The Misty Harbour Read Free

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