FFB: The Hatter's Phantoms - Georges Simenon

It took me three tries before I found a Simenon novel that I could get lost in. I chose to avoid Maigret and was searching for something different.  In browsing through our library's vast selection of his books I picked up a copy of The Widow (made into the superb movie La Veuve Couderc with Simone Signoret and Alain Delon) which had a lengthy introduction by Paul Theroux that revealed he was quite well read in Simenon's oeuvre. There were so many titles mentioned with tantalizing plot tidbits tempting me to try any number of them. It was the first time I learned of the term roman durs which Simenon himself coined to describe his more serious books as opposed to those he considered his popular fiction. Among those novels are The Man Who Liked to Watch Trains Go By, Red Lights, Dirty Snow, and Monsieur Monde Disappears. Apparently The Venice Train is also considered one of these "hard novels." I read that book but I found it to be a straightforward crime novel along the lines of A Simple Plan about a man who comes into possession of a great deal of money which may or may not be connected to the murder of a woman. It had in common a few plot points and themes with another psychological crime novel that I found a lot more interesting -- The Hatter's Phantoms (orig. French ed. 1949, English transl. 1976).

Léon Labbé has a secret life that is uncovered by the slightest of glances. One night while in a cafe, his neighbor across the street, a timid tailor named Kachoudas, sees a tiny piece of newsprint stuck to the cuff of Labbe's pants. It is carefully trimmed to a perfect square and consists of two letters, n and t. Kachoudas is unaccountably rendered speechless and quietly points to it. Labbé picks it off his cuff thanking the tailor. Later that evening as part of his nightly routine Kachoudas follows Labbé out of the cafe down a dimly lit street and becomes an accidental eyewitness to a crime. Labbé appears out of the shadows and gives the following warning: "You'd be making a mistake, Kachoudas."

In the next scene we see Labbé at his home sitting at a table with a newspaper meticulously snipping letters, words and sometimes complete phrases and gluing them to a sheet of paper. This is one of the many anonymous letters describing in detail his most recent late night exploit. He is the man the newspapers have dubbed "the Strangler" and he has been murdering old women with a garrotte made from an old cello string attached to two blocks of wood. Labbé is sure that his neighbor has linked the piece of paper with those anonymous letters which have been the subject of a local journalist's columns on the murders.

What begins as a routine study of a murderer and his crimes gradually becomes a more absorbing study of a criminal who falls victim to his own morbid imagination. The story details how Labbé, the hatter of the title, has fashioned a world of order and routine that masks his true murderous self. In addition to the several old women he killed the reader learns that he has constructed an elaborate charade in which he makes it appear that his invalid wife is still alive though she too was one of his vicitms. Part of the hatter's nightly routine is watching Kachoudas in his squalid studio apartment. So poor is the tailor none of his windows have curtains making it easy for Labbé to spy on the Kachoudas family. Like the hats he crafts and tends to in his day job Labbé fabricates a relationship with the tailor in which the two become both friend and foe. The hatter imagines the tailor plotting to turn him in for the 20,000 franc reward while simultaneously dreaming of adding Kachoudas to his roster of victims. His toying with the tailor is often more insidious than the actual murders.

Michel Serrault as Labbé  in Claude Chabrol's 1982 film

Simenon gets a lot of mileage out the plot motif of the criminal who obsessively dwells on how others perceive and think about him. The daydreaming becomes tainted and poisoned until it is converted into mad imaginings run wild. In trying to maintain a facade of normalcy the Simenon protagonist will sacrifice his integrity, morality and often his sanity. The fascination lies in reading how reality can never live up to his plans and ideas, how his crushing guilt usually leads to a tragic end. This theme can be found in any number of his crime novels and was the most noticeable similarity in all three books I read, though in The White Horse Inn (my least favorite of the trio) its presence was more subtle.

Labbé has a lot in common with Justin Calmar of The Venice Train who is entrusted by a complete stranger to deliver a briefcase he discovers contains over 200,000 francs in various currencies. The two men are utterly trapped in their heads, spending every waking hour trying to outwit and outguess the behavior of everyone they encounter. They also expend an enormous amount of energy deceiving their friends and family in constructing complex dual lives. The hatter must make his shop assistant and maid believe his wife is alive while Calmar convinces his wife that he has become an avid and very lucky horse race fanatic. In the end their lies and scheming get the better of them. These are criminals who seem to be screaming out to be caught no matter how much they may appear to be acting the opposite. And when the tragic end comes, for the most part, it is their greatest relief.

This week as part of Friday's Forgotten Books we are paying tribute to the prolific Belgian writer Georges Simenon.  For more a full list of reviews and insights into his work (there's bound to be a few Maigret books in the bunch) go to Patti Abbot's blog here.

And for those interested in a fine example of atmospheric film making, beautifully shot, framed, and lit, you can watch the scene in which Labbé lures Kachoudas to the site of his future crime from Claude Chabrol's film Les Fantômes du Chapelier by clicking here.