Jules

I have been reading the Maigret story called 'La Première Enquête de Maigret', firmly set in 1913 and written in eight days in 1948, just a year before I was born.

A Maigret version of 'Endeavour', with Maigret on the first steps of the ladder to chief inspector, aka commissaire. But see the helpful reference 1, which claims superintendent is a better fit. A rather frustrated Maigret chafing at his lack of standing and his posting to a district rather than to the Quai des Orfèvres. Hating being treated as and being called un enfant de choeur - which taking the literal meaning, he had, as it happens, once been, back in his natal village. Still being called Jules, at least by some, which use of his first name, in later life, like Morse, he heartily disliked.

Unusual, with nearly all the stories I have read so far being set in a timeless middle age, in an unspecified time. A sort of golden age where criminals come and go but where Maigret, his crowd and milieu are always there, always the same. The exceptions being a couple of stories set after his retirement, and there, as here, some mileage is made out of his changed standing in his calling.

Much talk of moustaches, which must have been worn by most Frenchmen at the time. With Maigret possessing, if not always using, the net for sleeping and the irons for curling. Just like Poirot.

One important plot element is a Dion-Bouton car, for which see reference 2, from which we get: 'in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916, which opened the Irish War of Independence, The O'Rahilly [The 'the' is no mistake. This was the name he is or was known by] drove his De Dion Bouton up to the Irish HQ in O'Connell Street, and, discovering that the Rising he had planned and trained soldiers for and then tried to prevent, was actually going on, he drove it into a barricade, walked into the GPO and said: "I've helped to wind the clock, I've come to hear it strike." He was killed in a heroic charge against a machine gun nest in Moore Street days later. A famous photograph shows the skeleton of the car in its barricade'.

Another is a famous coffee company. It seems that in the Paris of the time such a company would have its fancy horses and carts, just like those our own brewers used to sport. There were also cards in the packets of coffee which you could collect and stick into books, just like the cigarette cards noticed at reference 3. And if you collected enough of them, you got a suite of walnut veneer bedroom furniture. Presumably some of the cards were very rare.

Some treatment of the way that aristos and rich people were apt to get special treatment from the police. Unlike the ritual humiliation which was, in France in those days, meted out to the rest of us when pulled in for some reason or other.

Some treatment of the various bars and restaurants along the Seine, mostly catering to trippers and holiday makers from Paris, bars and restaurants which seem to figure quite a lot in the Maigret stories, along with locks and barges. In this one we have the restaurant keeper catching goujons for lunch, to order. Which I completely & miserably failed to connect to our gudgeon. Also several mentions of a green tinge to the white wine, from where I associated to the vinho verde to be had in Vauxhall.

As always, some interesting new words and phrases. For example, caca d'oie for a yellowy-green colour. Douche écossaisee for a shower that blows hot and cold.

A Poirot style ending, with most of the cast gathered for a lecture by Maigret on what really happened.

But unlike Poirot, who is always saying that he uses psychology, with Maigret we actually get some, with Simenon trying to explore what it is that would make someone like Maigret successful - in part, on his account, his ability to get inside the skin of the people, mostly of the lower orders, with whom he has to deal. He understands them, what they might get up to and the way they live. Part of this being his liking for low bars and bistros where he can soak all this sort of thing up. Another part of this is expressed in the word 'flou', to which I may come back on another occasion.

All in all, not a bad story, unlike Endeavour on the box, which I did not take to at all. But I think I prefer the regular ones, set in the aforementioned golden age.

PS: at least one reference to wooden cobbles in the Paris of 1913. Something one still comes across in London from time to time, usually covered with half an inch or so of something tarry (as in black stuff).

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissaire_de_police.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Dion-Bouton.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/treasure-trove.html.