The Night at the Crossroads

Title Page

About the Author

1. The Black Monocle

2. The Moving Curtains

3. Night at the Crossroads

4. The Prisoner

5. The Abandoned Car

6. Back from the Dead

7. The Two Wounds

8. Missing Persons

9. The Lineup

10. Looking for a Head

11. Else

EXTRA: Chapter 1 from
A Crime in Holland

 

Georges Simenon was born on 12 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life. Between 1931 and 1972 he published seventy-five novels and twenty-eight short stories
featuring Inspector Maigret.

Simenon always resisted identifying himself with his famous literary character, but acknowledged that they shared an important characteristic:

My motto, to the extent that I have one, has been noted often enough, and I've always conformed to it. It's the one I've given to old Maigret, who resembles me in certain points … ‘understand and judge
not'.

Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels.

PENGUIN CLASSICS

‘I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov'

— William Faulkner

‘A truly wonderful writer … marvellously readable – lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates'

— Muriel Spark

‘Few writers have ever conveyed with such a sure touch, the bleakness of human life'

— A. N. Wilson

‘One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century … Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories'

—
Guardian

‘A novelist who entered his fictional world as if he were part of it'

— Peter Ackroyd

‘The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature'

— André Gide

‘Superb … The most addictive of writers … A unique teller of tales'

—
Observer

‘The mysteries of the human personality are revealed in all their disconcerting complexity'

— Anita Brookner

‘A writer who, more than any other crime novelist, combined a high literary reputation with popular appeal'

— P. D. James

‘A supreme writer … Unforgettable vividness'

—
Independent

‘Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'

— John Gray

‘Extraordinary masterpieces of the twentieth century'

— John Banville

Detective Chief Inspector Maigret was sitting with his elbows on the desk, and when he pushed his chair back with a tired sigh, the interrogation of Carl Andersen had been going on for exactly seventeen hours.

Through the bare windows he had observed at first the throng of salesgirls and office workers storming the little restaurants of Place Saint-Michel at noon, then the afternoon lull, the mad six o'clock rush to the Métro and train stations,
the relaxed pace of the aperitif hour …

The Seine was now shrouded in mist. One last tug had gone past with red and green lights, towing three barges. Last bus. Last Métro. At the cinema they'd taken in the film-poster sandwich boards and were closing the metal gates.

And the stove in Maigret's office seemed to growl all the louder. On the table, empty beer bottles and the remains of some sandwiches.

A fire must have broken out somewhere: they heard the racket of fire engines speeding by. And there was a raid, too. The Black Maria emerged from the Préfecture at around two o'clock, returning later to drop off its catch at the central
lock-up.

The interrogation was still going on. Every hour – or every two hours, depending on how tired he was – Maigret
would push a button. Sergeant Lucas would awaken from his nap in a nearby office and arrive to
take over, glancing briefly at his boss's notes. Maigret would then go and stretch out on a cot to recharge his batteries for a fresh attack.

The Préfecture was deserted. A few comings and goings at the Vice Squad. Towards four in the morning, an inspector hauled in a drug pusher and immediately began grilling him.

The Seine wreathed itself in a pale fog that turned white with the breaking day, lighting up the empty quays. Footsteps pattered in the corridors. Telephones rang. Voices called. Doors slammed. Charwomen's brooms swished by.

And Maigret, setting his overheated pipe on the table, rose and looked the prisoner up and down with an ill humour not unmixed with admiration. Seventeen hours of relentless questioning! Before tackling him, they had taken away his shoelaces,
detachable collar, tie and everything in his pockets. For the first four hours they had left him standing in the centre of the office and bombarded him with questions.

‘Thirsty?'

Maigret was on his fourth beer, and the prisoner had managed a faint smile. He had drunk avidly.

‘Hungry?'

They'd asked him to sit down – and stand up again. He'd gone seven hours without anything to eat and then they had harassed him while he devoured a sandwich.

The two of them took turns questioning him. Between
sessions, they could each doze, stretch, escape the grip of this monotonous interrogation.

Yet they were the ones giving up! Maigret shrugged, rummaged in a drawer for a cold pipe and wiped his damp brow.

Perhaps what impressed him the most was not the man's physical and psychological resistance, but his disturbing elegance, the air of distinction he'd maintained throughout the interrogation.

A gentleman who has been searched, stripped of his tie and obliged to spend an hour completely naked with a hundred malefactors in the Criminal Records Office, where he is photographed, weighed, measured, jostled and cruelly mocked by other
detainees, will rarely retain the self-confidence that informs his personality in private life.

And when he has endured a few hours of questioning, it's a miracle if there's anything left to distinguish him from any old tramp.

Carl Andersen had not changed. Despite his wrinkled suit, he still possessed an elegance the Police Judiciaire rarely have occasion to appreciate, an aristocratic grace with that hint of reserve and discretion, that touch of arrogance so
characteristic of diplomatic circles.

He was taller than Maigret, broad-shouldered but slender, lithe and slim-hipped. His long face was pale, his lips rather colourless.

He wore a black monocle in his left eye.

Ordered to remove the monocle, he had obeyed with the faintest of smiles, uncovering a glass eye with a disconcerting stare.

‘An accident?'

‘A flying accident, yes.'

‘So you were in the war?'

‘I'm Danish. I did not have to fight. But I had a private aeroplane, back home.'

The artificial eye was so disturbing in this young face with pleasant features that Maigret had muttered, ‘You can put your monocle back.'

Andersen had not made a single complaint, either about them leaving him standing or their forgetting for so long to give him anything to eat or drink. He could see the street traffic out of the window, the trams and buses crossing the bridge, the
reddish sunlight as evening had fallen and now the bustle of a bright April morning.

And he held himself as straight as ever, as if it were only natural, and the sole sign of fatigue was the thin dark shadow underlining his right eye.

‘You stand by everything you've said?' Maigret asked.

‘I do.'

‘You realize how improbable this all sounds?'

‘Yes, but I cannot lie.'

‘You're expecting to be released, for lack of conclusive evidence?'