The Grand Banks Café (16 page)

He did not stop. Though he saw the
landlord making a sign to him, he hurried on his way. Five minutes later he was
ringing the bell of the hospital.

 

The registrar was very young. Visible under his white
coat were a suit in the latest fashion and an elegant tie.

‘The wireless operator? It was I
who took his temperature and pulse this morning. He's doing as well as can be
expected.'

‘Has he come round?'

‘Oh yes! He hasn't spoken to
me, but his eyes followed me around all the time.'

‘Is it all right if I talk to him
about important matters?'

The registrar waved a hand vaguely, an
indifferent gesture.

‘Don't see why not. If the
operation has been a success and he hasn't got a temperature, then … You want
to see him?'

Pierre Le Clinche was by himself in a
small room with distempered walls. The air was hot and humid. He watched Maigret
coming towards him. His eyes were bright, and there was not a trace of anxiety in
them.

‘As you see, he's making
excellent progress. He'll be on his feet in a week. On the other hand,
there's a chance that he'll be left with a limp, for a tendon in his hip
was severed. And he'll have to take care. Would you prefer it if I leave you
alone with him?'

It was really quite disconcerting. The
previous evening, a bleeding, unwholesome mess had been brought which could not
possibly, it seemed, have harboured the faintest breath of life.

And now Maigret found a white bed, a
face that was slightly drawn and a little pale which was more tranquil now than he
had ever seen it. And there was what looked like serenity in those eyes.

That is perhaps why he hesitated. He paced up and down
the room, leaned his head for a moment against the double window, from which he
could see the port and the trawler, where men in red jerkins were busily moving
about.

‘Do you feel strong enough to talk
to me?' he growled, firing the question without warning as he turned to face
the bed.

Le Clinche assented with a faint nod of
his head.

‘You are aware that I am not
officially involved in this case? My friend Jorissen asked me to prove your
innocence. It is done. You are not the killer of Captain Fallut.'

He sighed deeply. Then, to get it over
with, he put his head down and charged:

‘Tell me the truth about what
happened on the third day out, I mean about the death of Jean-Marie.'

He avoided looking directly at the
patient. He filled a pipe as a way of appearing casual and when the silence went on
and on, he murmured:

‘It was evening. There were only
Captain Fallut and you on deck. Were you standing together?'

‘No!'

‘The captain was walking near the
afterdeck?'

‘Yes. I'd just left my
cabin. He didn't see me. I watched him because I felt there was something odd
about the way he was behaving.'

‘You didn't know at that
point that there was a woman on board?'

‘No! I thought that if he was
being so careful about keeping his door locked, it was because he was storing
smuggled goods inside.'

The voice was weary. And yet, it became suddenly more
emphatic for he said distinctly:

‘It was the most terrible thing I
ever saw, inspector! Who talked? Tell me!'

And he closed his eyes, exactly as he
had as he sat waiting for the moment when he would fire a bullet through his pocket
into his belly.

‘Nobody. The captain was strolling
on deck, feeling apprehensive no doubt, just as he had ever since he'd left
port. Was there anybody at the wheel?'

‘A helmsman. He couldn't see
us because it was dark.'

‘The ship's boy showed up
…'

Le Clinche interrupted him by heaving
himself half up, both hands gripping the rope hanging from the ceiling which enabled
him to change his position.

‘Where's Marie?'

‘At the hotel. Her father has just
come.'

‘To take her back! Fair enough. He
should take her home. But whatever happens, she mustn't come here!'

He was getting worked up. His voice was
flatter and its flow more broken.

Maigret could sense that his temperature
was climbing. His eyes were becoming unnaturally bright.

‘I don't know who has been
talking to you. But it's time I told you everything.'

His agitation had reached such a pitch,
and was so vehement, that he looked and sounded as if he was almost raving.

‘It was awful! You never saw the
kid. Skinny's not the word. Wore clothes made from an old cut-down canvas
suit of his father's … On the
first day, he'd been scared and he blubbed. How can I explain … Afterwards he
got his own back by playing nasty tricks on people. What do you expect at his age?
Do you know what
a little brat
is? Well, that was him. Twice I caught him
reading the letters I wrote to my fiancée. He'd just look me brazenly in the
eye and say:

‘“Writing to your bit of
fluff?”

‘That evening … I think the
captain was walking up and down because he was too jumpy to sleep. There was quite a
swell on. From time to time, a green sea would wash over the foredeck rail and flood
across the metal plates of the deck. But it wasn't a storm.

‘I was maybe ten metres from them.
I only heard a few words but I could see their shapes. The kid was on his high
horse, he was laughing. And the captain stood there, his neck sunk in his jerkin and
his hands in his pockets …

‘Jean-Marie had talked about my
“bit of fluff” and he must have been taking the same sort of rise out of
Fallut. He had a piercing voice. I remember catching a couple of words:

‘“And if I ever told
everybody how …”

‘I didn't understand until
later … He'd found out that the captain was hiding a woman in his cabin. He
was full of himself. There was a swagger about him. He wasn't aware of how
vindictive he was being.

‘Then this is what happened. The
captain raised one hand to give him a cuff over the ear. The kid was very nimble and
ducked. Then he shouted something, probably another threat about telling what he
knew.

‘Fallut's hand struck a rigging stay. It
must have hurt like the devil. He saw red.

‘It was the fable of the lion and
the gnat all over again. Forgetting he was a ship's master, he started chasing
the kid. At first, the boy ran off laughing. The captain started to panic.

‘A chance remark and anyone who
heard it would know everything. Fallut was out of his mind with fear.

‘I saw him reach out to catch
Jean-Marie by the shoulders, but instead of grabbing hold of him he pushed him over,
head first …

‘That's it. Fatalities
occur. His head collided with a capstan. I heard the sound, it was awful, a dull
thud.
His skull
…'

He held both hands up to his face. He
was deathly pale. Sweat streamed down his forehead.

‘A big wave swept over the deck at
that moment. So it was a waterlogged body that the captain bent down to examine. At
the same time, he caught sight of me. I don't think it crossed my mind to
hide. I started walking towards him. I got there just in time to see the boy's
body clench and then stiffen in a reflex that I'll never forget.

‘Dead! It was so senseless! The
two of us looked at each other, not taking it in, unable to understand what an
appalling thing had happened.

‘No one else had seen or heard
anything. Fallut didn't dare touch the boy. It was me who felt his chest, his
hands and that crumpled skull. There was no blood. No wound. Just the skull, which
had cracked.

‘We stayed there for maybe a quarter of an hour,
not knowing what to do, grim, shoulders frozen, while at intervals the spray lashed
our faces.

‘The captain was not the same man.
It was as if something inside him had been broken too.

‘When he spoke, his voice was
sharp, without warmth.

‘“The crew mustn't
learn the truth! Bad for ship's discipline.”

‘And while I looked on, he himself
picked the boy up. Then just one more effort. Though … though I do remember that
with his thumb he made the sign of the cross on the boy's forehead.

‘The body, which had been snatched
by the sea, was swept back twice against the hull. Both of us were still standing in
the dark. We did not dare look at each other. We didn't dare speak.'

Maigret had just lit his pipe, clamping
his teeth hard on the stem.

A nurse came in. Both men watched her
with eyes that seemed so vacant that she was disconcerted and stammered:

‘Time to take your
temperature.'

‘Come back later!'

When the door closed behind her, the
inspector asked:

‘Was it then that he told you
about the woman?'

‘From then on, he was never the
same again. He probably wasn't certifiably mad. But there was definitely
something unhinged about him. He put one hand on my shoulder and murmured:

‘“And all because of a
woman, young man!”

‘I was cold. I was not thinking
straight. I couldn't take
my eyes
off the sea on the side where the body had been carried away.

‘Did they tell you about the
captain? A short, lean man with a face full of energy. He usually spoke in terse,
unfinished phrases.

‘That was it! Fifty-five years
old. Coming up to retirement. Solid reputation. A little put by in the bank. All
over! Finished! In one minute! Less than a minute. On account of a kid who … No, on
account of a woman …

‘And then and there, in the
darkness, in a quiet, angry voice, he told me the whole story, bit by bit. A woman
from Le Havre. A woman who couldn't have been up to much, he was well aware of
that. But he couldn't live without her …

‘He'd brought her with him.
And the moment he did, he had a sudden feeling that her presence on board would mean
trouble.

‘She was there. Asleep.'

The wireless operator began to fidget
restlessly.

‘I can't remember everything
he told me. For he had this need to talk about her, which he did with a mixture of
loathing and passion.'

‘“A captain is never
justified in causing a scandal likely to undermine his authority.”

‘I can still hear those words. It
was my first time out on a boat and I now thought of the sea as a monster which
would swallow us all up.

‘Fallut quoted examples. In such a
year such and such a captain, who had brought his mistress along with him …
There were so many fights on board that
three men never came back.

‘The wind was strengthening. The
spray kept coming at us. From time to time, a wave would lick at our feet which kept
sliding on the slippery metal deck.

‘He wasn't mad, oh no! But
he wasn't Fallut any more either.

‘“See this trip through and
then we'll see!”

‘I didn't understand what he
meant. He struck me as being both sensible and freakish, a man still clinging to his
sense of duty.

‘“No one must know! A
captain can never be in the wrong!”

‘My nerves were so strung out I
was ill with it. I couldn't think any more. My thoughts were all jumbled up in
my head, and by the finish it felt as if I was living through a waking
nightmare.

‘That woman in the cabin, the
woman a man like the captain could not live without, the woman whose very name made
him catch his breath.

‘And there was me writing reams
and reams to my fiancée, who I wouldn't be seeing again for three months, and
I never felt obsessed, possessed like that! And when he said words like her
flesh
or her
body
I felt my cheeks go hot without knowing
why.'

Maigret put the question slowly:

‘And no one, apart from the two of
you, knew the truth about the death of Jean-Marie?'

‘No one!'

‘And was it the captain who, in the customary way,
read out the prayers for the dead?'

‘At first light. The weather had
got thick. We were steaming through icy grey mist.'

‘Didn't the crew say
anything?'

‘There were funny looks and some
whispering. But Fallut was more authoritarian than ever, and his voice had acquired
a new cutting edge. He would not tolerate any answering back. He got angry with
anyone who looked at him in a way he didn't like. He spied on the men, as if
he was trying to detect any suspicions they might be getting.'

‘What about you?'

Le Clinche didn't answer. He
stretched out one arm for a glass of water on his bedside table and drank from it
greedily.

‘So you began prowling round the
cabin more often, didn't you? You wanted to see this woman who had got so far
under the captain's skin? Did you start the following night?'

‘Yes. I ran into her, just for a
moment. Then the next night … I'd noticed that the key to the wireless room
was the same as the key of the cabin. It was the captain's watch. I crept in,
like a thief.'

‘You went to bed with
her?'

The wireless operator's face
hardened.

‘I swear you won't
understand, you can't! The whole atmosphere was nothing like anything that
happens in the real world. The kid … the previous day's ceremony … But
whenever I thought about it, the same picture kept surfacing in my mind, the image
of a woman unlike any
other, a woman
whose body, whose flesh could turn a man into something that he was not.'

‘She led you on?'

‘She was in bed, half-dressed
…'

He turned bright scarlet. He looked
away.