Simenon

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29856, 23 June 1962, Page 3

Simenon

The Fate of the Malous. BySimenon. Hodder and Stoughton. 160 pp. Maigret in Society. By Simenon. Hodder and Stoughton. 160 pp.

These two books from one of the most prolific writers in France differ in subject if not in method. Each plays cleverly on the reader's emotions and keeps him interested until the last page. In “The Fate of the Malous,” compassion is aroused for the earnest and innocent boy who has to bear the brunt for the sins of his feckless and immoral family. When Eugene Malou shoots himself on the doorstep of a creditor from whom he has vainly tried to obtain more money, his schoolboy son, Alain, is his only sincere mourner. Living in a small provincial town, Alain has seen his family drop from a rathei ostentatious affluence to squalid bankruptcy, and the ostracism which this misfortune can provoke. With the bailiffs already in the house, Malou's widow prudently takes herself off to Paris with some good jewellery which she has managed to withhold from her husband in his desperate financial straits. Her daughter. Corine is deep in a liaison with a local doctor whose wife creates such a noisy scandal that the hapless Alain is compelled to leave the humble job he has obtained with a local printer. Hearing his father vilified on all hands he takes refuge with three people, all of whom revere the dead man for certain benefactions he has shown them; and between small-town gossip and his new friends' revelations, Alain is able to make a true appraisal of his father, and face life afresh. This book is translated from the French by Denis George. There is pathos, too, in the unfolding of the second book. All the principal characters are septuagenarians. Compte Armand de Saint-Hilaire, a retired diplomat, is found dead in his library with at least four bullets in his body. The first one, which had gone through his head had obviously killed him outright, but the others appeared to have been fired without any object save the murderer's frenzied rage. Maigret is called in to investigate the crime and discovers that for the last 50 years the Compte had been the platonic adorer of an old lady—the Princess de C —. whose elderly husband had died a few days earlier after a riding accident. It was tacitly accepted in high society that the two devoted friends would marry when free to do so. From the first Maigret comes up against a wall of opposition from the Compte’s elderly servant, Jaquette Larrieu, who, with her master, was the only other occupant of his house. A rather sinister nephew of the dead man as well as certain young relatives of the Princess are questioned, and none can throw the smallest Lgh’ on the mystery. An experiment carried out l.y Maigret with the consent of its subject apprises the detective of a solution of the problem, which proves to be both ingenious and touching The translator in this case was Robert Eglesfield.