Maigret and the Death of a Harbor-Master Page 2

  She accompanied him to the front door, slamming it behind him the moment he was outside.

  The fog was so thick that Maigret could not see where he was treading. Somehow he found his way to the gate. There was the feel of grass underfoot; then of a stony road. As he started down the road he heard a distant sound which, for quite a while, he was unable to account for.

  It was like the lowing of a cow, but more mournful, more resonant.

  “Of course!” he muttered. “What a fool I am! It’s a foghorn.”

  He had only the vaguest idea of where he was. Then he noticed, vertically below, a patch of water which seemed to be steaming. He was standing on the edge of the lock. From somewhere near at hand there came a sound of turning winches. Where had the taxi crossed the canal? He couldn’t remember. Noticing a foot-bridge, he started to cross it.

  “Stand back!”

  Incredible! The voice was almost in his ear. He had supposed he was quite alone, and all the time there was a man standing within a few feet of him. Peering across the fog, he made out the outlines of a tall black form.

  He realized at once why the man had shouted. The footbridge on to which he had been about to step began to edge away. It was the lock-gate slowly opening, and the sight was even more impressive when, where the man had been, there towered up, only a yard or so in front, a sheer, black wall, high as a house. Above the moving wall a line of lights glimmered through the fog.

  A ship was passing, so close he could have touched it. A hawser dropped beside him; someone snatched it up, dragged it to a bollard, and made it fast.

  High up, on the steamer’s bridge, a voice cried, “Half speed astern!” then, “Stand by!”

  A few moments before, the place had seemed empty, lifeless. Now, as he walked along the edge of the lock, Maigret discovered that the fog was humming with activity. Someone was turning a winch, a man rushed by him with another mooring-rope. A group of customs officers stood waiting for the gangway to be lowered before going on board.

  Sightless but skillful movements in a dank mist that fringed the men’s mustaches with big drops of water.

  “Want to cross?” A voice quite near again. Another lockgate. “Hurry up, or you’ll have a quarter of an hour to wait.”

  As, gripping the handrail, he crossed the bridge, he could hear water gushing in below through the sluices and, remote as ever, the baying of the foghorn. The farther he proceeded, the more the world of fog around seemed teeming with mysterious life. A faint glow of light drew him towards it. He saw a fisherman in a boat moored to the bank, lowering and raising a net slung between two poles. The fisherman cast him a casual glance, then started sorting out the small fry in a basket.

  In the zone of brightness made by the steamer’s lights he could now see people moving to and fro. They were speaking English on deck. On the edge of the quay a man in a braided cap was checking documents.

  The harbor-master, presumably; the man who had taken Joris’s place. Like Joris, he was short, but more wiry and alert-looking. He was bandying jokes with the ship’s officers.

  The visible world had shrunk to a few square yards of relative illumination beyond which lay a netherworld of darkness, hiding land and sea. The sea must be somewhere on his left, where he heard a murmur of waves.

  Was it not on just such a night as this that Joris had so mysteriously vanished? Like the fellow yonder, he had been checking ship’s papers; cracking jokes, most likely; watching from the corner of an eye the activities of the lock-keepers. Didn’t need to see, though. Probably a few familiar sounds told him all he required to know. Just as nobody here looks where he goes, Maigret reflected.

  He had just lit a pipe and was frowning at his thoughts. “Compared with these fellows I’m just a damn-fool landlubber. Everything to do with the sea is right outside my range.” And he resented feeling so feebly ineffectual.

  The lock-gates opened. The steamer glided into a canal nearly as wide as the Seine at Paris.

  “Good evening. You’re the harbor-master, aren’t you? I’m Inspector Maigret of the Paris police. I’ve just brought back your predecessor.”

  “What? Is Joris back? So it was he after all. I only heard of it this morning. Is it a fact that he’s…?”

  He tapped his forehead.

  “Yes—for the moment. Are you stopping here all night?”

  “No. We never stay more than five hours at a stretch. Two and a half hours on either side of high water. There are five hours each tide when there’s enough water for ships to enter the canal or go out. It’s a different time every day. Tonight we’ve just started, and we’ll be at it till three in the morning.”

  A simple, downright fellow. He spoke to Maigret as to a colleague; as one public servant to another.

  “Excuse me.” The harbor-master turned and gazed seawards. Nothing was visible, yet he said : “A sailing-boat from Boulogne’s made fast to the piles of the jetty, waiting for the gates to open.”

  “Do you always know in advance what ships are due in?”

  “Generally. Steamers especially. Most of them are on a regular run, bringing coal from England and shipping ore from Caen.”

  “What about a drink?” Maigret suggested.

  “Not till the ebb, thanks. I can’t get away.”

  He shouted some orders; the men were quite invisible, but he knew exactly where they were.

  “You’ve been sent here to make an inquiry, eh?”

  A sound of footsteps coming up the road from the village. A man walked past the lock-gate; as he walked under a lamp a gun-barrel glinted on his shoulder.

  “Who was that?”

  “The mayor, off on a duck-shoot. He’s rigged up a shooting-pit for himself on the bank of the Orne. His man’s there already, I expect, getting things ready for him.”

  “Think I’ll find the hotel open?”

  “The Univers? Yes. But you’d better get a move on. It’s near the time the landlord finishes his game of cards and closes down. And once he’s in bed he wouldn’t budge for the President himself!”

  “Thanks. I’ll look you up tomorrow.”

  “Right. I come on duty here at ten, for the morning tide.”

  They shook hands; neither had really seen the other’s face. A blind man’s world—of sightless contacts. There was nothing actually sinister about it, but Maigret was conscious of a certain uncanniness, of something in the air that fretted the nerves; of the sensation of being in a land of shadows, peopled by men who went their secret ways, a life in which he had no place… That sailing-ship, for instance, waiting its turn; it must be quite near, but there wasn’t the faintest sign of it.

  He passed again the fisherman sitting under his lamp, and was moved to speak to him.

  “Any luck?”

  The man merely spat into the water. Maigret walked on, furious with himself for making so idiotic a remark.

  The last sound he heard before stepping into the hotel was the clatter of the shutters being closed on the top floor of Joris’s cottage.

  Julie’s nervousness. The cat that had slipped out when they were entering the house…

  “Will the foghorn go on making that blasted noise all night?” Maigret inquired peevishly of the hotel proprietor, who had just approached him.

  “As long as the fog lasts. But you get used to it.”

  He had a restless night—the sort of night that comes of overeating, or when, as a child, one is looking forward to a great treat next day. Twice he rose and pressed his forehead to the icy panes, but all he could see was the empty road and the veering lighthouse-beam struggling to pierce a cloudbank. And all night the foghorn kept on baying, more stridently, it seemed, than ever.

  On the second occasion he looked at his watch. It was 4 a.m. There was a clatter of wooden clogs on the road: fishermen tramping down to their boats, baskets slung across their backs.

  Almost immediately afterwards, as it seemed to him, there was a banging on his door. It opened before he’d had time to sa
y “Come in.” It was the proprietor of the hotel. Seriously upset, judging by his expression.

  More time had passed than Maigret had supposed, for sunlight was streaming through the windows. The foghorn, however, was still at it, full blast.

  “Get up. The Captain’s dying.”

  “What Captain?”

  “Joris. Julie’s just rushed down to the village to fetch the doctor. She told me to let you know at once.”

  Maigret had already pulled on his shirt and trousers. He thrust his feet into his shoes without troubling to lace them up. Nor did he trouble to brush his tousled hair.

  He slipped on his coat and ran down the stairs, collarless.

  “Won’t you have something before you go? A cup of coffee? A glass of rum?”

  Maigret shook his head impatiently and rushed out.

  Though the sun was bright, the air was nippy. The road was still drenched with dew.

  As he hurried across the lock he had a brief glimpse of the sea, a pale expanse of blue; only a narrow strip, for the fogbank began quite near the shore.

  On the bridge one of the local police hailed him.

  “You the Inspector, sir, from Paris? Good morning, sir. Have you heard—?”

  “What?”

  “It’s horrible, they say… Hullo! That’s the doctor’s car.”

  Down in the harbor fishing-smacks were gently rocking at their moorings, dappling the water with glints of red and green. Some sails were set, to dry presumably; each had a number painted on it, in black.

  Two or three women were standing outside the Captain’s cottage, close by the lighthouse. The door was open. The doctor’s car dashed past Maigret and the policeman, who was keeping at his side.

  “There’s talk of poison. They say his face has gone all green!”

  As Maigret entered the house Julie was coming slowly down the stairs. Her eyes were swollen with weeping, her cheeks darkly flushed. The doctor, who was now examining his patient, had bundled her out of the bedroom.

  She had had no time to dress, and had slipped an overcoat over her long white nightgown. Her slippered feet were bare.

  “It’s too terrible, sir. You simply can’t imagine… Do please go up at once. Perhaps…”

  When Maigret opened the door, the doctor, who had been bending over the bed, was just straightening up. The expression on his face showed that he had given up hope.

  “Police,” said Maigret.

  “Yes? Quite so… It’s all over. Two or three minutes more, perhaps. Strychnine, unless I’m greatly mistaken.”

  He went to the window and flung it wide open, as the dying man seemed to be gasping for breath. Maigret had a glimpse of the sunlit harbor: fishing-boats and flapping sails, fishermen emptying creels of silvery fish into wooden boxes. And somehow the whole scene looked unreal, like a painted backcloth.

  When he turned towards the bed, the dying man’s face seemed greener, even more livid than before. Its color was incredible—quite unlike any idea one has of the color of human skin.

  The limbs were jerking spasmodically, like the limbs of a grotesque clockwork doll. And yet his look was placid as ever, his features in repose, his eyes fixed on the wall in front of him.

  The doctor’s fingers rested on his wrist, timing the failing pulse. A moment came when his look conveyed: “Now it’s come! He’s going…”

  But then something extraordinary happened; extraordinary and deeply touching. There had been no knowing if the unfortunate man had got back his reason; certainly there had been no sign of it. Now, of a sudden, his face seemed to come to life. His features quivered like a child’s on the brink of tears, in a look of utter, inconsolable distress.

  And two big tears welled up, and hovered at the corners of his eyes.

  Almost immediately the doctor said in a toneless voice:

  “He’s dead.”

  Was it possible? The notion of a dead man weeping seemed preposterous. Yet, as a tear that seemed alive trickled off into the hollow of an ear, the man who shed it had ceased to live.

  Hearing the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Maigret went out on to the landing and said commandingly :

  “No one is to enter the bedroom.”

  “Is he…?”

  “Yes.”

  He could hear Julie sobbing passionately in the hall and some women trying to console her.

  When he went back to the sunlit bedroom, he found the doctor, syringe in hand, administering a heart injection—merely for conscience’ sake.

  From the window he could see a white cat basking on the garden wall.

  * * *

  2.

  THE WILL

  SOMEWHERE downstairs, probably in the kitchen, Julie was still giving vent to her distress; Maigret could hear her shrill cries, though the bedroom door was closed.

  The window had remained open, and he now saw people pouring helter-skelter out of the village: boys on bicycles, women with babies in their arms, men in clogs. They streamed across the bridge in a small ragged procession, then spread out and hurried towards the Captain’s cottage. They were behaving exactly as they would have behaved had a traveling circus been sighted on the road, or had there been a motor accident.

  Soon the din outside was such that Maigret shut the window. At once the room took on a different aspect. The garish morning light was mellowed by the muslin curtains to a gentle glow that played discreetly on the polished light-oak chairs, pale pink wall-paper, a bowl of flowers standing on the mantelpiece.

  The doctor, Maigret noticed, was holding up to the light the water-bottle and tumbler he had found on the bedside table. He even dipped a finger in the tumbler and touched the tip of his tongue.

  “So that was it?”

  “Yes. Evidently the Captain had a habit of drinking at night. As far as I can judge, he must have had a drink at about three this morning. What I can’t make out is why he didn’t call for help.”

  “For the good reason,” said Maigret rather gruffly, “that he was incapable of speaking, or uttering the least sound.”

  Calling the local policeman, he instructed him to report to the mayor and to the Public Prosecutor at Caen what had happened. There was still a good deal of commotion going on downstairs. Villagers were standing about in groups around the gate; others, to wait in greater comfort, had stretched themselves on the grass along the roadside.

  The sand-banks at the harbor entrance were already submerged by the rising tide. A blur of smoke on the horizon showed where a steamer lay at anchor, waiting for high water before entering the lock.

  “Have you any idea—?”

  The doctor broke off, seeing that Maigret was busy. Between the two windows stood a mahogany writing-desk, and the Inspector had opened it. With the air of frowning concentration he always wore on such occasions he was making a list of the contents of the drawers. At such moments he looked positively churlish. He had lit his fat pipe and was puffing at it slowly, while his thick fingers handled without the least respect the objects they unearthed.

  Photographs, for instance. There were dozens of them. Many were the photographs of friends, mostly men in naval uniform and of about the same age as Joris. It was obvious that he had kept in touch with his fellow-cadets of the Brest training-ship, and they wrote to him from every corner of the Seven Seas. Picture-postcards, too; all equally banal whether they hailed from Saigon or from Santiago, with such inscriptions as: “All the best from Henry” “My third stripe at last!! Cheero! Eugène.” Most were addressed to “Captain Joris, S.S. Diana, Anglo-Norman Navigation Co., Caen.”

  Maigret turned to the doctor.

  “Had you known the Captain long?”

  “Only a few months. Since he became harbor-master. Before that he was on one of the mayor’s ships; commanded her for twenty-eight years.”

  “The mayor’s ships?”

  “Didn’t you know? Our mayor, Monsieur Ernest Grandmaison, is Chairman of the Anglo-Norman. In other words, sole owner of the eleven steamers flyi
ng the Company’s flag.”

  Another photograph, this time of Joris himself at the age of twenty-five. Already inclined to squatness, with a broad good-humored face, in which, however, was a hint of obstinacy. A typical Breton.

  Finally, in a canvas wallet was a sheaf of documents, ranging from a school award to a master’s ticket in the merchant service; some official forms, a birth-certificate, a soldier’s service-book, passports.

  An envelope fell on the floor. Maigret picked it up. The paper was already yellow with age.

  “Is it a Will?” asked the doctor, who had nothing more to do till the investigating magistrate arrived.

  Evidently an atmosphere of trust prevailed in Captain Joris’s cottage, for the envelope was not even closed. Inside was a sheet of paper, inscribed in a neat, copperplate hand.

  I, Yves Antoine Joris, Captain in the Merchant Service, hereby give and bequeath all the real and personal estate of which I shall be possessed at the time of my decease to my servant Julie Legrand, in gratitude for her faithful service.

  I instruct her to make the following bequests on my behalf: my dinghy to Captain Delcourt; my china dinner-service to his wife; my carved ivory walking-stick to…

  Almost all the people whom Maigret had seen working in the fog the night before, the small community of Port Ouistreham, had been remembered, down to the lock-hand, who was bequeathed a fishing-net—“the trammel hanging in the tool-shed,” as the Will described it.

  Just then there was a sound of hurried steps behind him. Julie had seized the opportunity, when the women with her were brewing a potion “to cheer the poor dear up,” of slipping upstairs. She burst into the room, cast a scared glance around it, then sidled nervously towards the bed. But her courage failed her at the sight of death, and she drew back.

  “Is he…?”

  She collapsed on to the carpet, murmuring broken phrases. “It can’t be true! My poor gentleman!… No, I can’t believe it.”

  Gravely Maigret bent down and raised her to her feet. Then, gently mastering her resistance, he shepherded her into the next room, her bedroom. It was in disorder. Clothes scattered on the bed, the basin full of soapy water.