Signed, Picpus by Georges Simenon

This 23rd Detective Chief Inspector Maigret mystery by Georges Simenon is one of his best—quirky and labyrinthine, Simenon once again pulls it all together.

Half the population of Paris is on holiday to escape the August heat - the rest of the men are in shirt-sleeves and the women are almost naked under their light dresses.

An agitated man named Mascouvin rushes into the Police Judiciarie on a matter of life or death, the note he found in a bar predicting a murder: "Tomorrow, at 5 in the afternoon, I will kill the clairvoyant. Signed, Picpus"

Despite a police dragnet around every known medium, at 5 o'clock the body of a woman is found in her apartment at 67a Rue Coulaincourt. She called herself Madame Jeanne, a clairvoyant unknown to police. The second thrust of the knife was the one that killed her.

Unexpectedly, they find a feeble older man locked in her kitchen from the outside. He claims Madame shut him in there when another visitor knocked at her door. He knows nothing of a crime committed. Delivering him home, they find he is used to being shut in his room by his shrewish wife and daughter, who find him an embarrassing nuisance. The house is sparse with bare walls despite his receiving a yearly allowance of 200,000 francs.

The mystery deepens when a woman reports Madame Jeanne used to frequent her inn, upstream on the Seine. There, Maigret discovers a man who returns from boating all day with a catch, despite not fishing. His ties to Madame Jeanne and Mascouvin interest Maigret.

The characters are followed, as Maigret probes for a lead in the case—his deceptively simple conversations forming a picture, as he "finds another question to ask... just a small one, hardly a question at all... his heart misses a beat... Maigret was certain it would happen... and yet all he had to go on were hunches..."

Simenon's Maigret series always features sharply drawn, entertaining characters. Each mystery has a mood and no matter how disparate the clues, he satisfyingly pulls it all together. Great writing only adds to the pleasure of reading Simenon. Regarded as one of his best, this has been filmed in France in 1943 and for TV in 1968 and 2003.

"There are days which, though you don’t know why, sum up a season, a phase of your life, a whole gamut of sensations. That Saturday night (and) the Sunday that followed were for Maigret the quintessence of summers spent by the river, the ease of life and the simple, sweet pleasures.

The lanterns under the trees which did not have to be lit until the end of dinner; the leaves which turned a sumptuous dark green, the green of old tapestries; the whitish mist which rose off the moving surface of the Seine; the sound of laughter from the small restaurant tables and the dreamy voices of loving couples…

The Maigrets were in bed when someone had brought a gramophone out onto the hotel terrace, and for some considerable time they had heard the sounds of soft, easy music and the crunch of gravel under the feet of dancers.

That night everyone slept with the doors and windows open to the August Night…"

1943 / Tradeback / 176 pages