The Misty Harbour by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online Page A

officials
     grew so uneasy that he rose and blurted out, ‘Time I was getting home to the
     little woman …’
    Maigret handed his tobacco pouch to his
     neighbour, who filled his pipe and passed the tobacco along. Then Delcourt stood up
     as well to escape the now oppressive atmosphere.
    ‘How much does it come to,
     Marthe?’
    ‘These two rounds? Nine francs
     seventy-five. And the gentleman’s from yesterday, that’s three francs
     ten.’
    Everyone was on his feet. Moist air
     swept in through the open door. There were handshakes all around.
    Once outside, the men strode off into
     the mist in every direction, as the fog horn boomed over the sound of their
     footsteps.
    Maigret stood listening to all the
     footsteps heading off in every direction. Heavy footsteps, sometimes pausing, or
     suddenly darting away …
    And he realized that somehow there was
     now fear in
the air. They were afraid, all
     those men going home, afraid of nothing, of everything, of some nebulous danger,
     some unforeseeable disaster, afraid of the dark and the lights in the mist.
    ‘What if it isn’t
     over?’
    Maigret knocked the ashes from his pipe
     and buttoned his overcoat.

4. The
Saint-Michel
    ‘Do you like it?’ inquired
     the hotel-owner anxiously about each dish.
    ‘It’s fine! Fine!’
     replied the inspector, who wasn’t actually quite sure what he was eating.
    He was alone in a hotel dining room
     spacious enough for forty or fifty guests. The hotel was for Ouistreham’s
     summer visitors. The furniture was the kind found in any seaside hotel. On the
     tables, small vases of flowers.
    No connection at all with the Ouistreham
     that the inspector found interesting and was beginning to understand.
    That was what pleased him. What he hated
     the most, in an inquiry, were the first steps, with all the attendant false moves
     and misinterpretations.
    The word Ouistreham, for example. In
     Paris, it had conjured up a complete fantasy, a port city like Saint-Malo. The
     evening he arrived, Maigret had decided that it was really a forbidding hole full of
     gruff, taciturn people.
    Now he had got his bearings. Felt more
     at home. Ouistreham was an ordinary village at the end of a bit of road planted with
     small trees. What truly counted was the harbour: a lock, a lighthouse, Joris’
     cottage, the Buvette de la Marine.
    And the workaday rhythm of this harbour
     as well: the
twice-daily tides, the
     fishermen lugging their baskets, the handful of men exclusively devoted to the
     constant traffic through the lock.
    Some words now meant more to Maigret:
     captain, freighter, coaster. He was watching all that in action and learning the
     rules of the game.
    The mystery had not been resolved. He
     still could not explain the things that had stymied him from the first. But at least
     now the cast of characters was clear: all were accounted for, with their settings
     and little everyday routines.
    ‘Will you be staying here
     long?’ asked the hotel-owner as he served the coffee himself.
    ‘That I don’t
     know.’
    ‘If this had happened during the
     season it would have hit us hard.’
    Now Maigret could distinguish among
     precisely four Ouistrehams: the Harbour, the Village, the Villas, the Seaside Resort
     – this last temporarily on holiday itself.
    ‘You’re going out,
     inspector?’
    ‘Just a stroll before
     bedtime.’
    The tide was almost full in. The weather
     was much colder than it had been; the fog, while still opaque, was turning into
     droplets of icy water.
    Everything was dark. Everything was
     closed. Only the misty eye of the lighthouse was visible. And up on the lock, voices
     called to one another.
    A short blast from a ship’s
     whistle. A green light and a red one drawing near; a mass gliding along, level with
     the wall …
    Maigret had learned the drill. A steamer
     was coming in.
The shadowy figure now
     approaching would pick up the hawser and secure it to the nearest bollard. Then, up
     on