Maigret et son Mort

Now on the second read of this Maigret story, which has come up with a good crop of interesting words and factlets. I offer a sample.

The Sûreté seems to be a national police force, working directly to the Ministry of Justice and responsible for policing in big towns. Maigret works for the PJ (Police Judiciaire) which investigates crimes under the authority of an examining magistrate. With Maigret being large & pleb and not getting on too well with his usual magistrate who is thin & posh. Plays bridge and that sort of thing, while Maigret likes low bars. There seems to be some professional rivalry between these two outfits, perhaps like that between local forces and Scotland Yard which crops up in Agatha from time to time. With the final confusion being the Parquet, described by wikipedia as a prosecuting agency, but which appears in Maigret for crime scene investigations, investigations which seem to take place in parallel with his own.

If you work in crime, you are in the milieu. While here, rather than in the middle world (or perhaps the phrase should be middle earth), you are in the under world.

If you are waiting until the cows come home, you are waiting underneath the elm tree, that is to say underneath the orme.

If you work in the licensed victualling trade, you are in la limonade.

People in la limonade are apt to wear white shirts for work, to have duck feet and to be fond of horse racing. I can certainly vouch for the first and last of these. They are also apt to drink suze, which gives the appearance of joining in while actually containing very little alcohol. Never before heard of, but still available at reference 2. Where very little alcohol seems to mean 15%, so perhaps Simenon assumes that one waters the stuff down with lemonade, as befits the name of the trade.

Some people eat their cod in the form of a brandade. A recipe from Provence involving cream, oil and garlic as well as cod.

While others eat their veal with a white sauce flavoured with sorrel, aka fricandeau a l'oseille. Harrap, as is its wont, tells me that a fricandeau is a fricandeau, while OED, rather more helpfully, explains that it is a French word used to describe various kinds of stew.

Dorothy Hartley explains in her famous food book that sorrel was a big vegetable in Tudor times, that it was often used where a lemon might be used now, that it was a valuable anti-scorbutic and that fricandeau a l'oseille was a traditional French usage in the Nottingham area. Perhaps the French in question were workers who were there for the silk and lace trades - although the best that google can offer is that the lace workers moved from Nottingham to France, where they invented a sort of popular dog, rather than from France to Nottingham. Hartley goes on to offer several sorrel recipes. Just two in 'La Cuisine Familiale'. See reference 4.

Lastly we have un couteau à cran d'arrêt, in the context probably a flick knife. But probably also pen-knives in general, certainly my penknife from Laguiole - which held its edge better than any knife I have known before or since. Caused concern when I tried to board the Eurostar with it and taken into temporary custody when I visited Sainte-Chapelle. Bought in Pall Mall, but see reference 3. While the cran bit is one of those odd words, literally notch or groove, directly from the Latin crena (oddly absent from my micro-Lewis), but used in all kinds of other ways which you would not have thought of. Possibly approximating scabbard here.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/maigret-et-son-mort.html.

Reference 2: https://www.suze.com/.

Reference 3: http://www.laguiole.com.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/truffes.html.