Internet failure

Simenon uses lots of slang in his stories, slang which I assume was current in the middle third of the last century, and a lot of which is rather good.

However, in 'Maigret à l'École' we have 'interrogatoire à la chansonnette'. Not the first time I have come across the phrase, but the first time I bothered to check.

My various print dictionaries do not help, beyond telling me that chansonnette was the diminutive of song, usually meaning a sort of light-hearted song.

The various online dictionaries I tried did not help at all.

Until google or bing - I forget which - directed me to reference 1, a wonderful trove of old words, sayings and pictures, a lot of them from the period in question, a time when there was plenty of rather dodgy paperback fiction about, some of it even surviving until my own youth in the late 1960's. And at least the phrase in question was present, although not as a head word.

I learn about 'La maison poulaga', a slang term for Maigret's HQ on the Quai des Orfèvres, derived from the poultry market which used to occupy the site, getting on for a hundred and fifty years ago now.

And then the sort of interrogation that I am looking for is contrasted with 'l’interrogatoire au bottin', with bottin seemingly being the many volumes of the Paris telephone directory, an object with many interesting uses and an important prop in police flics of the time.

I don't get to find out was this is or was, but I eventually decide that the chansonnette variety is when the detective has the suspect into his office for beer and sandwiches (the baguette sort they sell in Paris, not the machine bread sort that we sell) for a long, friendly chat, preferably at lunch-time or at night when all is quiet. With this sharing of bread - with this becoming companions - being a important ingredient in getting the atmosphere right for a confession. Then Maigret takes his time, smokes lots of pipes, looks out of the window at the Seine below. The chat goes round and round, the suspect eventually gets into a muddle with all his lies and sort of drifts into a confession. No rough stuff - although Maigret does occasionally bash people who annoy him. And his colleagues quite often seem to go in for the quaintly named 'passages à tabac', which appears to mean roughing up and has nothing to do with tobacco.

Maybe there is someone out there who can put me right.

PS: we reviewed the Belgrade/Gambon version of 'Maigret à l'École' yesterday evening. Good enough in its way and Gambon does a good job on Maigret, but it seemed curiously thin compared with the story that I had just read. Liked it much better first time around.

Reference 1: http://www.mots-surannes.fr/.

Reference 2: http://www.mots-surannes.fr/?p=3208.