The 13 Culprits (1932) by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 1885941781
Amazon: 188594179X
Barnesnoble: 188594179X
Goodreads: 140593
Publisher: Crippen & Landru Pub
Published: 1931-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

The Eighth Culprit:

PHILIPPE

POLICE INSPECTOR LUCAS of the P.J., who had been put in charge of the preliminary investigation, had notified the Judge. “You’ll tell me what effect this has on you… It’s hard to know… It’s not the same being in there.”

And Monsieur Froget was “in there,” that is to say in a strange lodging on the rue Bréa. Most of the tenants lived with their doors and windows open. Few of the window panes had been washed. The ones in 7 bis had no doubt never been washed.

Monsieur Froget had knocked, as there was no doorbell. Philippe, wearing a blue smock, just like the ones that had been described to the judge, had opened the door before fading away with a worrisome little laugh.

A Bedroom? A Dining room? A Kitchen? It was all of that, and it was something undefinable as well. Old carpets everywhere, pieces of discolored material, spread out along the walls. There were carpets still on the tables, sloppily drooping from armchairs. A profusion of somber tatters the aim of which was no doubt to give some semblance of comfort.

“Monsieur le juge, I presume?… Please sit down…”

After having observed him for a few seconds, Monsieur Froget noted that there were two aspects to him, because of the asymmetry of his face. If one looked at him at a profile, he was a young man who seemed sweet and tender; the contrast between his clear blue eyes and his dark hair gave him a certain charm that was too pronounced not to be annoying. But if one looked at him face to face, one noticed that his nose was quite long, twisted, and that his mouth had an abnormal curl to it.

He wore a woman’s smock. His mannerisms were all feminine — his way of doing household chores, how he wiped his hands, and the way that he bowed his head as he waited for his visitor to speak.

And so Monsieur Froget watched the single bed, the laundry which was drying, the portrait of two men in a golden frame, and he understood the importance of Lucas’s words. He should have known and expected all this. He felt that he was suddenly cast into a world that was fundamentally counterfeit.

“I do not believe you knew your mother, did you?”

“Nor my father. I am a natural child and my parents had the good sense to get rid of me. I was raised by peasants, near Turin, then sent to a juvenile detention center…”

“When you were twenty-one years old, you were hired as a valet. You had several positions. You came to France along with your next to last employers. When you were with the last ones, you met Forestier who was a maitre d’.”

“Yes, monsieur le juge. It was Monsieur Forestier who took care of me

Forestier’s portrait was was there. A man in his fifties, big, thin, with withered features, deathly pale skin, flabby legs and an uncertain gait caused by his rheumatism. His clothes and hair were gray.

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