Maigret Gets Angry (3 page)

‘You'll dine with us, of course? I
can't pretend the house is very cheerful at the moment, after the death of my niece, but
…'

As they left, Maigret glimpsed Jeanne, who sat
watching them from a dark corner. And he had the impression that there was hatred in the look
that she allowed to rest on Ernest Malik's elegant form.

As the two men walked along the riverbank, they
must have given the impression that one had the other on a leash, as if the latter, surly and
clumsy, was letting himself be dragged along like a big, shaggy dog.

And the truth is that Maigret was ill-at-ease.
Already, in their schooldays, he had had no fondness for the Tax Collector. What was more, he
abhorred those people from the past who suddenly pop up and give you a friendly tap on the
shoulder and treat you with familiarity.

In short, Ernest Malik was the type who had
always made his hackles rise.

Meanwhile Malik walked nonchalantly, relaxed in
his immaculately cut white-flannel suit, his person well groomed, his hair lustrous and his skin
dry despite the heat. He was already playing the lord of the manor showing a country bumpkin
around his estate.

There was a sardonic glint in his eyes, as there
always had been, even when he was a boy, a furtive glint that said: ‘I've got you
and I'll get you again … I'm so much smarter than you!'

The Seine, on their left, meandered lazily and
was very wide at this point, fringed with reeds. On their right, low walls, some of them very
ancient, others almost new, separated the towpath from the houses.

They
were few: four or five, as far as Maigret could tell. They looked opulent, set in extensive,
wellmaintained grounds, the paths visible through the metal railings.

‘This house belongs to my mother-in-law,
whom you had the pleasure of meeting today,' announced Malik as they reached a big gate
with pilasters surmounted by stone lions. ‘Old Amorelle bought it, some forty years ago,
from a Second Empire finance magnate.'

A vast edifice appeared, surrounded by trees. It
was not particularly attractive, but solid and affluent. Tiny revolving sprinklers were watering
the lawns, while an elderly gardener who looked as if he was out of a seed merchant's
catalogue was raking the paths.

‘What do you think of Bernadette
Amorelle?' asked Malik, turning to his former schoolmate and looking him straight in the
eye, his gaze twinkling with mischief.

Maigret mopped his forehead. Malik seemed to be
saying: ‘Poor old thing, you haven't changed. You're still the clumsy son of
an estate manager! A big country oaf. Full of naivety and perhaps some common sense!'

And out loud:

‘Keep going … I live a little further
on, after the bend. Do you remember my brother? … True, you didn't know him at
school, because he's three years younger than us. My brother Charles married one of the
Amorelle girls a couple of years after I married the eldest … He lives in this house in
the summer with his wife and our mother-in-law. It's his daughter who died last
week.'

A hundred metres further on, they passed a
gleaming
white pontoon, as luxurious as those of
the prestigious yacht clubs on the banks of the Seine.

‘This is the beginning of my estate …
I have a few small boats, because a man has to have some fun in this godforsaken hole … Do
you sail?'

What irony in his voice as he asked the burly
Maigret if he sailed in one of those frail barques that could be seen between the mooring
buoys!

‘This way …'

Railings topped with gilt arrows. A glistening
white-sand drive. The gardens sloped gently and soon a modern building came into view, much
bigger than the Amorelles' house. Tennis courts to the left, dark red in the sunshine. A
swimming pool to the right.

And Malik, increasingly offhand, like a pretty
woman playing carelessly with a jewel worth millions, seemed to be saying: ‘Look closely,
you great oaf, this is the Maliks' place. Yes, young Malik scornfully nicknamed the Tax
Collector because his daddy spent his days behind a grille in a dreary office.'

Two huge Great Danes came and licked his hands
and he accepted this meek homage, appearing not to notice.

‘We can have an aperitif on the terrace if
you like while we wait for the dinner gong … My son must be boating on the Seine
…'

Behind the house, a driver in shirt-sleeves was
hosing a powerful American car with gleaming chrome trims.

They climbed the steps and settled themselves in
wide rattan armchairs, like club chairs, under a red sunshade. A butler in a white jacket
hurried over, reinforcing Maigret's
feeling
that he was at a luxury hotel in a spa town rather than a private residence.

‘Rosé? … Martini? …
Manhattan?
…
What's your favourite tipple, Jules? If what the papers say
about you is true, you like a beer at the bar? … Sorry to say I haven't put a bar in
here yet … One day, maybe … That would be quite fun. Two Martinis, Jean!
You're very welcome to smoke your pipe. Where were we? Oh yes! … My brother and my
sister-in-law are of course pretty devastated by this business … They only had the one
daughter, you see. My sister-in-law has never enjoyed good health …'

Was Maigret listening? If he was, he wasn't
aware of it. And yet, Malik's words automatically etched themselves in his memory.

Ensconced in his chair, his eyes half-closed, a
warm pipe between his sullen lips, he gazed vaguely at the scenery, which was very beautiful.
The setting sun was turning red. From the terrace where they were sitting, they could see the
entire loop of the Seine, the opposite bank edged by wooded hillsides where a quarry made a
crude white gash.

A few white sails were moving over the dark,
silken water, a few varnished canoes glided slowly, a motor-boat buzzed, and after it had
vanished into the distance, the noise of its engine still hung in the air.

The butler had set down in front of them crystal
glasses which misted over.

‘This morning, I invited both of them to
spend the day here at the house. No point inviting my mother-in-law. She's a woman who
loathes family and who has been known to stay shut up in her room for weeks on end.'

His
smile proclaimed: ‘You can't understand, poor, overweight Maigret. You're used
to little people who lead ordinary little lives and who can't permit themselves the
slightest eccentricity.'

And it was true that Maigret did not feel at home
in this milieu. The decor itself irritated him – it was too harmonious, its lines too
smooth. He even came to hate the neat tennis court and the overfed driver he had seen polishing
the sumptuous car – and it wasn't envy because he wasn't
that
small-minded. The pontoon, with its diving boards, the little boats moored around it, the
swimming pool, the pruned trees and the immaculate white-sand paths all belonged to a world he
was reluctant to enter and which made him feel awkward and heavy.

‘I'm telling you all this to explain
why I turned up at the good Jeanne's earlier. When I say “the good Jeanne”,
it's a manner of speaking, because she's actually the most deceitful creature on
this earth. When her husband was alive, her Marius, she used to be unfaithful to him all the
time. Now that he's dead, she laments him from dawn to dusk.

‘So my brother and my sister-in-law were
here. When we were about to sit down to lunch, my sister-in-law realizes that she's
forgotten her pills. She's on medication. Her nerves, she says. I offer to go and fetch
them. Instead of going via the road, I go through the gardens since our properties are
adjacent.

‘I happen to look down. As I walk past the
old stables, I notice tyre tracks. I open the door and I'm flabbergasted to see that my
late father-in-law's old limousine has gone …

‘That, my friend, is how I ended up meeting you. I talked to
the gardener, who admitted that his boy had gone off an hour earlier with the car and that
Bernadette had been with him.

‘When they got home, I called the boy to me
and questioned him. I found out that he had gone to Meung-sur-Loire and that he had dropped a
fat man with a suitcase at Les Aubrais station. Apologies, old friend. His words, not mine.

‘I immediately thought that my charming
mother-in-law had gone to talk to some private detective, because she has persecution mania and
she's convinced that there's something sinister behind her granddaughter's
death.

‘I confess I didn't think of you
… I knew that there was a Maigret in the police, but I wasn't sure that it was the
Jules I was at school with.

‘What do you have to say about
that?'

And Maigret replied:

‘Nothing.'

He said nothing. He was thinking about his house
that was so different, about his garden with its aubergines, about the peas dropping into the
enamel basin, and he wondered why he had meekly followed the dictatorial old lady who had
literally kidnapped him.

He was thinking about the train, humming with
heat, his former office at Quai des Orfèvres, about all the scum he had interrogated, about
the many little bars, insalubrious hotels, improbable places where his investigations had taken
him.

He was thinking about all that and he was all the
more
furious, more annoyed at being there, in a
hostile environment, under the Tax Collector's sardonic gaze.

‘Later, if you like, I'll give you a
guided tour of the house. I drew the plans myself with the architect. Of course, we don't
live here all year round, only in summer. I have an apartment in Paris, Avenue Hoche. I've
also bought a house three kilometres outside Deauville, and we went there in July. In August,
with all the crowds, the seaside is impossible. Now, if you fancy it, I'd be delighted to
invite you to spend a few days with us. Do you play tennis? Do you ride?'

Why didn't he ask him if he played golf too
and whether he water-skied?

‘Mind you, if you attach the slightest
importance to what my mother-in-law told you, I wouldn't dream of getting in the way of
your little investigation. I place myself at your service and if you need a car and a driver
… Ah! Here's my wife.'

She emerged from the house, also dressed in
white.

‘Let me introduce Maigret, an old school
friend … My wife …'

She extended a pale, limp hand at the end of a
pale arm. Everything about her was pale – her face and her hair that was a too-light
blonde.

‘Do please sit down, monsieur.'

What was it about her that exuded a sense of
unease? Perhaps the fact that she seemed somehow absent? Her voice was neutral, so impersonal
that one wondered whether it was she who had spoken. She sat down in a big armchair, giving the
impression that she might just
as well have been
somewhere else. And yet she gave her husband a discreet signal, which he didn't
understand. She raised her eyes towards the single upper floor, and said:

‘It's Georges-Henry.'

Then, frowning, Malik rose, saying to
Maigret:

‘Would you excuse me for a
minute?'

They sat there, still and silent, the wife and
the inspector, and then suddenly, from upstairs, a rumpus broke out. A door was flung open.
Rapid footsteps. One of the windows banged shut. Muffled voices. The echoes of an argument, most
likely, or in any case, a fairly heated exchange.

All that Madame Malik could find to say was:

‘You've never been to Orsenne
before?'

‘No, madame.'

‘It's quite pretty if you like the
countryside. It's very restful, isn't it?'

And the way she pronounced the word
‘restful' gave it a very particular emphasis. She was so listless, so weary perhaps,
or had such little life in her, her body abandoned itself with such inertia in the rattan chair
that she was the picture of restfulness, eternal rest.

And yet she was listening out for the noises
upstairs, which were subsiding and, when all was quiet, she said:

‘I understand you're having dinner
with us?'

Well-brought-up as she was, she was unable to
appear pleased, even out of mere politeness. It was a statement. There was a note of regret in
her voice. Malik came back, and, when Maigret looked at him, he once again put on his pinched
smile.

‘Will you excuse me? … There's always trouble
with the servants.'

They waited for the dinner gong with a certain
awkwardness. In his wife's presence, Malik seemed less relaxed.

‘Jean-Claude isn't back
yet?'

‘I think I can see him on the
pontoon.'

A young man in shorts had just stepped off a
light sailing boat which he tied up before walking slowly towards the house, his sweater over
his arm. Just then, the gong sounded, and they moved into the dining room, where they would soon
be joined by Ernest Malik's eldest son Jean-Claude, washed, combed and dressed in grey
flannel.

‘If I had known sooner that you were coming
I would have invited my brother and my sister-in-law, so that you could meet the entire family.
I'll ask them tomorrow, if you like, as well as our neighbours – we don't have
many. Our place is where we all get together … There are nearly always guests …
People come and go, they make themselves at home.'