The Murderer (1935) Read online

  The Murderer

  Georges Simenon

  1935

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  A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0

  click for scan notes and proofing history

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  Contents

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  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data:

  Simenon, Georges, 1903-1989 The murderer.

  Translation of: L’assassin.

  1. Large type books. I. Title.

  [PQ2637.I53A8513 1987] 843‘.912 87-9988 ISBN 0-89621-816-3 (lg. print : alk. paper)

  Copyright 1937 by Editions Gallimard. First published in Great Britain by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. All rights reserved.

  Large Print edition published in North America by arrangement with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

  Cover design by James B. Murray.

  The Murderer

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  ONE

  ^ »

  So intimately blended was the sense of danger with the consciousness of everyday reality and all that was conventional and commonplace, that to Kuperus it was all the more exhilarating. It felt, indeed, very much like the effects of a strong dose of caffeine.

  Dr. Hans Kuperus, of Sneek, in the province of Friesland, was once again in Amsterdam. He was there on the first Tuesday of every month. This time it was January, and he was accordingly wearing his winter coat, with a sealskin collar, and galoshes to keep out the snow.

  Those details were in themselves of no importance, but they serve to show that this particular Tuesday was — so far, at any rate — just like any of the others. And when he came out of the fine red-brick station, he went straight into a bar across the way and had a glass of gin. He always did so, though he never mentioned it to anybody, since it wasn’t quite becoming for a man of his position to go into a bar at ten o’clock in the morning.

  It had snowed all night, and was snowing still, but the atmosphere was bright and cheerful. The flakes were far apart and floated down gently, and now and again a ray of sunshine burst through the clouds. It was freezing hard, so the snow was dry, and men were at work sweeping it up into heaps. On the canals, the water near the banks was rapidly being covered by a thin film of ice and the barges glittered with frost crystals.

  The adventure began with the second glass of Bols, for that was one more than usual. He put some bitters in it to cover up the taste, because he didn’t really like gin. Then he paid, wiped his mouth, turned up his coat collar, and walked out with his hands in his pockets and his briefcase tucked under his arm.

  In the ordinary course of events, he should then have taken the streetcar and gone to his sister-in-law’s, which was in the fashionable residential district near the Botanical Gardens. He should have had lunch there and then gone to his meeting at two.

  The medical section of the Biological Association met on the first Tuesday of each month in a new building of glazed bricks that was only two streets from where she lived.

  But he did not go to his sister-in-law’s, the fat Madame Kramm’s, nor to the meeting of the association, and this departure from the normal order of things made him extraordinarily light-hearted, as though the bonds that held him down to earth had suddenly snapped.

  Strolling along the big street that led to the theater district, he stopped to look in the window of every gunsmith’s. He might just as well have gone into the first one, but he went on until he must have inspected four or five, and, as he looked at the guns and revolvers, he also looked at his own reflection in the plate glass.

  He looked provincial and he knew it. Particularly when he took off his hat, because he had never been able to do anything with his hair, which was fair, inclining to ginger. He was tall and broad-shouldered.

  At first sight people were apt to say of him:

  “What a giant!”

  But he knew. He had really studied himself. And in his eyes there seemed to be something soft about him. His face, for instance. Those eyelids were too heavy, those eyes too protruding… And the curve of the mouth, the slightly crooked nose…

  He was easily tired. It was caused by a deficiency. That was a word he often used, and it always impressed his patients. Phosphate deficiency was his particular form. Moreover, he knew that after walking for some time he’d have a feeling of discomfort in the chest.

  That, however, was no longer of the slightest importance! With a spring in his step, he walked on to the next gunsmith’s, then to another, and this time, after a cursory glance at the window, he went inside. It was quite a small shop, and a funny old man in a skullcap stood behind the counter.

  “Have you got any revolvers?”

  A stupid question to ask, since the window was full of them!

  He handled the weapon respectfully, with a little shiver down his spine, as his patients might touch with awe the bright steel instrument he was going to use on them.

  He had it loaded for him, then put it in his pocket. Looking up at the clock, he reflected that normally he ought at that moment to be eating cheese sandwiches and drinking tea with his sister-in-law, Mme Kramm.

  The idea of going there didn’t attract him in the least, and, since his train wasn’t till three, he went into a good restaurant, the sort of place he would never have dreamed of entering ordinarily, considering it much too expensive. At a little table by himself, he ordered a full proper French meal, beginning with hors d’oeuvres and finishing with a bombe glacée and fruit. He had wine, too, which brought a flush to his face. Anyway, it was too hot in the room. He looked at his overcoat, hanging up, and thought the revolver made the pocket bulge.

  He sneered.

  Finally, he went into a movie house and saw the beginning of a film whose end he was never to know.

  From three o’clock onward, the adventure was still more intimately blended with habitual actions, for from that time Kuperus did exactly what he would normally have done the next day. An advance of twenty-four hours — that was the only difference.

  As a rule, he arrived on a Tuesday, went to his meeting in the afternoon, spent the evening at his sister-in-law’s, and stayed the night there. The next morning he would do a little shopping — there were always a few things his wife had asked him to get — and at three o’clock would take the train for Enkhuizen.

  A mere shift of twenty-four hours! Yet that was enough to change everything. No doubt Tuesday was market day at Enkhuizen, since the train was crowded. A different kind of people altogether from those he was accustomed to on Wednesdays. Some of them even wore fur caps. Admittedly he wore one himself at Sneek, but he would never have dreamed of going to Amsterdam in one.

  These strangers nodded to him, not because they knew him, but just because it’s the thing to do on entering a train compartment. After that they plunged into a discussion of Danish and Latvian pigs, taking no further notice of him.

  It all seemed very strange. If it had been a Wednesday, he would have had as companions in his first-class compartment the mayors of Staveren, Leeuwarden, and Sneek, who would have been to Amsterdam for the monthly conference of mayors.

  Two hours by train to Enkhuizen. Several times he felt in his pocket for the revolver, and each time he could hardly repress a smile.

  After that the difference between Tuesday and Wednesday was still more striking. Not that the ship was different. The same one as usual, the Princess Helena, was waiting alongside the quay. A fine white ship that had been in service only for the last year. Kuperus knew the captain and the other officers. The stewards, too. But today all the passengers were strangers to him.

  With his briefcase still under his arm, he went below to the big saloon. It was there, at a table at the far end, that he ought now to b
e sitting down with the three mayors. And the steward would immediately have produced two packs of cards and then four large glasses of Amster beer.

  For there was no time to be lost. It took only an hour and a half to cross the Zuider Zee. Still, they could generally count on finishing a rubber unless the mayor of Leeuwarden consistently overbid his hand, as he was apt to, particularly when he had a run of bad luck.

  But this was Tuesday, and the steward merely brought him his glass of beer, at the same time remarking:

  “You’re a day early, aren’t you?”

  And it gave Hans Kuperus a peculiar satisfaction to answer:

  “I’m a whole year late!”

  As in the train, the people on board looked quite different from those he was accustomed to on Wednesdays. Where were they all going? Kuperus decided there must be a market day at Leeuwarden.

  Darkness had fallen. The Zuider Zee was as calm as a millpond. The propeller throbbed evenly. In the saloon an Englishman was reading one of those bulky English newspapers.

  A whole year late! Kuperus leaned back in his chair, reveling in the thought.

  A year ago almost to the day — it was a Friday and so cold that the schools had been closed — he had received the following letter:

  Esteemed Doctor,

  It is painful to see a man like you made a fool of behind his back. Someone who has great regard for you begs to inform you that every time you go to Amsterdam Mme Kuperus deceives you with one of your friends, Herr de Schutter. She goes to see him in his cottage by the canal and sometimes she even spends the night there.

  The letter was badly written, but that may have been on purpose. It was by someone who knew him, certainly. But someone who didn’t know him well, or he wouldn’t have spoken of Schutter as his friend.

  In the eyes of the world, no doubt he was. But there was no real friendship between them. Herr de Schutter was a lawyer who didn’t bother to practice, since he had plenty of money without having to work for it. Like Kuperus, he belonged to the Billiard Club. In fact, he was its president, while Kuperus was only a member of the committee.

  Schutter belonged to an aristocratic family. He was actually a count, though he didn’t use the title and even pretended to be annoyed when people addressed him by it — which, after all, was only another way of showing off.

  He was the same age as Kuperus, forty-five, but he looked a good deal younger, in spite of his graying hair, because he was slim and had his clothes made by an English tailor in Amsterdam.

  Schutter could speak French, English, and German, and you only had to see the photographs that hung on his walls to know that he’d traveled all over the world.

  And his house! Easily the finest in Sneek. Next door to the Town Hall, which was a historic building. And Schutter’s was of the same period and almost as big. It was built of black brick, and the lattice windows had pink panes, and the chimneys were made of real delft!

  Schutter was on the town council. He could have been deputy mayor if he’d liked. At every election he allowed his name to be put forward, just for the pleasure of declining the honor.

  Schutter had a yacht on the lake. Not a six-meter boat, or a nine-meter. Not even a tialke. But a big seagoing yacht called the Southern Cross, which had been disqualified from the regattas after having won all the races two years running.

  Schutter had thin lips, which gave him a superior smile, an indulgent smile, but one that kept you at a distance, a Voltairean smile, as some of the members of the Billiard Club used to say.

  Schutter went every year to the Côte d’Azur and to the mountains…

  Schutter…

  More than anything else, Schutter was the one man in Sneek who could get by with a scandalous reputation. And what a reputation! A man of whom it could be said:

  “He does whatever he likes with them…”

  With all the women, even the married ones. Anyone else would have been cold-shouldered, blacklisted in the clubs.

  But not Schutter. He was the spoiled boy of Sneek and could get away with anything.

  And without even offering himself, he had been unanimously elected president of the Billiard Club, though everybody knew that Kuperus had been hankering after that honor for years.

  That was Herr de Schutter in a nutshell!

  And Mme Kuperus, Alice Kuperus, was a woman of thirty-five, perhaps a little stout, but pink and soft, with light blue eyes and a winning smile, commonplace and good-natured.

  Kuperus had never denied her anything. She got her clothes from the same dressmaker as the mayor’s wife. In fact, her astrakhan coat was easily the best-looking one in town. A little more than a year ago he had completely refurnished the living room because she had complained that it was old-fashioned, and he had even gone to the expense of a movable cocktail bar.

  The ship purred on the Zuider Zee. Occasionally a bump could be heard as the bow struck a block of ice, and a scraping noise as it slithered down the ship’s side.

  The steward, who knew Kuperus, was waiting for the order to refill his glass.

  “A cognac, please!”

  That alone was almost enough to create a scandal. Never on a Wednesday had he thought of drinking brandy as he played bridge with the three mayors. But this was Tuesday! And he smiled sublimely as he thought of the revolver.

  Alice Kuperus had been…

  At first he hadn’t believed it. And two months had gone by before he’d found out for certain. It wasn’t so easy. He had to find an excuse for not attending the meeting in Amsterdam, and that was only one of many complications.

  He had to pretend to catch the train. Then he had to hang around somewhere till nightfall.

  And the trouble was that everybody knew him by sight. Then he had to hang around all the next day, because he wasn’t expected home till evening…

  All the same, he’d done it. It was during the thaw, and he’d gone to spend the night at Hindeloopen, where his former nurse lived. She was an old woman who still wore the Friesland costume. He had thought up some kind of explanation for his visit, but she had certainly not been taken in by it.

  Anyhow, he’d found out what he wanted to know. And it was true. He had seen them together, Alice and Schutter, going into his cottage by the canal, not far from the Southern Cross, where in the winter the lawyer gave parties.

  It was a wooden building. Around it, nothing but an overgrown disused towpath and a great stretch of water, the water of the canal and then that of the first of the lakes, which in turn led to other lakes.

  And it was not even two kilometers from town!

  “You have no baggage?”

  Kuperus almost burst out laughing in the steward’s face. He would have liked to answer:

  “Yes! Just one item of baggage, important, terrible, and that’s in my overcoat pocket.”

  Through the scuttles the red and green lights of Staveren were already visible.

  Two months to find out, and then another ten to decide! And perhaps he would never have decided if, two weeks before, Schutter had not been re-elected president of the Billiard Club.

  Kuperus had put his own name forward. And it had been brushed aside on a show of hands. Not even a secret ballot!

  For ten months he had been trying to get up his nerve to act.

  He’d succeeded at last, and to prove it he was crossing the Zuider Zee in the Princess Helena on a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday.

  “Here you are, Peter!”

  He was on the point of giving the steward ten guilders, but he thought better of it. It might make him talk. Instead, he gave him one.

  The journey from Staveren to Sneek was a matter of even more clockwork regularity. There were two first-class compartments, one of which he always had to himself. The three mayors stayed behind, because the mayor of Staveren entertained his two colleagues at dinner.

  Getting off the boat, Kuperus went straight to his compartment, a smoking compartment, since he smoked a pipe.

  “Good evening, Dr
. Kuperus.”

  The ticket collector must have mistaken the day, thinking it a Wednesday, since he made no comment.

  The train trundled on, stopping at every station, and Kuperus had only to sit back and listen to their names being called out:

  “Hindeloopen!”

  Then:

  “Workum!”

  Which the man pronounced “Wooorekum.”

  Finally he would hear:

  “Sneek!”

  And he would find himself in the quiet little station, so clean and inviting. From there he generally went to the Groote Markt, where all would be in darkness except for the windows of the café Onder den Linden.

  That was the headquarters of the Billiard Club, and he would drop in, not for a game, but to have a final glass of beer and spend a few minutes hobnobbing with his fellow members, who would invariably ask:

  “Well? What’s the news from Amsterdam?”

  That was the normal end of the trip. This time a trifling hitch occurred, which sufficed to change everything. They had duly passed Hindeloopen and Workum. They had duly passed IJlst and were within a few minutes of Sneek when the train slowed down and then stopped altogether.

  There was so much frost on the window that Kuperus couldn’t see out. Opening the door, he saw a stretch of canal that he immediately recognized. They were barely five hundred yards from Schutter’s cottage.

  He didn’t hesitate. He snatched up his briefcase, a mechanical gesture, and climbed out of the train, shutting the door behind him. Then he scrambled down the embankment. At the bottom of it, he turned and watched the train once more start up and steam off toward the town.

  Dr. Kuperus had decided to make an end of it. It was practically over now, over for all three of them, for Schutter — whose Christian name was Cornelius — for Alice, and for Hans Kuperus himself.