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something to eat … I hope I’ll not get into any trouble on account of
all this, will I? Cheers …’
    Ten in the evening. Lucas has gone off to keep
Cape Horn under surveillance, replacing Janvier, who has gone back to Paris. The bar of the
Anneau d’Or is blue with smoke. Maigret has eaten too much and is now on his third or
fourth glass of the local marc-brandy.
    As he straddles a straw-bottomed chair, elbows
leaning on its back, there are moments when it seems he is nodding off. His eyes are
half-closed, and a faint tendril of smoke rises straight up from the bowl of his pipe, while
four men play cards on the table in front of him.
    As they deal and flip the greasy cards on the
garnet-red cloth, they talk, answer questions and sometimes tell an anecdote. The landlord,
Monsieur Joseph, is sitting in for old Lapie, and the mechanic has come back after eating his
dinner.
    â€˜In a word, then,’ murmurs Maigret,
‘he was on to a good thing. A bit like some respectable country priest with his
housekeeper. He probably made sure he got his home comforts and …’
    Lepape, who is deputy mayor of Orgeval, winks at
the others. His partner, Forrentin, is manager of the Jeanneville development and lives in the
best house, on the main road, just by the hoarding which informs all who pass by that there are
still plots for sale in Jeanneville.
    â€˜A priest and his
housekeeper, eh?’ grins the deputy mayor.
    Forrentin just gives a sardonic smile.
    â€˜Get on with you! It’s obvious you
didn’t know him,’ explains the landlord, declaring belote with three cards of the
same suit. ‘Dead he may be, but you can’t deny he was the sorest bear’s head
you ever did see …’
    â€˜What do you mean, sorest bear’s
head?’
    â€˜Well, he was always moaning about
something or nothing from morning to night. He was never satisfied. Take that business with the
glasses …’
    He turns to the others to back him up.
    â€˜First, he said the bottoms of my liqueur
glasses were too thick, and he managed to spot an odd glass on the top shelf that suited him
better. Then one day as he was decanting from one glass to another, he saw that both contained
exactly the same amount and he was hopping mad …
    â€˜â€œBut you chose that glass
yourself,” I told him.
    â€˜Well! He went into town, bought a glass
and brought it back to me. It held a third as much as the ones I use.
    â€˜â€œIt doesn’t make any
difference,” I told him. “You’ll just have to pay five sous extra.”
    â€˜After that, he didn’t come in here
for a week. Then one night I spot him standing in the frame of the door.
    â€˜â€œWhat about my glass?”
    â€˜â€œFive sous extra,” I say.
    â€˜Away he goes again. It lasted a month, and
in the end I was the one who blinked because we were short of a fourth for cards.
    â€˜So can’t a man
say, yes or no, that he was like a bear with a sore head? He was like that, as near as dammit,
with his housekeeper. They were at each other’s throats morning to night. You could hear
them arguing from miles away. They’d stop talking to each other for weeks on end. I think
that actually she always had the last word because, no offence intended, she was even more
Norman than he was … Anyway, I’d be interested to know who killed the old boy. There
was no harm in him really. It’s just the way he was. I never saw a game of cards when he
didn’t reckon at some point that people were trying to cheat him.’
    â€˜Did he often go to Paris?’ Maigret
asks after a moment.
    â€˜Next to never. Once a quarter, to collect
his pension. He’d go off in the morning and come back the same evening.’
    â€˜How about Félicie?’
    â€˜Hey, you boys, did Félicie used to go
to Paris?’
    The others don’t really know. On the other
hand she was often seen on a