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…’
    â€˜Did Feinstein kill himself?’
    â€˜He …’
    He sat down on a bench and put his head in his hands once more. He grabbed an unfinished drink from the table and swallowed it in one go, with a grimace.
    â€˜What happens next? Are you going to arrest me?’
    He stared at Maigret, his brow furrowed:
    â€˜But how did you happen to be there? You couldn’t have known …’
    He was struggling to make sense of everything, to tie together his tattered thoughts. He grimaced.
    â€˜It’s like some sort of trap …’
    The white canoe was on its way back from the far bank.
    â€˜Papa! … The key isn’t in the garage! … Mummy wants to know …’
    Mechanically, Basso felt his pockets. There was a tinkle of metal. He took out his keys and placed them on the table. Maigret took them across to the towpath and called out to the boy:
    â€˜Here! … Catch!’
    â€˜Thank you, monsieur.’
    The canoe moved off again. Madame Basso was laying the table for dinner with the help of the maid. Some of the canoes were heading back towards the Vieux-Garçon. The landlord was cycling back from the lock, where he had made the phone call.
    â€˜Are you sure it wasn’t you that pulled the trigger?’
    Basso shrugged, gave a sigh and didn’t reply.
    The canoe reached the far bank. They could just make out the child and his mother talking. The maid was sent to fetch something inside the house, and returned almost immediately. Madame Basso took the binoculars from her and trained them on the
Two-Penny Bar.
    James was sitting in a corner with the landlord and his family, pouring out large glasses of brandy and stroking the cat that had nestled in his lap.

4. Meetings in Rue Royale
    It had been a dreary, tiring week, full of boring chores, time-consuming tasks and countless petty frustrations. Paris remained oppressive, and around six every evening heavy thunderstorms would turn the streets into rivers.
    Madame Maigret wrote from her holiday: ‘
The weather’s lovely, I’ve never seen such a crop of sloes
…’
    Maigret didn’t like being in Paris without his wife. He ate without appetite in whichever restaurant was nearest to hand; he even stayed over in hotels so as not to go back home alone.
    The story had all begun in the sun-filled shop on Boulevard Saint-Michel, where Basso was trying on a top hat. Then came the secret rendezvous in a furnished block in the Avenue Niel. A wedding party in the evening at the Two-Penny Bar. A game of
bridge and the unexpected drama …
    When the police had arrived on the scene, Maigret, who was off duty, left them to do their job. They had arrested the coal merchant. The prosecutor’s office had been informed.
    One hour later, Monsieur Basso was sitting between two police sergeants in the little railway station at Seine-Port. The Sunday crowd were all waiting for the train. The sergeant on the right offered him a cigarette.
    The lamps had been lit. Night had virtually fallen. When the train had arrived in the station and everyone was crowding to get on, Basso shook off his captors, bustled his way through the crowd, ran across the rails and made for
the woods on the other side.
    The policemen couldn’t believe their eyes. Only a few moments earlier he had been sitting there quite calm and apparently docile between the pair of them.
    Maigret heard about the escape when he got back to Paris. It was an unpleasant night for everyone. The police searched the countryside around Morsang and Seine-Port, set up roadblocks, kept the railway stations under surveillance and questioned
passing motorists. The net spread out over nearly the whole
département
, and weekend ramblers returning home from their walks were astonished to find the gates of Paris manned by police.
    Two policemen stood guard outside the Bassos’ house in Quai d’Austerlitz; two more in front of the block where the