The Grand Banks Café (13 page)

‘Maybe not quite as strange. But
afterwards there were days when it all got weird, and I wondered if he wasn't
actually mad.'

‘And you had no idea about what
the reason for the change might have been?'

‘No. I thought about it. Sometimes
I told myself there had to be some funny business going on between him and the
wireless operator. I even thought they were involved in smuggling … Ah, you
won't ever get me to go anywhere near a fishing boat again! Can you believe
that it went on for three months? And then for it to end like that! One is murdered
as soon as he steps ashore and the other who … It is true, isn't it, that
he's not dead?'

They had reached the quays, and the
young woman seemed reluctant to go any further.

‘Where is Gaston
Buzier?'

‘Back at the hotel. He knows
it's not the moment to rub me up the wrong way, that I'd dump him if he
says one word out of place.'

‘Are you going back to him
now?'

She gave a shrug, a gesture which signified: ‘Why
not?'

And then there was a glimpse of her
flirtatious self. Just as she was taking her leave of Maigret, she murmured with an
awkward smile:

‘Thank you so much, inspector.
You've been ever so kind … I …'

But she didn't dare say the rest.
It was an invitation. A promise.

‘All right, all right!' he
growled and walked on.

He pushed open the door of the Grand
Banks Café.

Just as he reached for the latch, he
clearly heard a hubbub coming from inside the bar, like a dozen men's voices
all talking at once. The moment the door opened, complete silence fell with brutal
abruptness. Yet there were more than ten men there, in two or three groups, who must
have been calling to each other from one table to the next.

The landlord stepped forward to meet
Maigret and shook his hand, though not without a certain unease of manner.

‘Is it true what they're
saying? That Le Clinche shot himself?'

His customers toyed with their drinks in
a show of indifference. Present were Louis, the black sailor, the chief mechanic
from the trawler and a few others besides whom Maigret had finally got to know by
sight.

‘Quite true,' he said.

He observed that the chief mechanic,
looking suddenly very shifty, kept fidgeting on the oil-cloth of the bench seat.

‘Some voyage!' muttered someone in a corner
in a pronounced Norman accent.

The words probably were a fair
expression of the general opinion, for many heads dropped, a fist was brought down
on a marble tabletop while one voice echoed the sentiment:

‘Yes! A voyage of the
damned!'

But Léon gave a cough to remind his
customers to watch what they said and with a nod to them motioned towards a sailor
in a red jerkin, who was drinking alone in a corner.

Maigret sat down near the counter and
ordered a brandy and soda.

No one was talking now. Every man there
was trying to look calm and unruffled. Léon, a practised master of ceremonies,
called out to the group sitting around the largest table:

‘Want me to bring the
dominoes?'

It was a way of breaking the silence, of
occupying hands. The black-backed dominoes were shuffled on the marble tabletop. The
landlord sat down next to the inspector.

‘I shut them up,' he said
quietly, ‘because the fellow in the far corner, to your left, by the window,
is the father of the boy … You know who I mean?'

‘What boy?'

‘The ship's boy, Jean-Marie,
the one who fell overboard on their third day out.'

The man had his head on one side and was
listening. If he hadn't heard the words, he had certainly understood that they
concerned him. He called to the serving girl to
refill his glass and downed it in one, with a shudder of
disgust.

He was already drunk. He had bulging
light-blue eyes which were now more sea-green. A quid of tobacco raised a lump in
his cheek.

‘Does he go out on the Grand Banks
boats too?'

‘He used to. But now that
he's got seven kids, he goes out after herring in winter, because the periods
away are shorter: a month to start with and then for increasingly shorter spells as
the fish go south.'

‘And in summer?'

‘He fishes for himself, lays
dragnets, lobster pots …'

The man was sitting on the same
bench-seat as Maigret, at the far end of it. But the inspector had a good view of
him in a mirror.

He was short, with wide shoulders. He
was a typical northern sailor, squat, fleshy, with no neck, pink skin and fair hair.
Like most fishermen, his hands were covered with scars of old ulcers.

‘Does he usually drink this
much?'

‘They're all hard drinkers.
But he's been really knocking it back since his boy died. Seeing the
Océan
again hit him hard.'

The man was now staring at them, openly
insolent.

‘What you after, then?' he
spluttered at Maigret.

‘Nothing at all.'

All the mariners followed the scene
without interrupting their game of dominoes.

‘Because you'd better out
with it … A man's not entitled to have a drink, is that it?'

‘Not at all!'

‘Go on, say it, say I'm not
entitled to have a sup or two,' he repeated with the obstinacy of a drunk.

The inspector's eye picked out the
black armband he wore on one sleeve of his red jerkin.

‘So what you up to, then, sneaking
around here, the pair of you, talking about me?'

Léon shook his head, advising Maigret
not to reply, and went over to his customer.

‘Easy now! Don't go kicking
up a fuss, Canut. The inspector's not talking about you but about the lad who
shot himself.'

‘Serve him right! Is he
dead?'

‘No. Maybe they can save
him.'

‘Too bad! I wish they'd all
die!'

The words had an immediate impact. All
heads turned to stare at Canut, who felt the urge to shout it ever louder:

‘That's right! The whole lot
of you!'

Léon was worried. He looked imploringly
at everyone there, adding a gesture of helplessness in Maigret's
direction.

‘Go home. Go to bed. Your wife
will be waiting up …'

‘Don't give a
damn!'

‘In the morning, you won't
feel like going out to clear your nets.'

The drunk sniggered. Louis took the
opportunity to call to Julie:

‘How much does it come
to?'

‘Both rounds?'

‘Yes. Put it on the slate. Tomorrow I'll get
my advance pay before I sail.'

He got to his feet. The Breton
automatically followed his lead, as if he were his shadow. He tipped his cap. Then
he did it again for Maigret's particular benefit.

‘Bunch of chicken-hearts!'
muttered the drunk as the two men walked past him. ‘Cowards, the whole lot of
them!'

The Breton clenched his fists and was
about to say something. But Louis dragged him away.

‘Go home to bed,' Léon
repeated. ‘Anyway, it's closing time.'

‘I'll go when everybody else
goes. My money's as good as the next man's, right?'

He looked around for Maigret. It was as
if he was ready to start an argument.

‘It's like the big fella
there … What's he trying to ferret out?'

He was referring to the inspector. Léon
was on tenterhooks. The last customers lingered, sure that something was about to
happen.

‘Second thoughts, I think
I'd rather go home. What do I owe you?'

He fumbled beneath his jerkin and
produced a leather wallet, threw a few greasy notes on the table, stood up, swayed
and staggered to the door, which he had difficulty opening.

He kept muttering indistinctly what
might have been insults or threats. Once outside, he pressed his face to the window
for a last look at Maigret, flattening his nose against the steamed-up glass.

‘It hit him real hard,' sighed Léon,
returning to his seat. ‘He had just the one son. All his other kids are girls.
Which is to say they don't count.'

‘What are they saying here?'
asked Maigret.

‘About the wireless operator? They
don't know anything. So they make things up. Fanciful tales …'

‘Such as?'

‘Oh, I don't know.
They're always on about the
evil eye
…'

Maigret sensed that there was a keen eye
watching him. It belonged to the chief mechanic, who was sitting at the table
opposite.

‘Has your wife stopped being
jealous?' the inspector asked.

‘Given that we sail in the
morning, I'd like to see her try to keep me stuck in Yport!'

‘Is the
Océan
leaving
tomorrow?'

‘With the tide, yes. If you think
the owners intend to let her fester in the harbour …'

‘Have they found a new
captain?'

‘Some retired master or other who
hasn't been at sea for eight years. And on top of that, he was then skipper of
a three-masted barque! It'll be no fun!'

‘And the wireless
operator?'

‘Some kid they've got
straight out of college … Some big technical school, they said it was.'

‘And is the first mate coming
back?'

‘They recalled him. Sent him a
cable. He'll be here in the morning.'

‘And the crew?'

‘The usual story. They take whatever's
hanging around the docks. It always works, doesn't it?'

‘Have they found a ship's
boy?'

The chief mechanic looked at him
sharply.

‘Yes,' he said curtly.

‘Glad to be off?'

No reply. The chief mechanic ordered
another grog. Léon, keeping his voice low, said:

‘We've just had news of the
Pacific
, which was due back this week. She's a sister ship of the
Océan
. She sank in less than three minutes after splitting her seams on
a rock. All hands lost. I've got the first mate's wife staying upstairs.
She came from Rouen to meet her husband. She spends every day down by the harbour
mouth. She doesn't know yet. The Company is waiting for confirmation before
breaking the news.'

‘It's the design of those
boats,' growled the chief mechanic, who had overheard.

The black sailor yawned and rubbed his
eyes but was not thinking of leaving just yet. The abandoned dominoes formed a
complicated pattern on the grey rectangle of the tabletop.

‘So in a word,' Maigret said
slowly, ‘no one has any idea why the wireless operator tried to kill
himself?'

His words met with an obstinate silence.
Did all the men there know why? Was this the freemasonry of seamen taken to an
extreme, closing ranks against landlubbers who poked their noses into their
business?

‘What do I owe you, Julie?'
asked Maigret.

He stood up, paid, headed wearily to the
door. Ten
pairs of eyes followed him. He
turned but saw only faces that were blank or resentful. Even Léon, for all his
bar-keeper's chumminess, stood shoulder to shoulder with his customers.

It was low tide. All that could be seen
of the trawler was the funnel and the derricks. The trucks had all gone. The quay
was deserted.

A fishing boat, with its white light
swinging at the end of its mast, was slowly moving away towards the jetties, and the
sound of two men talking could be heard.

Maigret filled one last pipe, looked
across the town and the towers of the Palais de la Bénédictine, at the foot of which
were walls which were part of the hospital.

The windows of the Grand Banks Café
punctuated the quay with two rectangles of light.

The sea was calm. There was a faint
murmur of water lapping the shingle and the wooden piles of the jetties.

The inspector stood on the edge of the
quay. Thick hawsers, the ones holding the
Océan
fast, were coiled round
bronze bollards.

He leaned over. Men were battening down
the hatches over the holds in which salt had been stowed earlier that day. One of
them was very young, younger than Le Clinche. He was wearing a suit and, leaning
against the wireless room, was watching the sailors as they worked.

It could only be the replacement for the
wireless operator who not long since had put a bullet in his own belly. He was
smoking a cigarette, taking shallow, nervous pulls on it.

He'd come straight from Paris,
fresh out of the National
Technical
School. He was apprehensive. Perhaps he dreamed of adventure.

Maigret could not tear himself away. He
was rooted there by a feeling that the mystery was close, within his grasp, that he
had to make just one last effort.

Suddenly, he turned, sensing a strange
presence behind him. In the dark, he made out a red jerkin and a black armband.

The man had not seen him, or at least
was not paying him any attention. He was walking along the lip of the quayside, and
it was a miracle that in the state he was in that he did not go over the edge.

The inspector now had only a rear view
of him. He had a feeling that the drunk, overcome by dizziness, was about to fall
down on to the deck of the trawler.

But no. He was talking to himself. He
laughed derisively. He brandished a fist.

Then he spat, once, twice, three times
on the boat below. He spat to express his total and utter disgust.

After which, doubtless having relieved
his feelings, he wandered off, not in the direction of his house, which was in the
fishermen's quarter, but towards the lower end of town, where there was a bar
still with its lights on.