The Misty Harbour (13 page)

‘Monsieur Grandmaison hasn't
made any calls, mademoiselle?'

‘One hour ago. To
Paris.'

She gave him the number. He looked in
the phone book: a boys' school, the Collège Stanislas.

‘Does the
mayor often call that number?'

‘Rather often. I think it's
his son's boarding school.'

‘It's true, he does have a
son … Of about fifteen, yes?'

‘I believe, but I've never
seen him.'

‘Has Monsieur Grandmaison called
Caen?'

‘It was Caen that called him.
Someone in his family or one of his employees, because the call came from his house
there.'

The telegraph was clicking. A message
for the harbourmaster: ‘Tug Athos arriving noon. Signed: Trouville
Harbourmaster's Office.'

And the Caen police phoned in at
last.

‘Madame Grandmaison arrived in
Caen at four in the morning. She slept at her home in the Rue du Four. She has just
left by car for Ouistreham.'

When Maigret looked out at the beach
from the harbour, the sea had retreated so far that the stranded boat was about
halfway between the water and the dunes. Captain Delcourt was morose. Everyone was
watching the horizon with dread.

Because there could be no mistake. The
wind had fallen with the tide, but the storm would return with a vengeance around
noon, when the tide turned. That much was clear from the unhealthy grey colour of
the sky and the treacherous green of the waves.

‘Has anyone seen the
mayor?'

‘He had his maid inform me that he
is ill,' replied Delcourt, ‘and that he's leaving me in charge of
the rescue operation.'

Maigret headed
wearily towards the villa with his hands in his pockets. He rang. It was almost ten
minutes before the door opened.

The maid tried to speak but he did not
listen, walking into the front hall with such a determined expression that she
decided simply to hurry ahead to the study door.

‘It's the inspector!'
she cried.

Maigret entered the room he was
beginning to know so well, tossed his hat on to a chair, nodded to the man stretched
out in his armchair.

The bruises of the previous day were
much more visible, having turned from red to blue. An enormous coal fire was burning
in the fireplace.

One look told Maigret that the mayor
intended to say nothing and even to ignore his visitor.

Maigret did the same. He removed his
overcoat and went to stand with his back to the fire, like a man intent only on
warming himself. The flames felt good on his calves. He smoked his pipe in short,
hurried puffs.

‘Before the day is over, this
whole affair will be resolved!' he finally said, as if musing to himself.

The other man made an effort not to
react. He even picked up a newspaper lying within reach and pretended to read
it.

‘We might, for example, be obliged
to go to Caen together.'

‘To Caen?'

Monsieur Grandmaison had looked up with
a frown.

‘To Caen, yes! I should have told
you earlier, which would have spared Madame Grandmaison the trouble of coming here
for nothing.'

‘I
don't see what my wife—'

‘Has to do with all this!'
broke in Maigret. ‘Neither do I!'

And he went over to the desk for some
matches to relight his pipe.

‘It isn't important
anyway,' he continued in a lighter tone, ‘since it'll all be
cleared up soon. By the way, do you know who the current owner of the
Saint-Michel
is, which Delcourt will be attempting to
refloat? … Big Louis! Except that he's obviously a straw man, acting
on behalf of a certain Martineau.'

The mayor was trying to see where
Maigret was going with this, but had no intention of talking or – above all – asking
him any questions.

‘You'll see the chain of
events here. Big Louis buys the
Saint-Michel
as a cat's paw for this
Martineau five days before Captain Joris disappeared. The schooner is the only boat
that left Ouistreham soon after that disappeance, and she went on to England and
Holland before returning to France. From Holland, there must be coasters of the same
type making regular runs to Norway … Martineau happens to be Norwegian.
And before turning up in Paris, with a cracked and repaired skull, Captain Joris
went to Norway.'

The mayor was listening closely.

‘That isn't all. Martineau
returns to Fécamp to rejoin the
Saint-Michel
. Big Louis, who is his
factotum, is here a few hours before Joris' death. The
Saint-Michel
arrives a little later, with Martineau. And last night, he tries to make a run for
it, taking with him most of the men I asked to remain at the disposal of the
judicial authorities … Except you!'

Maigret paused, and sighed.

‘What's still unclear is why Martineau
returned and tried to reach Paris, and why you telephoned your wife to have her rush
back here.'

‘I hope you're not
insinuating …'

‘Me? Not a bit. Listen!
There's a car coming. I bet it's Madame Grandmaison arriving from Caen.
Would you do me the favour of not telling her anything?'

The doorbell. The maid's footsteps
in the hall. The sounds of low voices in conversation, then the maid's face
looking in through the half-open door. But why wasn't she saying anything? Why
such anxious looks at the master of the house?

‘Well?' said he,
impatiently.

‘It's just
that …'

Maigret pushed her aside and saw no one
in the hall but the uniformed chauffeur.

‘You've lost Madame
Grandmaison en route?' He demanded bluntly.

‘Well … Well,
she …'

‘Where did she get out of the
car?'

‘At the crossroads linking Caen
and Deauville. She did not feel well.'

In his study, the mayor was on his feet,
breathing heavily. The look on his face was grim.

‘Wait for me!' he shouted to
the chauffeur.

And finding his way blocked by
Maigret's massive form, he hesitated.

‘I suppose you're ready to
confess …'

‘Everything. You're right.
We
must go there together.'

The car stopped at a bare crossroads. The
chauffeur looked back over his shoulder for instructions. Ever since leaving
Ouistreham, Monsieur Grandmaison had not been the same man.

On his home ground he had always managed
to control himself, trying to maintain his dignity even under the most distressing
circumstances.

Not any more! He was now in a state
close to panic, which his battered face made even more obvious. His restless gaze
roamed constantly around the passing countryside.

When the car stopped, he looked at
Maigret expectantly, but the inspector simply asked, with quiet mischief,
‘What shall we do now?'

Not a soul on the road or in the
orchards nearby. Madame Grandmaison had clearly not left her car intending to sit
down by the roadside. If she had sent her chauffeur on, after alighting there, it
was because she was meeting someone or had suddenly seen a person with whom she
wished to speak in private.

The trees were dripping with rain. The
air smelled strongly of damp earth. Cows stared at the car, chewing their
cud …

The mayor peered all around, perhaps
expecting to spot his wife behind a hedge or tree trunk.

‘Look closely!' said
Maigret, as if training a rookie.

There were some
recognizable tracks on the road to Dives. A vehicle had stopped there, had some
trouble turning around on the narrow road and driven off again.

‘An old van. Let's go,
driver!'

They did not drive far. Well before
Dives, the tracks vanished near a stony side road. Monsieur Grandmaison was still
tense, his eyes glittering with both anxiety and hatred.

‘What do you think?'

‘There's a small village
that way, about five hundred metres on.'

‘In which case, we'd best
leave the car here.'

Exhaustion gave Maigret a look of
inhuman indifference. He was literally asleep on his feet. He seemed to advance
thanks only to his own momentum. Anyone watching them walk along that road would
have thought the mayor was in charge, and the inspector, some underling following
placidly in his wake.

They passed a little house surrounded by
chickens, where a woman stared at the two men in amazement. Then they arrived at the
back of a church not much bigger than a thatched cottage and, to the left, a
tobacconist's shop.

‘You don't mind?'
asked Maigret, bringing out his empty pouch.

He stepped inside the little shop, which
sold groceries and all sorts of household items. An elderly man emerged from a room
with a vaulted ceiling and summoned his daughter to bring Maigret his tobacco. While
the door was open, the inspector glimpsed a wall telephone.

‘At what time did my friend come
here to place a call this morning?'

‘A good
hour ago,' replied the girl promptly.

‘So the lady has
arrived?'

‘Oh, yes. She even came in here
for directions. They're not complicated, it's the last house, the lane
on the right.'

Maigret left, still moving like a
sleepwalker. He found Monsieur Grandmaison standing in front of the church, looking
all around in a manner certain to arouse the suspicions of the entire village.

‘It occurs to me,' murmured
Maigret, ‘that we should split up. You search off to the left, by the fields,
while I look on the right.'

He caught a gleam of delight in the
man's eye. The mayor could not hide his hope of finding his wife on his own
and talking privately with her.

‘Good idea,' he replied,
feigning indifference.

The hamlet consisted of no more than
twenty poky little houses that clumped together enough in one area to give the
illusion of a street, which did not prevent real manure from piling up there. It was
still raining, a rain so fine it was almost a mist, and no one was outdoors.
Curtains were twitching, however. One could just imagine, behind them, the usual
wrinkled old women peering out from their dimly lit homes.

At the very end of the hamlet, in front
of the fenced-in meadow where two horses were galloping around, there was a
single-storey building with a crooked roof and two front steps. Maigret looked back,
heard the mayor's footsteps at the other end of the village, then walked into
the house without knocking.

Something moved in the shadows that
pressed in on the
glowing hearth. A
black shape; the white patch of an old woman's house cap.

She hobbled over, bent almost in
two.

‘What d'you want?'

The stuffy room smelled of straw,
cabbage and chicken coops. There were even chicks pecking around by the
fireplace.

Maigret's head almost touched the
ceiling. Noticing a door at the far end of the room, he realized that speed was in
order. Without a word, he marched over and opened the door: Madame Grandmaison was
busy writing, with Jean Martineau standing next to her.

There was a moment of surprise and
dismay. The woman rose from her straw-bottomed chair. Martineau's first
impulse was to grab and crumple up her piece of paper. Both of them instinctively
drew close together.

The cottage had only these two rooms,
and this was the old woman's bedroom. On the whitewashed walls, two portraits
and some cheap chromos in black-and-gold frames. A very high bed. The table where
Madame Grandmaison had been writing was the wash stand, from which the basin had
been set aside.

‘Your husband will be here in a
few minutes!' announced Maigret, by way of an introduction.

‘Is that your doing?'
demanded Martineau angrily.

‘Hush, Raymond.'

She had used his first name – and called
him not Jean, but Raymond. Reflecting on these details, Maigret went to listen
briefly at the front door.

‘Will you give me the letter you
were writing?'

The couple looked at each other. Madame
Grandmaison
was pale and wan. Maigret
had seen her once before, but only in the performance of her most sacred duties as a
woman of her social standing: receiving guests at home.

At that time he had been impressed by
her perfect performance and the conventional graciousness with which she could offer
a cup of tea or respond to a compliment.

He had imagined her life: the cares of a
household in Caen, the social occasions, the children's upbringing. Two or
three months spent at health spas or luxury resorts. A certain level of vanity, but
more concern about her dignity than her beauty.

Something of all that doubtless remained
in the woman now before him, but there was a new element. She was in fact showing
more sang-froid, even more raw nerve than her companion, who seemed on the verge of
real collapse.

‘Give him the paper,' she
said, as Martineau was about to tear it up.

There was almost nothing on it.

Dear Headmaster,

Would you be kind enough
to …

The large, backwards-sloping hand of
every girl educated at boarding school at the turn of the century.

‘You received two telephone calls
this morning, didn't you? One from your husband … Or rather, you
were the one who called, to tell him you would be arriving in Ouistreham. Then a
call from Monsieur Martineau, asking you to come here. He had you picked up at the
crossroads by a small van.'

Just then Maigret saw something he
hadn't noticed
before, on the
table, behind the ink pot: a neat pile of thousand-franc bills.

Martineau followed his
eyes … Too late to do anything! And too much for him: he collapsed in
sudden lethargy on the edge of the old woman's bed and stared despondently at
the floor.

‘Are you the one who brought him
that money?'

And once again, there was the same
feeling that had marked this entire case. The same atmosphere as when Maigret had
caught Big Louis beating the mayor in his villa in Ouistreham – and both men had
refused to talk! The same atmosphere as when the crew of the
Saint-Michel
had refused to answer him the night before!

A fierce refusal, an absolute
determination not to explain anything at all.

‘I suppose this letter is
addressed to the headmaster of a boarding school. Your son is at Stanislas, so the
letter probably concerns him. As for the money … Of course! Martineau must
have abandoned the grounded schooner to swim to shore, and in his hurry he probably
left his wallet behind. You brought him some money so that—'

Maigret abruptly changed the subject,
and his tone:

‘And the others, Martineau? All
safe and sound?'

The man hesitated, but could not keep
himself, in the end, from blinking in affirmation.

‘I won't ask you where
they're hiding. I know you won't tell.'

‘True!'

‘
What's
true?
'

Someone had just pushed the front door
wide open. The outraged voice was the mayor's – and he was unrecognizable.
Panting with anger, fists clenched,
tensed to spring at the enemy, he glared at his wife, at Martineau, at the money
still lying on the table.

But the menace in his eyes betrayed
fear, too, and the dread of disaster.

‘What's true? What did he
say? What new lies is he telling? … And her? She's the
one …'

Choking, he couldn't get the words
out. Maigret watched, prepared to intervene.

‘What's true? What's
going on! … Are they plotting something? … And whose money is
that?'

The old woman was bustling about in the
front room, calling her chickens to the door.

‘Here, chick-chick!
Chick-chick!'

The scattered corn clattered softly down
on the bluestone steps. A neighbour's hen was fended off with a foot.

‘G'won home with you,
Blackie …'

In the bedroom, nothing. Heavy silence.
As pallid and depressing as the sky that rainy morning.

People possessed by fear. Because they
were afraid! All of them! Martineau, the woman, the mayor … It was as if
each one of them were alone with that fear … Each one afraid in a
different way!

Then Maigret spoke slowly and solemnly,
like a judge.

‘I have been instructed by the
public prosecutor to find and arrest the murderer of Captain Joris, wounded by a
bullet to the head and, six weeks later, poisoned in his bed with strychnine. Does
anyone here wish to make a statement regarding this crime?'

Until that moment, no one had noticed
that the room
was unheated. Yet
suddenly, they felt cold … Each syllable had rung out as if in a church.
The words still seemed to linger in the air.
Poisoned
 … 
Strychnine
 …

Especially Maigret's last
question.

Does anyone here wish to make a
statement?
 …

Martineau was the first to hang his
head. Madame Grandmaison, her eyes gleaming, kept looking back and forth between him
and her husband.

But no one said a thing. No one dared
face the look in Maigret's eyes, which seemed to grow darker.

Two minutes … Three
minutes … The old woman put a few logs on the fire in the next room.

Then Maigret's voice, again,
deliberately curt and stripped of all emotion.

‘In the name of the law, Jean
Martineau, I arrest you.'

A woman's scream. Madame
Grandmaison flung herself desperately at Martineau but fell in a faint almost at the
same instant.

With a savage look, the mayor turned
towards the wall.

And Martineau heaved a sigh of weary
resignation, not daring even to go to help the unconscious woman.

It was Maigret who bent down to her,
then looked around for the water jug from the wash stand.

He went to ask the old woman for some
vinegar, the smell of which now mingled with the already complex odour of the
cottage.

A few moments later Madame Grandmaison
came to, and, after a few uncontrollable sobs, sank into an almost complete state of
prostration.

‘Do you think you can
walk?'

She nodded. She
could walk, but in a jolting, uneven way.

‘You will follow me, gentlemen,
will you not? I trust that I may count,
this time
, on your
compliance?'

The old woman watched them cross her
kitchen in some consternation. Only after they were outside did she rush to the
door.

‘You're coming back for
lunch, then, Monsieur Raymond?'

Raymond! It was the second time he had
been called that. The man shook his head.

The four of them walked on through the
village. Martineau stopped in front of the little shop, hesitated, and turned to
Maigret.

‘Please forgive me, but as
I'm not sure I'll ever return here, I don't wish to leave any
unpaid debts behind. I owe these people for a phone call, a grog and a pack of
cigarettes.'