‘Obviously the last one wasn’t exactly a roaring success.’
Another sharp glance at Maigret.
‘What are you getting at?’
‘Just that everything went wrong! A ship’s boy was killed. There were more accidents than usual. The fishing wasn’t good, and when the cod arrived back in Fécamp it was off …’
‘Was that my fault?’
‘I’m not saying that. I merely ask if in the events at which you were present there was anything that might explain the captain’s death. He was an easy-going sort, led a quiet life …’
The mechanic smiled mockingly but said nothing.
‘Do you know anything about him that says otherwise?’
‘Look, I told you I don’t know anything, that I’ve had enough of the whole business! Is everybody trying to drive me crazy? … What more do you want now?’
He had it in most for his wife. She had just come back into the room and was hurrying to the stove, where a saucepan was giving off a smell of burning.
She was about thirty-five. She wasn’t pretty and she wasn’t ugly.
‘I’ll only be a minute,’ she said meekly. ‘It’s the dog’s dinner …’
‘Get on with it, woman! … Haven’t you finished yet?’
And turning to Maigret:
‘Shall I give you a piece of good advice? Let it alone! Fallut is well off where he is! The less said about him, the better it’ll be! Now listen: I don’t know anything. You can ask me questions all day, and I wouldn’t have anything else to say … Did you get the train here? If you don’t catch the one that leaves in ten minutes, you’ll not get another until eight this evening.’
He had opened the door. Sunshine flooded into the room.
When he got to the doorway, the inspector asked quietly: ‘Who is your wife jealous of?’
The man gritted his teeth and did not speak.
‘Do you know who this is?’
Maigret held out the photo with the head obscured by the red scribble. But he kept his thumb over the face. All that was visible was the cleavage in the silk dress.
Laberge glanced up at him quickly and tried to grab the picture.
‘Do you recognize her?’
‘Why should I recognize her?’
His hand was still open when Maigret put the photograph back in his pocket.
‘Will you be coming to Fécamp tomorrow?’
‘I don’t know … Will you be needing me?’
‘No. I was just asking. Thanks for the information you gave me.’
‘But I didn’t tell you anything!’
Maigret had not gone ten paces from the door when it was kicked shut and voices were raised inside the house, where the argument would now start up again, even more acrimoniously.
The chief mechanic was right: there were no trains to Fécamp until eight in the evening, and Maigret, having time on his hands, was inevitably drawn to the beach, where he sat down on the terrace of a hotel.
There was the usual holiday atmosphere: red sun umbrellas, white dresses, white trousers and a group of sightseers clustered around a fishing boat that was being winched up on to the pebble beach with a capstan.
To right and left, light-coloured cliffs. Straight ahead, the sea, pale green with white combers, and the regular murmur of wavelets lapping the shoreline.
‘A beer!’
The sun was hot. A family were eating ice-creams on the next table. A young man was taking photos with a Kodak, and somewhere there were the shrill voices of little girls.
Maigret allowed his eyes to wander over the view. His thoughts grew hazy, and his brain sluggishly started weaving a daydream around Captain Fallut, who became increasingly insubstantial.
‘Thanks a million!’
The words went round and round in his head, not on account of their meaning, but because they had been pronounced curtly, with biting sarcasm, by a woman somewhere behind the inspector.
‘But Adèle, I told you …’
‘Shut up!’
‘You’re not going to start all that again …’
‘I’ll do exactly as I please!’
It was obviously a good day for arguments. First thing that morning, Maigret had encountered a man who bristled: the head man from French Cod.
At Yport, there had been that domestic scene between the Laberges. And now on the hotel terrace an unknown couple were exchanging heated words.
‘Why don’t you stop and think!’
‘Get lost!’
‘Do you think it’s clever to talk like that?’
‘Damn and blast you! Haven’t you got the message yet? … Waiter, this lemonade is warm. Get me another!’
The accent was common, and the woman was speaking more loudly than was necessary.
‘But you must make up your mind!’ the man said.
‘Just go by yourself! I told you! And leave me alone.’
‘You know, what you’re doing is pretty shabby.’
‘So are you!’
‘Me? You dare … Listen, if we weren’t here, I don’t think I’d be able to keep control of myself!’
She laughed. Much too loudly.
‘You tell a girl the nicest things!’
‘Be quiet! Please!’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because!’
‘Now that really is a clever answer, I must say!’
‘Are you going to shut up?’
‘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.
4. The Mark of Rage
‘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, Lou
is.’
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.’
‘And it went on like that for three months?’
‘Yes. Anything else you want to ask me?’
‘No, that’s it. You can go …’
Louis walked away almost regretfully. He stopped for a moment by the hatch, watching the inspector, who was puffing gently at his pipe.
The Grand Banks Café Page 4