Maigret Gets Angry (7 page)

And yet he felt that she had been telling the
truth.

There was something in Orsenne, something in the
Malik family, that had to be hushed up at all costs. Was it in some way connected with
Monita's death? Possibly, but it wasn't certain.

The fact was that two people had broken away.
First of all, old Madame Amorelle had taken advantage of her daughter and son-in-law's
absence to be driven to Meung in the old-fashioned limousine to summon Maigret to the
rescue.

Then, on the same day, when the former inspector happened to be in
Ernest Malik's house, there had been a second escape. This time, it was Georges-Henry.

Why had his father claimed that the young man was
at his grandmother's? Why, in that case, had he not taken him there? And why had he not
seen him again the next day?

All that was still unclear, for sure. Ernest
Malik had been right when he had looked at Maigret with a smile that was a mixture of sarcasm
and contempt. This wasn't a case for him. He was out of his depth. This world was
unfamiliar to him, and he had difficulty piecing it all together. Even the decor shocked him for
its artificiality. Those huge mansions with deserted gardens and closed blinds, those gardeners
trundling up and down the paths, that pontoon, those tiny, heavily lacquered boats, those
gleaming cars sitting in garages …

And these people who stuck together, these
brothers and sisters-in-law who loathed each other perhaps, but who warned each other of danger
and closed ranks against him.

What was more, they were in deep mourning. They
had on their side the dignity of bereavement and grief. In what capacity, what right did he have
to come sniffing around here and poking his nose into their business?

He had almost given up earlier, just as he was
returning to L'Ange for lunch, to be exact. What had stopped him had been Raymonde, who
had been so easy to win over, and the relaxed, messy atmosphere of the kitchen. It was the words
she had inadvertently let slip, her elbows casually on the table, that had lodged in his
mind.

She
had spoken of Monita, who was a tomboy and who kept running away with her cousin. Of
Georges-Henry with his grubby shorts and unkempt hair.

Now Monita was dead and Georges-Henry had
disappeared.

He would seek and he would find. That, at least,
was his profession. He had been all around Orsenne. He was now almost certain that the young man
had not left. At least he was pretty sure that he had lain low somewhere until nightfall and
that then he had been able to remain unseen.

Maigret ate voraciously, in the kitchen again,
just him and Raymonde.

‘If Madame were to see us, she
wouldn't like it,' said Raymonde. ‘She asked me earlier what you'd
eaten. I told her that I served you two fried eggs in the dining room. She also asked me whether
you'd mentioned leaving.'

‘Before or after Malik's
visit?'

‘After.'

‘In that case, I'll wager that
tomorrow she'll refuse to come down from her room again.'

‘She came down earlier. I didn't see
her. I was at the bottom of the garden. But I noticed that she'd been down.'

He smiled. He had understood. He pictured Jeanne
descending noiselessly, having watched her housemaid go out, to come and get a bottle from the
shelf!

‘I may be back late,' he
announced.

‘Have they invited you again?'

‘No, but I feel like going out for a
stroll.'

At first he stayed on the towpath waiting for
nightfall. Then he headed for the level crossing, where he saw the
keeper, in the shadows, sitting outside his cottage, smoking a
long-stemmed pipe.

‘Do you mind if I take a walk beside the
railway track?'

‘Dear me, it's against the
regulations, but seeing as you're from the police … Keep a lookout for the train
that comes by at seventeen minutes past ten.'

Three hundred metres further on he caught sight
of the wall of the first property, that of Madame Amorelle and Charles Malik. It wasn't
completely dark yet, but inside the houses, the lamps had long been lit.

There was light on the ground floor. One of the
first-floor windows, one of the old lady's bedroom windows, was wide open, and it was
rather strange to peep into a private world from a distance, through the blue-tinged air and the
tranquillity of the garden, and discover an apartment whose furniture and objects seemed to be
frozen in a yellowish light.

He paused for a few moments to watch. A shadow
crossed his field of vision. It was not that of Bernadette, but of her daughter, Charles'
wife, who was pacing up and down anxiously and seemed to be speaking emphatically.

The old lady must be in her armchair, or her bed,
or in one of the corners of the bedroom that was hidden from his view.

He continued along the railway track and came to
the second garden, that of Ernest Malik. It was less bushy and had more open space, with wide,
well-maintained paths. Here too, lamps were on, but the light only filtered through the blinds
and Maigret wasn't able to see inside.

He stood looking down into the garden itself,
where,
camouflaged by the young hazelnut trees
planted along the railway line, Maigret could make out two tall shapes, pale and silent, and he
remembered the Great Danes that had bounded over to lick their master's hand the day
before.

They were probably let loose every night, and
were likely to be ferocious.

To the right, at the end of the garden, stood a
little cottage which Maigret had not yet seen and which was probably where the gardeners and the
driver lived.

There was a light on there too, a single one,
which went out half an hour later.

There was no sign of the moon yet, but the night
was not as dark as the previous one. Maigret sat down quietly on the embankment, facing the
hazelnut trees which concealed him, and which he could draw aside with his hand like a
curtain.

The 10.17 train sped past less than three metres
from him and he watched its red lamp disappear around the bend in the track.

The few lights from Orsenne went out one by one.
Old Groux was probably not out hunting woodpigeon that night, since the peace and quiet
wasn't shattered by any gunshots.

At last, at nearly eleven o'clock, the two
dogs, lying side by side at the edge of a lawn, rose as one and loped towards the house.

They vanished for a moment behind it, and, when
Maigret saw them again, the two animals were prancing around the shape of a man who was walking
hurriedly and seemed to be making straight for him.

It
was Ernest Malik, without a doubt. The shape was too slim and too energetic to be that of one of
the servants. He walked silently across the lawn. In his hand he had an object that it was
impossible to identify, but which looked quite bulky.

For a good while, Maigret wondered where on earth
Malik could be going. He saw him suddenly veer to the right and come so close to the wall that
he could hear the dogs' panting.

‘Quiet, Satan … Quiet,
Lionne.'

There, between the trees, was a little brick
building that must have pre-dated the house, a low building covered in ancient tiles. Former
stables perhaps, or a kennel?

‘A kennel,' Maigret said to himself.
‘He's simply feeding the dogs.'

But no! Malik pushed the dogs away, took a key
out of his pocket, and went inside the building. The key could clearly be heard turning in the
lock. Then there was silence, a very long silence, during which Maigret's pipe went out,
but he didn't dare re-light it.

Half an hour went by, and finally Malik emerged
and locked the door carefully behind him. Then, after looking around cautiously, he strode
rapidly towards the house.

At eleven thirty, everything was asleep or seemed
to be asleep. When Maigret walked past the back of the Amorelles' garden, he noticed only
a tiny night-light burning in old Bernadette's room.

No lights on at L'Ange either. He was
wondering how he would get in when the door opened noiselessly. He saw
or rather sensed Raymonde, who stood there in her nightdress and
slippers. She put her finger on her lips and whispered:

‘Go upstairs quickly. Don't make a
noise. She didn't want me to leave the door unlocked.'

He would have liked to linger, to ask her a few
questions and have something to drink, but a creaking sound coming from Jeanne's room
alarmed the girl, who rushed up the stairs.

Then he stood still for a good while. A smell of
fried eggs hung in the air, with a whiff of alcohol. Why not? He struck a match, took a bottle
from the shelf and tucked it under his arm to go upstairs to bed.

Old Jeanne was shuffling around in her room. She
must know that he was back. But he had no wish to go and keep her company.

He took off his jacket, his collar and his tie
and undid his braces, letting them dangle down his back and then, in his tooth mug, mixed brandy
and water.

One last pipe, leaning on the window-sill,
absently contemplating the gently rustling foliage.

He awoke at seven to the sound of Raymonde
bustling about in the kitchen. With his pipe in his mouth – the first pipe, the best
– he went downstairs and boomed a cheerful ‘Good morning'.

‘Tell me, Raymonde, you who know every
house around here—'

‘I do and I don't.'

‘Fine. At the bottom of Ernest
Malik's garden, on one side there's the gardeners' cottage.'

‘Yes. The driver and the servants sleep there too. Not the
maids. They sleep in the house.'

‘But what about on the other side, close to
the railway embankment?'

‘There's nothing.'

‘There's a very low building. A sort
of elongated hut.'

‘The top kennel,' she said.

‘What's the top kennel?'

‘In the old days, long before I came here,
the two gardens were one. It was the Amorelles' estate. Old Amorelle was a hunter. There
were two kennels, the bottom one, as it was called, for the guard dogs, and the top one for the
hunting hounds.'

‘Doesn't Ernest Malik
hunt?'

‘Not here, there isn't enough game
for him. He has a house and dogs in Sologne.'

But something was bothering him.

‘Is the building in good repair?'

‘I don't remember. I haven't
been in the garden for a long time. There was a cellar where—'

‘Are you certain there was a
cellar?'

‘There used to be one, in any case. I know
because people used to say that there was a hidden treasure in the garden. Before Monsieur
Amorelle built his place, forty years ago, or perhaps more, there was already a sort of little
ruined chateau. It was rumoured that at the time of the Revolution, the people from the chateau
hid their valuables somewhere in the grounds. At one point, Monsieur Amorelle tried to find it
and called in water diviners. They all said that the search should focus on the cellar of the
top kennel.

‘None of that is of any importance,' muttered Maigret.
‘What matters is that there is a cellar. And it is in that cellar, my dear Raymonde, that
poor Georges-Henry must be locked up.'

He suddenly looked at her differently.

‘What time is there a train for
Paris?'

‘In twenty minutes. After that there
isn't another one until 12.39. Others pass through, but they don't stop at
Orsenne.'

He was already halfway up the stairs. Without
stopping to shave, he got dressed and a little later could be seen striding towards the
station.

Her employer started thumping on the floor of her
room, and Raymonde too went upstairs.

‘Has he gone?' asked old Jeanne, who
was still lying in her damp sheets.

‘He's just left in a
hurry.'

‘Without saying anything?'

‘No, madame.'

‘Did he pay? Help me out of bed.'

‘He didn't pay, madame, but he left
his suitcase and all his things.'

‘Oh!' said Jeanne, disappointed and
possibly worried.

Paris was wonderfully vast and empty. The
cafés around Gare de Lyon smelled of beer and croissants dunked in coffee. Among other
things, Maigret enjoyed a memorably cheerful quarter of an hour in a barber's shop on
Boulevard de la Bastille, for no reason, simply because it was Paris on an August morning, and
perhaps too because shortly he would be going to shake hands with his old friends.

‘You're obviously just back from a
holiday, you've really caught the sun.'

It was true. The previous day, probably, while he
was running around Orsenne to check that Georges-Henry hadn't left the village.

It was funny how, from a distance, this affair
lost its substance. But now, freshly shaven, the back of his neck bare, a little smudge of
talcum powder behind his ears, Maigret clambered on to the running board of an omnibus and a few
minutes later walked through the gates of the Police Judiciaire.

Here too, there was a holiday atmosphere and the
air in the deserted corridors, where all the windows were wide open, had a smell he knew well. A
lot of empty offices. In his or rather his former office, he found Lucas, who was dwarfed by the
large space. Lucas leaped to his feet, as if
ashamed to be caught out sitting in the chair of his former
superior.

‘You're in Paris, chief? … Have
a seat.'

He immediately noticed Maigret's sunburn.
That day, everyone would notice his sunburn and nine out of ten of them would not fail to remark
with satisfaction:

‘You've obviously come up from the
country!'

As if he hadn't been living in the country
for the last two years!

‘Tell me, Lucas, do you remember
Mimile?'

‘Mimile from the circus?'

‘That's right. I'd like to get
hold of him today.'

‘You sound as if you're on a case,
chief.'

‘A fool's errand, more like! Anyway
… I'll tell you all about it another time. Can you track down Mimile?'

Lucas opened the door to the inspectors'
office and spoke in a hushed voice. He must have been telling them the former chief was there
and that he needed Mimile. During the half-hour that followed, nearly all of Maigret's
former team contrived to pop into Lucas' office under some pretext or another, to come and
shake hands with him.

‘You've caught the sun, chief!
You've obviously—'

‘And another thing, Lucas. I could do it
myself, but it's tiresome. I'd like the lowdown on the Amorelle and Campois firm of
Quai Bourbon. The sand quarries of the Seine, the tug-boats and everything else.'

‘I'll put Janvier on it, chief. Is it
urgent?'

‘I'd like to be done with it by
midday.'

He mooched around HQ, dropped into the finance
division. They had heard of Amorelle and Campois, but
they didn't have any inside information.

‘A big outfit. They have a lot of
subsidiaries. It's a robust concern and we haven't had any dealings with
them.'

It was good to breathe the air of the place, to
shake hands, to see the pleasure in every pair of eyes.

‘So, how's your garden, chief? And
what about the fishing?'

He went up to Criminal Records. Nothing on the
Maliks. It was at the last moment, when he was on the point of leaving, that it occurred to him
to search under the letter C.

Campois … Roger Campois … Hello,
hello! There's a file on Campois: Roger Campois, son of Désiré Campois,
industrialist. Blew his brains out in a hotel room on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.

He checked the dates, the addresses, the first
names. Désiré Campois had indeed been the partner of old Amorelle, he was the man
Maigret had glimpsed at Orsenne. He had been married to a certain Armande Tenissier, daughter of
a civil engineering entrepreneur and now deceased, with whom he had had two children, a boy and
a girl.

It was the boy, Roger, Désiré's
son, who had committed suicide at the age of twenty-two.

For some months had been frequenting the gambling dens of the Latin Quarter and had
recently lost heavily at the gaming tables.

As
for the daughter, she had married and had borne a child, probably the young man he had seen with
his grandfather at Orsenne.

Had she died too? What had become of her husband,
a certain Lorigan? There was no mention in the file.

‘Fancy a beer, Lucas?'

At the Brasserie Dauphine, of course, behind the
Palais de Justice, where he had downed so many beers in his life. The air was pungent, like a
fruit, with refreshing blasts punctuating the warm atmosphere. And it was a delightful sight to
see a municipal street cleaner spraying wide bands of water on the tarmac.

‘I wouldn't dream of questioning you,
chief, but I confess that I'm wondering—'

‘What I'm up to, eh? I'm
wondering too. And it is highly likely that tonight I'll be getting myself into serious
trouble. Look! Here comes Torrence!'

Fat Torrence, who had been tasked with locating
Mimile, knew where to find him. He had already accomplished his mission.

‘Unless he's changed his job in the
last two days, chief, you'll find him working as an animal keeper at Luna Park. A
beer!'

Then, Janvier, good old Janvier – how good
they all were that day, and how good it was to be with them, how good it was to be working with
the boys again! – Janvier too came and sat down at the table where an impressive pile of
saucers had begun to accumulate.

‘What exactly do you want to know about the
Amorelle and Campois outfit, chief?'

‘Everything …'

‘Hold on …'

He took a scrap of paper out of his pocket.

‘Old Campois, first of all. Arrived at the
age of eighteen from his native Dauphiné. A wily and obstinate farmer. Initially employed
by a building contractor in the Vaugirard neighbourhood, then by an architect, and then finally
by a contractor in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. That's where he met Amorelle.

‘Amorelle, born in the Berry, married his
boss's daughter. He and Campois became partners, and they both bought properties upstream
from Paris, where they founded their first sand quarry company. That was forty-five years
ago.'

Lucas and Torrence watched their former chief
with an amused smile as he listened impassively. It was as though, while Janvier was speaking,
Maigret's face had turned into that of the old days.

‘I found all that out from an elderly
employee who is vaguely related to a member of my wife's family. I knew him by sight and a
few little drinks were enough to get him to talk.'

‘Go on.'

‘It's the same story as with all big
companies. After a few years, Amorelle and Campois owned half a dozen sand quarries in the Haute
Seine area. Then, instead of transporting their sand by barge, they bought boats. Well, tugs.
Apparently it caused quite a stir at the time, because it was the ruin of the horse-drawn
barges. There were demonstrations outside their offices on the Île Saint-Louis
… Because the offices, which were not so grand
in those days, were already where they are today. Amorelle even received threatening letters. He
stood his ground and it all blew over.

‘Nowadays, it's a huge company. You
can't imagine the size of a business like that, and it leaves me flabbergasted. They
branched out into stone quarries. Then Amorelle and Campois bought shares in construction sites
in Rouen where they had their tug-boats built. They now have majority shareholdings in at least
ten businesses, shipping operations, quarries and shipbuilders, as well as civil engineering
firms, and in a cement company.'

‘What about the Maliks?'

‘I'm coming to them. My man told me
about them too. Apparently Malik number one—'

‘What do you mean by number one?'

‘The first to enter the company. Let me
check my notes. Ernest Malik, from Moulins.'

‘That's right.'

‘He wasn't in the business at all,
but was secretary to a high-up municipal councillor. That was how he met Amorelle and Campois.
Because of the tenders. Bribes and all that! … And he married the eldest daughter. That
was shortly after the suicide of the young Campois, who had been part of the firm.'

Maigret had withdrawn into himself and his eyes
had narrowed to slits. Lucas and Torrence exchanged looks again, amused to see the chief as they
had known him in his heyday, with his lips pursed around the stem of his
pipe, his fat thumb stroking the bowl and that hunching of the
shoulders.

‘That's about all, chief … Once
he'd joined the firm, Ernest Malik brought in his brother from some backwater. He was even
less from that world. Some say that he was just a small insurance agent from the Lyon area. Even
so, he married the second daughter and, since then, the Maliks have sat on all the boards of
directors. Because the firm consists of a myriad of different companies that are interconnected.
Apparently old Campois effectively has no authority. What's more, he was allegedly foolish
enough to sell a huge number of shares when he believed they were at their peak.

‘But, in opposition to the Maliks, there is
still the old Amorelle widow, who can't stand them. And it is she who still has – at
least it is thought she has – the majority shareholdings in the various companies. Company
gossip has it that to infuriate her sons-in-law, she is capable of disinheriting them as far as
the law allows.

‘That's all I managed to dig
up.'

A few more beers.

‘Will you have lunch with me,
Lucas?'

They had lunch together, like in the good old
days. Then Maigret took an omnibus to Luna Park, where at first he was disappointed not to find
Mimile in the menagerie.

‘He's bound to be in one of the local
cafés! You might find him in Le Cadran. Or perhaps at Léon's
,
unless
he's at the tobacconist's on the corner.'

Mimile was at the tobacconist's and Maigret
began by
buying him an aged
marc
brandy.
He was a man of indeterminate age, with colourless hair, one of those men whom life has worn
down like a coin to the point where they have no contours. You could never tell whether he was
drunk or sober, for he always had the same hazy look, the same nonchalant air, from dawn till
dusk.

‘What can I do for you, boss?'

He had a criminal record at the Préfecture,
quite a thick file. But he had calmed down years ago, and now did the occasional small favour
for his former foe at Quai des Orfèvres.

‘Can you leave Paris for twenty-four
hours?'

‘As long as I can find the Pole.'

‘What Pole?'

‘A fellow I know, but whose name is too
complicated for me to remember. He was with Cirque Amar for a long time and he could take care
of my animals. Let me telephone. A little drink first, eh boss?'

Two little drinks, three little drinks, a couple
of brief calls from the telephone booth and finally Mimile announced:

‘I'm your man!'

While Maigret explained what he wanted of him,
Mimile had the dismayed look of a clown being hit repeatedly over the head with a stick, his
rubbery lips repeating over and over again:

‘Well I don't know, I really
don't know … It's only because it's you who's asking me to do it
that I'm not reporting you to the police right away. Talk of a weird job, this is a weird
job, all right.'

‘Have you got it?'

‘I've got it. I've completely got it.'

‘Will you make sure you have everything you
need?'

‘And more! I know what I'm
doing.'

As a precaution, Maigret drew him a little map of
the place, checked the timetable and repeated his detailed instructions twice.

‘Everything has to be ready by ten
o'clock, I get it! You can count on me. As long as you're the one who takes the rap
if there's trouble.'

They boarded the same train, shortly after four
o'clock, pretending not to know each other, and Mimile, who had put an old bicycle
belonging to the owner of the menagerie in the luggage compartment, got off one station before
the Orsenne halt.

A few minutes later, Maigret calmly alighted,
like an old regular, and lingered to chat to the crossing-keeper, who doubled as
stationmaster.

He began by commenting that it was hotter in the
country than in Paris, and it was true, for the heat in the valley was suffocating that day.

‘Tell me, they must serve a reasonably
decent white wine in that café, do they?'

The café was fifty metres from the station,
and shortly the two men were sitting at a table with a bottle of white wine in front of them.
Soon there was a series of little glasses in front of them too, that succeeded each other at an
increasingly rapid rate.