The Misty Harbour by Georges Simenon Page B

continue my
     run?’ added the captain.
    ‘To Caen?’
    ‘Yes. The canal doesn’t go
     anywhere else! We’ll probably be finished unloading by tomorrow
     evening.’
    They all seemed like honest men, all had
     frank, open faces, and yet everything about them rang false! But so subtly that
     Maigret couldn’t have said what or where the trouble was.
    Lannec, Delcourt, Joris, everyone at the
     Buvette de la Marine, they appeared to be the salt of the earth. And even Big Louis,
     the ex-con, hadn’t made such a bad impression!
    ‘Don’t get up, Lannec,
     I’ll cast off for you,’ said the harbourmaster, and went topside to
     clear the hawser from its bollard. Célestin, the old fellow who had stuck his head
up out of the fo’c’sle,
     now hobbled across the deck muttering, ‘That Big Louis, he’s
     ’scaped off again!’
    And after letting out both the jib and
     flying jib, he poled the schooner off with a boat hook. Maigret leaped ashore just
     in time. The mist had definitely turned to rain, making the men at work, the harbour
     lights and the steamer from Le Havre, now whistling with impatience in the lock,
     visible once again.
    Winches clanked; water raced through the
     open sluices. The schooner’s mainsail blocked the view up the canal. From the
     lock bridge, Maigret could make out the two dredgers, great ugly boats with
     complicated shapes and grim upper works encrusted with rust. He made his way over
     there with great care because the surrounding area was strewn with junk, old cables,
     anchors and scrap iron. He was walking along a plank used as a gangway when he saw a
     light glimmering through a split seam in the hulk.
    ‘Big Louis!’ he called.
    The light vanished immediately.
     Louis’ head and torso emerged from a hatchway missing its cover.
    ‘What d’you want?’
    But as he spoke something was moving
     below him, in the belly of the dredger. A vague shape was slipping away with the
     utmost caution. The sheet iron was echoing with knocks and bumps …
    ‘Who’s that with
     you?’
    ‘With me? Here?’
    When Maigret tried to look around, he
     almost plummeted into a metre or so of slimy mud, stagnating in the hold of the
     dredger.
    Someone had
     definitely been there, but he was long gone: the banging noises were now coming from
     a different part of the vessel. And the inspector wasn’t sure where he might
     safely walk. He was completely unfamiliar with the mess decks of this apocalyptic
     boat – and now banged his head smartly against one of the dredger’s
     buckets.
    ‘You’ve got nothing to
     say?’
    An indistinct grunt. This seemed to
     mean, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    To search the two dredgers at night, the
     inspector would have needed ten men – men who knew their way around them, too!
     Maigret beat a retreat. The rain made voices carry surprisingly far, and he could
     hear someone in the harbour saying, ‘… lying right across the
     channel.’
    He followed the voice. It was the first
     mate of the steamer from Le Havre, who was pointing out something to Delcourt. And
     the harbourmaster seemed quite disconcerted when Maigret showed up.
    ‘It’s hard to believe
     they’d lose it and never notice,’ the mate went on.
    ‘Lose what?’ asked the
     inspector.
    ‘The dinghy.’
    ‘What dinghy?’
    ‘This one here, that we bumped
     into just inside the jetties. It belongs to the schooner that was ahead of us. Her
     name is on the stern:
Saint-Michel
.’
    ‘It must have come loose,’
     observed Delcourt dismissively. ‘That happens!’
    ‘It did not come loose, for the
     very good reason that in
this weather, the
     dinghy would not have been in tow, but on deck!’
    And the lock workers, still at their
     posts, were trying to hear every word.
    ‘We’ll see about it in the
     morning. Leave the dinghy here.’
    Turning to Maigret, Delcourt gave him a
     crooked smile.
    ‘You can see what an odd sort of
     job I have,’ he murmured.