Maigret Gets Angry Read Online Free PDF Page A

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