The Two-Penny Bar by Georges Simenon

getting back. I wouldn’t put it past my wife to stick a bullet in me. It’s stupid, stupid …’
    He opened the door with a tired movement. Outside, in the badly lit street, he looked Maigret in the eyes and said:
    â€˜A strange occupation.’
    â€˜What? The police?’
    â€˜Just being a man … When I get home my wife will count the change in my pocket to see how much I’ve been drinking. Goodnight. See you in the Taverne Royale tomorrow?’
    James went off, leaving Maigret with a sense of unease, which it took him a long time to shake off. It was as if all his thoughts had been unravelled and all his values had been turned on their head. Even the street looked distorted, the
passers-by were a blur, and the long, thin trams were like brightly glowing worms.
    It was like the ant-hill James had talked about. An ant-hill in a turmoil because one ant had been killed!
    In his mind’s eye, Maigret saw the haberdasher lying in the long grass behind the Two-Penny Bar. Then he saw all the police out manning the roadblocks. The ant-hill all stirred up!
    â€˜Drunken fool!’ he murmured as he thought of James with a bitterness not altogether devoid of affection.
    He made a fresh effort to look at the case objectively. He had forgotten what he had come to James’s apartment to do – to find out where James had taken the 300,000 francs. But then he thought of the Basso family – the father, the mother
and the child – skulking in their hideaway, jumping at the slightest noise from outside.
    â€˜That damn fellow gets me drinking every time we meet!’
    He wasn’t drunk, but he did feel out of sorts and went to bed in a bad mood, dreading the next day, when he would wake up with a thumping headache.
    â€˜You have to have a little bolt-hole to call your own,’ James had said, talking of the Taverne Royale.
    He didn’t just have a bolt-hole, he inhabited a whole world of his own, totally self-contained, created in a haze of Pernod or brandy, in which he wandered around totally indifferent to the real world. It was a formless world, a teeming
ant-hill of flitting shadows where nothing mattered, nothing had any purpose, where it was possible to wander aimlessly, effortlessly, feeling neither joy nor sadness, cocooned in a thick mist.
    A world into which James, with his clownish manner and his apathetic way of talking, had sucked Maigret without seeming to do so.
    So much so that the inspector found himself thinking about the Bassos – the father, the mother and the son – cowering in the cellar where they had sought refuge, listening anxiously to the footsteps coming and going over their heads.
    When he got up he was even more conscious of the absence of his wife, from whom the postman delivered a postcard.
We are starting to make the apricot jam. When will you be coming to taste it?
    He sat down heavily at his desk, causing the pile of letters in his in-tray to topple over. He called out, ‘Come in!’ to the clerk who was knocking at the door.
    â€˜What is it, Jean?’
    â€˜Sergeant Lucas has phoned asking for you to come to Rue des Blancs-Manteaux.’
    â€˜Which number?’
    â€˜He didn’t say. He just said Rue des Blancs-Manteaux.’
    Maigret checked that there wasn’t anything in his mail that required urgent attention, then went on foot to the Jewish quarter, of which Rue des Blancs-Manteaux was the main shopping street, with a number of second-hand dealers huddled in
the shadow of the large pawnshop.
    It was 8.30 in the morning. It was quite quiet. At the corner of the street Maigret spotted Lucas, who was walking up and down with his hands in his pockets.
    â€˜Where’s our man?’ asked Maigret anxiously, for Lucas had been given the task of following Victor Gaillard after the latter’s release the previous night.
    With a movement of the head the officer pointed out the figure of a man standing in front