The Grand Banks Café (15 page)

Maigret was standing on the bridge, and
any man waking then and seeing him would have wondered what he was doing there, an
imposing, solitary figure calmly surveying his surroundings.

And what was he doing? He was trying to
understand! All the characters were in position, each with a particular outlook and
all with their own preoccupations.

But after this point, there was no way
of guessing the rest. There was a large gap. The inspector had only witnesses to
rely upon.

‘It was on about the third day out
that Captain Fallut and the wireless operator started thinking of each other
as enemies. Each had a revolver in his
pocket. They seemed afraid of each other.'

Yet Le Clinche was not yet Adèle's
lover!

‘But from that moment, the captain
behaved as if he was mad.'

They are now in the middle of the
Atlantic. They have left the regular lanes used by the great liners. Now they hardly
ever sight even other trawlers, English or German, as they steam towards their
fishing grounds.

Does Adèle start to grumble and complain
about being cooped up?

…
wondered if he wasn't
actually mad
…

Everyone agrees that mad is the right
word. And it seems unlikely that Adèle alone is responsible for bringing about such
an astonishing change in a well-adjusted man who has always made a religion of
order.

She has not deceived him yet! He has
allowed her two or three turns around the deck, at night, provided she takes
multiple precautions.

So why is he behaving as if he is
actually mad
?

Here the evidence of witnesses begins to
mount up:

‘He gives the order to anchor the
trawler in a position where for as long as anyone can remember no one ever caught a
single cod …'

He is not an excitable man or a fool,
nor does he lose his temper easily! He is a steady, upstanding citizen of careful
habits who for a time dreamed of sharing his life with his landlady, Madame Bernard,
and of ending his days in the house full of embroidery in Rue d'Étretat.

‘There's one accident after
another. When we finally
get on to the
Banks and start catching fish, it gets salted in such a way that it's going
bad by the time we get back.'

Fallut is no novice! He's about to
retire. Until now, no one has ever had reason to question his competence.

He takes all his meals in his cabin.

‘He doesn't talk to
me,' Adèle will say. ‘He goes for days, weeks sometimes, without saying
a word to me. And then suddenly it comes over him again …'

A sudden wave of sensuality! She's
there! In his cabin! He shares her bed! And for weeks on end he manages to stay at
arm's length until the temptation proves too strong!

Would he behave this way if his only
grievance was jealousy?

The chief mechanic prowls round the
cabin, licking his lips. But he doesn't have the nerve to force the lock.

And finally, the Epilogue. The
Océan
is on the way home to France, laden with badly salted cod.

Is it during the voyage back that the
captain draws up what is virtually his will in which he says no one should be
accused of causing his death?

If so, he clearly wants to die. He
intends to kill himself. No one on board, except him, is capable of taking a
ship's bearings, and he has enough of the seafaring spirit to bring his boat
back to port first.

Kill himself because he has infringed
regulations by taking a woman to sea with him?

Kill himself because insufficient salt
was used on the fish, which will sell for a few francs below the market rate?

Kill himself because the crew,
bewildered by his odd conduct, believe that he is a lunatic?

The captain, the most cool-headed, the most scrupulously
careful master in all Fécamp? The same man whose log books are held up as
models?

The man who for so long has been living
in the peaceful house of Madame Bernard?

The steam vessel docks. The members of
the crew rush on shore and make a bee-line for the Grand Banks Café, where they can
at last get a proper drink.

And every man jack of them is stamped
with the mark of mystery! On certain questions they all remain silent. They are all
on edge.

Is it because a captain has behaved in
ways that no one understands?

Fallut goes on shore alone. He will have
to wait until the quays are deserted before he can disembark Adèle.

He takes a few steps forwards. Two men
are hiding: the wireless operator and Gaston Buzier, the girl's lover.

But the captain is jumped by a third
man, who strangles him and drops his body into the harbour.

And all this happened at the very spot
where the
Océan
is now gently rocking on the black water. The body had got
tangled in the anchor chain.

Maigret was smoking. He scowled.

‘Even at the first interview, Le
Clinche lies when he talks about a man wearing tan-coloured shoes who killed Fallut.
Now the man with the tan-coloured shoes is Buzier. When he is brought face to face
with him, Le Clinche retracts his statement.'

Why would he lie about this if not to
protect a third
person, in other words
the murderer? And why wouldn't Le Clinche name him?

He does no such thing. He even lets
himself be put behind bars instead of him. He makes little effort to defend himself,
even though there is every likelihood that he will go down for murder.

He is grim, like a man riddled with
guilt. He does not dare look either his fiancée or Maigret in the eye.

One small detail. Before returning to
the trawler, he headed back to the Grand Banks Café. He went up to his room. He
burned a number of papers.

When he gets out of jail, he isn't
happy, even though Marie Léonnec is there, encouraging him to look on the bright
side. And somehow he manages to get hold of a revolver.

He is afraid. He hesitates. For a long
time he just sits there, eyes closed, finger on the trigger.

And then he fires.

As the night wore on, it turned cooler,
and the smell of seaweed and iodine weighed more strongly on the breeze.

The trawler had risen by several metres.
The deck was now level with the quayside, and the push and drag of the tide caused
the boat to buck sideways and made the gangway creak.

Maigret had forgotten how tired he was.
The hardest time was over. It would soon be dawn.

He summarized:

Captain Fallut, who had been retrieved
dead from the anchor chain.

Adèle and Gaston Buzier, who argued all the time,
reached the stage where they could not stand each other and yet had no one else to
turn to.

Le Clinche, who had been wheeled out on
a trolley, swathed in white, from the operating theatre.

And Marie Léonnec …

Not forgetting the men in the Grand
Banks Café, who, even when drunk, seemed haunted by painful memories …

‘The third day!' Maigret
said aloud. ‘That's where I need to look!'

Something much worse than jealousy …
But something which flowed directly from the presence of Adèle on board the
boat
.

The effort took it out of him. The
effect of the strain on all his mental faculties. The boat rocked gently. A light
came on in the foredeck, where the sailors were about to get up.

‘The third day …'

His throat contracted. He looked down on
the after-deck and then along the quay, where, hours before, a man had leaned over
and brandished a fist.

Maybe it was partly the effect of the
cold and maybe not. But either way he suddenly shivered.

‘The third day … The ship's
boy, Jean-Marie, who kicked up a fuss because he did not want to go to sea, was
swept overboard by a wave, at night …'

Maigret's eye ran round the whole
deck, as if trying to determine where the accident had happened.

‘There were only two witnesses,
Captain Fallut and the
wireless
operator, Pierre Le Clinche. The next day or the day after that, Le Clinche became
Adèle's lover!'

It was a turning point! Maigret did not
loiter for another second. Someone was stirring in the foredeck. No one saw him
stride across the plank connecting the boat to dry land.

With his hands in his pockets, his nose
blue with the cold, unsmiling, he returned to the Hôtel de la Plage.

It was not yet light. Yet it was no
longer night because, out at sea, the crests of waves were picked out in crude
white. And gulls were light flecks against the sky.

A train whistled in the station. An old
woman set out for the rocks, a basket on her back and a hook in her hand, to look
for crabs.

When Maigret left his room and came
downstairs at around eight that morning, his head felt empty and his chest woolly,
the way a man feels when he has drunk too much.

‘Aren't things going the way
you'd like?' asked his wife.

He had given a shrug, and she had not
insisted. But there on the terrace of the hotel, facing a frothing, sly-green sea,
he found Marie Léonnec. And she was not alone. There was a man sitting at her table.
She stood up quickly and stammered to the inspector:

‘May I introduce my father?
He's just got here.'

The wind was cool, the sky overcast. The
gulls skimmed the tops of the water.

‘An honour to meet you, sir.
Deeply honoured and most happy …'

Maigret looked at him without
enthusiasm. He was short and would not have been any more ridiculous to look at than
the next man but for his nose, which was disproportionately large, being the size of
three normal noses and, furthermore, was stippled, like a strawberry.

It wasn't his fault. But it was a
physical affliction. And it was all anyone saw. When he spoke it was the only thing
people looked at, so that it was impossible to feel any sympathy for him.

‘You must join us in a little
…?'

‘Thank you, no. I've just had
breakfast.'

‘Perhaps a small glass of
something, to warm the cockles?'

‘No, really.'

He was insistent. Is it not a form of
politeness to make people drink when they don't want to?

Maigret observed him and observed his
daughter, who, apart from that nose, bore him a strong resemblance. By looking at
her in this light, he was able to get a picture of what she would be like in a dozen
years, when the bloom of youth had faded.

‘I'll come straight to the
point, inspector. That's my motto, and I've travelled all night to do
just that. When Jorissen came to me and said that he would accompany my daughter, I
gave him my permission. So I don't think anyone could say that I am at all
narrow-minded.'

Unfortunately Maigret was anxious to be
elsewhere. Then there was the nose. And also the pompous tone of the middle-class
worthy who likes the sound of his own voice.

‘Even so, it's my duty as a
father to keep myself fully informed, don't you agree? Which is why I'm
asking you to tell me, in your heart and conscience, if you think this young man is
innocent.'

Marie Léonnec did not know where to
look. She must have known deep down that her father's initiative was unlikely
to help arrange matters.

As long as she had been by herself,
rushing to the aid of her fiancé, she had seemed rather admirable. Or at any rate
she made a touching figure.

But now, inside the family, it was
another matter. There
was more than a
whiff here of the shop back in Quimper, the discussions which had preceded her
departure, the tittle-tattle of the neighbours.

‘Are you asking me if he killed
Captain Fallut?'

‘Yes. You must understand that it
is essential that …'

Maigret stared straight in front of him
in his most detached manner.

‘Well …'

He noticed the girl's hands, which
were shaking.

‘No, he didn't kill him.
Now, if you'll excuse me, there's something I really must attend to. I
shall doubtless have the pleasure of meeting up with you later …'

Then he turned tail! He fled so fast
that he knocked over a chair on the terrace. He assumed that father and daughter
were startled but did not turn round to find out.

Once on the quay, he followed the paved
walkway. The
Océan
was some distance away. Even so, he noticed that a
number of men had arrived with their sailor's kitbags slung over their
shoulders and were getting their first sight of the boat. A cart was unloading bags
of potatoes. The company's man was there with his polished boots and his
pencil behind his ear.

There was a great deal of noise coming
from the Grand Banks Café. Its doors were open, and Maigret could just make out
Louis holding forth in the middle of a circle of the ‘new' men.