmly and the next moment she was getting into
     the car.
    The three women at the next table
     followed her with their eyes and a disapproving air. The young man with the Kodak
     turned round.
    The grey car was already vanishing in a roar of
     acceleration.
    â€˜Waiter! Where can I get hold of a
     car?’
    â€˜I don’t think you’ll
     find one in Yport … There is one which sometimes takes people to Fécamp or Étretat,
     but now that I think I saw it drive off this morning with some English people in
     it.’
    The inspector’s thick fingers
     drummed rapidly on the tabletop.
    â€˜Bring me a road map. And get me
     the chief inspector of Fécamp police on the phone … Have you ever seen those two
     before?’
    â€˜The couple who were arguing?
     Almost every day this week. Yesterday they had lunch here. I think they’re
     from Le Havre.’
    There were now only families left on the
     beach, which exuded all the warmth of a summer evening. A black ship moved
     imperceptibly across the line of the horizon, entered the sun and emerged on the
     other side, as if it had jumped through a paper hoop.

4.
     The Mark of Rage
    â€˜Speaking for myself,’ said
     the chief inspector of Fécamp’s police department as he sharpened a blue
     pencil, ‘I’ll admit I have few illusions left. It’s so rarely that
     we manage to clear up any of these cases involving sailors. And that’s being
     optimistic! Just you try getting to the bottom of one of those mindless brawls that
     happen every day of the week down by