A Crime in Holland

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First published in French as
Un Crime en Hollande
by Fayard 1931
This translation first published 2014

Copyright 1931 by Georges Simenon Limited
Translation © Siân Reynolds, 2014
GEORGES SIMENON ® Simenon.tm
MAIGRET ® Georges Simenon Limited
Cover photograph (detail) © Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos
Front cover design by Alceu Chiesorin Nunes
All rights reserved

The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-698-15755-2

Version_1

Title Page

About the Author

Copyright

1. The Girl with the Cow

2. The Baes's Cap

3. The Quayside Rats Club

4. Logs on the Amsterdiep

5. Jean Duclos's Theories

6. The Letters

7. Lunch at the Van Hasselt

8. Two Young Women

9. The Reconstruction

10. Someone Waiting for the Right Moment

11. The Light in the Window

EXTRA: Chapter 1 from
The Grand Banks Café

 

Georges Simenon was born on 12 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life. Between 1931 and 1972 he published seventy-five novels and twenty-eight short stories featuring Inspector Maigret.

Simenon always resisted identifying himself with his famous literary character, but acknowledged that they shared an important characteristic:

‘My motto, to the extent that 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 certain points … “Understand and judge not”.'

Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels.

PENGUIN CLASSICS

‘I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov'

William Faulkner

‘A truly wonderful writer … marvellously readable – lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates'

Muriel Spark

‘Few writers have ever conveyed with such a sure touch the bleakness of human life'

A. N. Wilson

‘One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century … Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories'

Guardian

‘A novelist who entered his fictional world as if he were part of it'

Peter Ackroyd

‘The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature'

André Gide

‘Superb … The most addictive of writers … A unique teller of tales'

Observer

‘The mysteries of the human personality are revealed in all their disconcerting complexity'

Anita Brookner

‘A writer who, more than any other crime novelist, combined a high literary reputation with popular appeal'

P. D. James

‘A supreme writer … Unforgettable vividness'

Independent

‘Compelling, remorseless, brilliant'

John Gray

‘Extraordinary masterpieces of the twentieth century'

John Banville

When Detective Chief Inspector Maigret arrived in Delfzijl, one afternoon in May, he had only the sketchiest notions about the case taking him to this small town located in the northernmost corner of Holland.

A certain Jean Duclos, professor at the University of Nancy in eastern France, was on a lecture tour of the northern countries. At Delfzijl, he was the guest of a teacher at the Naval College, Conrad Popinga. But Popinga had been murdered, and while no one was formally charging the French professor, he was being requested not to leave the town and to remain answerable to the Dutch authorities.

And that was all, or almost. Jean Duclos had contacted the University of Nancy, which had asked Police Headquarters in Paris to send someone to Delfzijl to investigate.

The task had fallen to Maigret. It was more unofficial than official, and he had made it less official still by omitting to alert his Dutch colleagues on his arrival.

On the initiative of Jean Duclos, he had received a rather confused report, followed by a list of people more or less closely involved in the case.

This was the list which he consulted, shortly before arriving at Delfzijl station:

Conrad Popinga
(the victim), aged 42, former long-haul captain, latterly a lecturer at the Delfzijl Naval College. Married. No children. Had spoken English and German fluently and French quite well.

Liesbeth Popinga
, his wife, daughter of a high school headmaster in Amsterdam. A very cultured woman. Excellent knowledge of French.

Any Van Elst
, Liesbeth Popinga's younger sister, visiting Delfzijl for a few weeks. Recently completed her doctorate in law. Aged 25. Understands French a little but speaks it badly.

The Wienands family
: they live in the villa next door to the Popingas. Carl Wienands teaches mathematics at the Naval College. Wife and two children. No knowledge of French.

Beetje Liewens
, aged 18, daughter of a farmer specializing in breeding pedigree cattle for export. Has stayed twice in Paris. Speaks perfect French.

Not very eloquent. Names that suggested nothing, at least to Maigret as he arrived from Paris, after spending a night and a half the following day on the train.

Delfzijl disconcerted him as soon as he reached it. At first light, he had travelled through the traditional Holland of tulips, and then through Amsterdam, which he already knew. The Drenthe, a heath-covered wasteland crisscrossed with canals, its horizons, stretching thirty kilometres into the distance, had surprised him.

Here was a landscape that had little in common with picture-postcard Holland, and was a hundred times more Nordic in character than he had imagined.

Just a little town: ten to fifteen streets at most, paved with handsome red bricks, laid down as regularly as tiles on a kitchen floor. Low-rise houses, also built of brick, and copiously decorated with woodwork, in bright cheerful colours.

It looked like a toy town. All the more so since around this toy town ran a dyke, encircling it completely. Some of the stretches of water within the dyke could be closed off when the sea ran high, by means of heavy gates like those of a lock.

Beyond lay the mouth of the Ems. The North Sea. A long strip of silver water. Cargo vessels unloading under the cranes on a quayside. Canals and an infinity of sailing vessels the size of barges and just as heavy, but built to withstand ocean swells.

The sun was shining. The station master wore a smart orange cap, with which he unaffectedly greeted the unknown traveller.