The conversation had switched abruptly from comedy to tragedy, but the curious thing was that the old lady’s tone remained that of comedy. She did not cry. There wasn’t the hint of a tear in her startlingly black eyes. Her entire sharp, twitchy being continued to be animated with the same vitality, which, in spite of everything, had something comical about it.
She forged on, pursuing her train of thought with no regard for customary niceties. She looked at Maigret without doubting for a moment that he was all hers, simply because that was what she wanted.
She had stolen away in secret, in a dubious automobile, with a kid who could barely drive, crossing the entire Beauce region in the heat of the day, forgoing lunch. Now, she was looking at the time on an old-fashioned necklace watch that she was wearing.
‘If you have any questions, be quick,’ she commanded, already poised to get up.
‘You don’t like your son-in-law, if I understand correctly.’
‘I hate him.’
‘Does your daughter hate him too? Is she unhappy with him?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’
‘Don’t you get on with your daughter?’
‘I prefer to ignore her. She has no spine, no blood in her veins.’
‘You say that seven days ago, in other words last Tuesday, your granddaughter drowned in the Seine.’
‘I most certainly did not. You’d better listen more carefully to what I tell you. Monita was found dead in the Seine, on the weir downstream.’
‘But she had no injuries and the doctor gave permission for the body to be buried?’
She merely looked at him with the utmost contempt, with perhaps a touch of pity.
‘You are the only person, I gather, who suspects that this death was not natural.’
This time, she rose.
‘Listen, inspector. You are reputed to be the cleverest policeman in the whole of France. At least the one who has had the most successes. Get dressed. Pack your bag. In half an hour I’m dropping you off at Les Aubrais station. By seven o’clock this evening, you’ll be at the Auberge de l’Ange. It would be best if we appeared not to know one another. Every day, at around midday, François will go and have a drink at L’Ange. He doesn’t usually drink, but I’ll order him to. So that we can communicate without arousing their suspicions.’
She took a few steps in the direction of the garden, determined no doubt to go for a stroll while waiting for him, despite the heat.
‘Hurry up.’
Then, turning around:
‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to have a drink brought out to François. He must be in the car. Wine mixed with water. Not pure wine, as he has to drive me home, and he’s not used to it.’
Madame Maigret, who must have overheard everything, was standing in the hall behind the door.
‘What are you doing, Maigret?’ she asked on seeing him head for the staircase with its copper banister knob.
It was cool inside the house, where there was a pleasant smell of wax polish, cut hay, ripening fruit and food simmering on the stove. It had taken Maigret fifty years to rediscover that smell, the smell of his childhood, of his parents’ house.
‘You’re not going to go with that mad old woman, are you?’
He had left his clogs by the door. He walked barefoot on the cool tiles, then up the polished oak stairs.
‘Give the driver a drink, then come upstairs and help me pack.’
There was a little twinkle in his eyes, a little twinkle he recognized as he shaved in cold water and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror.
‘I really don’t understand you,’ sighed his wife. ‘Only a couple of hours ago you couldn’t relax because of a few Colorado beetles.’
The train. He was hot. He sat in his corner puffing on his pipe. The grass on the embankments was yellow, the little stations with their tubs of flowers flashed past. In the haze of the heat a man waved his small red flag and blew a whistle, as children do, looking ridiculous.
Maigret was greying at the temples. He was a little calmer, a little heavier than he had been, but he did not feel that he had aged since retiring from the Police Judiciaire.
It was out of vanity, or rather a sort of modesty, that for the past two years he had systematically refused to take on any of the jobs he had been offered, especially by banks, insurance companies and jewellers, who brought him tricky cases.
At Quai des Orfèvres they would have said:
‘Poor old Maigret’s going back to his old ways, he’s already bored with gardening and fishing.’
And here he was, having allowed an old woman who had appeared through the little green door to twist him round her little finger.
He pictured her sitting upright and dignified in the old-fashioned limousine driven with perilous negligence by a François still wearing his gardener’s clothes who hadn’t had time to swap his clogs for a pair of shoes.
He heard her saying, after she had seen Madame Maigret waving from the doorstep as they left:
‘That’s your wife, isn’t it? She must have been offended when I took her for the housekeeper … And I thought you were the gardener.’
And the car set off on its daredevil journey, having dropped Maigret off at Les Aubrais station in Orléans, where François, in the wrong gear, had nearly reversed into a whole cluster of bicycles.
It was the holiday season. Parisians swarmed all over the countryside and the woods, driving fast cars on the roads and paddling canoes on the rivers, and there were fishermen in straw boaters at the foot of every willow tree.
Orsenne wasn’t a station, but a halt where the occasional train condescended to stop. Through the trees in the vast gardens the roofs of large houses could be glimpsed, and beyond them the Seine, broad and majestic at this spot.
Maigret would have found it hard to say why he had obeyed Bernadette Amorelle’s orders. Perhaps because of the Colorado beetles?
Suddenly, he too felt as if he were on holiday, just like the people he had sat among on the train, those he met walking down the steep path, those he saw everywhere since he had left Meung.
A different atmosphere from that of his garden enveloped him. He walked with a light step amid his new surroundings. At the bottom of the sloping path, he came to the Seine bordered by a track wide enough for vehicle traffic.
From the station, Maigret had followed the signs with arrows indicating the Auberge de l’Ange. He entered a garden with neglected arbours, and finally pushed open the glass door of a veranda where the air was suffocating because of the sunshine streaming in through the glazed sides.
‘Hello!’ he called.
There was only a cat on a cushion on the floor and some fishing rods in a corner.
‘Hello!’
He descended a step and found himself in a room where the copper pendulum of an ancient clock swung lazily to and fro, clicking with each movement.
‘There’s no one in this dump,’ he muttered.
Just then someone stirred, close to where he stood. He shuddered and in the gloom could just make out a person moving. It was a woman wrapped in blankets, no doubt this Jeanne whom Madame Amorelle had mentioned. Her dark, greasy hair hung down on either side of her face and there was a thick white compress around her neck.
‘We’re closed!’ she croaked.
‘I know, madame. I heard you were unwell.’
Ouch! The word ‘unwell’, ridiculously inadequate, was an insult.
‘I’m at death’s door, you mean! Nobody will believe it … People are horrible.’
Nevertheless, she finished shrugging off the blanket covering her legs and got to her feet, her thick ankles swollen over the tops of her felt slippers.
‘Who sent you here?’
‘It so happens I came here once before, more than twenty years ago, and this is a sort of pilgrimage that—’
‘So you knew Marius?’
‘Of course I did!’
‘Poor Marius … You know he died?’
‘So I heard. I found it hard to believe.’
‘Why? … He wasn’t in good health either … It’s three years since he died, and here I am, dragging on … Were you expecting to sleep here?’
She had spotted the suitcase that he had left in the doorway.
‘I was planning to spend a few days here, yes. As long as I’m not putting you to any trouble. In your condition—’
‘Have you come far?’
‘From the Orléans area.’
‘You don’t have a car?’
‘No. I came by train.’
‘And there are no trains back today. Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Raymonde! Raymonde! … I bet she’s off gallivanting again. I’m going to have to have words with her … If she’ll listen … Because she can be difficult. She’s the maid, but she takes advantage of my being unwell to do as she pleases and anyone would think she was the one in charge. Well, well, now what does he want around here?’
She was looking out of the window at a man whose footsteps could be heard crunching the gravel. Maigret watched him too and began to frown, for the newcomer vaguely reminded him of someone.
He was wearing tennis whites or country attire, white flannel trousers, a white jacket and shoes, but what struck Maigret was his black crepe armband.
He came in, as if he were a regular.
‘Hello, Jeanne.’
‘What do you want, Monsieur Malik?’
‘I came to ask if you—’
He stopped mid-sentence, looked straight at Maigret and broke into a smile, saying:
‘Jules! … Well I never! … What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I’m sorry?’
First of all, it had been years and years since anyone had called him Jules, to the extent that he had almost forgotten his first name. Even his wife was in the habit of calling him Maigret, which he found amusing.
‘Don’t you remember?’
‘No …’
Yet that ruddy face with well-defined features, a prominent nose, cold, steely eyes, was no stranger to him. The name Malik too, when Madame Amorelle had uttered it, had rung a bell somewhere in the back of his mind.
‘Ernest.’
‘Ernest who?’
Hadn’t Bernadette Amorelle spoken of a Charles Malik?
‘The Moulins lycée.’
Maigret had been a pupil at the lycée in Moulins for three years when his father was the estate manager at a chateau in the region. Still …
Curiously, although his memory was unreliable, he was certain that it was an unpleasant recollection that this well-groomed face, this man brimming with self-confidence, stirred in him. What was more, he did not like his over-friendly manner. He had always had a horror of familiarity.
‘The Tax Collector.’
‘I’m with you, yes … I would never have recognized you.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Me? I—’
Malik burst out laughing.
‘We’ll talk about it later … I knew perfectly well that Detective Chief Inspector Maigret was none other than my old pal Jules. Do you remember the English teacher? … No need to make up a room, Jeanne. My friend will stay at the house.’
‘No!’ protested Maigret, annoyed.
‘Eh? What did you say?’
‘I said that I’d stay here … It’s already been arranged with Jeanne.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I insist.’
‘Because of the old woman?’
‘What old woman?’
A mischievous smile hovered on Ernest Malik’s thin lips, the smile of the schoolboy he had once been.
He was nicknamed the Tax Collector because his father was the tax collector in Moulins. He was very thin, with a hatchet face and light-coloured eyes, of an unappealing grey.
‘Don’t worry, Jules. You’ll understand later … Tell us, Jeanne, don’t be afraid to speak your mind. Is my mother-in-law mad, yes or no?’
And Jeanne, gliding noiselessly in her slippers, muttered half-heartedly:
‘I’d rather not get involved in your family affairs.’
She was already viewing Maigret less sympathetically, if not with distrust.
‘Well, are you staying here or are you going with him?’
‘I’m staying.’
Malik was still looking at his former schoolmate mockingly, as if this were all a prank being played on Maigret.
‘You’re going to have a lot of fun, I assure you … I can’t think of anywhere more lively than the Auberge de l’Ange. You saw the angel, you were taken in!’
Did he suddenly recall that he was in mourning? In any case, his manner became more solemn as he added:
‘If all this weren’t so sad, we’d have a good laugh, the two of us … Come up to the house at least. Yes, you must! You have to … I’ll explain … I’ll tell you over an aperitif and you’ll get the picture.’
Maigret was still in two minds. He stood rooted to the spot, massive compared to his companion, who was the same height as him but unusually slim.
‘I’ll come,’ he eventually said, somewhat reluctantly.
‘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.
2. The Tax Collector’s Second Son
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.
Maigret Gets Angry Page 2