Read Online Maigret Gets Angry by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online Page A

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