Maigret se retrouve avec un meurtre dans une famille guère collaborative. Propriétaire d’une ancienne biscuiterie florissante dont il ne reste plus que des miettes et des dettes dans une grande maison peu causeuse.

Alors, cambriolage ou meurtre de l’intérieur ?

Un commissaire qui rêve déjà de retraite, encombré d’un jeune juge d’instruction envahissant pour une enquête à la Maigret. Il cause, flâne, flaire, renifle, se questionne et interroge ( )

Maigret is feeling old - he has only 2 years until his retirement and even though initially he was very enthusiastic about the future, these days he would rather stay and work longer. The novel gets its main feeling from that mood - it is melancholic and steeped into the past. The murder victim adds to that mood - the oldest brother in once affluent family, with a family trying to keep their business and their good name afloat with any means necessary. These days all they have is the business, which makes no money and requires additional funds to be added monthly, a house which is about to fall down around them and their name - which appears to be their only read currency.

When a family member dies, you would expect that the family will do all they can to assist the investigation. And yet, the Lachaumes refuse to answer any question they do not deem strictly necessary and even call a lawyer to assist them. The surviving brother, the elderly parents, the sister-in-law and even the very old maid - they all seem to be hiding something. And then there is the son of the murdered man - a 12 years old boy which get spirited away to school and turned into a boarder there thus making it very hard for the police to even see him, let alone talk to him.

To add to the frustrations of the case the old examining magistrate Judge Coméliau had retired and Maigret's is stuck with a new one, Angelot, who wants to do things his own way and throws our detective out of his game. The new way is supposedly by the book and yet, Angelot somehow decides not to disclose a personal connection in the case. Simenon never comments on it, neither does Maigret - but it is left there for the reader to ponder at and evaluate the "new" and "old" ways.

As usual, to figure out the murder, Maigret needs to figure out everyone's history and with noone willing to talk, he has to rely on other means and other people's ideas about the family. The story that starts to emerge is tragic and shows not only the moral corruption of the once powerful family but also the ability of people to ignore what they are seeing for the sake of proprietary and the past. By the end, when we finally learn who the killer is and why Léonard dies, one wonders who they should reserve the sympathy for - the dead man or the killer. Mine went to the latter.

It is a slow and calm novel, dealing with the past as much as it deals with the present and Maigret's issues with the new magistrate and with the impeding retirement (both indicating change - the thing he really is afraid of - in case one does not pick on that earlier, his reminiscence about his old heater which was taken away from him should really make you realize it) take as much of a central role as the murder mystery. It is probably not a good novel to start with if you never read the series before but it is a decent entry in the series. ( )

** spoiler alert ** Simenon fa fare alla vita del suo personaggio uno dei non inconsueti balzi improvvisi: Maigret è a due anni dal salutare tutti, Lapointe non è più “giovane”, Coméliau è in pensione e al suo posto bisogna gestire un rampante giudice fresco di università.
Classicissima invece l’ambientazione: una casa un tempo alto-borghese e ora decaduta con gli ultimi rappresentanti della famiglia che cercano di farla sopravvivere succhiando il sangue di chi si avvicina (ovvero le eredità delle nuore).
Il commissario si sente superato dai tempi – finisce persino per sognarsi il nuovo magistrato – e alla fine viene quasi espropriato del risultato, però è il suo non-metodo che risulta vincente: non importa se bisogna sporcarsi le mani (controvoglia, come nella vicenda di Veronique), l’esperienza maturata sul campo finisce per avere il suo peso.
E se i tempi stanno cambiando, di lì a poco ci sono sempre le giornate a pesca da pensionato. ( )

Frankrig, Paris, ca 1959
Maigret har to år tilbage inden pensionen. Det er november og han føler sig gammel, fordi konen har givet ham et tykt halstørklæde på. En ny og ambitiøs politiadvokat Angelot plager ham.
En mand Léonard Lachaume fra en tidligere velhavende familie, hvis rigdom skyldtes kiks og som betegnende nok er ret kiksede, er blevet dræbt. Men hvorfor og af hvem? Ingen i familien har hørt eller set noget, siger de stædigt. Der var seks hjemme foruden den dræbte: hans kone, hans dreng, hans bror Armand og dennes kone Paulette og en tjenestepige Catherine. Der er også en bogholder, Justin Brême. Og den gamle Felix Lachaume.
Huset, de bor i, er gammelt og brøstfældigt. Maigret får efterhånden fundet ud af at kiksefabrikken i årevis kun har givet underskud. Léonard giftede sig med en Marcelle Donat, som fik en god medgift med fra sin far. Hun døde men medgiften var allerede da brugt op. Så giftede Armand sig med Paulette Zuber, som var god for flere hundrede millioner francs som hun havde fået og arvet fra sin far, Frédéric Zuberski.
Der er tegn på at nogen har forsøgt at få det til at se ud som om der er forsøgt indbrud, men det er amatøragtigt gjort. Familien gemmer sig bagved deres sagfører, Radel.
Undervejs snakker Maigret også med Armands søster, Véronique Lachaume på 34. Hun er glad og i godt humør og har en 44-årig elsker Arthur Baquet, som er reklamemand og der kalder sig Jacques Sainval. Desværre afslører Maigrets efterforskning at Arthur spiller på to heste og også har noget gående med Paulette. Paulette havde skilsmissepapirerne klar til at sende til Armand.
Maigret får dog efterhånden løst knuderne op og finder ud af at Paulette har slået Léonard ihjel i selvforsvar. Familien havde bestemt sig for at slå hende ihjel, så Armand kunne arve pengene og redde fabrikken (nogle år endnu). Så Léonard kom ind på Paulettes værelse med en stor skruenøgle klar til slag, da hun skød ham med en pistol, som Jacques havde givet hende. Kort efter at Paulette har tilstået, skyder hendes mand Armand sig og dør.

Udmærket tidsbillede af en familie, der er gået helt i stå i et forsøg på at holde en fabrik gående. Og temaet med en rig person, der bliver slået ihjel eller truet af nogle, han har givet penge, når han på et tidspunkt holder pungen knappet i, har Simenon brugt gentagne gange. Jeg ved ikke om moralen er at man aldrig skal give penge til andre, eller om det bare er snyltere, man skal undgå? Nogle gange er sympatien også på den anden side, hvor man næsten synes at det er ok at gå en gnier ihjel i stedet for at sulte ihjel i stilhed ved siden af hans pengeposer. ( )

This short novel, first published in 1959, opens with Chief Inspector Maigret feeling his age, and looking forward to hid retirement in a couple of years time. The weather is what the Scots would call "dreich" - a marvellously onomatopoeic word to which the French "il fait mauvais" would not come close to doing justice - and he is feeling rather out of sorts.

He is not the only one - I get them impression that Georgres Simenon himself was out of sorts in no small way when he wrote this. It is a petulant novel that seems to have been dashed off in a hurry - I wonder whether he found himself under a contractual obligation to deliver another novel within a certain period, and just rattled this one off without a second thought.

The crime in question is the murder of the managing director of a long﷓established family firm making biscuits that have now faded from favour. The murder occurs in his own home, in close proximity to the rest of his family, but no-one seems to have seen or heard anything, and the family close ranks ion a way suggesting some shared and ominous secret. Maigret finds himself unhappy to be dealing with new colleagues in the Prosecutor's Department, and spends most of the story sulking.

I had generally enjoyed working through the Maigret oeuvre, but if this is typical of the later works I may well just draw a veil over the venture and divert my attentions elsewhere. ( )