The Carter of ’La Providence’ by Georges Simenon

everybody knows what his promises are worth. A cheque! He won’t even have enough money to get him to Porquerolles … though that won’t stop him getting drunk on
whisky every day!’
    She wasn’t crying, but there were tears in her voice. There was something unnerving about the distress exhibited by this woman who, when Maigret had seen her previously, had always seemed steeped in blissful sloth, supine in a hothouse
atmosphere.
    â€˜And his precious Vladimir’s just the same! He tried to kiss my hand and had the cheek to say: “It’s adieu, madame, not au revoir.”
    â€˜By God, they’ve got a nerve … But when the colonel wasn’t around, Vladimir …
    â€˜But it’s none of your business! Why are you still here? What are you waiting for? Are you hoping I’m going to tell you something?’
    â€˜Not at all!’
    â€˜But you can’t deny that I’d be perfectly within my rights if I did …’
    She was still walking up and down agitatedly, taking things out of her case, putting them down somewhere then a moment later picking them up again and putting them somewhere else.
    â€˜Leaving me at Épernay! In that disgusting hole, where it never stops raining! I begged him at least to take me to Nice, where I have friends. It was on his account that I left them.
    â€˜Still, I should be glad they didn’t kill me.
    â€˜I won’t talk! Got that? Why don’t you clear off! Policemen make me sick! As sick as the English! If you’re man enough, why don’t you go and arrest him?
    â€˜But you wouldn’t dare! I know all about how these things work …
    â€˜Poor Mary! She’ll be called all sorts now. Of course, she had her bad side and she’d have done anything for Willy. Me, I couldn’t stand him.
    â€˜But to finish up dead like that …
    â€˜Have they gone? … So who are you going to arrest, then? Maybe me?
    â€˜Well, you just listen. I’ll tell you something. Just one thing and you can make of it whatever you like. This morning, when he was getting dressed to appear before that magistrate – because he’s forever trying to impress people
and flashing his badges and medals – when he was dressing, Walter told Vladimir, in Russian, because he thinks I don’t understand Russian …’
    She was now speaking so quickly that she ran out of breath, stumbled over her words and reverted to throwing in snatches of Spanish.
    â€˜He told him to try and find out where the
Providence
was. Are you with me? It’s the barge that was tied up near us at Meaux.
    â€˜They want to catch up with it and they’re afraid of me.
    â€˜I pretended I hadn’t understood.
    â€˜But I know you’d never ever dare to …’
    She stared at her disembowelled suitcases and then around the room, which in only a few minutes she had succeeded in turning into a mess and filling with her acrid perfume.
    â€˜I don’t suppose you’ve got any cigarettes? What sort of hotel is this? I told them to bring some, and a bottle of kümmel.’
    â€˜When you were in Meaux, did you ever see the colonel talking to anybody from the
Providence
?’
    â€˜I never saw a thing. I never paid attention to any of that … All I heard was what he said this morning. Why otherwise would they be worrying about a barge? Does anybody know how Walter’s first wife died in India? The second
one divorced him, so she must have had her reasons.’
    A waiter knocked at the door with the cigarettes and a bottle. Madame Negretti reached for the packet and then hurled it into the corridor yelling:
    â€˜I asked for Abdullahs!’
    â€˜But madame …’
    She clasped her hands together in a gesture which seemed like the prelude to an imminent fit of hysterics and shrieked:
    â€˜Ah! … Of all the