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?�
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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.’
The dining room was vast and sumptuous. The table was of pink-veined marble and the cutlery was placed on little individual table mats.
‘In short, from what the papers have said about you, you had quite a successful career in the police? Strange profession. I’ve often wondered what makes a person become a policeman, at what point and how they feel that is their vocation. Because, well—’
His wife was more absent than ever. Maigret watched Jean-Claude, who the minute he thought no one was looking at him, scrutinized the inspector closely.
The young man was as cold as the marble of the table. Aged around nineteen or twenty, he already had his father’s self-assurance. It would take a lot to shake him, and yet there was a sense of unease about him.
They didn’t speak of Monita, who had died the previous week. Perhaps they preferred not to discuss her in front of the butler.
‘You see, Maigret,’ Malik was saying, ‘at school, you were all blind, the lot of you, and you had no idea what you were saying when you called me the Tax Collector. There were a few of us, you remember, who weren’t well off, and were more or less excluded by the sons of the local squires and the wealthy. Some boys were upset by this, but others, like you, were indifferent.
‘They nicknamed me the Tax Collector out of contempt, and yet that’s where my strength lies.
‘If you knew everything that passes through a tax collector’s hands! I’ve seen the dirty linen of the outwardly most reputable families … I’ve witnessed the dodgy dealings of those who grew rich. I’ve seen those who rose up and those who fell, even those who tumbled to the very bottom, and I began to study the way it all worked …
‘The social mechanism if you like. Why people rise and why they fall.’
He spoke with a scornful pride, in the sumptuous dining room whose decor was reflected in the windows, echoing his success.
‘I’m one of the people who rose …’
The food was undoubtedly of the highest quality, but Maigret had no liking for those complicated little dishes with sauces invariably studded with truffle shavings or crayfish tails. The butler kept leaning over to fill one of the glasses lined up in front of him.
The sky was turning green on one side, a cold, almost grass green, and red on the other, with purple streaks and scattered clouds of an innocent white. A few canoes lingered on the Seine, where the occasional fish would leap up, making a series of slow loops.
Malik must have had keen hearing, as keen as Maigret, who also heard. And yet it was barely audible, the silence of the evening alone magnified the slightest sound.
A scratching at first, as if at a first-floor window, from the side where, earlier, before dinner, there had been outbursts of shouting. Then a faint thud coming from the garden.
Malik and his son looked at each other. Madame Malik hadn’t batted an eyelid but merely carried on raising her fork to her mouth.
Malik whipped off his napkin, put it on the table and raced outside, lithe and silent in his crepe-soled shoes.
The butler seemed no more surprised by this incident than the mistress of the house. But Jean-Claude, on the other hand, had turned slightly red. And now he was casting around for something to say. He opened his mouth and stammered a few words:
‘My father is still spry for his age, isn’t he?’
With exactly the same smile as his father. In other words:
‘Something’s going on, obviously, but it’s none of your business. Just carry on eating and don’t take any notice of the rest.’
‘He regularly beats me at tennis, even though I’m not too bad a player. He’s an extraordinary man.’
Why did Maigret repeat, staring at his plate:
‘Extraordinary …’
Someone had been locked in up there, in one of the bedrooms, that was clear. And that someone could not have been happy to be shut up like that, since, before dinner, Malik had had to go upstairs to reprimand him.
That same someone had tried to take advantage of the mealtime, when the entire family was in the dining room, to run away. He had jumped on to the soft flower bed planted with hortensias that surrounded the house.
It was that dull sound of someone landing on the earth that Malik had heard at the same time as Maigret.
And he had raced outside. It must be serious, serious enough to make him behave in a way that was strange, to say the least.
‘Does your brother play tennis too?’ asked Maigret, looking up and gazing at the young man opposite.
‘Why do you ask that? No, my brother isn’t sporty.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Sixteen … He’s just failed his baccalaureate, and my father is furious.’
‘Is that why he locked him in his room?’
‘Probably … Georges-Henry and my father don’t always get along too well.’
‘You on the other hand must get along very well with your father, is that right?’
‘Fairly well.’
Maigret happened to glance at the hand of the mistress of the house and was astonished to see that she was gripping her knife so hard that her knuckles had a bluish tinge.
The three of them sat there, waiting, while the butler changed the plates once again. The air was stiller than ever, so still that you could hear the slightest rustle of the leaves in the trees.
When he had regained his footing in the garden, Georges-Henry had set off at a run. In which direction? Not towards the Seine, for he would have been seen. Behind the house, at the bottom of the garden, was the railway line. To the left were the grounds of the Amorelle residence.
The father must be running after his son. And Maigret could not help smiling as he imagined Malik, doubtless driven by rage, forced into this thankless chase.
They had had the cheese, and the dessert. It was the moment when they should have left the table and moved into the drawing room or on to the terrace, where it was still daylight. Gla
ncing at his watch, Maigret saw that it was twelve minutes since the master of the house had rushed outside.
Madame Malik did not rise. Her son was trying discreetly to remind her of her duty when footsteps were heard in the adjacent hall.
It was Malik, with his smile, a slightly tense smile all the same, and the first thing Maigret noticed was that he had changed his trousers. This pair was white flannel too, but clearly fresh out of the wardrobe, the crease still immaculate.
Had Malik got caught in some brambles during his chase? Or had he waded across a stream?
He hadn’t had time to go far. His reappearance was still a record, for he was not out of breath, his grey hair had been carefully slicked back, and nothing in his dress was out of place.
‘I have a rascal of—’
The son took after his father, for he interrupted him with all the naturalness in the world:
‘Georges-Henry again, I’ll bet? I was just telling the inspector that he failed his baccalaureate and that you had locked him in his room to make him study.’
Malik didn’t falter, showed no satisfaction, no admiration for this adroit rescue. And yet it was a smart move. They had just sent the ball back and forth as deftly as in a game of tennis.
‘No thank you, Jean,’ said Malik to the butler, who was trying to serve him. ‘If madame so wishes, we’ll go out on to the terrace.’
Then to his wife:
‘Unless you feel tired? … In which case my friend Maigret won’t be offended if you retire. With your permission, Jules? … These past few days have been a great strain for her. She was very fond of her niece.’
What was it that grated? The words were ordinary, the tone banal. And yet Maigret had the sense that he was uncovering, or rather getting a whiff of, something disturbing or menacing behind each sentence.
Erect now in her white dress, Madame Malik gazed at them, and Maigret, without knowing exactly why, would not have been surprised if she had collapsed on the black and white marble floor tiles.
Maigret Gets Angry Page 3
