Free The Misty Harbour by Georges Simenon

it! The
Saint-Michel
is the best coaster anyone could find for turning into a
     yacht. In the beginning my brother was
supposed to get ten thousand francs if the deal was made.
     Next the buyer talked about keeping him aboard as captain, someone he could
     trust.’
    Immediately regretting those last words,
     she glanced at Maigret and seemed grateful to him for not smiling ironically at the
     idea of someone trusting an ex-con.
    Instead, Maigret was thinking things
     over. Even he was startled by the frank simplicity of her story, which had the
     troubling ring of truth.
    ‘But you haven’t any idea
     who this buyer is?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Or where your brother was going
     to meet him again?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Or when?’
    ‘Very soon. The refitting was
     supposed to be done in Norway, he said, and the yacht would leave within a month for
     the Mediterranean, bound for Egypt.’
    ‘A Frenchman?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘And you were at
     Notre-Dame-des-Dunes just now to retrieve your shell?’
    ‘Because I thought that, if it
     were found, everyone would think something completely different from the truth.
     Admit it: you don’t believe me …’
    Instead of an answer, another
     question.
    ‘Did you see your
     brother?’
    She shuddered in surprise.
    ‘When?’
    ‘Last night … or this
     morning.’
    ‘Louis is here?’
    She seemed
     frightened, disoriented.
    ‘The
Saint-Michel
has
     arrived.’
    His words appeared to reassure her, as
     if she had been afraid that her brother had shown up without the schooner.
    ‘So he’s on his way to
     Caen?’
    ‘No, he spent the night aboard one
     of the dredgers.’
    ‘Let’s go – I’m
     cold …’
    The wind from the ocean was freshening
     as the overcast deepened.
    ‘Does he often sleep on an empty
     old boat?’
    When she didn’t reply, the
     conversation died on its own. They walked on, hearing only the sand crunching softly
     underfoot and the snapping leaps of tiny crustaceans, disturbed at their feast of
     seaweed swept in by the tide.
    Maigret was seeing two images come
     together in his mind’s eye: a yacht … and a gold fountain-pen.
    Then his thoughts came like clockwork.
     Earlier that morning, the pen had been difficult to explain because it didn’t
     fit in with the
Saint-Michel
or its rough-and-ready crew.
    A yacht … and a fountain-pen.
     That made more sense! A wealthy, middle-aged man is looking for a pleasure yacht and
     loses a gold pen.
    But how to explain why this man, instead
     of going ashore at the quay, took the schooner’s dinghy, hauled himself up the
     jetty ladder and hid in a waterlogged dredger?
    ‘The night Joris vanished, when
     your brother came to see you, did he talk about this buyer? He didn’t mention,
     for example, that the man was aboard the
Saint-Michel
?’
    ‘No. He simply said that the deal
     was almost settled.’
    They were approaching the foot of the
     lighthouse. Joris’
cottage was just
     to the left, and flowers planted by the captain were still blooming in the
     garden.
    Julie’s face fell. She seemed sad
     and looked around vacantly like someone who no longer knew what to do with her
     life.
    ‘You’ll probably be going to
     see Joris’ lawyer soon, for the reading of the will. You’re a wealthy
     woman, now.’
    ‘Fat chance!’ she said
     curtly.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You know perfectly well. All this
     nonsense about a fortune, huh … The captain wasn’t rich.’
    ‘You don’t know
     that.’
    ‘He didn’t keep secrets from
     me. If he’d had hundreds of thousands of francs, he would have told me. And he
     wouldn’t have hesitated, last winter, to buy himself a two-thousand-franc
     shotgun! He really wanted that gun … He’d had a look at the
     mayor’s and found out how much it cost.’
    They had reached the front gate.
    ‘Are you coming in?’
    ‘No. Perhaps I’ll see you
     later.’
    She hesitated before going inside the
     cottage, where she would be all