Harriet Devine's Blog

Woman with Book

No prizes for knowing who this is by - sent to me by ex-colleague and regular Shiny reviewer Rob Spence, from a Picasso exhibition in London.

Maigret and the Lazy Burglar by Georges Simenon

As I'm sure you know, Penguin has set itself the delightful task of republishing every one of Simenon's seventy-five Maigret novels. This one, published earlier this month, is number 57. It first came out in 1961, thirty years after the series began.

I was struck by the biographical note which appears at the beginning of the book. This is Simenon writing about himself:

My motto, to the extent I have one, has been noted often enough, and I've always conformed to it. It's the one I've given to old Maigret, who resembles me in some points...'understand and judge not'.

I've probably read this before, but it struck me forcibly as being particularly applicable to this delightful novel. Maigret is woken in the early hours of the morning by a phone call from a colleague, Fumel. A body has been discovered in the Bois de Boulogne and Fumel has called because 'I don't know why, but I get the feeling there's something strange about it'. Maigret drags himself unwillingly from his warm bed, urged by Mme Maigret to wrap up warm, and refuses her offer to make him something to eat. He's feeling a little sulky, 'and yet, deep down, these were the time he liked, perhaps those he would miss most when he retired'.

He arrives in the freezing Bois to find a group of policemen standing around the body of a well-dressed, middle-aged man who, they conclude, must have been killed elsewhere and dumped here for some reason. Back at the police station Maigret reveals that he knows the man's identity. His name is Honoré Cuendet, originally from Switzerland. He's known Cuendet for many years: 'A quiet man, probably the quietest burglar ever'. Maigret volunteers to visit his old mother, whose address he already knows. The first thing she asks Maigret is whether he's arrested her son again. Her reaction to news of his death is surprisingly calm at first, though later she begins to weep over her boy, who never harmed anyone, 'the quietest, gentlest man in the world'.

Later, Maigret muses on the many years of his long acquaintance with Cuendet and on the man's history. Trained as a locksmith, he had turned to theft while still a teenager, storing things in his room that he had no real use for, just for the fun of having taken them. After five years in the Foreign Legion he had moved to Paris and his career as a burglar began. His technique was an unusual one. He would single out a great house, occupied by wealthy people, and rent a room opposite for weeks at a time while he observed the comings and goings of the household. Eventually it was time to move. Unlike other burglars, he only broke into houses where the people were asleep in their beds - he clearly enjoyed his skill in moving round oblivious peoples' bedrooms. His burglaries were few and far between, but Maigret knows there must be a stack of money and treasure stored away somewhere - Mme Cuendet had said her son always promised he would look after her after his death, though she apparently doesn't have anything stored in her own apartment. After a long time of thinking and asking around, Maigret finds out where Cuendet has been staying, and why - his room looked out at the facade of a mansion owned by a stupendously rich Englishman, obviously the burglar's latest target. He also discovers someone who can give him a deeper insight into the man's character and a hint as to where the money may be stored.

Maigtet has to do all this surreptitiously, as this is not actually his case. And in fact the case is never completely solved, though Maigret is certain as to who was responsible. His investigations have been almost entirely for his own satisfaction. He imagines himself in court, producing his small amounts of real evidence and trying to convince the judge of the truth of the matter. It's not really important, though, as he's sure that Cuendet has left his mother and his girlfriend in a secure financial situation.

The note I quoted at the beginning, 'understand and judge not', absolutely sums up Maigret's position in this novel. He and Cuendet were on opposite sides , and yet he liked the man and rather admired his quiet, skilful methodology. But this is something he had to keep to himself. As we learn early on in the novel:

He rarely spoke about his job, and even more rarely expressed an opinion about men and their institutions. He distrusted their ideas, as they were always too rigid to reflect reality, which, as he knew from experience, was very fluid.

Wonderful stuff, and well worth reading.

Girl Reading

This is Girl Reading in an Interior by the Spanish artist Francesco Serra Castellet (1912- 1976). I love the informality of the scene.

woman reading

Following on from last week's painting, here's another by the same artist, František Dvořák (1862-1927). It's much less formal than the last one and makes me think it's probably a portrait of a family member. It's just called Reader and was painted in 1906.

 

The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor

A couple of years ago I reviewed Andrew Taylor's novel The Ashes of London for Shiny. I'd been impressed with his evocation of 1660s London in the grip of the Great Fire, so I was pleased to find this new book, which is basically a continuation of the first one. It's set in the aftermath of the Fire, when London is trying to rebuild itself and to house the many people who have been rendered homeless. This is frequently a complex task, as many properties have multiple owners, freeholders and leaseholders. For this reason the government has set up the Fire Court, a body dedicated to hearing the cases and disputes that arise. 

The two central characters of the first book, James Marwood and Cat Lovett, reappear here. James has been working for a government office and caring for his aged father who is suffering from dementia. At the start of the novel old Marwood comes back from one of his wanderings around the city, and rambles on about a whore he has seen lying dead in a room at Clifford's Inn. James dismisses this as part of his father's imaginary life, but when the body of a murdered woman is found on the scene and then the old man is killed in an apparent street accident, he realises there was truth in what he had described. Cat, meanwhile, is living a concealed life. Unable to return to the wealthy home where she was brought up, she is living under an assumed name with her employer, an ageing and frail architect, who allows her to work on drawing up his plans. 

Another strand of the novel concerns Sir Philip Linley and his wife Jemima. Sir Philip owns the freehold of Dragon Court, a large property which has been destroyed in the fire, and wants to build new houses there, but he's in opposition to the leaseholder, who's employing Cat's employer to design an alternative development. Their case is due to come up before the Fire Court soon. Sir Philip is not a nice man - he's mean to Jemima, who he married for her money, and consorts with the very unpleasant Gromwell, a seedy and cadging lawyer. It soon turns out that the murdered woman was one of the leaseholders of Dragon Court, and James and Cat are convinced that Linley and Gromwell were in some way responsible. Many dramatic events ensue, including two more fires, in one of which James sustains bad injuries and almost loses his life, while Cat is almost destroyed by the second one. 

Although I did enjoy this, my enthusiasm is not as great as it was when I read the first one. Not sure why this is - the historical research is equally impressive, the characters attractive and lively, the plot satisfyingly complex. Maybe I just wasn't quite in the mood. I've certainly been left looking forward to what I hope will be a third volume - it would be interesting to see what the future holds for Cat and James. Cat is an admirable character, strong and determined, defensive and often spiky, mistrustful of men (she carries a knife for self-defence), and highly intelligent. I should be sorry to have seen the last of her.  As for James, we can only hope he makes a full recovery from the damage done by the fire and continues to fight corruption.

Woman Reading in the Garden

I like reading in the garden but the sun has been so hot recently that it's ceased to be comfortable. It certainly wouldn't be comfortable in an outfit like this lady's, painted by the Czech artist František Dvořák (1862-1927). She looks very glamorous, though.

Two British Library Crime Classics

Thank goodness for the British Library Crime Classics. When I hit a reading slump I'm always happy to have one or more of these on hand to lift me out of it. I read two of them recently, both particularly entertaining and witty. 

Alan Melville wrote several crime novels though he's better known for having becomes a successful radio presenter. This one, published in 1934, was his first. Weekend at Thrackley is the story of young Jim Henderson, whose life in a London bedsit is not all that pleasant - money is short and prospects not great. So he's pleased and amazed to get an invitation to a weekend house party in a grand country house in Sussex. Five other guests are there, all wealthy people dripping with jewels, which makes sense as their host, Edwin Carson, is a well--known collector and connoisseur of precious stones. What does not make sense to Jim is the fact that he himself was invited. He doesn't know Carson and is decidedly down on his luck. Unsurprisingly Carson proves to have an ulterior motive in hosting the party, leading to many situations of comic drama. 

Though possibly not Melville's best effort, this is an entertaining novel, full of larger-than-life characters and events. There's not actually a murder (or not one which needs solving) and no real mystery to solve except how various people are going to get out of the threatening situations they find themselves in. The denouement (Jim's discovery of his reason for being there) is somewhat predicatble too. But the whole thing is great fun and I enjoyed it a lot. 

I recently reviewed Richard Hull's first novel. The Murder of my Aunt, published in 1934. Excellent Intentions appeared four years later. I was very enthusiastic about the first one and this one is excellent too, though in a very different mode. It concerns what's known as an 'altruistic crime' - the victim, Henry Cargate, was an outstandingly unpleasant man, and each of the suspects has a different reason for thinking that the world would be a better place if he wasn't in it. It's also a courtroom mystery, but one with a difference - we know who the prosecution, the defence and the judge are, and we meet some members of the jury, but the identity of the accused is kept secret until close to the end of the novel. In the course of the book we see Inspector Fenby painstakingly investigating four suspects, one of whom we assume will end up in the dock, but which one?

 There's a lot to enjoy here. The suspects are the local vicar, who is horrified by Cargate's atheism, a celebrated stamp dealer who believes Cargate to be flooding the market with faked stamps, the creepy butler who has been mistreated by Cargate for far too long, and his efficient secretary, whose political opinions are a million miles away from Cargate's fascism. All four seem to have solid, if somewhat bizarre, reasons for wishing him dead but who actually committed the deed? We do find out in the end, but there's an extra twist in the final chapter. Great stuff.

 

Girl Reading

This is by the incomparably talented Russian artist Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967). I've shown her work on here before but this was a new one to me, and shows two of her four children (three if you count the one in the background) and the artist herself engaged in painting them. If you read her Wikipedia entry you will see that she had rather a tragic life - she was forced to move to Paris in 1917 and had to part with the children. Two of them soon came to live with her but it was many years before she was reunited with the two eldest ones.