Maigret's Holiday by Georges Simenon

The street was narrow, like all the streets in the old quarter of Les Sables d'Olonne, with uneven cobblestones and pavements so narrow that you had to step off to let another person pass. The entrance to the corner building was a magnificent double door, painted a dark, rich, pristine green, with two highly polished brass knockers of the kind found only on the houses of provincial lawyers or convents.

Opposite were parked two long, gleaming cars which exuded the same aura of spotlessness and comfort. Maigret recognised them, they both belonged to surgeons.

'I could have been a surgeon too,' he thought to himself. And owned a car like that. Probably not a surgeon, but it was a fact that he had almost become a doctor. He had set out to study medicine and sometimes felt a hankering for the medical profession. If his father hadn't died three years too soon...


Before mounting the step, he drew his watch out of his pocket. It showed three o'clock. The same instant, the chapel's slightly shrill peal rang out, and then came the deeper chimes of Notre-Dame over the rooftops of the town's little houses.

Translated from French byRos Schwartz