The Hatter's Ghost (Simenon novel)  

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Les Fantômes du chapelier (1949, English: The Hatter's Ghost) is a 'roman dur' by Georges Simenon.

Contents

Summary

M. Labbé, a respectable shopkeeper from La Rochelle, goes every evening to the Café des Colonnes, where he plays bridge with friends. Since 13 November, five women have been murdered in the city, and journalist Jeantet has been talking to the anonymous killer through a local newspaper, L'Écho des Charentes.

One evening, Labbé's neighbour Kachoudas, a poverty-stricken tailor, notices on the hatter's garment the print, cut out from newspapers, with which messages to "L'Écho" are composed. Kachoudas, who has guessed the horrible truth, remains silent out of fear: he dares not speak out, despite the hefty reward that has been promised. A sixth crime is committed and the little tailor, anguished by a certainty that oppresses him, soon falls ill.

In reality, six weeks earlier, Mr Labbé had killed his wife, Mathilde, who was bedridden and ill-tempered, in order to get rid of her, but he had led even his maid to believe that he was continuing to look after her. What is the connection between these murders? The hatter sends extracts to the press in a memoir of sorts, revealing that he has decided to eliminate all his wife's friends from boarding school, who used to gather at her house for an annual visit on 24 December. The next gathering of friends must be avoided at all costs, as it would reveal Mathilde's disappearance (her body has been buried in the cellar).

After another, unsuccessful, attempt on the life of a nun - she was to be the last victim - the hatter begins to doubt himself, to lose his cool lucidity, even though he knows that his half-failure has no consequences, since the nun lives in seclusion. In his confusion, he kills his maid, Louise, but manages to pass the crime on to the unknown strangler. Wasn't the murderous madness that seized the hatter during this latest crime already present when he killed his wife? The answer is given when M. Labbé murders again, this time without motive, since the victim, Madame Berthe, is a stranger to the group of former companions. And it is almost voluntarily that M. Labbé, putting an end to his crimes, will have himself arrested by his friend the superintendent. But in the meantime, Kachoudas, the poor little tailor, is dead: didn't he kill him too?

Special aspects of the novel

Based on the short story "Le Petit tailleur et le chapelier" (English: The Little Tailor and the Hatter), the novel replaces Kachoudas' point of view with that of the hatter Labbé, the point of view of the murderer whose past the reader gradually discovers from the moment he kills his wife. The story alternates with passages from Labbé's "memoir of the strangler's victims", written to explain his actions.

Le Petit tailleur et le chapelier was published in 1950 in the collection Les Petits cochons sans queue.

Fact sheet

Time and place

La Rochelle. Contemporary period

Main character

Léon Labbé. Hatter. Married. In his sixties.

Other characters

  • Kachoudas, the "little tailor", originally from the Near East.
  • Jeantet, a young journalist from L'Echo des Charentes
  • The bridge players' circle, which includes M. Labbé, Dr Chantreau, the insurer Lambert, the printer Caillé and the superintendent Pigeac.

Film adaptation

Source

  • Maurice Piron, Michel Lemoine, L'Univers de Simenon, guide des romans et nouvelles (1931-1972) de Georges Simenon, Presses de la Cité, 1983, p. 148-149

See also





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Hatter's Ghost (Simenon novel)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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