The Grand Banks Café

 

THE GRAND BANKS
CAFÉ
Translated by
David Coward

Published by the Penguin Group
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WC2R 0RL,
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First published in French as
Au
Rendez-Vous des Terre-Neuvas
by Fayard 1931
This translation first
published 2014

Copyright 1931 by Georges Simenon
Limited
Translation copyright © David Coward, 2014
GEORGES SIMENON ®
Simenon.tm
MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited

Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos
Front cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author and
translator have been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-698-15757-6

Version_1

Title Page

Copyright

About the Author

1. The Glass Eater

2. The Tan-Coloured Shoes

3. The Headless Photograph

4. The Mark of Rage

5. Adèle and Friend

6. The Three Innocents

7. Like a Family

8. The Drunken Sailor

9. Two Men on Deck

10. What Happened on the Third Day

11. The
Océan
Sails

EXTRA: Chapter 1 from
A Man's Head

Georges Simenon was born on 12 February 1903
in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the
latter part of his life. Between 1931 and 1972 he published seventy-five novels and
twenty-eight short stories featuring Inspector Maigret.

Simenon always resisted identifying himself
with his famous literary character, but acknowledged that they shared an important
characteristic:

My motto, to the extent that I have
one, has been noted often enough, and I've always conformed to it. It's
the one I've given to old Maigret, who resembles me in certain points …
‘understand and judge not'.

Penguin is publishing the entire series of
Maigret novels.

PENGUIN CLASSICS

‘I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of
Chekhov'

— William Faulkner

‘A truly wonderful writer … marvellously
readable – lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates'

— Muriel Spark

‘Few writers have ever conveyed with such a
sure touch, the bleakness of human life'

— A. N. Wilson

‘One of the greatest writers of the twentieth
century … Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked
by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories'

—
Guardian

‘A novelist who entered his fictional world as
if he were part of it'

— Peter Ackroyd

‘The greatest of all, the most genuine
novelist we have had in literature'

— André Gide

‘Superb … The most addictive of writers … A
unique teller of tales'

—
Observer

‘The mysteries of the human personality are
revealed in all their disconcerting complexity'

— Anita Brookner

‘A writer who, more than any other crime
novelist, combined a high literary reputation with popular appeal'

— P. D. James

‘A supreme writer … Unforgettable
vividness'

—
Independent

‘Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'

— John Gray

‘Extraordinary masterpieces of the twentieth
century'

— John Banville

… that he's the finest young
man around here there ever was, and that all this could well be the death of his
mother. He's all she's got. I am absolutely sure that he's
innocent: everybody here is. But the sailors I've talked to reckon
he'll be found guilty because civilian courts never understand anything to
do with the sea.

Do everything you can, old
friend, just as if you were doing it for me. I see from the papers that
you've become something very important in the Police Judiciaire, and …

It was a June morning. The windows of the
flat on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir were wide open. Madame Maigret was finishing
packing large wicker trunks, and Maigret, who was not wearing a collar, was reading
aloud.

‘Who's it from?'

‘Jorissen. We were at school
together. He's a primary-school teacher now in Quimper. Listen, are you still
set on passing our week's holiday in Alsace?'

She stared at him, not understanding.
The question was so unexpected. For the past twenty years they'd always spent
their holidays with family, and always in the same village in eastern France.

‘What if we went to stay by the
sea instead?'

He read out parts of the letter again,
in a half whisper:

… you are better placed than I am to get accurate
information. Very briefly, Pierre Le Clinche, aged twenty, a former pupil of
mine, sailed three months ago on the
Océan
, a Fécamp trawler which was
going fishing for cod off Newfoundland. The boat docked back in port yesterday.
Hours later, the body of the captain was found floating in the harbour, and all
the signs point to foul play. Pierre Le Clinche is the man who's been
arrested.

‘We'll be able to take it
just as easy at Fécamp as anywhere else!' said Maigret, holding out no great
hopes.

Objections were raised. In Alsace,
Madame Maigret was with her family and helped with making jam and plum brandy. The
thought of staying in a hotel by the seaside with a lot of other people from Paris
filled her with dread.

‘What would I do all
day?'

In the end, she packed her sewing and
her crocheting.

‘Just don't expect me to go
swimming! I thought I'd better warn you in advance.'

They had arrived at the Hôtel de la
Plage at five. Once there, Madame Maigret had set about rearranging the room to her
liking. Then they'd had dinner.

Later, Maigret, now alone, pushed open
the frosted-glass door of a harbour-front café, the Grand Banks Café.

It was located opposite the berth where
the trawler the
Océan
was tied up, just by a line of railway trucks.
Acetylene lamps hung from the rigging, and in their raw light a number of figures
were busily unloading cod, which they
passed
from hand to hand and piled into the trucks after the fish had been weighed.

There were ten of them at work, men and
women, dirty, their clothes torn and stiff with salt. By the weighing scales stood a
well-turned-out young man, with a boater over one ear and a notebook in his hand, in
which he recorded the weighed catch.

A rank, stomach-churning smell, which
distance did nothing to lessen, seeped into the bar, where the heat made it even
more oppressive.