The Misty Harbour (15 page)

Old Bernard was whiter than the
butcher's paper on his desk.

Monsieur Grandmaison was dead. Lying
across the carpet, his head near a table leg, his feet over by the window, he seemed
enormous. Very little blood. The bullet had entered between two ribs and lodged in
his heart.

As for the revolver, it lay next to his
lifeless hand.

Madame Grandmaison was not weeping. She
stood leaning against the monumental mantelpiece, staring at her husband as if she
had not yet grasped what had happened.

‘It's over,' said
Maigret simply, and got to his feet.

A large room, sad and severe. Dark
curtains at windows that let in a bleak light.

‘Did he say anything to
you?'

She shook her head, then made an effort
to speak.

‘Ever since we got home,'
she stammered, ‘he'd been pacing up and down. Several times he turned to
me, and I thought he was going to tell me something … Then suddenly, the
shot came – and I hadn't even seen the gun!'

She spoke as women do when they are
profoundly shaken and struggling to make sense of their own thoughts, but her eyes
were dry.

It was clear that she had never loved
Grandmaison, at least not passionately. He was her husband. She was a dutiful wife.
A kind of affection had sprung up as they'd grown used to living together.

But before his
dead body, she displayed none of those wrenching emotions that betoken real
love.

Instead, dazed and exhausted, she asked,
‘Was it him?'

‘It was.'

Then there was silence around the
immense body bathed in harsh daylight. The inspector watched Madame Grandmaison. He
saw her look out at the street, searching for something across the way, and a
feeling of nostalgia seemed to soften her features.

‘Would you allow me to ask you two
or three questions before the others arrive?'

She nodded.

‘Did you know Raymond before you
met your husband?'

‘I lived across the
street.'

A grey house much like the one they were
in. Above the front door, the brass plate of a notary.

‘I loved Raymond. He loved me. His
cousin was courting me as well, but in his own way.'

‘Two quite different men,
weren't they?'

‘Ernest was already as you knew
him. A cold man, who seemed never to have been young. Raymond, well, he had a bad
reputation because his life was too big and wild to fit into the small-town mould.
That and his lack of fortune were why my father did not want me to marry
him.'

It was eerie, listening to these
personal confessions murmured next to a corpse. They were like the dismal summing-up
of a whole life.

‘Were you Raymond's
mistress?'

She blinked in affirmation.

‘And he left?'

‘Without
telling a soul. One night. I learned about it from his cousin. Left with some of the
company money.'

‘And Ernest married you. Your son
is not his, I take it?'

‘He is Raymond's son. You
see, when he left and I was on my own, I knew I was going to have a child. And
Ernest was asking me to marry him. Look at these two houses, this street, this city
where everyone knows everyone else.'

‘You told Ernest the
truth?'

‘Yes. He married me anyway. The
child was born in Italy; I stayed there for more than a year to avoid nasty gossip.
I thought my husband had been a kind of hero …'

‘And?'

She turned away: she had just caught
sight of the body again.

‘I don't know,' she
sighed. ‘I believe that he did love me,' she continued reluctantly,
‘but after his own fashion. He wanted me. He got me. Can you understand? A man
incapable of impulse, of spirit. Once married, he lived as before: for himself. I
was part of his household. Somewhat like a trusted employee. I don't know if
he received any news of Raymond later on, but when the boy came across a picture of
him one day and asked Ernest about him, he simply said, “A cousin who turned
out badly.”'

Maigret seemed gripped by some profound
concern, for it was a whole way of life he was attempting to piece together. More
than that, it was the life of a family business, of the very family itself!

That life had lasted fifteen years! New
steamships had been bought. There had been receptions in this very room, bridge
parties and afternoon teas. There had been baptisms.

Summers at
Ouistreham and in the mountains.

And now, Madame Grandmaison was so weary
that she collapsed into an armchair, passing a limp hand over her face.

‘I don't understand,'
she stammered. ‘This captain whom I never saw … You really
think …?'

Maigret turned away to listen, then went
to open the door. The old man was on the landing, fearful but too deferential to
enter the room. He looked searchingly at the inspector.

‘Monsieur Grandmaison is dead.
Call the family doctor. Do not announce the news to the employees and servants until
later.'

He closed the door, almost took his pipe
from his pocket and shrugged.

To his surprise, he felt growing respect
and sympathy for this woman, who had struck him, the first time he had seen her, as
an ordinary ‘lady of the house'.

‘Was it your husband, yesterday,
who sent you to Paris?'

‘Yes. I hadn't known that
Raymond was in France. My husband simply asked me to get my son at Stanislas and
spend a few days with him in the South of France. Although I thought this somewhat
peculiar, I did as he asked, but when I arrived at the Hôtel de Lutèce, Ernest
telephoned to ask me to return home without going on to the boarding
school.'

‘And this morning, Raymond called
you here?'

‘Yes, with an urgent request. He
begged me to bring him a little money. He swore that our lives – all our lives –
would otherwise be torn apart.'

‘He did not accuse your husband of
anything?'

‘No. Back
there, in the cottage, he never even mentioned him, but spoke of friends, a few
seamen to whom he had to give some money so that they could leave the country. He
spoke of some kind of shipwreck.'

The doctor arrived, a friend of the
family who stared at the corpse in consternation.

‘Monsieur Grandmaison has killed
himself!' announced Maigret firmly. ‘It is for you to discover what
illness has carried him off. You understand me? And I will deal with the
police …'

He went to take leave of Madame
Grandmaison, who finally summoned the courage to say, ‘You have not told me
why …'

‘Raymond will tell you one day.
Ah, one last question. On the 16th of September, your son was in Ouistreham with
your husband, was he not?'

‘Yes. He stayed there until the
20th …'

Maigret bowed himself out, tramped
downstairs and walked through the offices with drooping shoulders and a heavy
heart.

Outdoors, he breathed more deeply and
stood bareheaded in the rain, as if to refresh himself, to dispel the oppressive
atmosphere of that house.

Turning, he took one last look up at the
windows. Another at those across the street, where Madame Grandmaison had spent her
youth.

A sigh.

‘Come on!'

Maigret stood in the open door to the
empty room
where Raymond had been kept.
He beckoned to him to follow, then led him out to the street and the road to the
harbour.

Raymond was surprised and somewhat
worried by this unexpected release.

‘Haven't you anything to
tell me?' grumbled Maigret with a show of irritation.

‘No!'

‘You won't defend yourself
against the charges?'

‘I'll keep telling the court
that I haven't killed anyone!'

‘But you won't tell the
truth?'

Raymond hung his head.

They were beginning to catch glimpses of
the sea and could hear the tug whistling as it moved towards the jetties, towing the
Saint-Michel
at the end of a steel cable.

It was then that Maigret announced
impassively, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: ‘Grandmaison
is dead.'

‘What? … What did you
say?'

Raymond caught Maigret's arm in a
fierce grip.

‘He's …?'

‘He killed himself an hour ago, in
his house.'

‘Did he say anything?'

‘No. He paced up and down his
dining room for a quarter of an hour and then shot himself. That's
it!'

They kept walking. In the distance they
could see the excited crowd on the jetties, watching the salvage operation.

‘So now you can tell me the truth,
Raymond Grandmaison. Besides, I already know the gist of it. You were trying to get
your son back, weren't you!'

No reply.

‘You had help from Captain Joris,
among others. And unfortunately for him, as it turned out.'

‘Don't say it! If you only
knew …'

‘Come this way, there will be
fewer people.'

The narrow path led down to a deserted
beach pounded by waves.

‘Did you really take off with some
of the company funds?'

‘Is that what Hélène told
you?' Now his voice was bitter. ‘Yes … Ernest must have told
her his own version of what happened … I'm not claiming to have been
a saint, far from it! I was looking for a good time, as they say. And above all, at
least for a while, I was enthralled by gambling. I won, I lost. Then came the day
when, yes, I helped myself to some company money. My cousin found out.

‘I promised to pay it back over
time and pleaded with him to keep the whole thing quiet. He really did want to call
in the police but agreed not to, on one condition: that I leave the country and
never set foot in France again! You understand? He wanted Hélène … and he
got her.'

Smiling sadly, Raymond was quiet for a
few moments.

‘Others head down south or out
east, but I went north and set myself up in Norway. I never heard any news from
home … The letters I wrote to Hélène went unanswered, and yesterday I
learned that she'd never received them.

‘I wrote to my cousin, too, with
no more success.

‘I won't pretend to be
better than I am or try to make you feel sorry for me with a tale of unhappy love.
No … In the beginning I didn't think much about it. There, you can
see
I'm being sincere! I was
working, having all sorts of problems … But at night, I felt a kind of
dull, aching nostalgia.

‘There were
disappointments … I started a business; it ended badly. For years I went
through ups and downs in a country where I was an outsider.

‘I'd changed my name there.
To try tipping the scales in my favour as a businessman, I became a naturalized
citizen as well.

‘Now and then I'd entertain
officers from some French ship, and that's how I discovered one day that I had
a son.

‘I wasn't sure! But when I
thought about the dates … I couldn't stop thinking about it and
wrote to Ernest. I begged him to tell me the truth, to let me come home to France,
if only for a few days.

‘He sent me a telegram:
“Arrest at French border”.

‘Years went by; I was bent on
making money. There's not much to say about that, except that there was a
hollow place in my heart.

‘In Tromsö there are three months
of endless night every year. Regrets and longings grow sharper … Sometimes
I would have attacks of hysterical rage.

‘I set myself a goal: to become as
rich as my cousin. And I did! Thanks to the cod roe business. But it was when I
achieved this success that I felt the most miserable.

‘Then suddenly, I came back here.
I was determined to act. Yes! After fifteen years! I was looking around Ouistreham
and … I saw my boy, on the beach. I saw Hélène, at a distance …

‘And I wondered how I had ever
managed to live without my son. Do you understand me?

‘I bought a boat. If I had acted
openly, my cousin would
not have
hesitated for a moment to have me arrested. Because he had kept all the evidence he
needed!

‘You saw the men helping me: good
men, no matter what they look like. Everything was arranged.

‘Ernest Grandmaison and the boy
were alone in the house that night. To be even more certain of success, to increase
the odds in my favour, I'd asked Captain Joris to help. I'd met him in
Norway, when he was still going to sea. He knew the mayor and was to visit him under
some pretext and distract him while Big Louis and I were spiriting my son away.

‘And that –
that
was what
caused the tragedy. While Joris was with my cousin in the study, Big Louis and I had
come in through the back door, but unfortunately, we knocked over a broom in the
corridor.