Maigret Gets Angry by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-04-11T10:57:47+00:00

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

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.