Maigret and Madame Maigret are a team. They respect and understand each other for their very different strengths and though they have never had children, their apartment on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir is a warm, comfortable home, filled with rich cooking smells. 

They met when Maigret first came to Paris and a friend took him to a party, where Louise, a shy and warm-hearted girl from Alsace, fell for the equally shy young man stuffing himself on petits fours and in due time they were married. 

Mme Maigret provides the calm balance to Maigret's hectic working life. Even after long interrogations into the small hours, he knows that there will always be a pot of coffee on the stove and a stew warming but Mme Maigret is more than a traditional French housewife. Her female insights are invaluable to Maigret and her wise answers to his apparently innocuous questions often help him with his cases: “Why would a woman take a long bus ride to market in one neighbourhood when she lives in another?” (Maigret’s Christmas) or “…at what point in a relationship would a woman walking with a man not her husband casually take his arm?” (Maigret Has Scruples).

In The Friend of Madame Maigret Mme Maigret gets involved in investigating a crime, after a young mother mysteriously abandons her child with her. It is Madame Maigret’s discoveries that ultimately lead Maigret to solve a murder case, as the local newspaper reports: "[Maigret] won't give up. Rather than admit defeat he is trying to gain time, playing to the gallery, calling Madame Maigret to the rescue..."

In The Madman of Bergerac ,when Maigret lies in bed with a gunshot wound, Madame Maigret takes over the investigation for him, acting as his eyes, ears and legs and when she disagrees with his methods, he clearly takes it personally: "Madame Maigret's face spoke volumes. She did whatever he asked but she had no faith in this investigation. He was conscious of the fact and it infuriated him. Scepticism in other people did not offend him, but in her it was intolerable."

Mme Maigret is, above all, Maigret's best friend and no matter how busy Maigret is solving crime, they rarely miss their Friday nights together, when they walk arm in arm to the neighbourhood cinema, to see Maigret's favourite comedies.