Maigret Gets Angry by Georges Simenon Page A

the investigation which I asked you to carry out in a moment of
understandable depression, given my age and the recent shock I have suffered.
    This may have led me to interpret certain tragic events in a way that is incompatible with
the facts, and I now regret having disturbed you in your retirement.
    Your presence at Orsenne only complicates an already painful situation and I am taking the
liberty of adding that the indiscretion with which you have set about the task I entrusted to
you and the clumsiness you have exhibited so far prompt me to demand your immediate
departure.
    I hope you will understand and not insist on upsetting a family under a great deal of
strain.
    During my thoughtless visit to Meung-sur-Loire, I left a bundle of ten thousand francs on
your table to cover your
initial expenses. You
will find enclosed a cheque for the same amount. Please consider this case over.
    Yours sincerely,
    Bernadette Amorelle
    The note was indeed in her large, pointed
handwriting, but it wasn’t her style. Maigret gave a wry grimace and put the letter and
the cheque in his pocket, convinced that the words he had just read were those of Ernest Malik
rather than the elderly lady.
    ‘I also have to tell you that Madame Jeanne
asked me earlier when you were planning to leave.’
    ‘Is she throwing me out?’
    Plump Raymonde, whose curves were both sturdy and
soft, blushed a deep red.
    ‘That’s not what I meant at all.
It’s just that she claims she’s going to be ill for a while. When she has one of her
attacks …’
    He glanced covertly at the bottles that were the
main reason for those attacks.
    ‘And then?’
    ‘The house is going to be sold any day
now.’
    ‘Once again!’ said Maigret
sardonically. ‘And then what, dear Raymonde?’
    ‘Don’t you worry about me. I’d
rather she’d told you herself. She says that it’s not proper for me to be alone in
the house with a man. She heard that the two of us ate together in the kitchen. She scolded
me.’
    ‘When does she want me to leave?’
    ‘Tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest.’
    ‘And there are no other inns around here,
are there?’
    ‘There’s one five kilometres
away.’
    ‘Well, Raymonde, we’ll see about that
tomorrow morning.’
    ‘The thing is I’ve got no food this
evening and I’ve been forbidden—’
    ‘I’ll eat up at the lock.’
    Which he did. There was a little grocer’s
shop for the bargemen where drinks were served, as there are beside most locks. A group of boats
was in the lock and the women, surrounded by their brood, were doing their shopping while the
men came in for a quick drink.
    All these people worked for Amorelle and
Campois.
    ‘Give me a bottle of white wine, a piece of
sausage and half a pound of bread,’ he ordered.
    There was no restaurant. He sat down at the end
of a table, and watched the water cascading over the lock gates. In the past, the barges used to
make their way slowly along the banks, drawn by heavy horses which a little girl, often barefoot
on the towpath, drove with a stick.
    Those were the barges on which the horses used to
sleep too that could still be seen on some canals but which, thanks to Amorelle and
Campois’ smoke-belching tug-boats and motorized barges, had disappeared from the Haute
Seine.
    The sausage was good, and the wine light, with a
slightly acidic taste. The grocery shop smelled of cinnamon and oil. The upstream lock gates now
open, the tug led its barges like chicks towards the top of the millrace and the lock-keeper
came to have a drink at Maigret’s table.
    ‘I thought you had to leave tonight.’
    ‘Who told you that?’
    The lock-keeper looked sheepish.
    ‘You know, if we listened to all the
rumours we heard …!’
    Malik was fighting back. He wasn’t wasting
any time. Had he come all the way to the lock himself?
    From a distance, Maigret could see, amid the
foliage, the roofs of the Campois’ and the Amorelles’ stately houses – that of
the elderly Madame