The Carter of La Providence by Georges Simenon

JetBlackDragonfly
May 1, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Apr 7

The Carter of Providence, featuring Inspector Maigret by Georges Simenon, is also known as The Crime At Lock 14.

It defies belief that this was first published in 1931, as it remains as fresh, exciting and engrossing today. This case is less dangerous, more meditative. There are few clues for the reader, leaving me in the dark until the very last pages - Maigret keeps his cards close to his chest.

Outside Epernay, there is a canal junction at Dizy where boats and barges tie up for the night. The Cafe de Marine is always packed, the smell of oilskins fills the room. Two barge workers awaking from sleep in a hay filled stable discover the body of a woman; cold and dead. Well dressed in a beige dress and white buckskin shoes; her short wavy hair, her string of real pearls, and her face contorted by the effects of strangulation. She must have been very pretty.

It is a rainy April, and Maigret feels something forbidding in the barren atmosphere. Perhaps it was an illusion but Maigret had the impression that the rain was coming down twice as hard and that the sky was the darkest and most threatening he'd ever seen.

She must have been alive when she entered, there is no mud. The police are baffled.

Maigret investigates the Southern Cross, an English yacht heading down to the Mediterranean. Living onboard with the owner Sir Walter Lampson (Colonel, Indian Army, retired), is Vladimir the captain, Willy the deck hand, and a Chilean woman Madame Negretti. The dead woman is Lampson's wife Mary, missing for several days.

The story deepens when we learn Mr. Lampson is lovers with Madame Negretti, and his wife Mary is lovers with Willy. With copious drinking aboard, they exist in realaxed surroundings.

A ship already passed down the canal is the Providence, a 'panama' boat without an engine. Horses are kept in a stable onboard, used with ropes on either side of the canal to pull the boat along the canal under the direction of the Carter. As Maigret alternates duties with his partner Lucas, and the everyday business of the lock-keepers continues traffic, another body is discovered in the canal - neck bruised in strangulation as well - turning up several physical clues in the flattened grass of the bank. As Maigret doggedly investigates, Simenon captures the essence of canal life, so different from the world we know.

This second book is rich in atmosphere. A short novel, it was impressive that so few words on a page could ilicit such tension. The solution to the mystery is one a reader could not figure out. The enjoyment this time is to watch Maigret at work, and in such an unusual setting.

Simenon spent six months in 1928 navigating the rivers and canals of France. Carter is one of several novels he wrote on his boat the Ostrogoth, on through Belgium, Holland, and Germany. Simenon and Maigret - notably this book - are highly recommended.

1931 / Tradeback / 151 pages