Maigret Gets Angry (13 page)

‘Where are the others?'

‘Her second son-in-law, Charles, is in the
drawing room with his wife. The deputy public prosecutor and the examining magistrate are
questioning them. They claim they know nothing, that the old lady had been acting strangely for
a while.'

Maigret lumbered up the stairs and, something he
rarely
did, he emptied his pipe and put it in his
pocket before knocking at the door, where a second gendarme stood guard. It was a simple
gesture, but it was a sort of homage to Bernadette Amorelle.

‘What is it?'

‘Detective Chief Inspector
Maigret.'

‘Let him come in.'

She had been left alone with her maid and, when
Maigret went in, she was sitting at a pretty little writing desk, busy penning a letter.

‘It's for my lawyer,' she said,
apologizing. ‘Leave us, Mathilde.'

The sun was streaming in through the three
windows of this bedroom where the old woman had spent so many years. There was a joyful glint in
her eyes and even – goodness knows if the moment might seem incongruous – a sort of
playfulness.

She was pleased with herself. She was proud of
what she had done. She had a slightly mocking attitude towards the burly inspector who, unlike
her, would not have been capable of finishing things off.

‘There was no other solution, was
there?' she said. ‘Sit down. You know that I hate talking to someone who is
standing.'

Then, rising herself, blinking a little because
of the dazzling sun in her eyes:

‘Last night, when I finally got Aimée
to tell me everything …'

He made the mistake of registering surprise. A
flicker. A start at the mention of Aimée, Charles Malik's wife.
Madame Amorelle was as clever as Maigret and understood.

‘I should have realized that you
didn't know that. Where is Georges-Henry?'

‘At my place, with my wife.'

‘At your house in Meung?'

And she smiled at the memory of Maigret, whom she
had mistaken for the gardener when she had gone to fetch him, having entered through the little
green garden door.

‘In Paris, in my apartment in Place des
Vosges.'

‘Does he know?'

‘I told him before coming here.'

‘What did he say?'

‘Nothing. He's calm.'

‘Poor boy! I wonder how he found the
courage not to say anything. Don't you think it's funny, going to prison at my age?
These gentlemen, by the way, are very kind. At first, they wouldn't believe me. They
thought I was confessing to protect the real culprit. They nearly demanded proof.

‘It went very well. I don't know
exactly what time it was. I had my pistol in my bag. I went over there. There was a light on the
first floor. I rang the bell. Malik asked me what I wanted from the window.

‘“To talk to you,” I
answered.

‘I'm convinced he was frightened. He
asked me to come back the next day, claiming that he wasn't feeling well, that he was
suffering from neuralgia.

‘“If you don't come down right
away,” I shouted, “I'll have you arrested.”

‘In the end he came down, in his pyjamas and dressing gown.
Have you seen him?'

‘Not yet.'

‘I insisted: “Let's go into
your study. Where is your wife?”

‘“She's in bed. I think
she's asleep.”

‘“Good.”

‘“Mother, are you sure this
can't wait until tomorrow?”

‘And do you know what I replied?

‘“That won't do you any good. A
few hours more, or less …”

‘He tried to follow. He was as cold as a
pike. I've always said he was like a pike, but people laughed at me.

‘He opened the door to his study.

‘“Sit down,” he said to me.

‘“There's no need.”

‘Had he guessed what I was about to do?
I'm convinced he had, because he automatically glanced at the desk drawer where he usually
keeps his gun. If I'd given him the time, I'll wager that he would have defended
himself and he would probably have shot first.

‘“Listen, Malik,” I went on.
“I know about all your vile deeds. Roger is dead (Roger was Campois' son), your
daughter is dead, your son …”'

Maigret had opened his eyes wide at the words
your daughter
. He had finally understood and he looked at the old woman with a
stupefaction that he no longer sought to hide.

‘“Since there's no other way
out and no one had the guts to do it, it may as well be an elderly grandmother who takes care of
it. Goodbye, Malik.”

‘And as I said the last word, I fired. He was three paces
away from me. He clutched his stomach, because I shot too low. I squeezed the trigger two more
times.

‘He fell, and Laurence came rushing in,
half-crazy.

‘“There,” I said to her.
“Now we can live in peace and we can all breathe at last.”

‘Poor Laurence. I think it was a relief for
her too. Aimée's the only one to shed any tears for him.

‘“Call a doctor if you like, but I
don't think there's any point,” I continued. “He's well and truly
dead! And if he weren't, I'd finish him off with a bullet through the brain. Now, I
suggest you come and spend the rest of the night at our house. There's no need to call the
servants.”

‘We both left. Aimée came running to
meet us, while Charles stood in the doorway looking shifty.

‘“What have you done, Mother? Why is
Laurence …?”

‘I told Aimée. She suspected as much,
after the conversation we had just had in my room. Charles didn't dare open his mouth. He
followed us like a big dog.

‘I came back here and telephoned the
gendarmerie. They were very courteous.'

‘So,' murmured Maigret after a
silence, ‘it's Aimée.'

‘I'm just an old fool, I should have
guessed. I'd always had my suspicions about Roger Campois, for example. At least that it
was Malik who had got him into the habit of gambling.

‘I was so thrilled, at the time, that he
would be our son-in-law! He was more brilliant than the others. He was able to entertain me. My
husband had the tastes of a petty bourgeois, a country bumpkin even, it was Malik who
taught us how to live in style, who took us to
Deauville. Before that, I had never set foot in a casino and I remember he gave me the first
chips to play roulette.'

‘He married Laurence—'

‘Because Aimée was too young,
wasn't she? Because she was only fifteen at the time? If Aimée had been two years
older, Roger Campois might perhaps have lived. He would have married the older daughter and
Malik the younger.'

They could hear people coming and going down
below. Through the windows they saw a group heading for the Maliks' house, where the body
still lay.

‘Aimée truly loved him,' sighed
Madame Amorelle. ‘She still loves him, in spite of everything. She hates me now, for what
I did last night.'

The skeleton in the cupboard! If there had only
been, in that metaphorical cupboard, just the skeleton of the shy Roger Campois!

‘When did he think of bringing his brother
from Lyon to marry your youngest daughter?'

‘Perhaps two years after his own marriage.
And I was naive! I could see that Aimée was only interested in her brother-in-law, that she
was much more in love with him than her sister was. Strangers mistook her for his wife, and when
we travelled together, she was the one, despite her young age, that they called madame.

‘Laurence wasn't jealous. She was
blind to it, was happy to live in the shadow of her husband, whose personality crushed
her.'

‘So Monita was the daughter of Ernest
Malik?'

‘I found out yesterday. But there are other things that, at
my age, I'd rather not know.'

This brother who was brought from Lyon, where he
was just a low-wage earner and then married off to a rich heiress.

Did he know, at the time?

Probably! He's spineless, meek! He got
married because he was told to get married. He acted as a screen! In exchange for playing the
part of husband, he shared the Maliks' fortune with his brother.

So Ernest had two wives, and children in both
homes.

And that was what Monita had found out. That was
what had overwhelmed her with disgust and driven her to drown herself.

‘I don't know exactly how she
discovered the truth, but, since last night, I have an idea. Last week, I had the lawyer come to
change my will.'

‘Maître Ballu, I
know—'

‘I had not been getting along with the
Maliks for a long time, and funnily enough it was Charles I hated the most. Why, I don't
know … I'd always found him underhand. I was close to thinking that he was worse
than his brother.

‘I wanted to disinherit the pair of them,
and leave my entire fortune to Monita.

‘That same evening, Aimée admitted
yesterday during the scene we had, Ernest came to see Charles to discuss the matter.

‘They were very worried about this new
will, whose contents they didn't know. They spent a long time talking in Charles'
study on the ground floor. Aimée went up to
bed. It was only much later, when her husband came up to bed that
she said:

‘“Hasn't Monita come
back?”

‘“Why do you say that?”

‘“She didn't come up and say
good night to me as usual.”

‘Charles went into the girl's room.
She wasn't there and the bed hadn't been slept in. He went downstairs and found her
in the lounge, ashen-faced, sitting in the dark as if frozen.

‘“What are you doing here?”

‘She appeared not to hear. She consented to
go upstairs.

‘I am convinced, now, that she had
overheard everything. She knew. And the next morning, before anyone was up, she went out as if
going for her swim, which she often did.

‘Except that she didn't intend to
swim.'

‘And she'd had the opportunity to
speak to her cousin … her cousin whom she loved and who is, in fact, her
brother.'

There was a timid knock at the door. Bernadette
Amorelle opened it and found herself facing the chief inspector from Melun.

‘The car is downstairs,' he
announced, not without some embarrassment, for it was the first time in his career that he had
had to arrest an eighty-two-year-old woman.

‘In five minutes,' she answered, as
if she were speaking to her butler. ‘We still have a few things to say to each other, my
friend Maigret and I.'

When she went back to Maigret, she commented,
demonstrating her astonishing alertness:

‘Why haven't you smoked your pipe? You know very well
that you can. I came to fetch you. I didn't know what was afoot. At first I wondered
whether Monita had been killed because I had just made her my heiress. I confess to you –
but this is none of their business, there are things that are none of their business –
that I thought that they might want to poison me. There, inspector. There's still the boy.
I'm pleased that you took care of him, for I can't get the idea out of my head that
he would have ended up like Monita.

‘Put yourself in their shoes … At
their age, suddenly finding out …

‘In the boy's case, it was even more
serious. He wanted to know. Boys are more enterprising than girls. He knew that his father kept
his private papers in a little cupboard in his bedroom and that he always kept the key on
him.

‘He forced the cupboard open, the day after
Monita's death. It was Aimée who told me. Ernest Malik told her everything, he knew
he could trust her, that she was worse than a slave.

‘Malik realized the cupboard had been
broken into and he immediately suspected his son.'

‘What documents could he have found?'
sighed Maigret.

‘I burned them last night. I asked Laurence
to go and fetch them, but Laurence didn't dare go back into the house where her
husband's body lay.

‘Aimée went.

‘There were letters from her, little notes
they passed to each other, arranging to meet.

‘There were receipts signed by Roger
Campois. Not
only did Malik lend him money to
sink him further, but he got him loans from money-lenders, which he then redeemed.

‘He kept all that.'

And, with contempt:

‘Despite everything, he had the soul of a
book-keeper!'

She did not understand why Maigret corrected her
as he heaved himself to his feet:

‘Of a tax collector!'

It was he who saw her into the car, and she
extended her arm through the window to shake his hand.

‘You're not too annoyed with
me?' she asked as the police car pulled away, taking her to her prison.

And he never knew if she meant for having dragged
him away from the peace and quiet of his garden in Meung-sur-Loire for a few days or for firing
the gun.

There had been a skeleton in the cupboard for
many years, and it was the old lady who had taken it upon herself to clean things up, like those
grandmothers who can't bear the house to be dirty.