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    A Maigret Christmas: And Other Stories
    A Maigret Christmas: And Other Stories
    A Maigret Christmas: And Other Stories
    Ebook229 pages6 hours

    A Maigret Christmas: And Other Stories

    By Georges Simenon and David Coward

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    “One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories.” —The Guardian

    In this delightful holiday-themed collection of nine short stories, Inspector Maigret must solve a series of little mysteries—just in time for Christmas morning

    Christmas mysteries abound in this light-hearted holiday collection of Jules Maigret’s exploits: In one, an otherwise sensible little girl insists that she has seen Father Christmas, a statement alarming to her neighbors, Monsieur and Madame Maigret. Then, a choirboy helps the inspector solve a crime while he lies in bed with a cold; another boy, pursued by a criminal, ingeniously leaves a trail to help Maigret track him. Many of these stories feature observant and resourceful children, frightened yet resolute, who bring out a paternal streak in the childless Maigret.

    The rapport between the inspector and these youthful heroes imparts a delightful freshness to this holiday collection. A Maigret Christmas is a cornucopia for fans of Maigret and mysteries alike.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Books
    Release dateOct 30, 2018
    ISBN9781524705459
    A Maigret Christmas: And Other Stories
    Author

    Georges Simenon

    Georges Simenon (Lieja, Bélgica, 1903 – Lausana, Suiza, 1989) escribió ciento noventa y una novelas con su nombre, y un número impreciso de novelas y relatos publicados con pseudónimo, además de libros de memorias y textos dictados. El comisario Maigret es el protagonista de setenta y dos de estas novelas y treinta y un relatos, todos ellos publicados entre 1931 y 1972. Célebre en el mundo entero, reconocido ya como un maestro, hoy nadie duda de que sea uno de los mayores escritores del siglo xx.

    Read more from Georges Simenon

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    Reviews for A Maigret Christmas

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    • 4/5
      This volume brings together three Simenon stories with a Christmas theme, in a new translation by David Coward. The title of the collection might be slightly misleading – of the three tales, only the first features Simenon’s famous creation. On Christmas Day, Maigret is visited at his apartment by two neighbours with a mystery on their hands – a little girl claims to have seen Father Christmas in her room. Given that Santa has also deemed it fit to pull up a couple of floorboards, it seems unlikely that the night visitor is the real McCoy. Maigret solves the enigma without moving much from his home, thanks to nifty brainwork, judicious phone calls and a little help from his friends and colleagues.

      The protagonist of the second story – Seven Crosses in a Notebook – is a humble policeman who has spent his career away from the limelight, manning a police station’s switchboard and keeping a list of the crimes carried out in the French capital. One Christmas, he finds himself thrust into the midst of an investigation, one which concerns his closest family. A boy is chasing a murderer across the streets of Paris – or perhaps it’s the other way round – and by the time the Police find them, someone might be dead. This story is actually better than the Maigret title piece – it is, in effect, a finely-crafted and well-paced mini-thriller. It also has almost Dickensian undertones as it brings us face-to-face with the “other” Christmas: that of the lonely and the downtrodden, that of the workers who need to spend Christmas night awake and away from their families, that of the poor who can barely afford to buy presents for their children.

      This “social” subtext is also an important element in 'The Little Restaurant in Les Ternes (A Christmas Story for Grown-Ups)'. On Christmas night, two women witness a suicide in a little bar. One is Long Tall Jeanne, a prostitute and cynical woman of the world. The other is Martine, a young girl who happens to come from a town close to Jeanne’s birthplace and who is alone in Paris for reasons we do not learn. The women, shaken by the evening’s events, go out into the night. Jeanne, almost on an impulse, follows Martine, determined to save her from the clutches of dubious men who might take advantage of her. Nothing much happens in this story, but it’s an interesting psychological study. We are never sure what fuels Jeanne’s actions – is it a sense of sisterly affection, is it nostalgia for an innocence which she has lost, or a sense of jealousy towards a girl who is younger, fresher, more attractive?

      I greatly enjoyed this anthology even though I read it two months after Christmas. Part of the pleasure is derived from the atmosphere of a retro Paris, where people still write letters, and even telephones are a luxury. A word of warning though – some of the attitudes portrayed are out of date as well. For instance, in the age of #MeToo, the image of Maigret lounging about in a dressing gown whilst his wife frets about serving him Christmas breakfast in bed, might raise a few eyebrows. But this is part of the package – a package which is, on the whole, très jolie
    • 3/5
      The first story was great, the other two a bit disappointing, but still well done.
    • 4/5
      A Netgalley ARC.

      Three short stories set in Paris at Christmas, but with lots of crime amidst the snow and festive cheer.

      From the central switchboard in Paris, Christmas Eve:
      "But there had been no emergencies. The small crosses in Lecœur’s log were eloquent. He did not bother to count them. He knew that there were almost two hundred in the drunks’column. Because on that night, obviously, some latitude was allowed. Uniformed officers tried to persuade revellers to go home without making trouble. They intervened only when drunks turned nasty and started smashing wine glasses or threatening law-abiding drinkers. In various police stations, 200 men – and a handful of women – slept heavily on bare boards, behind bars.
    • 4/5
      Full disclosure: I was given an ARC of this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

      (Yes I like the title too.)

      Georges Simenon's pipe-smoking sleuth gets a cosey little mystery for Christmas - one he can solve almost without leaving the comfort of his own apartment.

      For it is a time for friends and family, and this being Simenon there's a level of class and character that's above the norm for detective fiction. As well as a nice little mystery, we also get a sketch portrait of the home life of M and Mme Maigret; their obvious deep affection for each other, but also the largely unspoken sadness.

      I rarely find Simenon's writing as compulsive in the moment ofreading as I might, say, Arthur Conan Doyle's or even Victor L Whitechurch's, but his imagery and his characters return to me far more often afterwards. It's a deeply problematic way of phrasing it and deeply unfair to so many other genre writers, but it's hard to escape the feeling that Simenon is a 'proper' writer. Your intellect gets something back from reading him.

      A rich and sophisticated Christmas liqeur.

    Book preview

    A Maigret Christmas - Georges Simenon

    Penguin Walking Logo

    A MAIGRET CHRISTMAS

    1.

    It was always the same, every time. As he settled down in bed, he had sighed, as usual:

    ‘Tomorrow, I shall sleep in.’

    And Madame Maigret had taken him at his word, as though the years had taught her nothing, as if she had not learned to attach no importance whatsoever to sentiments uttered in this way. She could have slept in too. There was no reason why she should get up early.

    But it was not yet first light when he heard her carefully stirring between the sheets. He had not budged. He had forced himself to breathe regularly and deeply, like a man fast asleep. It was almost a game. He was touched when he felt her working her way to the edge of the bed as cautiously as an animal, and stopping after each movement to check that he had not woken up. There came the moment he always waited for, in a state almost of suspense, when the bedsprings, relieved of his wife’s weight, would relax with a sound like a sigh.

    She gathered her clothes from the chair, took for ever turning the knob of the bathroom door and eventually, far away in the kitchen, allowed herself to move about normally.

    He had gone back to sleep. Not deeply and not for very long, though long enough to have a confused, rather maudlin dream. Later, he would remember nothing about it but he knew it had been sad and it had left him in a state of heightened sensitivity.

    A long stripe of pale light was visible between the curtains, which never closed fully. He lay there a little longer, on his back, with his eyes open. The aroma of coffee came to him, and when he heard the front door of the apartment open and close, he knew that Madame Maigret had rushed down the stairs and gone out to buy him warm croissants.

    He never ate anything in the morning, making do with black coffee. But this was another ritual, one of his wife’s ideas. On Sundays and public holidays, he was supposed to stay in bed until late morning, and she would pop out and get croissants for him from the shop on the corner of Rue Amelot.

    He got out of bed, slid his feet into his slippers, put on his dressing gown and opened the curtains. He knew he was in the wrong and that she’d be upset. He would have done anything to keep her happy, but not stay in bed when he didn’t feel like it.

    It wasn’t snowing. It was ridiculous for a man of more than fifty to go on being disappointed that there was no snow on Christmas morning, but middle-aged people are not always as dull and withered as the younger generation often think.

    The sky, heavy and low and dirty white, seemed to weigh down on the roofs. Boulevard Richard-Lenoir was completely deserted and, directly opposite, above the wide main gate, the words ‘Entrepôts Legal, Fils et Cie’ were as black as boot polish. For some reason, the ‘E’ had a forlorn look about it.

    He heard his wife moving about again in the kitchen, tiptoeing around the dining room, treading quietly without suspecting that he was up and standing looking out of the window. Glancing at his watch on the bedside table, he saw that it was ten minutes past eight.

    The previous evening they had been to the theatre. Afterwards, they would have liked to have had something to eat in a restaurant, like everyone else, but everywhere all the tables had been booked up for the Christmas Eve festivities, and they had walked home instead, arm in arm. The result was that it was a little before midnight when they had got back, and they hadn’t had long to wait before exchanging presents.

    A pipe for him, as usual. For her, the latest model of a brand of electric coffee-maker which she had wanted plus, to remain true to tradition, a dozen finely embroidered handkerchiefs.

    Automatically, he filled a fresh pipe. In some apartment blocks, on the other side of the boulevard, there were windows that had Venetian shutters and others that didn’t. Not many people were up and about. Only here and there was a light burning, probably because there were children there who had woken up early so they could investigate the presents under the tree.

    They would both spend a quiet morning cocooned in their apartment. Maigret would lounge around in his dressing gown until it was very late, without shaving, and go into the kitchen to chat with his wife as she was putting the lunch on the stove.

    He didn’t feel depressed exactly. It was just that his dream – which he still could not remember – had left him with raw nerves. And anyway maybe it wasn’t the dream but Christmas itself. He was going to have to tread carefully all day, weigh his words, just as Madame Maigret had calibrated her movements as she got out of bed, for she too would be a little more prickly than usual … But enough of that! Don’t even think about it! Don’t say a word that might bring up that subject. And later on, don’t look out on to the street too often when the kids came out of doors and started showing off their toys.

    There were children in most of the apartments, if not all. There would be the sound of tinny trumpets, drums, cap-guns … Little girls would already be playing with their dolls.

    Once, a few years back, he had said, without really thinking:

    ‘Why don’t we make the most of Christmas and get away somewhere for a few days?’

    ‘Get away where?’ she had answered with unanswerable good sense.

    Go and see who? They did not even have any family to visit, apart from her sister, who lived too far away. Go and stay in a hotel in some strange town or at an inn in the middle of nowhere?

    Leave it! It was time to have his coffee and afterwards he would feel more himself. He was never fully at ease before that first of cup of coffee and his first pipe.

    He was just reaching for the door handle when it opened soundlessly, and Madame Maigret appeared, holding a tray in her hand. She looked at the empty bed and then at him, disappointed, and on the verge of tears.

    ‘You’re up!’

    With her hair done, she looked as fresh as a rose in her light-coloured apron.

    ‘And there was me looking forward to bringing you breakfast in bed!’

    He had many times tried, delicately, to make her understand that it wasn’t a pleasure for him, that it made him feel uneasy, that it made him feel as if he were ill or helpless, but breakfast in bed continued for her to be the ideal treat for Sundays and public holidays.

    ‘Sure you won’t get back into bed?’

    No! He couldn’t face it.

    ‘All right then … Happy Christmas!’

    ‘Happy Christmas! … Are you cross with me?’

    They were now in the dining room, with the silver tray on a corner of the table, steam rising from the cup of coffee and golden croissants in a napkin.

    Putting his pipe down, he ate a croissant, just to humour her, but he remained standing as he looked out of the window:

    ‘A dusting of snow.’

    It wasn’t really snow. A kind of fine white powder was falling and it reminded him that when he was little he used to stick his tongue out to catch the flakes.

    His eye settled on the door of the building opposite, to the left of the warehouses. Two hatless women had just emerged from it. One, fair-haired and about thirty years of age, had thrown a coat over her shoulders, without putting her arms through the sleeves, while the other, who was older, was holding a shawl tightly round her.

    The fair-haired one seemed to be hesitating, as if she was ready to turn and go back. The dark one, very small and thin, stood her ground, and Maigret had the feeling that she was pointing to his windows. Behind them, the concierge appeared in the doorway and seemed to be backing up the thin woman, and the blonde made up her mind to cross the road, not turning round, as if she was worried about something.

    ‘What are you looking at?’

    ‘Nothing … A couple of women …’

    ‘What are they doing?’

    ‘They look as if they’re intending to come up here.’

    Because both of them, now halfway across the boulevard, were looking up and were definitely staring in his direction.

    ‘I hope they’re not going to pester you on Christmas Day. I haven’t even finished tidying the place up yet.’

    Actually, no one would have noticed because, apart from the tray, nothing had been left lying around, and there was no dust dulling the sheen of the polished furniture.

    ‘Are you sure they’re coming here?’

    ‘We’ll soon find out.’

    Just in case, he decided to run a comb through his hair, brush his teeth and splash a little water over his face. He was still in the bedroom, where he was relighting his pipe, when he heard a ring at the door. Madame Maigret must have shown her tough, protective side because a fair time went by before she came to find him.

    ‘They insist on speaking to you,’ she whispered. ‘They said it could be important and need to ask your advice. I know one of them.’

    ‘Which one?’

    ‘The small, thin one, Mademoiselle Doncœur. She lives across the road, on the same floor as us. She sits working at her window all day. She’s a very decent sort. She does delicate embroidery for a shop in Faubourg Saint-Honoré. I’ve sometimes wondered if she’s not in love with you.’

    ‘Why?’

    ‘Because when you go out, she often stands up to get a better look at you.’

    ‘How old is she?’

    ‘Between forty-five and fifty. Aren’t you going to put your suit on?’

    Why should he not be entitled to wear a dressing gown when people came bothering him at home at half past eight on Christmas morning? Even so, he put on a pair of trousers under it then opened the door to the dining room, where both women stood waiting.

    ‘I’m so sorry, ladies …’

    Perhaps Madame Maigret had been right after all, because Mademoiselle Doncœur did not blush but turned pale, smiled, cancelled the smile but then turned it on again, opened her mouth but did not find anything to say.

    On the other hand, the blonde was perfectly self-composed and, not without a hint of irritation, said:

    ‘It wasn’t me that wanted to come.’

    ‘Perhaps you’d like to take a seat …’

    He noticed that under her coat the blonde wasn’t dressed for company and wore no stockings, whereas Mademoiselle Doncœur was got up as if she were going to church.

    ‘Maybe you are wondering how we had the nerve to come to see you,’ the latter began, her words not coming easily. ‘Like everyone hereabouts we know obviously who we are privileged to have as a neighbour …’

    This time, her cheeks flushed a faint red. Then she looked at the tray.

    ‘But we’re stopping you finishing your breakfast.’

    ‘I already finished. I’m all ears.’

    ‘Something happened in our building this morning, or rather last night, something so disturbing that I immediately thought it was our duty to speak to you about it. Madame Martin didn’t want to worry you. I said to her …’

    ‘Do you live across the road too, Madame Martin?’

    ‘I do, inspector.’

    She was not happy, that much was patently obvious, at being pushed into coming here. But Mademoiselle Doncœur resumed where she had left off.

    ‘We both live on the same floor, exactly opposite your windows (again she blushed, as if her statement was some sort of confession). Monsieur Martin is often away on business, which is understandable, since he is a commercial traveller. Their little girl has been in bed these last two months following a silly accident.’

    Maigret turned to the woman with fair hair.

    ‘You have a daughter, Madame Martin?’

    ‘She’s not actually our daughter, she’s our niece. Her mother died just over two years ago, and ever since then the girl has lived with us. She broke her leg falling downstairs. She should have got over it six weeks ago if there hadn’t been complications.’

    ‘Is your husband out of town at the moment?’

    ‘He should be down in the Dordogne.’

    ‘I’m all ears, Mademoiselle Doncœur.’

    Madame Maigret had gone round by way of the bathroom to get back to her kitchen, where she could be heard rattling saucepans. From time to time, Maigret glanced out at the pale sky.

    ‘This morning, I was up first thing, as usual, to go to first mass.’

    ‘And did you go?’

    ‘Oh yes! I got back about seven thirty, because I heard three masses. I got my breakfast ready. You might have seen the light in my window.’

    He waved a hand to indicate that he hadn’t been paying much attention.

    ‘I couldn’t wait to take a few sweeties and suchlike round for Colette. It’s not a very happy Christmas for her. Colette is Madame Martin’s niece.’

    ‘How old is she?’

    ‘Seven. That’s right, isn’t it, Madame Martin?’

    ‘Seven in January.’

    ‘At eight o’clock, I knocked on the door of the apartment.’

    ‘I wasn’t up,’ said the blonde. ‘Sometimes I sleep in quite late.’

    ‘As I was saying, I knocked. Madame Martin kept me waiting for a minute or two, just enough time for her to slip on a dressing gown. I had my hands full and I asked her if I could give Colette her presents from me.

    He sensed that the woman with fair hair had had time to examine everything in the apartment, though not without casting him an occasional pointed look tinged with suspicion.

    ‘Then we both opened her bedroom door.’

    ‘The child has a room to herself?’

    ‘Yes. It’s a two-bedroom apartment, with bathroom, dining room and kitchen. But I must tell you … No! I’ll keep that for later. I’d got up to the moment when we opened the door. As it was dark inside, Madame Martin turned the light on.’

    ‘Was Colette awake?’

    ‘Yes. You could tell she hadn’t been asleep for ages and was lying there, waiting. You know what children are like on Christmas morning! If she’d have been able to use her legs, she’d very likely have got up and gone to see what Father Christmas had brought her. Maybe another child would have called out. But she’s already a young lady. You can tell she thinks a lot, that she’s older than her years.’

    Madame Martin now looked out of the window too, and Maigret tried to work out which apartment was hers. It had to be the one on the right, at the far end of the building, where two windows were lit.

    Mademoiselle Doncœur went on:

    ‘I wished her a happy Christmas. I said, and these are my exact words: Look, sweetheart, at what Father Christmas left for you in my bedroom. ’

    Madame Martin’s fingers twitched open and shut.

    ‘And do you know what she replied without even looking at what I’d brought for her – actually they were just a few little things …?

    ‘ I saw him.

    ‘ Who did you see?

    ‘ Father Christmas.

    ‘ When did you see him? Where?

    ‘ Here, last night. He came into my room.

    ‘That’s what she told us, isn’t it, Madame Martin? Coming from another child, it would have made you smile, but I told you that Colette is already quite grown up. She wasn’t joking.

    ‘ How could you have seen him in the dark?

    ‘ He had a torch.

    ‘ Did he put the light on?

    ‘ No. He had an electric torch. Look, Maman Loraine …

    ‘I should tell you that she calls Madame Martin maman, which is only natural, seeing as how her real mother is dead and Madame Martin has taken her place …’

    All this was beginning to turn into a continuous, even drone in Maigret’s ears. He had not yet drunk his second cup of coffee. His pipe had just gone out.

    ‘Did she really see someone?’ he asked, unconvinced.

    ‘Oh yes, inspector. That’s why I insisted that Madame Martin should come and speak to you. We’ve got proof. Colette gave a little knowing smile, pulled back the covers and showed us, in the bed, cuddled up close to her, a wonderful doll which hadn’t been in the apartment the night before.’

    ‘And you didn’t give her the doll yourself, Madame Martin?’

    ‘I was going to give

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