Back to Givet

About 17 months ago I noticed the Maigret story at reference 2 at reference 1 - at which time I was puzzled that Maigret had not brought the perpetrator of the crime - a rather brutal murder of a young lady - to justice. A murder set on the Meuse, at Givet, on the eastern end of the border between France and Belgium. I thought maybe the problem was my command of written French.

I have now gone through the entire cycle and am working through them again, and have just finished another reading of this same story. And the story does indeed seem to be that the perpetrator, a young lady of decent, shop-keeping pedigree, did the deed (premeditated for weeks) with a hammer acquired for the purpose and that the other three young people in the shop-keeping family either assisted directly in the clearing and covering up or knew that something was going on. One of these last dies, possibly of guilt, and the other two are unhappily married. While the perpetrator leaves the family home in Givet - a serious matter at the time - and winds up as the efficient assistant to a shop-keeper in Paris. But likely to be old before her time and to die an old maid. And the victim was working class. And her brother was rather a bad lot.

A story written in the early days of Maigret, when Simenon was a young man. Perhaps he was just concerned to whack out the stories to pay for his expensive life style - and just thought that this sort of ending would make a change for the punters. Without regard to morals or propriety. Or did he really think that a conscientious chap like Maigret would let this one go, this one time, on the grounds that he could not shop a member of his family, albeit his wife's family? Cousinage rather than immediate. Or was his point that even cousinage often did matter, even among respectable policemen and their families?

But I have learned that I did the whole 28 volume cycle in a little over a year. Near enough a volume a fortnight, rather faster than I would have guessed.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/chez-les-flamands_20.html.

Reference 2: Chez les Flamands - Simenon - 1932. Volume IV of the collected works.