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from eighteen to twenty-five, invaded the café. Noisy groups took over tables and
ordered drinks, which they never touched. They weren’t in the café more than five minutes
before their jokes petered out, their laughter died down, and awkwardness gave way to bluffing. And one by one they left.
    The difference in the town was more apparent when it came time to light the street lamps. It was four o’clock. Ordinarily at that hour the streets would still be busy. That evening, they were deserted, and deathly silent. It was as if the
strollers had passed the word. In less than a quarter of an hour the streets had emptied, and when footsteps sounded, they were the hurried ones of someone anxious to get to the shelter of home.
    Emma leaned on her elbows at the till. The proprietor went back and forth between the kitchen and the café, where Maigret stubbornly refused to listen to his lamentations.
    Ernest Michoux came downstairs at about 4.30, still in slippers. Stubble covered his cheeks. His cream silk scarf was stained with sweat.
    â€˜Ah, you’re here, inspector!’ The fact seemed to comfort him. ‘And your officer?’
    â€˜I sent him off to look around town.’
    â€˜The dog?’
    â€˜Hasn’t been seen since this morning.’
    The floor was grey, the marble of the tables a harsh white veined with blue. Through the windows, the glowing Old Town clock was dimly visible, now showing ten minutes to five.
    â€˜We still don’t know who wrote that article?’
    The newspaper lay on the table. By this point only one headline stood out:
WHOSE TURN NEXT?
    The telephone jangled. Emma answered. ‘No … Nothing … I don’t know anything.’
    â€˜Who was it?’ Maigret asked.
    â€˜Another Paris paper. They said their reporters are arriving by car.’
    She had hardly finished the sentence when the phone rang again.
    â€˜It’s for you, inspector.’
    The doctor, pale as a ghost, kept his eyes on Maigret.
    â€˜Hello! Who’s there?’
    â€˜It’s Leroy … I’m over in the Old Town, near the channel inlet. There’s been a shooting here … A shoemaker saw the yellow dog from his window and—’
    â€˜Dead?’
    â€˜Wounded! Badly. In the hindquarters. The animal can barely drag himself along. People don’t dare go near him … I’m calling from a café. The dog is in the middle of the street – I can see him through the window.
He’s howling … What should I do?’ And despite his effort to keep calm, the officer’s voice was tense, as if the wounded yellow dog were some supernatural creature. ‘There are people at every window … What should I do, inspector? Finish him
off?’
    His colour leaden, the doctor stood behind Maigret, asking fearfully, ‘What is it? … What’s he saying?’
    And the inspector saw Emma leaning on the counter, her expression blank.

4. Field Headquarters
    Maigret crossed the drawbridge, passed through the Old Town ramparts and turned down a crooked, poorly lit street. What the people of Concarneau call ‘the closed town’ – the old section still surrounded by its walls – is one of the most
densely populated parts.
    As the inspector advanced, however, he entered a zone of ever more ambiguous silence, the silence of a crowd hypnotized by a spectacle and trembling with fear or impatience. Here and there, a few isolated voices, those of adolescents determined to
sound bold, could be heard.
    One last bend in the street and he reached the scene: a narrow lane, with someone at every window, the rooms behind them lit with oil lamps; a glimpse of beds; in the street a mob blocking the way, and, beyond, a large open space, from which came
the sound of hoarse breathing.
    Maigret pushed through the spectators, mostly youngsters, who were startled by his arrival. Two of them