Poor Chief Inspector Maigret! His day had started out so splendidly:
“From the moment he lit it, in the doorway of the apartment on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, Maigret savored his pipe with greater enjoyment than on other mornings. The first fog of the year was an unexpected treat, like the first snow to a child, especially as this was no noxious, yellowish winter fog but, rather, a milky haze interspersed with haloes of light. The air was crisp. He felt a tingling in his fingertips and the tip of his nose, and his footsteps rang out on the pavement.”
Sadly, that feeling of contentment was extinguished once he arrived at police headquarters and it left him in a bad mood that never left him throughout the next few days as he worked a particularly knotty case.
The spinster in the title was a little mouse of a woman named Cecile. She had taken to showing up at the precinct, expressly to speak with the Chief Inspector. She was her elderly aunt’s caretaker and had been convinced that during the night, someone had been coming into their apartment while they slept, moving items and pieces of furniture around. Nothing was ever taken, so Cecile had not mentioned anything to her cantankerous and distrustful aunt, yet she continued to visit the precinct, sometimes waiting hours for Maigret to be free. It was a big joke amongst the squad.
On that morning that had started out so promisingly, Cecile had installed herself in the waiting room once again. As Maigret was busy, he put off seeing her and before he could hear her out she was missing and her aunt had been found murdered in their apartment. It wasn’t long before Cecile herself was found dead in a broom closet.
So, it’s not surprising that Maigret was in an ill mood. What I so enjoyed about this installment was how we were able to get deeper into the mind of this illustrious sleuth. In many ways, he is very much a precursor to my other favorite French flic, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, he of the cloud-shoveling and wool gathering.
“….in this torpid bodily state, his mind was freed, as in dreams, to wander at will, sometimes in pursuit of will-o’-the-wisps, but occasionally along the paths which reason alone could never have discovered.”
