The Grand Banks Café by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online Page B

was still being extracted from the
     gaping hold in the glare of the acetylene lamps. But Maigret had had enough of
     trucks, dockers, the quays, the jetties and the lighthouse.
    He was standing on a world of plated
     steel and, half-closing his eyes, he imagined being out on the open sea, in a field
     of surging swells through which the bows ploughed an endless furrow, hour after
     hour, day after day, week after week.
    â€˜Don’t imagine we walk
     around like we’re doing now …’
    Men below serving the engines. Men in
     the forward crew quarters. And on the after deck, a handful of God’s
     creatures: the captain, his first mate, the chief mechanic and the wireless
     operator.
    A small binnacle light to see the
     compass by. Charts spread out.
    Three months!
    When they’d got back, Captain
     Fallut had written his will, in which he stated his intention to put an end to his
     life.
    An hour after they’d berthed, he’d been
     strangled and dumped in the harbour.
    And Madame Bernard, his landlady, was
     left grieving because now there would be no marriage of two ideally suited people.
     The chief mechanic shouted at his wife. The girl called Adèle defied an unknown man,
     but ran off with him the moment Maigret held a picture of herself scribbled on in
     red ink under her nose.
    And in his prison cell the wireless
     operator Le Clinche in a foul temper.
    The boat hardly moved. Just a gentle
     motion, like a chest breathing. One of the three men he’d seen in the foredeck
     was playing the accordion.
    As he turned his head, Maigret made out
     the shapes of two women on the quayside. Suddenly galvanized, he hurried down the
     gangway.
    â€˜What are you doing
     here?’
    He felt his face burn because he had
     sounded gruff, but especially because he was aware that he too was being infected by
     the frenzy which filled all those involved in the case.
    â€˜We wanted to see the boat,’
     said Madame Maigret with disarming self-effacement.
    â€˜It’s my fault,’ said
     Marie Léonnec. ‘I was the one who insisted on …’
    â€˜All right! That’s fine!
     Have you eaten?’
    â€˜It’s ten o’clock …
     Have you?’
    â€˜Yes, thanks.’
    The windows of the Grand Banks Café were
     more or less the only ones still lit. A few shadowy figures could
be made out on the jetty: tourists dutifully out for
     their evening stroll.
    â€˜Have you found out
     anything?’ asked Le Clinche’s fiancée.
    â€˜Not yet. Or rather, not
     much.’
    â€˜I don’t dare ask you a
     favour.’
    â€˜You can always ask.’
    â€˜I’d like to see
     Pierre’s cabin. Could I?’
    He shrugged and took her there. Madame
     Maigret refused to walk over the gangway.
    Literally a metal box. Wireless
     equipment. A steel table, a seat and a bunk. Hanging on a wall, a picture of Marie
     Léonnec in Breton costume. Old shoes on the floor and a pair of trousers on the
     bed.
    The girl inhaled the atmosphere with a
     mixture of curiosity and delight.
    â€˜Yes! But it isn’t at all
     how I’d imagined. His shoes have never been cleaned … Oh look! He kept
     drinking from the same glass without ever washing it …’
    A strange girl! An amalgam of shyness,
     delicacy and a good upbringing on the one hand and dynamism and fearlessness on the
     other. She hesitated.
    â€˜And the captain’s
     cabin?’
    Maigret smiled faintly, for he realized
     that deep down she was hoping to make a discovery. He led the way. He even fetched a
     lantern he found on deck.
    â€˜How can they live with this
     smell?’ she sighed.
    She looked carefully around her. He saw
     her become flustered and shy as she said:
    â€˜Why has the bed been raised
     up?’
    Maigret stopped drawing on his pipe. She was right. All
     the crew slept in berths which were more or less part of the architectural structure
     of the boat.