The Misty Harbour (6 page)

‘Mebbe so. Not for
long …'

‘Didn't Joris forbid you to
set foot in his house?'

‘Bunk!'

‘What do you mean by
that?'

‘Nothing. It's all
rubbish … You finished with me now?'

Maigret couldn't really charge him
with anything. Besides, he had no desire at all to arrest him.

‘Finished
for today.'

Louis spoke with his skipper in Breton,
rose, emptied his glass and touched his cap in farewell.

‘What did he say to you?'
asked the inspector.

‘That I didn't need him on
the Caen run, so he'll rejoin me back here after I've delivered our
cargo.'

‘Where is he going?'

‘He didn't tell
me.'

Delcourt hurried to look out of the
hatchway, listened for a little while and returned.

‘He's over on the
dredger.'

‘The what?'

‘You didn't notice the two
dredgers in the canal? They're simply moored there for the moment. They have
sleeping quarters there. Sailors would rather kip on an old boat than in a
hotel.'

‘Another round?'

And after looking intently about the
cabin, Maigret made himself more comfortable.

‘What was your first port of call
after leaving Ouistreham, on the 16th of last month?'

‘Southampton. Delivering a cargo
of stone.'

‘Then?'

‘Boulogne.'

‘You haven't been up to
Norway since then?'

‘I've been there only once,
six years ago.'

‘Did you know Joris
well?'

‘Us, we know everyone, you see.
From La Rochelle to Rotterdam. Cheers! … In fact, this here is good Dutch
gin I got in Holland. Cigar?'

He took a box from
a drawer.

‘Cigars that cost ten cents over
there. One franc!'

They were fat, smoothly rolled with gold
bands.

‘It's strange,' sighed
Maigret. ‘I was told that Joris definitely came aboard your boat when you were
in the outer harbour, and that someone else was with him.'

Lannec was busy cutting the tip of his
cigar, however, and when he looked up, his face wore no expression.

‘I wouldn't have any reason
to hide that.'

Outside, someone jumped on to the bridge
with a loud thud. A head appeared at the top of the hatchway ladder.

‘The steamer from Le Havre's
coming in!'

Delcourt sprang up and turned to
Maigret.

‘I have to clear the lock for her,
so the
Saint-Michel
will be moving out.'

‘I assume I may continue my
run?' added the captain.

‘To Caen?'

‘Yes. The canal doesn't go
anywhere else! We'll probably be finished unloading by tomorrow
evening.'

They all seemed like honest men, all had
frank, open faces, and yet everything about them rang false! But so subtly that
Maigret couldn't have said what or where the trouble was.

Lannec, Delcourt, Joris, everyone at the
Buvette de la Marine, they appeared to be the salt of the earth. And even Big Louis,
the ex-con, hadn't made such a bad impression!

‘Don't get up, Lannec,
I'll cast off for you,' said the harbourmaster, and went topside to
clear the hawser from its bollard. Célestin, the old fellow who had stuck his head
up out of the fo'c'sle,
now hobbled across the deck muttering, ‘That Big Louis, he's
'scaped off again!'

And after letting out both the jib and
flying jib, he poled the schooner off with a boat hook. Maigret leaped ashore just
in time. The mist had definitely turned to rain, making the men at work, the harbour
lights and the steamer from Le Havre, now whistling with impatience in the lock,
visible once again.

Winches clanked; water raced through the
open sluices. The schooner's mainsail blocked the view up the canal. From the
lock bridge, Maigret could make out the two dredgers, great ugly boats with
complicated shapes and grim upper works encrusted with rust. He made his way over
there with great care because the surrounding area was strewn with junk, old cables,
anchors and scrap iron. He was walking along a plank used as a gangway when he saw a
light glimmering through a split seam in the hulk.

‘Big Louis!' he called.

The light vanished immediately.
Louis' head and torso emerged from a hatchway missing its cover.

‘What d'you want?'

But as he spoke something was moving
below him, in the belly of the dredger. A vague shape was slipping away with the
utmost caution. The sheet iron was echoing with knocks and bumps …

‘Who's that with
you?'

‘With me? Here?'

When Maigret tried to look around, he
almost plummeted into a metre or so of slimy mud, stagnating in the hold of the
dredger.

Someone had
definitely been there, but he was long gone: the banging noises were now coming from
a different part of the vessel. And the inspector wasn't sure where he might
safely walk. He was completely unfamiliar with the mess decks of this apocalyptic
boat – and now banged his head smartly against one of the dredger's
buckets.

‘You've got nothing to
say?'

An indistinct grunt. This seemed to
mean, ‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

To search the two dredgers at night, the
inspector would have needed ten men – men who knew their way around them, too!
Maigret beat a retreat. The rain made voices carry surprisingly far, and he could
hear someone in the harbour saying, ‘… lying right across the
channel.'

He followed the voice. It was the first
mate of the steamer from Le Havre, who was pointing out something to Delcourt. And
the harbourmaster seemed quite disconcerted when Maigret showed up.

‘It's hard to believe
they'd lose it and never notice,' the mate went on.

‘Lose what?' asked the
inspector.

‘The dinghy.'

‘What dinghy?'

‘This one here, that we bumped
into just inside the jetties. It belongs to the schooner that was ahead of us. Her
name is on the stern:
Saint-Michel
.'

‘It must have come loose,'
observed Delcourt dismissively. ‘That happens!'

‘It did not come loose, for the
very good reason that in
this weather, the
dinghy would not have been in tow, but on deck!'

And the lock workers, still at their
posts, were trying to hear every word.

‘We'll see about it in the
morning. Leave the dinghy here.'

Turning to Maigret, Delcourt gave him a
crooked smile.

‘You can see what an odd sort of
job I have,' he murmured. ‘There's always
something …'

Maigret did not smile back, however. In
fact, he replied with the utmost gravity.

‘Listen: if you don't see me
anywhere tomorrow morning at seven, or perhaps eight, then telephone the public
prosecutor at Caen.'

‘But what …'

‘Goodnight! And make sure that the
dinghy does stay here.'

To lay a false trail, he walked off
along the jetty, hands in his pockets, his overcoat collar turned up. The sea
rumbled and sighed beneath his feet, ahead of him, on his right, on his left. The
air he breathed into his lungs smelled strongly of iodine.

When almost at the end of the jetty, he
bent down to pick something up.

At dawn Maigret plodded back to the Hôtel
de l'Univers in his sodden overcoat with a parched throat, having smoked pipe
after pipe. The hotel seemed deserted but he found the hotel-owner in the kitchen,
lighting the fire.

‘You were out all
night?'

‘Yes. Would you bring some coffee
up to my room as soon as possible? Oh, and is there any way I can have a
bath?'

‘I'll have to fire up the
boiler.'

‘Then don't
bother.'

A grey morning with the inevitable fog,
but it was a light, luminous one. Maigret's eyelids were stinging, and his
head felt empty as he stood at the open window in his room, waiting for the
coffee.

A strange night. He had done nothing
sensational. Made no great discoveries. Yet he had made progress in his
understanding of the crime. Many nuggets of information had been added to his
growing store.

The arrival of the
Saint-Michel
. Lannec's behaviour. Was the skipper's attitude
ambiguous? Dubious? Not even that! Yet he was a slippery fellow. But Delcourt as
well was sometimes less than forthcoming. They all were, if they had anything to do
with this harbour! Big Louis, for example, was definitely acting suspiciously. He
hadn't gone on to
Caen with the
schooner. He was holed up on an empty dredger. And Maigret was sure that he
wasn't there alone.

Then he had learned that the
Saint-Michel
had lost its dinghy shortly before entering the harbour.
And at the end of a jetty, he had made a most unusual find: a gold fountain-pen.

It was a wooden jetty supported by
pilings. At its far end, near the green light, an iron ladder went down to the
water. The dinghy had been found in that area. In other words, the
Saint-Michel
had been carrying someone who did not want to be seen in
Ouistreham. After landing in the dinghy, this passenger had let it drift away, and,
as he had leaned over at the top of the ladder to hoist himself on to the jetty, the
gold fountain-pen had slipped from his pocket.

The man had taken refuge in the dredger,
where Louis was to join him.

This scenario was just about airtight.
There could be no other interpretation of the facts.

Conclusion: an unknown man was hiding in
Ouistreham. He had not come here without a reason: he had a job to do. And he
belonged to a milieu in which men used gold fountain-pens!

So: not a sailor. Not a
tramp … The expensive pen suggested clothing of equally good quality. The
man must be a gentleman – a ‘gent' as they say in the
countryside … And off-season, in Ouistreham, a ‘gent' would
not pass unnoticed. He would have to lie low all day in the dredger. But
wouldn't he come out at night to accomplish whatever he had come here for?

Maigret had therefore resigned himself,
grumpily, to mounting guard. A job for a junior inspector! Spending
hours in the drizzle peering at the inordinately
complicated shadows of the dredger.

Nothing had happened. No one had come
ashore. Day had dawned, and now the inspector was furious at not being able to enjoy
a hot bath. Contemplating his bed, he considered snatching a few hours'
rest.

The hotel-owner came in with his
coffee.

‘You're not going to
sleep?'

‘I haven't decided yet.
Would you take a telegram to the post office for me?'

He was summoning Lucas, a trusted
colleague, for Maigret had no desire to keep an eye on the dredger again that
night.

The window looked out on the harbour,
Joris' cottage and the sandbanks now emerging as the ebb tide left the
bay.

While the inspector wrote his telegram,
the hotel-owner looked outside, remarking off-handedly, ‘Well! Captain
Joris' maid is going for a walk …'

Looking up, Maigret saw Julie, who
closed the front gate and set out briskly for the beach.

‘What's over
there?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Where can one go? Are there any
houses?'

‘Nothing at all! Only the beach,
but no one goes there because it's interrupted by breakwaters and mud
sinkholes.'

‘No path or road?'

‘No. You reach the mouth of the
Orne, and the banks are marshy all along the river. Wait, now … There are
some duck blinds there for hunting.'

Maigret was already heading out of the
door with a
determined frown. He strode
across the lock bridge, and by the time he reached the beach Julie was just a few
hundred metres ahead of him.

The place was deserted. The only living
creatures in the morning mist were the gulls, shrieking as they flew. To avoid being
seen, the inspector went up into the dunes on his right.

The air was cool and the sea, calm. The
white hem of the surf subsided with a rhythm like breathing and the crunching of
broken shells.

Julie was not out for a walk. She
advanced quickly, holding her little black coat tightly closed. She hadn't had
time, since Joris' death, to order mourning clothes, so she was wearing all
her black or dark things: an old-fashioned coat, woollen stockings, a hat with a
downturned brim.

She staggered along, her feet sinking
into the soft sand. Twice she turned around but did not see Maigret, hidden by the
rolling dunes.

About a kilometre from Ouistreham,
however, she almost spotted him when she went abruptly off to the right.

Maigret had thought she was making for a
duck blind, but there was nothing like that out in the landscape of sand and coarse
beach grass.

Nothing but a tumbledown structure
missing one entire wall. Facing the ocean, five metres in from the high-tide line,
there was a small chapel, probably constructed a few centuries earlier.

It had a semicircular vault, and the
missing wall allowed Maigret to judge the thickness of the others: almost one metre
of solid stone.

Julie went inside to the back of the
chapel, and the
inspector could now hear
small objects being moved, almost certainly shells, from the sound of them.

He moved forwards cautiously and could
see a small recess in the far wall, closed with a metal grille. Beneath was a kind
of tiny altar, over which hovered Julie, looking for something.

She whipped around and recognized
Maigret, who had had no time to hide.

‘What are you doing here?'
she exclaimed.

‘And you?'

‘I … I've come to
pray to Notre-Dame-des-Dunes …'

She was nervous, and everything about
her showed that she was hiding something. Her red eyes betrayed an almost sleepless
night, and two locks of untidy hair stuck out from beneath her hat.

‘Ah! This place is a Lady
chapel?'

And indeed, in the niche behind the
grille was a statue of the Virgin, so old and eaten away by time that it was almost
unrecognizable.

The stone all around the niche was
covered with a tangle of supplications written in pencil or incised with a sharp
rock or pocket-knife.

Help Denise pass her
exam … Notre-Dame-des-Dunes, make Jojo quickly learn to
read … Grant good health to the whole family and especially
Grandmother and Grandfather …

There were more earthly inscriptions,
too, with hearts pierced by arrows.

Robert &
Jeanne for ever …

Dried stalks that had once been flowers
still hung from the grille, but what made this chapel different from so many others
were the shells piled high on the ruins of the altar. Shells of every shape and
kind, and there were words written on all of them, mostly in pencil, in the clumsy
handwriting of children and simple souls, or sometimes the firmer script of more
literate supplicants.

May the fishing be good in
Newfoundland and Papa need never sign up again …

The floor was of beaten earth. Where the
wall had fallen, the view was of sandy beach and silvery sea in the white haze. And
in spite of herself, having no idea how to handle the situation, Julie kept glancing
anxiously at the shells.

‘Did you bring one here?'
asked Maigret.

Julie shook her head.

‘When I arrived, though, you were
going through them. What were you looking for?'

‘Nothing, I …'

‘You …?'

‘Nothing!'

And she glared stubbornly, clutching her
coat more tightly around her.

Now it was the inspector's turn to
pick up the shells one by one to read what was written on them. Suddenly, he smiled.
On an enormous clam shell he read, ‘Notre-Dame-
des-Dunes, help my brother Louis succeed so we will all
be happy.'

The date on it was 13 September. So this
primitive ex-voto had been brought here three days before Captain Joris
vanished!

And hadn't Julie come here to
remove it?

‘Is this what you were hunting
for?'

‘What business is it of
yours?'

Her eyes never left the shell. She
seemed ready to jump at Maigret to tear it from his hands.

‘Give it to me! Put it back where
it belongs!'

‘All right, I'll leave it
here, but you must, too. Come on, we'll talk about it on the walk
back.'

‘I've nothing to say to
you.'

They set out, leaning forwards because
their feet sank into the soft sand. The wind was so sharp that their noses were red
and their cheeks gleamed.

‘Everything your brother has done
has gone wrong, hasn't it?'

She stared straight ahead at the
beach.

‘Some things are impossible to
hide,' he continued. ‘I'm not talking only about … about
what landed him in prison.'

‘Of course! It's always
that! After twenty years they'll still be saying—'

‘No, no, Julie! Louis is a good
sailor. Even an excellent one, I hear, able to serve as a first mate. Except that
one fine day he gets drunk with some fellows he's just met and does some
stupid things, doesn't return to his boat, drags around for weeks without a
job. Am I right? At times like that, he asks you for help. You – and just a few
weeks ago,
Joris. Then he becomes
responsible and hardworking again for a while.'

‘So?'

‘What was the plan that you
wanted, on the 13th of September, to make turn out well?'

Julie stopped and looked into his face.
She was much calmer now. She had had time to reflect. And there was an appealing
gravity in her eyes.

‘I knew it would bring us trouble.
And yet, my brother did nothing! I swear to you that if he had killed the captain, I
would have been the first to pay him back in kind.'

Her voice was low and heavy with
emotion.

‘It's just that, there
are
some coincidences, and then that time in prison always hanging
around his neck. Whenever anyone does something wrong, Louis gets blamed for
everything that happens afterwards.'

‘What was the plan Louis
had?'

‘It wasn't a plan. It was
quite simple. He'd met a really rich man, I don't remember any more if
it was in England or at Le Havre. He didn't tell me his name. A gentleman
who'd had enough of life ashore and wanted to buy a yacht and travel. He asked
Louis to find him a boat.'

They were still standing on the beach,
where all they could see of Ouistreham was the lighthouse, a raw white tower set off
by the paler sky.

‘Louis talked to his skipper about
it. Because for some time, on account of the slump, Lannec had been wanting to sell
the
Saint-Michel
. And that's the whole of it! The
Saint-Michel
is the best coaster anyone could find for turning into a
yacht. In the beginning my brother was
supposed to get ten thousand francs if the deal was made.
Next the buyer talked about keeping him aboard as captain, someone he could
trust.'

Immediately regretting those last words,
she glanced at Maigret and seemed grateful to him for not smiling ironically at the
idea of someone trusting an ex-con.

Instead, Maigret was thinking things
over. Even he was startled by the frank simplicity of her story, which had the
troubling ring of truth.

‘But you haven't any idea
who this buyer is?'

‘No.'

‘Or where your brother was going
to meet him again?'

‘No.'

‘Or when?'

‘Very soon. The refitting was
supposed to be done in Norway, he said, and the yacht would leave within a month for
the Mediterranean, bound for Egypt.'

‘A Frenchman?'

‘I don't know.'

‘And you were at
Notre-Dame-des-Dunes just now to retrieve your shell?'

‘Because I thought that, if it
were found, everyone would think something completely different from the truth.
Admit it: you don't believe me …'