"That's it! I can feel it!" said Maigret, the words now coming faster, as if he were being rushed along by them. Face to face with the woman who had been his wife, Jean the carter, who had virtually forgotten Doctor Darchambeux, had begun to remember, and mists of the past rose to meet him. And a strange plan had started to take shape. Was it vengeance? Not really. More an obscure desire to bring down to his level the woman who had promised to be his for the rest of their lives.
-- Georges Simenon, The Carter of La Providence (1931, Penguin, translated by David Coward)
The Carter of La Providence was one of ten novels about Inspector Maigret that Simenon published in 1931, when Maigret first appeared. A carter is one in charge of the horses that pull a boat through the canals of France; La Providence is the name of a boat on a canal near the Marne in northwestern France. A murder takes place near the town of Dizy and Inspector Maigret of the Flying Squad is sent to investigate, as the violence increases. Maigret is obdurate, following ships on the canal by bicycle for many kilometers, usually in the rain, staying at working class cafes and sleeping in rooms with "a slightly nauseating smell." Maigret's attention to detailed is matched by Simenon's detailed descriptions of life on the boats and the lives of those who work on and near the locks. The killer turns out to be similar to some of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes characters, someone who was betrayed by a woman when he was incarcerated and moved from the upper classes to the lower, class usually playing a significant role in Simenon's novels.
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