Félicie by Georges Simenon

that lies beneath the most wildly flamboyant exteriors.
    â€˜We’re going to have a nice lunch
together now, all right?’
    She felt obliged to repeat:
    â€˜But I’m still not going to tell you
anything.’
    â€˜I’ve got the message. You
won’t tell me anything. Now, what do you want to eat?’
    The inside of the restaurant is old-fashioned
and friendly. The walls are creamy-white, and there are large, patchilyclouded mirrors, nickel-plated holders into which the waiter tucks the cloth he uses for
wiping his tables, a varnished and grained rack of pigeon-holes, where the regulars keep their
serviettes. The dish of the day is written on a board: mutton stew with spring vegetables. On
the menu extra charges are marked next to nearly all the dishes.
    Maigret has ordered. Félicie has arranged
her veil so that it falls behind her, and the weight of it pulls her hair back.
    â€˜Were you very unhappy at
Fécamp?’
    He knows what he is doing. He waits for the
quiver of her lips, the defiant expression she is able instinctively to put on her face.
    â€˜Why should I have been unhappy?’
    True. Why? He knows Fécamp, the small,
pinched-looking houses crouching in a line under the east cliffs, the narrow alleyways running
with sewage, the children playing in a stomach-turning stench of fish …
    â€˜How many brothers and sisters do you
have?’
    â€˜Seven.’
    The father a drunk. A mother who washes clothes
all day long. He pictures her, a little girl who is too tall, legs like matchsticks, no shoes.
She is put to work as a servant at Arsène’s, a small restaurant on the docks, and she
sleeps in an attic. She is dismissed for stealing a few sous from the till and she does
housework on odd days for Ernest Lapie, the Lapie who is a ship’s carpenter …
    She is now eating daintily, almost to the point
of holding her little finger in the air, and Maigret does not feel like laughing at her.
    â€˜I could have married the son of a
ship-owner …’
    â€˜Of course,
Félicie. But you didn’t fancy him, did you?’
    â€˜I don’t like men with red hair. Not
to mention the fact that his father had designs on me. Men are such pigs …’
    It’s odd. When you see her a certain way,
you forget that she’s twenty-four, you just see that restless face, like a little
girl’s, and you wonder how anyone could ever have taken her seriously.
    â€˜Tell me, Félicie … Did your
… I mean, was Pegleg jealous?’
    He is pleased with himself. He has anticipated
that sharp thrust of the chin, the look which is both surprised and uncertain, the flash of
anger in those eyes.
    â€˜There was never anything between
us.’
    â€˜Yes, I know. But that doesn’t mean
he couldn’t be jealous, does it? I’d bet that he forbade you to go dancing at Poissy
on Sundays, and you were forced to sneak out …’
    She does not answer him. No doubt, she is
wondering how he has managed to find out about the old man’s weird jealousy. He would wait
for her every Sunday evening, even coming as far as the top of the slope to watch out for her,
and made terrible scenes.
    â€˜You let him think you had boyfriends
…’
    â€˜What’s stopping me have
boyfriends?’
    â€˜Nothing! But you told him about them! He
called you all sorts of names. I wonder if it ever happened that he hit you?’
    â€˜I wouldn’t have let him lay a finger
on me!’
    She’s lying! Maigret pictures both of them
so clearly!They were as isolated in that new house, in the middle of the
new village of Jeanneville, as castaways on a desert island. There is nothing to connect them to
anything. They rub each other up the wrong way from morning to night, they watch each other,
argue and need each other: the pair of them form a world of their own.
    Pegleg only emerges from that world at set times,
when he goes off to play cards in