The Grand Banks Café (6 page)

‘If I feel like it.'

‘Adèle, I'm warning you
I'll …'

‘You'll what? Kick up a fuss
in front of everybody? And where would that get you? People are already
listening.'

‘If only you'd stop and
think for a moment, you'd understand.'

She sprang to her feet like someone who
has had enough. Maigret had his back turned to her but saw her shadow grow bigger on
the tiled floor of the terrace.

Then he saw her, from the back, as she
walked off in the direction of the sea.

From behind, she was just a silhouette
against the sky, which was now turning red. All Maigret could make out was that she
was quite well-dressed, but not for the beach, not with silk stockings and high
heels.

It was an outfit which made it difficult
for her to walk elegantly over the pebble beach. At any moment she could twist an
ankle, but she was furiously, stubbornly determined to forge ahead.

‘Waiter, what do I owe
you?'

‘But I haven't brought the
lemonade which the lady …'

‘Forget it! What's the
damage?'

‘Nine francs fifty … Won't
you be having dinner here?'

‘No idea.'

Maigret turned round to get a sight of
the man, who
was looking very awkward
because he was well aware that everyone nearby had heard everything.

He was tall and flashily elegant. His
eyes looked tired, and his utter frustration was written all over his face.

When he stood up, he hesitated about
which way to go and in the end, trying to look as if he didn't give a damn
about anything, he set off in the direction of the young woman, who was now walking
along the winding edge of the sea.

‘Another pair that aren't
married, for sure!' said a voice at a table where three women were busy doing
crochet work.

‘Why couldn't they wash
their dirty linen somewhere else? It's not setting the children a very good
example.'

The two silhouettes joined at the
water's edge. Their words were no longer audible. But the way they stood and
moved made it easy to guess what was going on.

The man pleaded and threatened. The
woman refused to give an inch. At one point he grabbed her by the wrist, and it
seemed as if they would come to blows.

Instead, he turned his back on her and
walked away quickly towards a street nearby, where he started the engine of a small
grey car.

‘Waiter! Another beer!'

Then Maigret noticed that the young
woman had left her handbag on the table. Imitation crocodile-skin, full to bursting,
brand new.

Then a shadow coming towards him on the
ground. He looked up and got a front view of the owner of the handbag, who was
coming back to the terrace.

The inspector gave a start. His nostrils flared
slightly.

He could be wrong, of course. It was
more an impression than a certainty. But he could have sworn he was looking at the
person in the headless photo.

Cautiously, he took the photo out of his
pocket. The woman had sat down again.

‘Well, waiter? Where's my
lemonade?'

‘I thought … The gentleman said
…'

‘I ordered lemonade!'

It was the same slightly fleshy line of
the neck, the same full but firm breasts, the same voluptuous buoyancy …

And the same style of dressing, the same
taste for very glossy silk in loud colours.

Maigret dropped the photo in such a way
that the woman at the next table could not fail to see it.

And see it she did. She stared at the
inspector as though she were trawling through her memories. But if she was
disconcerted, her feelings did not show in her face.

Five minutes, ten minutes went by. Then
there was the distant thrum of an engine. It grew louder. It was the grey car
heading back to the terrace. It stopped, then set off again, as though the driver
could not make up his mind to drive away and not come back.

‘Gaston!'

She was on her feet. She waved to the
man. This time she grasped her bag firmly and the next moment she was getting into
the car.

The three women at the next table
followed her with their eyes and a disapproving air. The young man with the Kodak
turned round.

The grey car was already vanishing in a roar of
acceleration.

‘Waiter! Where can I get hold of a
car?'

‘I don't think you'll
find one in Yport … There is one which sometimes takes people to Fécamp or Étretat,
but now that I think I saw it drive off this morning with some English people in
it.'

The inspector's thick fingers
drummed rapidly on the tabletop.

‘Bring me a road map. And get me
the chief inspector of Fécamp police on the phone … Have you ever seen those two
before?'

‘The couple who were arguing?
Almost every day this week. Yesterday they had lunch here. I think they're
from Le Havre.'

There were now only families left on the
beach, which exuded all the warmth of a summer evening. A black ship moved
imperceptibly across the line of the horizon, entered the sun and emerged on the
other side, as if it had jumped through a paper hoop.

‘Speaking for myself,' said
the chief inspector of Fécamp's police department as he sharpened a blue
pencil, ‘I'll admit I have few illusions left. It's so rarely that
we manage to clear up any of these cases involving sailors. And that's being
optimistic! Just you try getting to the bottom of one of those mindless brawls that
happen every day of the week down by the harbour. When my men get there,
they're all beating seven bells out of each other. Then they spot uniforms and
they close ranks and go on the offensive. Question them and they all lie, contradict
each other and muddy the waters to the point that in the end we give up.'

There were four of them smoking in the
office, which was already filled with tobacco fumes. It was evening. The divisional
head of Le Havre's flying squad, who was officially in charge of the
investigation, had a young inspector with him.

Maigret was there in a private capacity.
He sat at a table in a corner. He hadn't yet spoken.

‘It looks straightforward enough
to me,' ventured the young inspector, who was hoping to earn the approval of
his chief. ‘Theft wasn't the motive for the crime. So it was an act of
revenge. On which member of the crew did Captain Fallut come down hardest when they
were away at sea?'

But the chief inspector from Le Havre gave a shrug, and
the junior inspector turned red and fell silent.

‘Still …'

‘No, no! It's something
else. And top of the list is this woman you unearthed for us, Maigret. Did you give
the boys in uniform all the information they need to find her? Dammit, I can't
for the life of me work out what part she played in all this. The boat was at sea
for three months. She wasn't there when it docked, because no one has reported
seeing her get off it. The wireless operator is engaged to be married. By all
accounts, Captain Fallut didn't seem the kind of man who'd do anything
silly. And yet he wrote his will just before he got himself murdered.

‘It would also be interesting to
know who exactly went to the trouble of delivering the will here,' sighed
Maigret. ‘There's also a reporter – he's the one who wears a beige
raincoat – who claims in
L'Éclair de Rouen
that the owners of the
Océan
had sent it to sea to do something other than fish for
cod.'

‘They always say that, every
time,' muttered the Fécamp chief inspector.

The conversation languished. There was a
long silence during which the spittle in Maigret's pipe could be heard
sizzling. He got stiffly to his feet.

‘If anyone asked me what the
distinctive feature of this case is,' he said, ‘I'd say that it
has the mark of rage on it. Everything to do with the trawler is acrimonious, tense,
overheated. The crew get drunk and fight in the Grand Banks Café. I bring the
wireless operator's fiancée to see him, and he could barely conceal his
irritation and gave
her a pretty cool
reception. He almost as good as told her to mind her own business! At Yport, the
chief mechanic calls his wife all sorts and treats me like some dog he can kick. And
then I come across two people who seem to have the same mark on them: the girl
called Adèle, and her boyfriend. They make scenes on the beach, and no sooner do
they settle their differences than they disappear together …'

‘And what do you make of it
all?' asked the chief inspector from Le Havre.

‘Me? I don't make anything
of it. I merely remark that I feel as if I'm going round in circles surrounded
by a lot of mad people … Anyway, I'll say good night. I'm just an
observer here. Besides, my wife is expecting me back at the hotel. You'll let
me know, chief inspector, if you locate the Yport woman and the man in the grey
car?'

‘Of course! Good night!'

Instead of walking through the town,
Maigret went via the harbour, hands in pocket, pipe between his teeth. The empty
port was a large black rectangle where the only lights that showed were those of the
Océan
, which was still being unloaded.

‘… the mark of rage!' he
muttered to himself.

No one paid attention when he climbed on
board. He walked along the deck, with no obvious purpose, he saw a light in a
foredeck hatchway. He leaned over it. Warm air blew up into his face, a combined
smell of doss-house, canteen and fish market.

He went down the iron ladder and found
himself face to face with three men who were eating from mess tins
balanced on their knees. For light, there was an oil lamp
hung on gimbals. In the middle of their quarters was a cast-iron stove caked with
grease.

Along the walls were four tiers of
bunks, some still full of straw, the others empty. And boots. And sou'westers
hanging on pegs.

Of the three, only Louis had stood up.
The other two were the Breton and a black sailor with bare feet.

‘Enjoying your dinner?'
growled Maigret.

He was answered with grunts.

‘Where are your mates?'

‘Gone home, haven't
they,' said Louis. ‘You gotta have nowhere to go and be broke to hang
about here when you're not at sea.'

Maigret had to get used to the
semi-darkness and especially the smell. He tried to imagine the same space when it
was filled by forty men who could not move a muscle without bumping into
somebody.

Forty men dropping on to their bunks
without taking their boots off, snoring, chewing tobacco, smoking …

‘Did the captain ever come down
here?'

‘Never.'

And all the while the throb of the
screw, the smell of coal smoke, of soot, of burning hot metal, the pounding of the
sea …

‘Come with me, Louis.'

Out of the corner of his eye, Maigret
caught the sailor, full of bravado, making signs to the others behind his back.

But once aloft, on the deck now flooded
with shadow, his swagger evaporated.

‘What's up?'

‘Nothing … Listen … Suppose the
captain died at sea, on the way home. Was there someone who could have got the boat
safely back to port?'

‘Maybe not. Because the first mate
doesn't know how to take a bearing. Still they say that, using the wireless,
the wireless operator could always find the ship's position.'

‘Did you see much of the wireless
operator?'

‘Never saw him at all! Don't
imagine we walk around like we're doing now. There are general quarters for
some, others have separate quarters of their own. You can go for days without
budging from your small corner.'

‘How about the chief
mechanic?'

‘Him? Yes. I saw him more or less
every day.'

‘How did he seem?'

Louis turned evasive.

‘How the devil should I know?
Look, what are you driving at? I'd like to see how you make out when
everything's going wrong, a lad goes overboard, a steam valve blows, the
captain's mind is set on anchoring the trawler in a station where
there's no fish, a man gets gangrene and the rest of it … You'd be
effing and blinding nineteen to the dozen! And for the smallest thing you'd
take a swing at someone! And to cap it all, when you're told the captain on
the bridge is off his rocker …'

‘Was he?'

‘I never asked him. Anyway
…'

‘Anyway what?'

‘At the end of the day, what
difference will it make? There'll always be someone who'll tell you.
Look, it seems
there were three of them up
top who never went anywhere without their revolvers. Three of them spying on each
other, all afraid of each other. The captain hardly ever came out of his cabin,
where he'd ordered the charts, compass, sextant and the rest to be
brought.'