Following advertisement at reference 1, a post to be avoided by readers who are thinking of reading this Maigret story for the first time. A spoiler.
A story which I have read several times over the years, although I do not seem to have written about it before, beyond the mention at reference 4. A story broken down into nine roughly equal chapters of around 15 pages each; a short novel rather than a short story.
The structure of the story
This structure having been put together after several readings of the story. The inner structure, rather than what you get as a reader. In which I hope I have not been too clever, in the way of the people who put together the fancy graphics in the online version of the FT: all very clever but not very comprehensible. From where I associate to paintings where the artist has gone to a lot of bother to include all kinds of tricky stuff, most of which is not noticed by the viewer, at least first time around.
So we have a small gang who commit a couple of murders, one of them one their own. The story starts with one murder, goes on to put the gang together, turning up the second murder on the way.
With the incident involving Madame Maigret with which the story starts, slowly getting woven in.
Steuvels, an art bookbinder with an impressive list of clients, is where murder 2 starts. The former clown who is Steuvels' brother, goes by various names, including Moss, turns out to be central to solving the mystery.
Part of which is the attractive and personable Gloria getting herself employed by the rich old countess. The mistress of the murderous Levine and mother of his son.
Some of the important features of the story.
Most of the important stuff is there from the very beginning, with the three bits of new material only appearing as the story comes to its climax and end.
The shoes, which go with the hat, seem to be a loose end. Evidence perhaps that Simenon wrote his stories from start to finish with little planning and virtually no revision. Unlike, for example, D H Lawrence, whom I believe had several goes at at least some of his novels. Tearing up a manuscript and starting over. Not for Simenon!
Background colour
The usual Maigret stuff. His pipes, his wife, his flat. His relations with the examining magistrates. His many visits to cafés for a little something. His occasional visits to bistros for a spot of choucroute.
His half a dozen or so principal colleagues. Present as names, but without much of their lives or characters being filled in. We do rather better with Madame Maigret.
Barges, rivers and canals crop up quite a bit. While a good number of other stories are built around same.
Some comments
Maigret appears on most pages. He is centre stage most of the time. And the story moves forward: we might learn about things which happened in the past, but in the form of spoken report in the present. None of the jumping around in time that I find so irritating in a lot of the television drama which we watch - although it may well be that large chunks of spoken report would not watch well either.
The pushy young lawyer and his unsavoury ex-police assistant, take up a good bit of space. An opportunity for Simenon to write about same and also to make the space needed for the story proper to unfold. Without the pushy young lawyer the whole business would have been wrapped up much more quickly. Plus Simenon seems to have a bit of a thing about short policemen who dress high and wear high heels. Often Corsicans.
One loose end is that we are left with Maigret knowing stuff which would finish the lawyer off, if reported to the proper authorities. Which I find a bit unsatisfactory.
Getting information from the taxi drivers of Paris was an important ingredient. One wonders whether this is true of the London of today.
Criminals have private lives too. They have hobbies, friends, family and children and may care about them in much the same way as the rest of us. Perhaps their problem is that they think they can have it both ways.
I thought it unlikely that the successful art bookbinder (Steuvels) would be sucked into passport forgery for his wayward brother (Moss). He didn't need the money and he did like the quiet life.
I thought it unlikely that the pushy young lawyer, having made away with the valise and the important evidence therein, would not have put it out of Maigret's reach. Perhaps just by dumping it in the Seine.
We are reminded that the public like a story about old school Maigret vs. flashy young lawyer to be in the papers. A few days entertainment is much more important than the truth of the matter or the hurt and damage that might be caused by such stories. And for that part of the public in the quartier concerned, there is always the possibility of drinks from newspaper reporters or pictures in the papers.
I wonder whether the refrain about the changing ways of police work, here and elsewhere, with the old fashioned ways of Maigret slowly being superseded by bright young things from universities, not necessarily for the better, being part of the attraction of these stories - for all those men of advancing years getting left behind, stranded, by change of one sort or another. Perhaps, in my own case, by the invasion of expensive management consultants with fancy suits, pushing me and my kind aside.
More positively, I came away with the thought that consistency and continuity between one story and the next did not matter that much. One liked the cast and context to stay the same, but more or less the same was good enough. It did not matter, for example, that things did not change much over time. It did not much matter that some of the details about an examining magistrate changed from one story to the next.
On the other hand, I did worry about Madame Maigret, who seemed to prepare lunch and dinner every day, on the off-chance that Maigret would turn up. While when he had an inquiry on the go, he would often fail to show without notice.
Conclusions
An entertaining exercise. One which would probably run in a book club?
In the course of which, I did get to look up more words that I did not know than I usually bother with. Sometimes with surprising results!
I should add, that my various complaints about loose ends above did not detract much from my enjoyment of the story. Complaints very much after the event.
PS 1: talking of words, I am reminded that I need to look up the origins of 'pillow' and 'cushion'.
PS 2: both old words, from at least the 14th century, both with more or less their present meanings. Both having plenty of derived words and phrases. The French for pillow is quite different, being about ears, but cushion is much the same.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-keeper-of-bottle.html.
Reference 2: L'Amie de Madame Maigret - Georges Simenon - 1949. To be found in Volume XV of the Rencontre collection.
Reference 3: https://www.trussel.com/maig/mommme.htm. A proper write-up of the story from a Maigret website. Not read at the time of first posting.
Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/on-titles-and-titling.html.
