The Misty Harbour Read online

  He was alone in a hotel dining room spacious enough for forty or fifty guests. The hotel was for Ouistreham’s summer visitors. The furniture was the kind found in any seaside hotel. On the tables, small vases of flowers.

  No connection at all with the Ouistreham that the inspector found interesting and was beginning to understand.

  That was what pleased him. What he hated the most, in an inquiry, were the first steps, with all the attendant false moves and misinterpretations.

  The word Ouistreham, for example. In Paris, it had conjured up a complete fantasy, a port city like Saint-Malo. The evening he arrived, Maigret had decided that it was really a forbidding hole full of gruff, taciturn people.

  Now he had got his bearings. Felt more at home. Ouistreham was an ordinary village at the end of a bit of road planted with small trees. What truly counted was the harbour: a lock, a lighthouse, Joris’ cottage, the Buvette de la Marine.

  And the workaday rhythm of this harbour as well: the twice-daily tides, the fishermen lugging their baskets, the handful of men exclusively devoted to the constant traffic through the lock.

  Some words now meant more to Maigret: captain, freighter, coaster. He was watching all that in action and learning the rules of the game.

  The mystery had not been resolved. He still could not explain the things that had stymied him from the first. But at least now the cast of characters was clear: all were accounted for, with their settings and little everyday routines.

  ‘Will you be staying here long?’ asked the hotel-owner as he served the coffee himself.

  ‘That I don’t know.’

  ‘If this had happened during the season it would have hit us hard.’

  Now Maigret could distinguish among precisely four Ouistrehams: the Harbour, the Village, the Villas, the Seaside Resort – this last temporarily on holiday itself.

  ‘You’re going out, inspector?’

  ‘Just a stroll before bedtime.’

  The tide was almost full in. The weather was much colder than it had been; the fog, while still opaque, was turning into droplets of icy water.

  Everything was dark. Everything was closed. Only the misty eye of the lighthouse was visible. And up on the lock, voices called to one another.

  A short blast from a ship’s whistle. A green light and a red one drawing near; a mass gliding along, level with the wall …

  Maigret had learned the drill. A steamer was coming in. The shadowy figure now approaching would pick up the hawser and secure it to the nearest bollard. Then, up on the bridge, the captain would give the order to reverse engines.

  Delcourt passed close by the inspector, looking anxiously out towards the jetties.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I can’t tell …’

  The harbourmaster squinted hard, as if it were possible to see into the pitch dark through sheer force of will. Two men were already moving to close the lock-gates.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Delcourt yelled to them.

  And exclaimed in astonishment:

  ‘It’s them!’

  Just then a voice not fifty metres away called out, ‘Hey there! Louis! Down jib and stand by to come alongside port side-to …’

  The voice had come from the darkness below, over by the jetties. A firefly of light was coming closer. Someone seemed to be moving around; canvas fell as rings clattered along a stay.

  Then a mainsail slipped past, close enough to touch.

  ‘How in heaven did they pull that off!’ grumbled Delcourt, who then turned towards the schooner and yelled, ‘Get her nose in under the port quarter of the steamer, so’s we can close the gates!’

  A man had leaped ashore with a mooring line and now stood looking around him, hands on his hips.

  ‘The Saint-Michel?’ Maigret asked Delcourt.

  ‘The same … They must have flown over the water.’

  There was only a small lantern down on the schooner’s deck, illuminating a confused scene: a cask, a pile of gear, the silhouette of a man leaving the tiller to dash forwards to the schooner’s bows.

  The lock workers seemed particularly interested in the boat, arriving one after the other to take a look at it.

  ‘The lock-gate winches, men! Back to work! Let’s go!’

  With the gates closed, water roared in through the sluices, and both vessels began to rise. The lantern’s pale light drew closer. As the schooner’s deck drew level with the quay, the man there hailed the harbourmaster.

  ‘All’s well?’

  ‘All’s well,’ replied Delcourt guardedly. ‘Didn’t expect you so soon!’

  ‘Had the wind at our backs, and Louis put up all the canvas we had. We even left a freighter in our wake!’

  ‘Heading for Caen?’

  ‘We’ll be unloading there, yes. Anything new around here?’

  Maigret was a few paces away, Big Louis a bit further off, but they could barely see each other. Only Delcourt and the Saint-Michel’s captain were talking, and now the harbourmaster, at a loss, looked over at Maigret.

  ‘I heard it’s in the paper that Joris has come back. Is that true?’

  ‘He came back and he left again,’ replied Delcourt.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Big Louis had taken a step closer. With his hands in his pockets and the one shoulder crooked, he looked rather flabby in the darkness, like a shapeless hulk.

  ‘He’s dead …’

  Now Big Louis went right up to Delcourt.

  ‘Is that true?’ he grunted.

  Hearing his voice for the first time, Maigret found that flabby, too, in a way: hoarse, and somewhat drawling. He still could not see his face.

  ‘The first night he was home,’ explained Delcourt, ‘he was poisoned. And here,’ he quickly pointed out, ‘is the inspector from Paris who’s in charge of the case.’

  Having worried for some time how to prudently reveal this information, the harbourmaster now seemed relieved. Had he been afraid the men of the Saint-Michel might accidentally get themselves into trouble?

  ‘Ah! So this gentleman is with the police …’

  The schooner was still rising. Her skipper swung his legs over the rails and dropped down on to the quay, but then hesitated before shaking hands with Maigret.

  ‘Hard to imagine …’ he said slowly, still thinking about Joris.

  He seemed worried as well, and even more obviously than Delcourt.

  Louis, his tall form swaying, his head tilted to one side, barked out something the inspector could not understand.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He was grumbling in dialect. He said: “a filthy business”!’

  ‘What was a filthy business?’ the inspector asked the ex-convict, but Big Louis simply looked him in the eye. They had moved closer and could now see each other’s faces. Big Louis’ features looked swollen; one cheek was bigger than the other, or simply seemed so because of the way he always tilted his head to one side. Puffy flesh, and big eyes that seemed to start from his head.

  ‘You were here yesterday!’ said the inspector sharply.

  The water was at the proper level; the upper gates were opening. The steamer moved smoothly into the canal, and Delcourt hurried over to record her tonnage and provenance.

  A voice shouted down from the bridge: ‘Nine hundred tons! … Rouen!’

  The Saint-Michel remained in the lock, however, and each of the men stationed there to deal with her, aware that something unusual was happening, waited, wrapped in shadows, listening carefully.

  Delcourt returned, writing the necessary information in his notebook.

  ‘Well?’ asked Maigret impatiently.

  ‘Well, what?’ grumbled Louis. ‘You says I was here yesterday! That’s ’cause I was …’

  It was hard to understand him, because he had a peculiar way of chewing on his words with his mouth almost closed, as if he were eating. Not to mention his thick local accent …

  ‘Why did you come here?’

 
‘See my sister.’

  ‘And, not finding her at home, you left her a note.’

  In the meantime, Maigret was stealthily observing the schooner’s captain, who was dressed just like Louis. There was nothing special about him; indeed, he seemed more like a seasoned bosun’s mate than the skipper of a coaster.

  ‘We were three days at Fécamp for repairs,’ the man now piped up, ‘so Louis grabbed his chance to come here and see Julie!’

  All around the lock, the men on duty must have been straining to listen in, keeping as quiet as possible. The fog horn still moaned in the distance, and the fog itself was growing wetter, leaving the cobblestones black and gleaming.

  A hatchway opened in the schooner’s deck, and a man’s head emerged, with unkempt hair and a bushy beard.

  ‘What’s wrong? Why’re we sitting here?’

  ‘Shut it, Célestin!’ said his skipper quickly.

  Delcourt was stamping up and down the quay to warm himself up – and perhaps to save face as well, for he didn’t know if he should stay there or not.

  ‘Louis, what made you think that Joris was in danger?’

  ‘Huh!’ said Louis, and shrugged. ‘He’d already had his skull stove in, hadn’t he, so it wasn’t hard to work out.’

  It was so difficult to make out the syllables all mashed together in the man’s grunting that Maigret could have done with an interpreter.

  The atmosphere felt intensely uncomfortable and in a way, mysteriously threatening.

  Louis looked towards the cottage but couldn’t see a thing, not even a darker patch in the night.

  ‘She’s there, our Julie?’

  ‘Yes. Are you going to go and see her?’

  Louis shook his head with big sweeps, like a bear.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Sure she’ll cry.’

  It sounded like ‘Shore shale crah’ – and in the disgusted tone of a man who can’t take the sight of tears.

  They were still standing there; the fog was thickening, soaking their shoulders, and Delcourt decided to intervene.

  ‘Anyone for a drink?’

  A lock worker chimed in, off at his post in the darkness.

  ‘They just closed the bar!’

  ‘We could go below to the cabin, if you like,’ offered the Saint-Michel’s captain.

  There were four of them: Maigret, Delcourt, Big Louis and the skipper, whose name was Lannec. The cabin wasn’t large, and the small stove gave off heat so intense that the air was hazy with humidity. The paraffin lamp, set in gimbals, looked almost red hot.

  Cabin walls of varnished pitch pine. A scarred oak table, so worn that the entire surface was uneven. Dirty dishes still sat out, along with some sturdy but gummy-looking glasses and a half-bottle of red.

  On either side of the cabin were wide, rectangular recesses, like cupboards without doors, for the beds of the captain and Louis, the first mate. Unmade beds, with dirty boots and clothing tossed on to them. Whiffs of tar, alcohol, cooking and stuffy bedrooms, but most of all, that indescribable smell of a boat.

  Everyone looked less unsettling in the lamplight. Lannec had a brown moustache and sharp, bright eyes. He had taken a bottle from a locker and was rinsing glasses by filling them with water he then poured out on the floor.

  ‘It seems that you were here on the night of the 16th of September, Captain Lannec.’

  Big Louis was sitting hunched over with his elbows on the table.

  ‘Right, we were here,’ replied Lannec, pouring out the drinks.

  ‘Wasn’t that unusual? Because spending the night in the outer harbour would mean you’d have to keep an eye on your moorings, because of the tide.’

  ‘It happens,’ said Lannec casually.

  ‘Like that you can often get underway a few hours earlier in the morning,’ added Delcourt, who seemed determined to keep things cordial.

  ‘Captain Joris didn’t come and see you aboard?’

  ‘While we were in the lock … Not later on.’

  ‘And you neither saw nor heard anything out of the ordinary?’

  ‘Cheers! … No, nothing.’

  ‘You, Louis, you went to bed?’

  ‘Must have.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I said must have … Was some time ago.’

  ‘You didn’t visit your sister?’

  ‘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.’