The Venice train

The Venice Train is a stand-alone novella by award-winning Belgian author, Georges Simenon, first published in 1965. This reissue, with a gorgeous art deco-style cover, is issued by Penguin Press UK some fifty-two years later. It is translated by Ros Schwartz.

When, due to work commitments, Parisian sales manager, Justin Calmer leaves his vacationing family in Venice to travel home, he finds himself sharing his train carriage for the first leg of his journey, as far as Lausanne, with a man he thinks might have come from Yugoslavia.

Normally quite reserved, he's surprised to be sharing details of his life with this stranger, and agreeing to do the man a favour. Mysteriously, he doesn't see the man again after the train emerges from the Simplon Tunnel.

With two hours to kill between trains, Justin leaves his luggage, collects a locked attaché case from a pay locker, catches a cab and tries to deliver the briefcase to a certain Arlette Staub in Lausanne. But at Rue du Bugnon, he's in for a shock: a woman lies, apparently dead, on the floor of the apartment. Calmar backs out, attaché case still in hand.

He doesn't summon the police, telling himself that what led up to this point is too bizarre to be believed. He heads back to the station where, likely too affected by the trauma of seeing the body, he doesn't do the obvious thing: put the case back into a locker. Instead, he carries home an attaché case filled with worry and anxiety and, as it later turns out, a lot of cash.

In between furtively and obsessively checking Swiss papers for news of the stranger and the dead woman, that case of cash has him re-evaluating his life so far. Having second-guessed and rationalised about his right to the cash, he ends up in a complicated routine for storing the case and finding creative ways to spend the money without alarming his wife or friends.

He's a lot less successful at staying under the radar of family, friends and colleagues than he thinks. The secret eating him up from inside, he wonders if he is happy.

Readers expecting a crime novel may be disappointed: the details of the mystery are never revealed, and the abrupt ending, quite fitting with what Simenon intends, may leave some dissatisfied. Simenon uses the encounter on the train, and its aftermath, to explore their psychological effect on his protagonist, who believes himself a man of integrity. A short read that ultimately packs quite a punch.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Penguin Press UK.