The Grand Banks Café by Georges Simenon

well-brought-up girl, that she will make a model wife
     and a caring mother but … but there’ll always be something missing?
     Isn’t that so? Something more elemental, something you discovered on board
     shut away inside the captain’s cabin, when fear caught you by the throat, in
     the arms of Adèle. Something vulgar, brutal … The spirit of adventure! … And the
     desire to bite, to burn your bridges, to kill or die …’
    Le Clinche stared at him in
     amazement.
    â€˜How did you …’
    â€˜How do I know? Because everyone
     has had a sight of the same adventure come his way at least once in his
life! … We cry hot tears, we shout, we
     rage! Then, a couple of weeks later, you look at Marie Léonnec and you wonder how on
     earth you could have fallen for someone like Adèle.’
    As he walked, the young man had been
     keeping his eyes firmly on the glinting water of the harbour. In it were reflected
     the reds, whites and greens that decorated the taffrails of boats.
    â€˜The voyage is over. Adèle has
     gone. Marie Léonnec is here.’
    There was a moment of calm. Maigret went
     on:
    â€˜The ending was dramatic. A man is
     dead because there was passion on that boat and …’
    But Le Clinche was again in the grip of
     wild ideas.
    â€˜Stop it! Stop it!’ he
     repeated in a brittle voice. ‘No! Surely you can see it’s not possible
     …’
    He was haggard-eyed. He turned to see
     the trawler, which, almost empty now, sat high in the water, looming over them.
    Then his fears took hold of him once
     more.
    â€˜I swear … You’ve got to let
     me alone …’
    â€˜And on board, throughout the
     entire voyage, the captain was also stretched to breaking point, wasn’t
     he?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜And the chief mechanic
     too?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜It wasn’t just the two of
     you. It was fear, Le Clinche, wasn’t it?’
    â€˜I don’t know … Please leave
     me alone!’
    â€˜Adèle was in the cabin. Three men
     were on the prowl.
Yet the captain would
     not give in to his urges and refused to speak to his woman for days on end. And you,
     you looked in through the portholes but after just one encounter you never touched
     her again …’
    â€˜Stop it!’
    â€˜The men down in the bunkers, the
     crew in the foredeck, they were all talking about the evil eye. The voyage went from
     bad to worse, lurching from navigational errors to accidents. A ship’s boy
     lost overboard, two men injured, the cod going bad and the mess they made of
     entering the harbour …’
    They turned at the end of the quay, and
     the beach stretched out before them, with its neat breakwater, the hotels,
     beach-huts and multicoloured chairs dotted over the shingle.
    Madame Maigret in a deckchair was picked
     out by a patch of sunshine. Marie Léonnec, wearing a white hat, was sitting next to
     her.
    Le Clinche followed the direction of
     Maigret’s eyes and stopped suddenly. His temples looked damp.
    The inspector went on:
    â€˜But it took more than a woman …
     Come on! Your fiancée has seen you.’
    And so she had. She stood up, remained
     motionless for a moment, as if her feelings were too much for her. And then she was
     running along the breakwater while Madame Maigret put down her needlework and
     waited.

7.
     Like a Family
    It was one of those situations which crop
     up spontaneously from which it is difficult to get free. Marie Léonnec, alone in
     Fécamp, had been placed under the wing of the Maigrets by a friend and had been
     taking her meals with them.
    But now her fiancé was there. All four
     of them were together on the beach when the hotel bell announced that it was time
     for lunch.
    Pierre Le Clinche hesitated for a moment
     and looked at the others in embarrassment.
    â€˜Come on!’ said Maigret,
     ‘we’ll