The Hatter’s Ghost by Georges Simenon

The Hatter’s Ghost by Georges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title: Les fantômes du chapelier

Translator: Howard Curtis

Source: Personal copy

Yesterday I said there are a number of writers like Wodehouse, you know, who may have written a book each year; another is Georges Simenon, since he wrote so many books. I think I once said I heard his publisher in Belgium isn’t sure, since he wrote so many books under different names and with different publishers.  He was prolific this year; for example, I could have picked three Maigret novels and three of his Roman D’ur, and this is one, so you could have spent nearly a whole week with his books in 1949.  For me, this is perfect, since it is another book set in a small town. A lot of his Roman Durs seem to be set in small towns or suburbs.

He had waded through puddles and his feet were wet, his features hardened by the cold. He was again walking like a normal person. He passed Rue du Minage, his own street.
He was almost at his destination. He couldn’t hear any footsteps, but he knew all the same that someone was walking behind him, catching up with him. He still didn’t dare run or stop. A taller, broader figure than he was loomed up on his left and fell into step with him, and a strangely calm voice said:
‘You’d be making a big mistake, Kachoudas.’ He didn’t turn to look at his companion. He didn’t say anything in reply. He didn’t immediately change direction.
He was alone. He could see the red lantern, a policeman coming out of the station and getting on his bicycle.
He turned. Ignoring him now, Monsieur Labbé had done an about-turn and was walking, with his hands in his pockets and his coat collar raised, in the direction of Rue du Minage, their street.

The rain filled town and our narrator

The narrator is the local hatter in the small town of Rochelle Monsieur Labbe. We find that over the last few weeks there has been the killing of five elderly women in the town, and since then it has been raining, adding to the sense of dark foreboding among the locals. We see small-town life focusing on a group of men who meet, chat, and play cards.  One of them is the murderer. Another has almost, by mistake, put the pieces together, and a chance moment means that the local tailor, Kachouda, a quiet, unassuming fellow, has found out who the killer is.  The book follows what happens next and how it starts to fray the killer’s edges. As a cat-and-mouse story, it comes out in the rain before there are more killings or the tailor is killed himself.  Two men, very different in character, and the one that should be the killer, the quiet, unassuming one, isn’t

As for him, they had probably forgotten he was a mus-ician. He hadn’t played for at least twenty years, and the cello itself was in the attic. To get to the attic, you had to leave the house, enter the dead-end alley and take the stairs to the second floor. That was what he had done: he hadn’t been so incautious as to buy a cello string from the instrument maker in Rue du Palais. Especially as that was the only one in the town. And the hatter hadn’t been outside La Rochelle in fifteen years, not even to go to Rochefort, fifteen years during which he hadn’t once slept anywhere but in his own bed.

A little more of the backstory to our narrator

I love Simenon Roman Durs’ books; they offer a great examination of the human soul and the morals of nations and individuals.  Here we have two men and a secret that comes out: one of them is the killer.  What I love is how Simenon twists who the killer is: not the quiet, unassuming character it often seems to be; no, it is the outgoing, well-liked one. I was reminded of the French film Le Boucher, where the local butcher, a well-liked man, is the killer. In fact, I checked, and the director of that film, Claude Chabrol, also made a film adaptation of this very book a number of years later. He also shows how the two men who run shops next to each other are viewed, and how the story twists as one discovers the other is the serial killer, all from the killer’s perspective. It’s a mind-unwinding that reminded me of books like Blaugast, where we see a man’s mind fall apart as we read. If you like a dark, twisty book from a killer’s perspective, this is the book for you.  Do you have a favourite from Simenon’s Roman Durs, his hard novels?