Free Maigret Gets Angry by Georges Simenon

the first pipe, the best
– he went downstairs and boomed a cheerful ‘Good morning’.
    ‘Tell me, Raymonde, you who know every
house around here—’
    ‘I do and I don’t.’
    ‘Fine. At the bottom of Ernest
Malik’s garden, on one side there’s the gardeners’ cottage.’
    ‘Yes. The driver and the servants sleep there too. Not the
maids. They sleep in the house.’
    ‘But what about on the other side, close to
the railway embankment?’
    ‘There’s nothing.’
    ‘There’s a very low building. A sort
of elongated hut.’
    ‘The top kennel,’ she said.
    ‘What’s the top kennel?’
    ‘In the old days, long before I came here,
the two gardens were one. It was the Amorelles’ estate. Old Amorelle was a hunter. There
were two kennels, the bottom one, as it was called, for the guard dogs, and the top one for the
hunting hounds.’
    ‘Doesn’t Ernest Malik
hunt?’
    ‘Not here, there isn’t enough game
for him. He has a house and dogs in Sologne.’
    But something was bothering him.
    ‘Is the building in good repair?’
    ‘I don’t remember. I haven’t
been in the garden for a long time. There was a cellar where—’
    ‘Are you certain there was a
cellar?’
    ‘There used to be one, in any case. I know
because people used to say that there was a hidden treasure in the garden. Before Monsieur
Amorelle built his place, forty years ago, or perhaps more, there was already a sort of little
ruined chateau. It was rumoured that at the time of the Revolution, the people from the chateau
hid their valuables somewhere in the grounds. At one point, Monsieur Amorelle tried to find it
and called in water diviners. They all said that the search should focus on the cellar of the
top kennel.
    ‘None of that is of any importance,’ muttered Maigret.
‘What matters is that there is a cellar. And it is in that cellar, my dear Raymonde, that
poor Georges-Henry must be locked up.’
    He suddenly looked at her differently.
    ‘What time is there a train for
Paris?’
    ‘In twenty minutes. After that there
isn’t another one until 12.39. Others pass through, but they don’t stop at
Orsenne.’
    He was already halfway up the stairs. Without
stopping to shave, he got dressed and a little later could be seen striding towards the
station.
    Her employer started thumping on the floor of her
room, and Raymonde too went upstairs.
    ‘Has he gone?’ asked old Jeanne, who
was still lying in her damp sheets.
    ‘He’s just left in a
hurry.’
    ‘Without saying anything?’
    ‘No, madame.’
    ‘Did he pay? Help me out of bed.’
    ‘He didn’t pay, madame, but he left
his suitcase and all his things.’
    ‘Oh!’ said Jeanne, disappointed and
possibly worried.

5.
Maigret’s Accomplice
    Paris was wonderfully vast and empty. The
cafés around Gare de Lyon smelled of beer and croissants dunked in coffee. Among other
things, Maigret enjoyed a memorably cheerful quarter of an hour in a barber’s shop on
Boulevard de la Bastille, for no reason, simply because it was Paris on an August morning, and
perhaps too because shortly he would be going to shake hands with his old friends.
    ‘You’re obviously just back from a
holiday, you’ve really caught the sun.’
    It was true. The previous day, probably, while he
was running around Orsenne to check that Georges-Henry hadn’t left the village.
    It was funny how, from a distance, this affair
lost its substance. But now, freshly shaven, the back of his neck bare, a little smudge of
talcum powder behind his ears, Maigret clambered on to the running board of an omnibus and a few
minutes later walked through the gates of the Police Judiciaire.
    Here too, there was a holiday atmosphere and the
air in the deserted corridors, where all the windows were wide open, had a smell he knew well. A
lot of empty offices. In his or rather his former office, he found Lucas, who was dwarfed by the
large space. Lucas leaped to his feet, as if
ashamed to be caught out sitting in the chair of his