Maigret Gets Angry Page 7

  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.

  5. Maigret’s Accomplice

  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�
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  ‘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 co
ntours. 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.