The Misty Harbour (2 page)

‘But I'm sure I put the cat
out when I left, the way I always do …'

She's worried, talking to
herself.

‘Yes, I'm certain of it. I
left all the doors locked. Oh, inspector, would you please go through the house with
me? I'm frightened …'

So much so that she hardly dares to go
first. She opens the door to the dining room, where all is in such perfect order,
with the furniture and parquet polished to a fare-thee-well, that it's clear
the room is never used.

‘Look behind
the curtains, would you?'

There are pieces of Chinese lacquerware
and porcelain the captain must have brought back from the Far East, and an upright
piano.

Then the living room, just as tidy, with
the furniture as spotless as on the day it was bought. The captain is tagging along,
pleased, almost blissful. They go upstairs, walking on a red carpet runner. There
are three bedrooms, one of which is a spare.

And everywhere, that same cleanliness,
that meticulous order, that faint smell of cooking and countryside.

No one is hiding there. The windows are
shut and bolted. The garden gate is locked, although the key has been left
outside.

‘Perhaps the cat came in through a
basement window,' Maigret tells her.

‘There are none.'

They return to the kitchen; she opens a
cupboard.

‘May I offer you a drop of
something?'

And it is now, amid these ritual
movements, while pouring a liqueur into tiny glasses decorated with painted flowers,
that she feels her anguish most deeply and begins to sob.

She looks furtively at the captain, who
is back in his armchair. The sight of him is so painful that she looks away and,
stammering with the effort to pull herself together, tells Maigret,
‘I'll make the guest room ready for you.'

She can hardly get the words out. She
takes an apron hanging on the wall to wipe her eyes.

‘I would
rather stay at the hotel. I suppose there is one …'

Julie looks up at a small china clock,
the kind often won at a fairground, a clock that ticks along like the comforting
soul of the household.

‘Yes! You'll still find
someone there at this hour. It's on the other side of the lock, just behind
the Buvette de la Marine.'

She wishes he would stay, however, and
seems afraid to be left alone with the captain, whom she no longer dares look
at.

‘You don't think
there's anyone in the house?'

‘As you saw for
yourself.'

‘You'll come back tomorrow
morning?'

She goes with him to the front door,
which she shuts firmly behind him.

And Maigret finds himself plunging into
fog so dense that he cannot even see his feet. He does manage to find the gate. He
can feel that he is walking on grass, then on the rough, stony road. He also becomes
aware of a distant noise that he will need some time to identify.

It resembles the lowing of a cow, but
sadder, more desolate.

‘Idiot!' he finally growls
between his teeth. ‘It's only the foghorn …'

He's no longer sure where he is.
And now, right in front of his feet, he looks down at water that appears to be
steaming. He is on the wall of the lock! He hears the screech of cranks turning
somewhere. He can't remember where the taxi crossed the water and, spotting a
narrow footbridge, he is about to step on to it.

‘Watch
out!'

He is stunned: the voice is so close to
him! Just when Maigret was feeling absolutely alone, a man has turned up within
three metres of him – and the inspector must strain to make out even his
silhouette.

Now he understands that warning: the
footbridge he was about to cross is moving. It's the gate of the lock itself
that is opening, and the sight becomes even more hallucinatory because quite close
by, a few metres away, it's no longer a man that appears but an entire wall,
as high as a house. On top of this wall are lights shining fitfully through the
mist.

A ship is passing – and Maigret could
reach out to touch it! When the end of a hawser thuds down near him, someone picks
it up, lugs it to a bollard and makes it fast.

‘Slow astern! … Stand
by!' shouts someone up on the bridge of the steamer.

A few moments earlier, the place had
seemed dead, deserted. And now Maigret, walking the length of the lock, sees that
the mist is full of human figures. Someone is turning a winch. Another man runs up
with a second mooring line. Customs officials are waiting for the gangway to be
lowered to allow them aboard. And none of them can see a thing, in the thick mist
that pearls in droplets on the men's moustaches.

‘You want to cross
over?'

The voice is quite close. Another
lock-gate.

‘Hurry up, or you'll have to
wait a good fifteen minutes …'

He goes across holding on to the
handrail, hears water boiling beneath his feet and, still in the distance, the
moaning of the foghorn. The more Maigret
advances, the more this world of mist fills with teeming, mysterious life. A light
draws him on; approaching, he sees a fisherman, in a boat moored to the dock,
lowering and raising a net attached to some poles.

The man glances at him without interest,
then begins to sort through a basket of small fish.

The lights illuminating the mist around
the ship make it easier to see what is going on. Up on deck, they're speaking
English; a man in an officer's cap is initialling documents at the edge of the
quay.

The harbourmaster! The replacement for
Captain Joris …

Like Joris, the man is short, but
he's thinner, more lively, and jokes around with the ship's
officers.

The world has dwindled to a few square
metres of patchy illumination and a vast black hole where water and terra firma make
their invisible presence felt. The sea is over there, to the left, barely murmuring
at all.

Wasn't it on a night like this
that Joris suddenly vanished from the scene? He was checking papers, like his
colleague now, and probably cracking jokes, too. He was keeping track of the
sluicing water and all the activity. He had no need to see everything; a few
familiar sounds would have been enough. Look at the way no one here watches where
he's going!

Maigret has just lit a pipe and begins
to scowl; he does not like to feel clumsy. He's angry with himself for being a
ponderous landlubber for whom the sea is a source of fear or wonder.

The lock-gates
open. The ship enters a canal almost as wide as the Seine in Paris.

‘Forgive the interruption: are you
the harbourmaster? … Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, of the Police
Judiciaire. I've just brought home your colleague.'

‘Joris is here? So it really is
he? … I heard about it this morning … But, is it true
he's …'

And he gently taps his forehead.

‘For the moment, yes. Will you
spend all night here?'

‘Never more than five hours at a
stretch. As long as the tide lasts, basically! There are five hours during each tide
when the ships have enough water to enter the canal or set out to sea, and this
window shifts every day. Tonight, we've just begun and we'll be busy
here until three in the morning …'

A straightforward man, who treats
Maigret as a colleague, a public servant like himself.

‘Would you excuse me?'

Then the harbourmaster looks out towards
the open water, where there is nothing to see, and remarks, ‘A sailing ship
from Boulogne has tied up at the jetty to wait her turn at the canal.'

‘Do you always know what ships to
expect?'

‘Most of the time. Especially the
steamers. They're generally on a regular schedule, bringing coal from England,
heading back from Caen loaded with ore.'

‘Will you join me in a
drink?'

‘I can't, not until the tide
has ebbed. I have to stay here.'

And the harbourmaster shouts orders to
invisible men, knowing exactly where they are.

‘You are
conducting an inquiry?' he asks.

Just then they hear footsteps, coming
from the village. A man goes across one of the lock-gates and as he passes a light,
it gleams on the barrel of a rifle.

‘Who is that?'

‘The mayor, off to hunt ducks. He
has a blind down by the Orne. His assistant must already be there getting things
ready for tonight.'

‘You think I'll find the
hotel still open?'

‘The Hôtel de l'Univers?
Yes, but you'd best hurry … The owner will soon finish playing cards
and head off to bed. And once there, he stays there!'

‘Until tomorrow, then.'

‘Fine. I'm due back here at
ten, for the morning tide.'

They shake hands, like two phantoms in
the mist. And life goes on in the fog, where one may suddenly bump into an invisible
man.

The experience does not feel sinister,
really; it's something else: a vague uneasiness, a faint oppressive anxiety,
the impression of an unknown world with its own life going on all around you. A
world in which you are a stranger.

That darkness peopled by invisible
beings … That sailing ship, for example, waiting nearby for its turn,
although you would never even guess it was there.

About to pass the fisherman again,
sitting motionless under his lantern, Maigret tries to think of something to
say.

‘They biting tonight?'

And the other man merely spits into the
water as Maigret walks on, kicking himself for having said something so stupid.

The last thing he
hears before entering the hotel is the slamming of the upstairs shutters over at
Captain Joris' cottage.

Julie, who is frightened! The cat
escaping when they entered the house …

‘That foghorn going to wail all
night?' grumbles Maigret impatiently, as the landlord comes to greet him.

‘As long as there's fog
about … You get used to it …'

Maigret slept fitfully, the way one
does with indigestion or as a child tosses and turns the night before some great
event. Twice the inspector got up to lean his face against the cold windowpanes and
saw nothing but the empty road and revolving lighthouse beam, which seemed to keep
stabbing at a cloudbank. The eternal foghorn sounded harsher, more aggressive.

The second time, he checked his watch:
four o'clock, and fishermen with baskets on their backs were clattering off to
the harbour in their clogs.

Almost immediately there was a frantic
pounding on his door, which opened without waiting for his response and revealed the
anguished face of the landlord.

Some time had passed, however: although
the foghorn was still going strong, sunshine now gleamed at the windows.

‘Hurry! The captain is
dying …'

‘What captain?'

‘Captain
Joris … Julie's just rushed to the harbour to send for both you and
a doctor.'

Maigret, his hair unbrushed, was already
pulling on his
trousers. He jammed his
feet into his shoes without lacing them up and forgot to attach the stiff collar to
his shirt before putting on his jacket.

‘You'll have nothing before
you go? A cup of coffee? A tot of rum?'

No – he hadn't time! It was sunny
outdoors, but quite chilly. The road was still damp with dew.

Hurrying across the lock, Maigret caught
a glimpse of the sea, but only a small strip of it, perfectly still and pale blue;
the rest was hidden by a long fogbank hanging just offshore.

Someone called to him from the
bridge.

‘Are you the detective chief
inspector from Paris? I'm with the local police. I'm glad you've
come … Have you already heard?'

‘Heard what?'

‘They say it's
awful! … Wait a minute … There's the doctor's
car …'

Fishing boats in the outer harbour were
rocking gently, casting red and green reflections across the water. Some sails were
set, probably to dry, and showed their black identity numbers.

Two or three women waited out by the
lighthouse, in front of the captain's cottage. The door was open.

The doctor's car passed Maigret
and the policeman, who was sticking close to the inspector.

‘They're talking about
poison,' the officer continued. ‘It seems he's turned a greenish
colour …'

Maigret entered the cottage just when
Julie was coming slowly downstairs in tears, her eyes swollen, her cheeks
flushed. She had been shooed out of the
bedroom so the doctor could examine the dying man.

Under a hastily donned coat, she still
wore a long white nightgown and her feet were bare in their slippers.

‘It's terrible, inspector!
You can't imagine … Go up, quickly! Maybe …'

The doctor had been bending over his
patient and was just straightening up when Maigret entered the bedroom. The
inspector could see from his face that it was hopeless.

‘Police …'

‘Ah! Well, it's the end.
Maybe two or three minutes more … Either I'm way off course, or
it's strychnine.'

Joris seemed to be straining to breathe,
so the doctor opened a window. And there again was that dreamlike tableau: the sun,
the harbour, the boats and their unfurled sails, fishermen pouring brimming baskets
of glittering fish into crates.

What a contrast: the dying man's
face seemed yellower, or greener, an indescribable colour. A neutral tone
incompatible with any ordinary conception of flesh. His limbs were writhing, jerking
spasmodically, yet his face remained calm, in seeming repose, as he stared at the
wall in front of him.

Holding one of his patient's
wrists, the doctor was tracking the weakening pulse when Maigret saw a look come
over his face that said, ‘Watch closely! He's going
now
 …'