About the Author
Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1903. He is best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret novels and his prolific output of over 400 novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.
Georges Simenon
THE WIDOW COUDERC
Translated by
SIÂN REYNOLDS
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
1
He was walking. For at least three kilometres he was alone on a road across which tree trunks cast oblique shadows every ten metres, and he strode on, without hurrying, from one dark strip of shade to the next. Since it was near midday and the sun was reaching its height, a grotesquely foreshortened shadow, his own, slipped along ahead of him.
The road led straight up to the summit of the hill, where it seemed to vanish from view. On the left, things rustled in the woods. On the right, in the gently rolling fields, there was just one horse, far in the distance, a white horse, pulling a wine-vat mounted on wheels; in the same field stood a scarecrow, or it might have been a man.
The red bus was at that moment leaving Saint-Amand, where it was market day, edging its way out, accompanied by blasts on the horn, before emerging at last from the interminable street of whitewashed houses to drive along the road lined with elm trees. It stopped again to pick up a farm woman, waiting under an umbrella because of the sun. There were no free seats left. The woman did not attempt to put down her two baskets but stood swaying to and fro between two benches, her eyes glazed over like an ailing chicken.
‘It was Jeanine told me. She was in the next seats, and even she was disgusted! And for Jeanine to be disgusted …!’
The driver sat expressionless in his uniform cap, his mauve tie slightly askew, his eyes fixed on the dark stripes across the road. ‘No smoking’, the notice read. The cigarette stuck to his lower lip was unlit.
‘Yeah,’ he said, in the tone of a man who knows what he is talking about. And the plump girl, who had taken the seat next to him a quarter of an hour before the bus left, carried on whispering, interrupting herself now and then with a giggle.
‘Well, first it was Léon, the boy from the barber’s … Then Lolotte. Then this lad from Montluçon that works in the aircraft factory? And then Rose.’
‘Rose? Who’s Rose?’
‘You must know. You see her on her bike every day on the road. The butcher’s daughter, from Tilly? Big girl, red cheeks and pop-eyes, and her dresses are always too short. She goes into Saint-Amand for her shorthand-typing lessons. No better than she should be, mind.’
Chickens and ducks were stirring in their baskets. Forty or more women, dressed in black, were tightly packed on to the bench seats and almost all of them sat silently looking straight to the front, heads swaying right and left with the movements of the bus: now and again, the top halves of their bodies jerked forward together.
Ten, nine, then eight kilometres ahead of them, the man was still walking, like someone going nowhere in particular and thinking about nothing. He had no luggage, no parcels, no walking stick, not even a switch cut from the roadside. His arms swung casually at his sides.
‘So it was Léon started it, with Lolotte, and she laughed so loud that a lot of people in the cinema were going “Hush!”’
The heavy red bus drew nearer. A grey motorcar overtook it. Not locals, people from far away, passing through. The car, going fast, started up the hill. The man walking heard it approach but did not slow down, simply turned his head a little and raised his arm, without conviction.
The car didn’t stop. The woman next to the bus driver asked:
‘What did he want?’
Craning her neck, she saw the tall, thin shape going from the shadow of one tree to the next, and almost at once the car disappeared over the hill.
The bus followed, groaning with the change of gear and vibrating. The widow by the name of Couderc, sitting behind the driver, raised her eyes anxiously to the roof, on which they could hear the parcels being jolted.
The man on the road raised his arm again. The bus stopped alongside him. Without leaving his seat, in a practised movement, the driver opened the door.
‘Where to?’
The man glanced round and said casually:
