His office has windows onto the Seine, a row of pipes sit on the desk and a coal stove fills his office with a warm fug. Maigret is a man of simple needs and comforts.
Waiting for their summons from the ‘aquarium’ Maigret often finds individuals who come voluntarily to seek his protection. In Maigret Has Scruples for example, a distraught husband goes to Maigret because he fears that his wife is planning to poison him. Later his wife turns up and reports, with cool composure, that her husband is in fact the would-be poisoner and she the prospective victim. Needless to say, Maigret is never deceived by a sob story and in this case he finds the truth in the end.
Maigret has no time for high society and shows no favour to the privileged but he can be surprisingly gentle with the small people struggling for survival, often showing sympathy for murderers and victims alike. In Maigret’s Special Murder he sent flowers to the hospital room of a splendid, savage young woman and cruel murderess, simply because she had just given birth to a child.
When he is on a case Maigret will usually spend his time smoking, listening, watching - sometimes for days; sitting in bargemen's cafes, rundown nightclubs and workmens' bistros. What he drinks depends on the crime and it's setting: Pernod in Montmartre and cocktails in Montparnasse. If he begins a case with a drink, calvados or vin blanc and (rarely) whisky for example, he continues with that drink until the case is solved, as if the drink itself is an inseparable part of the all important ‘atmosphere’ of the case, so crucial to solving the crime.
His favourite drink though is beer and his favourite local is the Brasserie Dauphine which sits across the square from police headquarters, where the same table is always reserved for him and his squad.
Key Colleagues
His right-hand man, whom he still calls "son," is Inspector Lucas, a loyal small-scale Maigret; shorter and half as broad, who smokes a pipe like the chief's, although it is much too large for his frame. Another devoted aide Maigret still calls ‘mon petit’ is Janvier although he is by now nearing middle age: the affectionate term dates from his early days as Maigret's young protégé, when Maigret mocked him gently for inconspicuously watching a suspect by sitting behind an open newspaper of which he never turned a page.
Approach to the Investigation
Maigret tells his aides never to make ‘deductions’; he insists that he 'never thinks' about a case (Maigret's Pipe). Instead he imagines, he watches, waits, listens, visits and revisits the scene, walking the district and holding apparently purposeless conversations with people on the periphery of the crime.
Although at the start of a case Maigret conscientiously sets in motion the complete police routine, his sole link with criminological science is a young, weedy, short sighted laboratory technician named Moers, who understands Maigret's concern with character and psychology as the true clues to a crime, and can penetrate the physical findings to uncover these sort of clues.
As he comes close to understanding the case, he begins to think, feel, even act like the murderer; he becomes sulky and preoccupied and often does not answer when spoken to. At such times his men tiptoe around him, knowing a solution is within his grasp.
His patience in waiting for this moment is legendary and his record is dotted with endurance records. In Maigret in New York a 26-hour vigil is mentioned. In Pietr-le Letton he kept watch beside a garden gate for two nights and three days in the rain, waiting for a man to come out of a house. He had neither food nor drink but to him the worst part of the ordeal was that he ran out of matches for his pipe!
In The Yellow Dog he crouched on the roof of a small seaside hotel in the teeth of an icy gale from noon to midnight, watching through the window of a deserted house for two lovers to meet. He held his revolver ready in case the man's anger might drive him to do violence to the girl, and he ended his watch with a satisfied sigh when at last the two fell into each other's arms.
The Early Years >
Maigret's Paris >
At Work >
Outside Paris >
Madame Maigret >
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