The Grand Banks Café Page 8

  ‘Would you like a room to be made up for this gentleman?’

  He was looking at Le Clinche: he had spotted a fiancé. And no doubt he took the Maigrets for the girl’s parents.

  Two or three times the wireless operator made the same gesture as he had that morning during the confrontation. A rapid movement of his hand across his forehead, a very boneless, weary gesture.

  ‘What shall we do now?’

  The other guests were getting up and leaving. The group of four were standing on the terrace.

  ‘Shall we sit down for a while?’ suggested Madame Maigret.

  Their folding chairs were waiting for them, on the shingle. The Maigrets sat down. The two young people remained standing for a moment, uncertain of what they should do.

  ‘I think we’ll go for a little walk, shall we?’ Marie Léonnec finally brought herself to say with a vague smile meant for Madame Maigret.

  The inspector lit his pipe and, once he was alone with his wife, he muttered:

  ‘Tell me: do I really look like the father-in-law!’

  ‘They don’t know what to do. Their position is very delicate,’ remarked his wife as she watched them go. ‘Look at them. They’re so awkward. I may be wrong but I think Marie has more backbone than her fiancé.’

  He certainly made a sorry sight as he strolled listlessly along, a slight figure who paid no attention to the girl at his side and, you would have sworn even from a distance, did not say anything.

  But the girl gave the impression that she was doing her level best, that she was talking as a way of distracting him, that she was even trying to appear as if she was having a good time.

  There were other groups of people on the beach. But Le Clinche was the only man not wearing white trousers. He was wearing a dark suit, which made him look even more pitiful.

  ‘How old is he?’ asked Madame Maigret.

  Her husband, lying back in his deckchair with eyes half-closed, said:

  ‘Nineteen. Just a boy. I’m very afraid that he’ll be easy meat for anybody now.’

  ‘Why? Isn’t he innocent?’

  ‘He probably never killed anybody. No. I’d stake my life on it. But all the same, I’m afraid he’s had it … Just look at him! And look at her!’

  ‘Nonsense. Leave the pair of them alone for a moment and they’ll be kissing.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Maigret was pessimistic.

  ‘She isn’t much older than him. She really loves him. She is quite ready to become a model little wife.’

  ‘Why do you think …’

  ‘That it won’t ever happen? Just an impression. Have you ever looked at photos of people who died young? I’ve always been struck by the fact that those pictures, which were taken when the subjects were fit and healthy, always have something of the graveyard about them. It’s as if those who are doomed to be the victims of some awful experience already have a death sentence written on their faces.’

  ‘And do you think that boy …’

  ‘He’s a sad case. Always was! He was born poor. He suffered from being poor. He worked like a slave, put his head down, like a man swimming upstream. Then he managed to persuade a nice girl from a higher social class than his to say yes … But I don’t believe it’ll happen. Just look at them. They’re groping in the dark. They’re trying to believe in happy endings. They want to believe in their star …’

  Maigret spoke quietly, in a half-whisper, as he stared at the two outlines, which stood out against the sparkling sea.

  ‘Who is officially in charge of the investigation?’

  ‘Girard, a chief inspector at Le Havre. You don’t know him. An intelligent man.’

  ‘Does he think he’s guilty?’

  ‘No. In any case, he’s got nothing solid on him, not even any real circumstantial evidence.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Maigret turned round, as if to get a glimpse of the trawler, though it was hidden from him by a row of houses.

  ‘I think that the voyage was, for two men at least, tragic. Tragic enough that Captain Fallut couldn’t go on living any longer and the wireless operator couldn’t go back to living his old, normal life.’

  ‘All because of a woman?’

  He did not answer the question directly but went on:

  ‘And the rest of them, the men who had no part in events, all of them including the stokers, were, if they did but know it, deeply marked by it too. They came back angry and scared. For three months, two men and a woman raised the tension around the deck-house in the stern. A few black walls with portholes … But it was enough.’

  ‘I’ve hardly ever seen you get so worked up about a case … You said three people were involved. What on earth did they do out there in the middle of the ocean?’

  ‘Yes, what did they do exactly? Something which was serious enough to kill Captain Fallut! And also bad enough to leave those two young people not knowing which way to turn. Look at them out there, trying to find what’s left of their dreams in the shingle.’

  The young people were coming back, arms swinging, uncertain whether courtesy required them to rejoin the Maigrets or whether it would be more tactful to leave them to themselves.

  During their walk, Marie Léonnec had lost much of her vivaciousness. She gave Madame Maigret a dejected look. It was as if all her efforts, all her high spirits had run up against a wall of despair or inertia.

  It was Madame Maigret’s custom to take some light refreshment of an afternoon. So at around four o’clock, all four of them sat down on the hotel terrace under the striped umbrellas, which exuded the customary festive air.

  Hot chocolate steamed in two cups. Maigret had ordered a beer and Le Clinche a brandy and soda.

  They talked about Jorissen, the teacher from Quimper who had written to Maigret on behalf of the wireless operator and had brought Marie Léonnec with him. They said the usual things:

  ‘You won’t find a better man anywhere …’

  They embroidered on this theme, not out of conviction, but because they had to say something. Suddenly, Maigret blinked, then focused on a couple now walking towards them along the breakwater.

  It was Adèle and Gaston Buzier. He slouched, hands in pockets, his boater tilted on the back of his head, seemingly unconcerned, while she was as animated and as eye-catching as ever.

  ‘As long as she doesn’t spot us …!’ the inspector thought.

  But at that very moment, Adèle’s eye caught his. She stopped and said something to her companion, who tried to dissuade her.

  Too late! She was already crossing the road. She looked around at all the tables in turn, chose the one nearest to the Maigrets, then sat down so that she was facing Marie Léonnec.

  Her boyfriend followed with a shrug, touched the brim of his boater as he passed in front of the inspector and sat astride a chair.

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Not hot chocolate, that’s for sure. A kümmel.’

  What was that if not a declaration of war? When she mentioned chocolate, she was staring at Marie Léonnec’s cup. Maigret saw the girl flinch.

  She had never seen Adèle. But surely the penny had dropped? She glanced across at Le Clinche, who looked away.

  Madame Maigret’s foot nudged her husband’s twice.

  ‘What say the four of us walk over to the Casino.’

  She too had worked it out. But no one answered. Only Adèle at the next table said anything.

  ‘It’s so hot!’ she sighed. ‘Take my jacket, Gaston.’

  She removed her suit jacket and was revealed in pink silk, opulently sensual and bare-armed. She did not take her eyes off the girl for an instant.

  ‘Do you like grey? Don’t you think they should ban people from wearing miserable colours on the beach?’

  It was so obvious. Marie Léonnec was wearing grey. But Adèle was demonstrating her intention to go on the attack, by any means and without wasting any time.

  ‘Waiter! Shift yourself! I c
an’t wait all day.’

  Her voice was shrill. And it sounded as if she was deliberately exaggerating its coarseness.

  Gaston Buzier scented danger. He knew Adèle of old. He muttered a few words to her. But she replied in a very loud voice:

  ‘So what? They can’t stop anyone sitting on this terrace. It’s a free country!’

  Madame Maigret was the only one with her back to her. Maigret and the wireless operator sat sideways on but Marie Léonnec faced her directly.

  ‘We’re all as good as everybody else, isn’t that right? Only there’s some people who trail round after you when you’re too busy to see them and then won’t give you the time of day when they’re in company.’

  And she laughed. Such an unpleasant laugh! She stared at the girl, whose face flushed bright red.

  ‘Waiter! What do I owe you?’ asked Buzier, who was anxious to put a stop to this.

  ‘We’ve got plenty of time! Same again, waiter. And bring me some peanuts.’

  ‘We don’t have any.’

  ‘Well go and get some! That’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it?’

  There were people at two other tables. They all stared at the new couple, who could not go unnoticed. Maigret began to worry. He wanted of course to put an end to a scene which might turn nasty.

  On the other hand, the wireless operator was trapped opposite him: he could see him sit there and sweat.

  It was fascinating, like being present at a dissection. Le Clinche did not move a muscle. He was not facing the woman, but he must surely have been able to see her, however vaguely, on his left, at the very least to make out the pink cloud of her blouse.

  His eyes, grey and lacklustre, were fixed and staring. One hand lay on the table and was closing slowly, as slowly as the tentacles of some undersea creature.

  There was no telling yet how it would all turn out. Would he get up and run away? Would he turn on the woman who talked and talked? Would he …?

  No. He did none of those things. What he did was quite different and a hundred times more unnerving. It was not just his hand that was closing, but his whole being. He was shrivelling, shrinking into his shell.

  His eyes steadily turned as grey as his face.

  He did not move. Was he still breathing? Not a tremor. Not a twitch. But his stillness, which grew more and more complete, was mesmerizing.

  ‘… puts me in mind with another of my gentleman friends, married he was, with three kids …’

  Marie Léonnec, on the other hand, was breathing quickly. She gulped down her chocolate to hide her confusion.

  ‘… now he was the most passionate man on the planet. Sometimes, I refused to let him in and he’d stop outside on the landing and sob, until the neighbours worked up a right old head of steam! “Adèle my sweety pie, my pet, my own …” All the usual lovey-dovey stuff. Anyway, one Sunday I met him out walking with his wife and kiddies. I heard his wife ask him:

  ‘“Who’s that woman?”

  ‘And all pompous, he says to her:

  ‘“Obviously a floozie. You can tell from the ridiculous way she’s dressed.”’

  And she laughed, playing to the crowd. She looked at the faces around her to see what effect her behaviour was having.

  ‘Some people are that slow on the uptake you can’t get a rise out of them.’

  Again Gaston Buzier said something to her quietly in an attempt to shut her up.

  ‘What’s the matter? Not turning chicken are you? I pay for my drinks, don’t I? I’m not doing anybody any harm! So nobody’s got any right to tell me what to do … Waiter, where are those peanuts? And bring another kümmel!’

  ‘Maybe we should leave,’ said Madame Maigret.

  It was too late. Adèle was on the rampage. It was clear that if they tried to leave, she would do anything to cause a scene, whatever the cost.

  Marie Léonnec was staring at the table. Her ears were red, her eyes unnaturally bright, and her mouth hung open in distress.

  Le Clinche had shut his eyes. And he went on sitting there, unseeing, with a fixed expression on his face. His hand still lay lifelessly on the table.

  Maigret had never had an opportunity like this to scrutinize him. His face was both very young and very old, as is often the case with adolescents who have had difficult childhoods.

  Le Clinche was tall, taller than average, but his shoulders were not yet those of a man.

  His skin, which he had not looked after, was dotted with freckles. He had not shaved that morning, and there were faint blond shadows around his chin and on his cheeks.

  He was not handsome. He could not have laughed very often in his life. On the contrary, he had burned large quantities of midnight oil, reading too much, writing too much, in unheated rooms, in his ocean-tossed cabin, by the light of dim lamps.

  ‘I’ll tell you what really makes me sick. It’s seeing people putting on airs who’re really no better than us.’

  Adèle was losing patience. She was ready to try anything to get what she wanted.

  ‘All these proper young ladies, for instance. They pretend to be lily-white hens but they’ll run after a man the way no self-respecting trollop would dare to.’

  The hotel owner stood by the entrance, surveying his guests as if trying to decide whether or not he should intervene.

  Maigret now had eyes only for Le Clinche, in close-up. His head had dropped a little. His eyes had not opened.

  But tears squeezed out one by one from under his clamped eyelids, oozed between the eyelashes, hesitated and then snaked down his cheeks.

  It wasn’t the first time the inspector had seen a man cry. But it was the first time he had been so affected by the sight. Perhaps it was the silence, the stillness of his whole body.

  The only signs of life it gave were those rolling, liquid pearls. The rest was dead.

  Marie Léonnec had seen nothing of all this. Adèle was still talking.

  Then, a split second later, Maigret knew. The hand which lay on the table had just imperceptibly opened. The other was out of sight, in a pocket.

  The lids rose no more than a millimetre. It was enough to allow an eye-glance to filter through. That glance settled on Marie.

  As the inspector was getting to his feet, there was a gunshot. Everyone reacted in a confused pandemonium of screams and overturned chairs.

  At first, Le Clinche did not move. Then he started to lean imperceptibly to his left. His mouth opened, and from it came a faint groan.

  Marie Léonnec, who had difficulty understanding what had happened, since no one had seen a gun, flung herself on him, grabbed him by the knees and his right hand and turned in panic:

  ‘Inspector! … What …?’

  Only Maigret had worked out what had happened. Le Clinche had had a revolver in his pocket, a weapon he had found God knows where, for he hadn’t had one that morning when he was released from his cell. And he’d fired from his pocket. He’d been gripping the butt all the interminable time Adèle had been talking, while he kept his eyes shut and waited and maybe hesitated.

  The bullet had caught him in the abdomen or the side. His jacket was scorched, cut to ribbons at hip level.

  ‘Get a doctor! Ring for the police!’ someone somewhere was shouting.

  A doctor appeared. He was wearing swimming trunks. He’d been on the beach hardly a hundred metres from the hotel.

  Hands had reached out and held Le Clinche up just as he began to fall. He was carried into the hotel dining room. Marie, utterly distraught, followed the stretcher inside.

  Maigret had not had time to worry about Adèle or her boyfriend. As he entered the bar, he suddenly saw her. She looked deathly pale and was emptying a large glass, which rattled against her teeth.

  She had helped herself. The bottle was still in her hand. She filled the glass a second time.

  The inspector paid her no further attention, but retained the image of that white face above the pink blouse and particularly the sound of her teeth chattering against the
glass.

  He could not see Gaston Buzier anywhere. The dining-room door was about to be closed.

  ‘Move along, please,’ the hotel-owner was telling guests. ‘Keep calm! The doctor has asked us to keep the noise down.’

  Maigret pushed the door open. He found the doctor kneeling and Madame Maigret restraining the frantic Marie, who was trying desperately to rush to the wounded man’s side.

  ‘Police!’ the inspector muttered to the doctor.

  ‘Can’t you get those women out of here? I’m going to have to undress him and …’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll need a couple of men to help me. I assume someone has already phoned for an ambulance?’

  He was still wearing his trunks.

  ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything until I’ve probed the wound. You do of course understand …’

  Yes! Maigret understood all too well when he saw the appalling, lacerated mess, a coalescence of flesh and fabric.

  The tables had been laid for dinner. Madame Maigret took Marie Léonnec outside. A young man in white trousers asked shyly:

  ‘If you’ll allow me, I could help … I’m studying pharmacy.’

  A burst of fierce red sunlight slanted through a window and was so blindingly bright that Maigret closed the Venetian blind.

  ‘Will you take his legs?’

  He recalled the words he had said to his wife that afternoon as he lounged in his folding chair watching the gangling figure move across the beach with the smaller and livelier outline of Marie Léonnec at his side:

  ‘Easy meat.’

  Captain Fallut had died as soon as he had docked. Pierre Le Clinche had fought long and hard, perhaps had even still been fighting as he sat eyes closed, one hand on the table, the other in his pocket, while Adèle went on talking, endlessly talking and playing to the gallery.

  8. The Drunken Sailor

  It was a little before midnight when Maigret left the hospital. He had waited to see the stretcher being wheeled out of the operating theatre. On it lay the prone figure of a tall man swathed in white.

  The surgeon was washing his hands. A nurse was putting the instruments away.

  ‘We’ll do our best to save him,’ he said in reply to the inspector. ‘His intestine is perforated in seven places. You could say it’s a very, very nasty wound. But we’ve tidied him up.’