The Misty Harbour

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Is he … Can he be …?’

  She collapsed on to the carpet, wailing almost unintelligibly, but one could just make out: ‘… It can’t be … My poor monsieur … my … my …’

  Solemnly, Maigret stooped to help her to her feet and guide her, still shuddering in distress, into her bedroom next door. The place was in disorder, with clothes lying on the bed and soapy water in the wash basin.

  ‘Who filled the water carafe sitting on the bedside table?’

  ‘I did … Yesterday morning … When I put flowers in the captain’s room …’

  ‘Were you alone in the house?’

  Julie was panting, slowly recovering her composure, yet beginning to wonder at the inspector’s questions.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she cried abruptly.

  ‘I’m not thinking anything. Calm down. I’ve just read the captain’s will.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You inherit everything. You’ll be rich …’

  His words simply provoked fresh tears.

  ‘The captain was poisoned by the water in the carafe.’

  She glared at him with bristling contempt.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ she shouted. ‘What do you mean?’

  She was so overwrought that she grabbed his forearm, shook it in fury and even seemed about to start hitting and clawing at him.

  ‘Julie, compose yourself, listen to me! The inquiry has only just begun. I am not insinuating anything. I am gathering information.’

  A loud knock at the door; the policeman had brought news.

  ‘The magistrate cannot get here before early this afternoon. The mayor, who was out hunting last night, was in bed. He will come as soon as he’s ready.’

  Everyone was on edge. Throughout the house there was a fever of anxiety. And that crowd outside, waiting without really knowing what it was waiting for, increased the feeling of tension and disturbance.

  ‘Are you planning on staying here?’ Maigret asked Julie.

  ‘Why not? Wherever would I go?’

  The inspector asked the doctor to leave the captain’s bedroom, then locked the door behind him. He permitted only two women to remain with Julie, the wife of the lighthouse-keeper and a lock-worker’s wife.

  ‘Allow no one else in,’ he told the policeman. ‘If necessary, try to send these curiosity seekers away without making a fuss.’

  The inspector himself left the cottage, made his way through the onlookers and walked to the bridge. The foghorn was still sounding in the distance, but only faintly now, with the wind blowing offshore. The air was mild. The sun shone more brightly with each passing hour. The tide was rising.

  Two lock workers were already arriving from the village to begin their shifts. On the bridge, Maigret saw Captain Delcourt, with whom he had spoken the previous evening and who now came towards him.

  ‘Tell me! Is it true?’

  ‘Joris was poisoned, yes.’

  ‘Who did it?’

  The people over at the cottage were beginning to disperse. The policeman seemed to be the reason, going from group to group, telling them God knows what and gesturing emphatically. Now, however, the crowd had fixed on the inspector and observed him intently.

  ‘Are you already on duty?’

  ‘Not yet. Not until the tide rises a good metre more. Look! That steamship you see at anchor in the roadstead has been waiting since six this morning.’

  Customs officials, the head lock-keeper, the water bailiff and the skipper of the coastguard cutter were among the onlookers hovering nearby, not daring to approach the two men, but the lock workers were getting ready to start their shifts.

  So Maigret was now seeing in broad daylight the men he had sensed had been working all around him the previous night, hidden in the fog. The Buvette de la Marine was only a few steps away, its windows and glass door providing a fine view of the lock, the bridge, the jetties, the lighthouse and Joris’ cottage.

  ‘Will you come and have a drink?’ the inspector asked Captain Delcourt.

  He had the feeling that this was customary, that with each tide this little fraternity would repair to their local hangout. The captain checked the level of the water.

  ‘I’ve got half an hour,’ he announced.

  They both entered the simple wooden tavern, gradually followed – after some hesitation – by the others. Maigret beckoned to them to join him and his companion at their table.

  He had to break the ice, introducing himself to everyone to inspire their trust and even gain some sort of access to their circle.

  ‘What’ll you have?’

  They all glanced at one another, still a bit ill at ease.

  ‘This time of day, it’s usually coffee laced with a warming drop …’

  A woman served them all. The crowd returning from the cottage tried to see inside the bar and, reluctant to go on home, scattered through the harbour to await developments.

  After filling his pipe, Maigret passed his tobacco pouch around. Captain Delcourt preferred a cigarette, but the head lock-keeper, reddening slightly, tucked a pinch of tobacco inside his lip and mumbled, ‘If you don’t mind …’

  Maigret finally made his move.

  ‘A strange business, this, don’t you think?’

  They had all been expecting this moment, but the sally still met with an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Captain Joris seems to have been quite a fine fellow …’

  And the inspector waited, darting discreet glances at the men’s faces.

  ‘Indeed!’ replied Delcourt, who was a bit older than his predecessor, less tidy in his appearance and apparently not averse to drink.

  Nevertheless, while speaking he kept a careful eye, through the curtains, on both the progress of the tide and the ship now weighing anchor.

  ‘He’s starting a mite early! The current in the Orne will shortly drive him on to the sandbanks …’

  ‘Your health!’ said Maigret. ‘I take it, then, that none of you knows what happened on the night of the 16th of September …’

  ‘No one. It was a foggy evening, like last night. I myself was not on duty. I stayed on here, though, playing cards with Joris and these other men here with you now.’

  ‘Did you get together here every evening?’

  ‘Just about … Not much else to do in Ouistreham. Three or four times, that night, Joris left his hand to someone else when he had to go and attend to a boat in the lock. By nine thirty, the tide had gone out. He set out into the fog, as if he were heading home.’

  ‘When did you realize he was missing?’

  ‘The next day. Julie came to ask about him. She’d gone to sleep before he got home and the next morning was astonished not to find him in his bedroom.’

  ‘Joris had had a few drinks?’

  ‘Never more than one!’ insisted the customs man, growing eager to have his say on this subject. ‘And no tobacco!’

  ‘And … How shall I put this … He and Julie? …’

  An exchange of looks, some hesitation, several smiles.

  ‘No way to know. Joris swore there was nothing. It’s just that …’

  The customs man picked up the thread.

  ‘I’m not speaking ill of him when I say that he didn’t entirely fit in with the rest of us. He wasn’t a prideful man, no, that’s not the right word! But he paid attention to appearances, you understand? He’d never have come on duty in clogs, like Delcourt sometimes does. He played cards here of an evening, but never came by during the day. He never spoke familiarly to the lock workers … I don’t know if you see what I’m getting at …’

  Maigret saw perfectly. He had spent several hours in Joris’ modest, cosy, neat little house. And now he considered the regulars at the Buvette de la Marine, a rowdier, more unbuttoned crew. This was a place for hearty drinking, where voices surely grew boisterous, the atmosphere thick with smoke, and the talk a touch coarse.

  Joris came here simply to play cards, never chatted about his personal
life, had only the one drink before leaving.

  ‘She’s been at his house for about eight years now. She was sixteen when she arrived, a little country girl, bedraggled and badly dressed …’

  ‘And now …’

  The waitress arrived as if on cue with a bottle of home-made brandy and poured another shot into the glasses, where only a little coffee remained. This, too, appeared to be the custom of the place.

  ‘Now? She is what she is … At our dances, for example, she won’t step out on the floor with just anyone. And in the shops, when she’s treated with easy familiarity, like a maid, she gets angry. It’s hard to explain … Even though her brother …’

  The head lock-keeper gave the customs man a sharp look – but Maigret caught him at it.

  ‘Her brother?’

  ‘The inspector will find out anyway!’ continued the man, who was obviously not on his first spiked coffee of the day. ‘Her brother did eight years in prison. He was drunk, one night, in Honfleur. With a few others, loud and disorderly in the streets. When the police stepped in, the fellow hurt one officer so badly that he died the next month.’

  ‘He’s a sailor?’

  ‘He served on ocean-going vessels in the foreign trade before coming back home. He’s currently sailing on a schooner out of Paimpol, the Saint-Michel.’

  Captain Delcourt had begun fidgeting nervously.

  ‘Let’s go!’ he announced. ‘It’s time …’

  ‘Before the steamer’s even in the lock!’ sighed the customs officer, clearly in less of a hurry.

  Only three men were left. Maigret signalled to the waitress, who returned with her bottle.

  ‘Does the Saint-Michel sometimes come through here?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes.’

  ‘Was she here on the 16th of September?’

  ‘Well, it’s going to be right there for him in the lock-keeper’s log,’ the customs man remarked to his neighbour and turned to Maigret: ‘Yes, she was here. She even had to stay in the outer harbour on account of the fog and left only at daybreak.’

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘Southampton. I’m the one who looked over their papers. The cargo was grindstone grit, from Caen.’

  ‘And Julie’s brother hasn’t been seen here since?’

  This time the customs officer sniffed thoughtfully and paused before draining his glass.

  ‘You’ll have to ask those who claim to have spotted him yesterday … Me, I haven’t seen a thing.’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  A shrug. An enormous steamer came gliding between the stone walls of the lock, a vast black mass towering over the countryside, its funnel taller than the trees lining the canal.

  ‘I’ve got to get over there …’

  ‘Me too …’

  ‘How much does it come to, mademoiselle?’ Maigret asked the waitress.

  ‘The landlady isn’t here just now, but I’m sure you’ll be back.’

  The people still waiting outside the captain’s cottage for something to happen now gratefully turned their attention to the English steamer passing through the lock.

  As Maigret left the bar, a man was arriving from the village; the inspector assumed he was the mayor, whom he had seen only briefly the night before.

  A somewhat beefy fellow between forty-five and fifty, quite tall, with a rosy complexion. He was wearing a grey hunting coat and aviator gaiters. Maigret went over to him.

  ‘Monsieur Grandmaison? I am Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Police Judiciaire.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ came the casual reply.

  The mayor looked at the Buvette de la Marine, then Maigret, then the tavern again as if to say, ‘Strange company for an important official to keep!’

  And he kept walking towards the lock on his way to the cottage.

  ‘Joris is dead, I hear?’

  ‘It’s true,’ replied Maigret, who did not much like the man’s attitude.

  An attitude that could hardly have been more traditional: that of the big fish in a small pond, someone who thinks himself the centre of the world, dresses like a country gentleman and pays a token tribute to democracy by shaking hands half-heartedly with his fellow citizens, saluting them with mumbled greetings and the occasional inquiry after their children’s health.

  ‘And you’ve caught the murderer? Since it was you who brought Joris here and who – excuse me …’

  He went over to speak to the water bailiff, who apparently attended him when he went duck hunting.

  ‘The left-hand reeds of the blind need straightening. And one of the decoys is useless, it looked half dead this morning.’

  ‘I’ll see to it, sir.’

  The mayor rejoined Maigret, pausing en route to shake the harbourmaster’s hand with a murmured greeting.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine, sir.’

  ‘Where were we, inspector? Ah! What’s all this I hear about a patched-up fractured skull, insanity and so on?’

  ‘Were you a particular friend of Captain Joris?’

  ‘He was in my employ for twenty-eight years, a fine man, assiduous in his duties.’

  ‘Honest?’

  ‘Almost all my employees are.’

  ‘What was his salary?’

  ‘That would depend, because of the war, which disrupted things everywhere. Enough for him to buy his little house, in any case. And I wager he had at least twenty thousand francs in the bank.’

  ‘No more?’

  ‘Oh, perhaps five thousand francs or so more, at most.’

  The upstream lock-gate was opening to let the steamer into the canal; another ship, coming down from Caen, would take its place and head out to sea.

  The day was beautifully calm. Everyone was watching Maigret and the mayor. Up on their ship, the English sailors glanced nonchalantly at the crowd while going about their duties.

  ‘What is your opinion of Julie Legrand?’

  The mayor hesitated for a moment before grumbling, ‘A silly creature who had her head turned because Joris treated her far too nicely. She thinks she’s … How shall I … Anyway, she fancies herself better than she is.’

  ‘And her brother?’

  ‘Never laid eyes on him. I’m told he’s a scoundrel.’

  They had left the lock behind and were approaching Joris’ front gate, where a few kids were still playing and hoping to see some interesting developments.

  ‘What did the captain die of?’

  ‘Strychnine!’

  Maigret was wearing his most pigheaded expression. He walked slowly, hands in his pockets, pipe clenched in his teeth. And this pipe seemed to match his big face, for it held a quarter-packet’s worth of shag tobacco.

  The white cat, stretched full-length in the sunshine atop the garden wall, leaped down in a flash as the two men arrived.

  ‘You’re not going in?’ asked the mayor in surprise when Maigret stopped short at the cottage gate.

  ‘Just a moment. In your opinion, was Julie the captain’s mistress?’

  ‘How would I know that!’ exclaimed Monsieur Grandmaison impatiently.

  ‘Did you often visit the captain here?’

  ‘Never! Joris was one of my employees. So you see …’ And he smiled in what he imagined to be a lordly manner. ‘If it’s all the same to you, inspector, we’ll deal with this as swiftly as possible. I’m expecting guests for lunch.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  Frowning in concentration, Maigret kept pursuing his thought, his hand still on the front-gate latch.

  Monsieur Grandmaison, who was just over six feet tall, looked down at the inspector, who noticed that although the mayor wasn’t exactly cross-eyed, his irises were slightly asymmetrical.

  ‘I should warn you, sir,’ said the mayor, ‘that if you continue to address me in that tone, you might well come to regret it. Now show me what it is you wish me to see.’

  And after pushing open the gate himself, he walked up to and through the front door, where
the policeman on guard stepped swiftly out of his way.

  Through a glass panel in the kitchen door Maigret could see right away that something was amiss: the two women were there, but he did not see Julie.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She went up to her room! Locked herself in and refused to come down.’

  ‘Just like that, out of the blue?’

  ‘She was doing better,’ explained the lighthouse-keeper’s wife. ‘Still crying, but not as hard, and was talking with us a little. I told her she should eat something, so she opened the cupboard …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I don’t know … She seemed frightened! She dashed up the stairs, and next thing, we heard the key to her bedroom turning in the lock.’

  There was nothing in the cupboard but crockery, a few apples in a basket, a dish of marinating herrings and two greasy plates that had probably held some cold meat.

  ‘I am still waiting!’ snapped the mayor, who had stayed out in the front hall. ‘It is eleven thirty. What that young woman has been up to should hardly …’

  Maigret locked the cupboard, pocketed the key and walked heavily to the stairs.

  3. The Kitchen Cupboard

  ‘Julie, open up!’

  No reply, but the sound of someone collapsing on a bed.

  ‘Open this door!’

  Nothing. So Maigret slammed his shoulder into the door – and the screws popped out of the lock plate.

  ‘Why didn’t you open the door?’

  She was not crying. She was not agitated. No, she was curled up on her bed staring fixedly straight in front of her. When the inspector came too close, she jumped down and attempted to reach the door.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she said loudly.

  ‘Well then, give me the note, Julie.’

  ‘What note?’

  She spoke aggressively, hoping to camouflage her lie.

  ‘Did the captain allow your brother to come and visit you?’

  No answer.

  ‘Which means that he did not permit it! Your brother used to come and see you anyway. It seems he came here the night Joris disappeared …’

  A hard, almost hateful look.