Maigret Mystified – Georges Simenon (1932, trans. Jean Stewart 1964) 139 pages

This is the first Maigret I’ve read, despite Simenon being such a prolific writer and despite my love of golden age detective fiction. I picked it up in a pleasingly battered old green Penguin edition and I enjoyed it greatly. I’m sure it won’t be the last time I accompany the insightful French detective in his ruminations 😊

This may well be the shortest post I ever write, given that it’s about a novella and a mystery, so I want to avoid spoilers!

Maigret is called to the scene of a murder in an office of a pharmaceutical company, Doctor Rivière’s Serums. Monsieur Couchet, the owner, has been shot dead. The mystifying element is that he was also robbed of 360,000 francs, but his chair was jammed against the safe. So did he face his murderous thief? Or did he not know of the theft? Did the same person carry out both crimes?

As the office is adjacent to a block of flats, Maigret must interview possible witnesses from the various homes in Place des Vosges.

Image from Wiki Commons

There is the concierge who called the police; Madame Martin who seems to torture her husbands with their failure to live up to her expectations (the first of whom was the murdered man, their son now self-medicates with ether and lives close by); Mathilde who eavesdrops on everyone; new parents the de Sant-Marcs…

There are also the lovers of the victim to contend with: his second wife and his girlfriend Nine, a cabaret dancer, the portrayal of whom is pleasingly non-judgemental.

I suspect this isn’t the greatest Maigret offering, but it is a quick, entertaining and atmospheric read. I also found it a welcome antidote to the overly convoluted plot lines of many contemporary detective dramas – much as I enjoy those, it was a nice change to just see Maigret get on with it, in no time at all.

“ ‘You old rascal, Couchet!’

The words had sprung to his lips as if Couchet had been an old friend. And he felt this impression so strongly that he could not realise he had only seen him dead.”

A previous English title used for this mystery was The Shadow in the Courtyard, which to me is a much better. After all, at 139 pages, Maigret isn’t mystified for long…

“It was ten o’clock at night. The iron gates of the garden were shut, the Place des Vosges deserted, with gleaming car tracks on the asphalt and the unbroken murmur of the fountains, the leafless trees and the monotonous outline of identical roofs silhouetted against the sky.”

To end, this year sees a cinematic outing for Maigret: