The Misty Harbour

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New York, New York 10014

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First published in French as
Le port des brumes
by Fayard 1932

This translation first published in Penguin Books 2015

Copyright © 1932 by Georges Simenon Limited

Translation copyright © 2015 by Linda Coverdale

GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm

MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited

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The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted.

ISBN 978-0-698-19417-5

Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos

Cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes

Title Page

Copyright

About the Author

1. The Cat in the House

2. The Inheritance

3. The Kitchen Cupboard

4. The
Saint-Michel

5. Notre-Dame-des-Dunes

6. The Fall Down the Stairs

7. Orchestrating Events

8. The Mayor's Inquiry

9. The Conspiracy of Silence

10. The Three Men of the
Saint-Michel

11. The Black Cow Shoal

12. The Unfinished Letter

13. The House Across the Street

EXTRA: Chapter 1 from
Liberty Bar

When they had left Paris at around three
o'clock, the streets were still bustling in the chilly late-autumn sunshine.
Shortly afterwards, near Mantes, the lights had come on in the train compartment.
Darkness had fallen outside by the time they reached Évreux, and now, through
windows streaming with droplets, they saw a thick mist gleaming in soft haloes
around the track lights.

Snug in his corner, resting his head
against the back of the banquette, Detective Chief Inspector Maigret had not taken
his half-closed eyes from the unlikely couple across from him.

Captain Joris was asleep. His clothes
were wrinkled, his wig askew on his gleaming pate.

And Julie, clutching her imitation
crocodile handbag, stared off into space while endeavouring, despite her fatigue, to
look thoughtful.

Joris! Julie!

Inspector Maigret of the Police
Judiciaire was used to having people suddenly take over his life like this,
monopolize him for days, weeks, months, and then sink back into the anonymous
crowd.

The rhythmic sound of the wheels carried
his thoughts along, and they were always the same at the beginning of
each case: would this investigation be challenging or
dull? Thankless and demoralizing, or painfully tragic?

As Maigret considered Joris, a faint
smile touched his lips. A strange fellow! And for five days back at Quai des
Orfèvres, everyone had called him That Man, because they couldn't find out who
he was.

A man picked up for wandering in obvious
distress among the cars and buses on the Grands Boulevards. Questioned in French, he
remains mute. They try seven or eight languages. Nothing. Sign language proves
fruitless as well.

A madman? In Maigret's office, he
is searched. His suit is new, his underwear is new, his shoes are new. All
identifying labels have been removed. No identification papers. No wallet. Five
crisp thousand-franc bills have been slipped into one of his pockets.

The inquiry could not be more
aggravating! Criminal records and case files are searched. Telegrams are sent at
home and abroad. And although subjected to exhausting interrogation, That Man smiles
affably all day long! A stocky fellow of about fifty, broad-shouldered, who neither
protests nor gets upset, who smiles and sometimes seems to try to remember, but
gives up almost immediately …

Amnesia? When the wig slides off his
head they discover that a bullet has pierced his skull not more than two months
earlier. The doctors marvel: whoever operated on him displayed superb surgical
skill.

Fresh telegrams go out to hospitals and
nursing homes in France, Belgium, Germany, Holland …

Five whole days of
these painstaking investigations. The absurd results obtained by analysing some
stains on his clothing and fine debris from his pockets: traces of salted
cod's roe, dried and pulverized on the far shores of Norway for sardine
bait.

Does That Man come from up there? Is he
Scandinavian? There are indications that he has travelled a long way by train. But
how can he have done this on his own, without speaking, with the befuddled
appearance that makes him so conspicuous?

His picture appears in the newspapers. A
telegram arrives from Ouistreham:
Unknown man identified!

The telegram is followed by a woman –
more of a girl, really – who shows up in Maigret's office, her haggard face
inexpertly rouged and powdered: Julie Legrand, the mystery man's maid.

He is no longer That Man: he has a name
and a profession. He is Yves Joris, formerly a captain in the merchant navy, now the
harbourmaster at Ouistreham, a small port between Trouville and Cherbourg in Lower
Normandy.

Julie bursts into tears! Julie cannot
understand! Julie begs him to speak to her! And he looks at her calmly, pleasantly,
the way he looks at everyone.

Captain Joris had disappeared from
Ouistreham on 16 September. It is now the end of October.

What has happened to him while he was
missing for six weeks?

‘He went out to the lock to work
the tide, as usual. An evening tide. I went off to bed. The next morning, he
wasn't in his room …'

On account of the
fog that night, everyone thinks Joris had slipped and fallen into the water. They
hunted for him with grappling hooks. Then they assumed he had simply gone off for
some peculiar reason of his own.

‘Lisieux! … Departure in
three minutes!'

Maigret goes to stretch his legs on the
platform and refill his pipe. He has smoked so much since Paris that the air in the
compartment has turned grey.

‘All aboard!'

In the meantime Julie has powdered her
nose; her eyes are still a bit red from weeping.

It's strange … There are
moments when she is pretty, with a certain polish. At other times, though it would
be hard to say why, she seems like a gauche little peasant.

She straightens the wig on the
captain's head, for
her monsieur
, as she puts it, and looks at
Maigret as if to say: ‘Haven't I every right to take care of
him?'

For Joris has no family. He has lived
alone, for years, with Julie, whom he calls his housekeeper.

‘He treated me like his
daughter …'

As far as anyone knows, he has no
enemies! Has had no adventures, no love affairs, no grand passions!

A man who, after sailing the seven seas
for thirty years, could not resign himself to idleness and, despite his retirement,
applied for the position of harbourmaster at Ouistreham. He had a small house built
there …

And one fine evening, on 16 September,
he vanished – then reappeared in Paris six weeks later in this sorry state.

Having never seen him in anything but a
naval officer's
uniform, Julie had
been dismayed to find him wearing an off-the-peg grey suit.

She is anxious, uneasy. Whenever she
looks at the captain, her face reflects both pity and a nameless fear, a haunting
anguish. It really is him, obviously! It's
her monsieur
, all right.
And yet, he is no longer completely himself.

‘He'll get well again,
won't he? I'll take good care of him …'

The mist is now turning into large,
blurry drops on the windows. Maigret's big, stolid face rocks a little from
side to side as the train rattles along. Placidly, he goes on watching his
companions: Julie, who pointed out to him that they might just as well have
travelled third class, as she normally does, and Joris, who is waking up only to
look around him vacantly. One more stop, at Caen. Then on to Ouistreham.

‘Around a thousand people live in
the village,' a colleague originally from there had told Maigret. ‘The
harbour is small but important, because of the canal linking the roadstead to the
city of Caen. The canal can handle ships of five thousand tons or more.'

Maigret doesn't bother trying to
imagine what the place looks like; he knows that's a fool's game. He
waits, and his eyes keep turning to the wig, which hides the raw pink scar.

When Captain Joris disappeared, he had
thick, dark brown hair with only a touch of silver at the temples. Another torment
for Julie, who can't bear the sight of his bare skull … Every time
the wig slips, she quickly straightens it.

‘In short,
someone tried to kill him …'

He was shot, and that's a fact.
But he was also given the very best of medical care. He had no money when he
vanished – yet was found with five thousand francs in his pocket.

But there is more to come. Julie
suddenly opens her handbag.

‘I forgot! I brought along the
captain's mail.'

Almost nothing. Brochures for marine
supplies. A receipt for dues paid to the Association of Merchant Navy Captains.
Postcards from friends still in the service, including one sent from Punta
Arenas …

A letter from the Banque de Normandie,
in Caen. A printed form, the blanks filled in on a typewriter.

… beg to inform you that the
sum of three hundred thousand francs has been transferred as per your
instructions from the Dutch Bank in Hamburg and credited to your Account No.
14173 …

And Julie has already insisted over and
over that the captain is not a wealthy man! Maigret looks from one to the other of
the pair seated across from him.

Salted cod's
roe … Hamburg … The made-in-Germany shoes … And only
Joris could explain all this. Joris, who beams a nice broad smile his way because he
sees that Maigret is looking at him …

‘This station is Caen! Passengers
for Cherbourg remain on board; change here for Ouistreham, Lion-sur-Mer,
Luc …'

It is seven
o'clock. The air is so humid that the lights on the platform can barely shine
through the milky mist.

‘How do we go on to our
destination now?' Maigret asks Julie as the other passengers push past
them.

‘Well, the local train runs only
twice a day in the winter …'

There are taxis outside the station.
Maigret is hungry. Having no idea what awaits him in Ouistreham, he prefers to have
dinner in the station buffet.

Captain Joris is still behaving well and
eats what he is served, like a child who trusts those in charge of him. A passing
railway employee pauses at their table to consider the captain.

‘Isn't that the
harbourmaster of Ouistreham?' he asks Maigret, and twirls a finger at his
temple. At a nod from Maigret he goes on his way, visibly amazed.

As for Julie, she takes refuge in
practical matters.

‘Twelve francs for a dinner like
this, and it wasn't even cooked with butter! As if we couldn't simply
have eaten when we got home …'

As she speaks, Maigret is thinking,
‘A bullet in the head … Three hundred thousand
francs …'

He stares searchingly into the
captain's innocent eyes, while his mouth sets in a hard line.

The next taxi in line, once a fine
limousine, has lumpy seats and creaking joints. The three passengers must crowd
together in the back because the jump seats are broken, and Julie is pinned between
the two men, squashed by first one, then the other, as the car swerves.

‘I'm trying to remember if I
locked the garden gate!'
she murmurs,
increasingly concerned about her domestic duties as they get closer to the
house.

Leaving the village, they literally
drive into a wall of fog. A horse and cart appear abruptly, barely two metres away,
like phantoms, and the trees and houses flitting by on both sides of the road seem
like ghosts as well.

The driver slows down. They're
going barely ten kilometres an hour, which doesn't prevent a man on a bicycle
from bursting out of the fog and into the side of the taxi, which stops. The cyclist
is unhurt.

As they go through Ouistreham, Julie
rolls down the partition window to speak to the driver.

‘Keep going to the harbour and
across the swing bridge … Then stop at the cottage that's right by
the lighthouse!'

Between the village and the harbour lies
about a kilometre of road, now deserted, outlined by the feeble glow of streetlamps.
At one corner of the bridge they see a lighted window and hear voices.

‘That tavern is the Buvette de la
Marine,' Julie points out. ‘Everyone in the harbour spends most of their
time in there.'

Beyond the bridge there's hardly
any road at all, and what little there is goes wandering through the marshes along
the banks of the Orne, leading at last only to the lighthouse and a cottage
surrounded by a garden.

When they stop, Maigret watches the
captain, who gets out of the taxi as calmly as you please and walks over to the
gate.

‘Did you see that,
inspector!' cries Julie delightedly.
‘He recognizes the house! I'm sure he'll
eventually be completely himself again.'

She fits the key into the lock, pushes
open the squeaky gate and heads up the gravel path. After paying the driver, Maigret
quickly joins her, but now that the taxi is gone it is pitch dark.

‘Would you mind striking a match?
I can't find the keyhole …'

A tiny flame; the door is opened. A dark
form brushes past Maigret's legs. Already inside, Julie switches on the light
and, looking curiously along the floor, asks softly, ‘That was the cat going
outside just now, wasn't it?'

She takes off her hat and coat with
practised ease, hangs them on a coat peg, pushes open the door to the kitchen and
turns on the light, thus inadvertently revealing that this is the room where
everyone usually gathers.

A well-lit kitchen with tiled walls, a
big sand-scoured pine table, sparkling copper pots and pans. And the captain goes
automatically to sit in his wicker armchair over by the stove.