The Window Over the Way
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"He's Etienne Roy .... He'll never have anything to worry about . His father's got the best farm at Saint - Odile .... " " Twice the inn - keeper had crept up to the door of her room and knocked discreetly . She had pretended not to hear ..."--The Window Over the Way (1944) by Georges Simenon |
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Le Rapport du gendarme (1944) is a 'roman dur' by Georges Simenon. The novel starts with the mystery of a stranger run over by a car who becomes amnesiac but evolves to a familicide.
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Summary
The Roy family discovers a stranger in front of their farm, seriously injured, run over by a car? The stranger, untransportable, is treated at the farm and the investigation begins. Very quickly, a brigadier from the gendarmerie abandons the stranger (of whom nothing is known, except that he has probably arrived from America or Africa, carrying a sum of 60,000 francs) and turns to the Roy family to house the man. Indeed, although the family knows nothing about the injured man who has become amnesiac, it appears that he had come to their house on purpose: a scrap of paper with their address was found on him, a scrap that Joséphine Roy tried almost instinctively to make disappear.
From that moment on, the family, pushed by the brigadier and his questions, is forced to question itself and to break the sort of self-defence rule that each member had unconsciously imposed on itself. This is how we learn that Evariste is not Etienne's father: he married Etienne's mother when she was pregnant and has always kept a role of valet at the farm. Joséphine, too, has a secret: before marrying Étienne, she lived with her family, a tribe of showmen, thieves and fighters, always hunted down. By marrying Etienne without love, she has chosen security, a security that she feels threatened by the revelations that may come to light from the gendarme who is searching the family's past. For she too was pregnant by another man, a young showman, to whom Lucile bears a strong resemblance because of the same wine stain on her face. When Joséphine suspects that Étienne, after twenty-two years, has discovered the truth, imagining that she might be evicted with her daughter and sent back to her old life, she tries to poison her husband, but fails. From then on, he has no more doubts: he kills his wife, his daughter and the stranger, before hanging himself.
We then learn that the man, sent by Joséphine's brother (a criminal who had to flee), was bringing her money to give to her mother. Evariste, the old Roy, will be from now on the only master at the Gros-Noyer. With a young maid that he has just hired.
Particular aspects of the novel
A story whose point of view and axis of meaning gradually shift: a police plot that will not be clarified is followed by a psychological drama seen from the inside, that of the Roy family.
Datasheet
Space and time
Space
Gros-Noyer farmhouse, in Sainte-Odile, near Fontenay-le-Comte.
Time
Contemporary era.
Characters
Main characters
A family of farmers:
- Evariste Roy, the septuagenarian father
- Etienne Roy, his son, 41 years old
- Josephine Roy, Etienne's wife, 40 years old
- Lucile Roy, their daughter, 21 years old
- Brigadier Liberge, the gendarme.
Editions
- Pre-publication in serial form in the weekly Actu, n° 12-30 from July 15 to November 22, 1942, under the title: Le mystère du Gros-Noyer.
- Original edition: Gallimard, 1944
- Folio Policier, No. 1203, 1980 Template:ISBN
- Tout Simenon, tome 24, Omnibus, 2003 Template:ISBN
- Romans durs, tome 5, Omnibus, 2012 Template:ISBN
Adaptations
- 1987 : Le Rapport du gendarme, episode 6 of the French television series L'Heure Simenon directed by Claude Goretta, with André Lacombe, Marie Collins and Fred Ulysse
Source
- Maurice Piron, Michel Lemoine, L'Univers de Simenon, guide des romans et nouvelles (1931-1972) de Georges Simenon, Presses de la Cité, 1983, pp. 114-115 Template:ISBN
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