"Maigret Goes to School"

Inspector Maigret, of the Parisian police, would have found it difficult to explain why he had become involved in the case of a schoolteacher accused of murder. It wasn't even in his jurisdiction. But Maigret had come to work in the morning and found Joseph Gastin, the schoolteacher from the tiny village of Saint-Andrè-sur-Mer, sitting in the large, impersonal waiting room which the police called "Purgatory," hoping to speak to Maigret. Gaston was accused by many of the villagers in Saint-Andrè of having murdered the town's former postmistress. Gastin doesn't trust the local police and - when Maigret finally agrees to see him - begs Maigret to help, because he does trust Maigret to be fair. And Maigret, much to his own amazement, agrees to take some of his own vacation time and return to the village with Gastin to find the truth of the matter. You'll find the story in Maigret Goes to School, by Georges Simenon, first published in 1954 and an excellent entry in the series of books about Maigret. The book is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

When Maigret accompanies Gaston back to his village (where the schoolteacher, as he had feared, is promptly arrested), he  discovers that the teacher is largely detested by the local villagers (who appear to resent him as a “foreigner” – by which they mean a person not born in Saint-Andrè) and that there may, in fact, be a conspiracy to fasten the crime on Gastin. He also finds that the villagers almost unanimously hated the dead woman, who was an evil-tempered and shrewish person who knew everybody’s secrets, and who liked to taunt people with her knowledge. As Maigret investigates further – and remember that this crime literally was none of his business – he will find that those villagers will close ranks against him and lie with great ease to get their stories accepted as the truth. As for Maigret – well, here’s how Simenon describes his detective’s quandary:

“After all, what was he doing there? A hundred times, in the middle of an investigation, he’d had the same feeling of helplessness or, rather, futility. He would find himself abruptly plunged into the lives of people he had never met before, and his job was to discover their most intimate secrets. This time, as it happened, it wasn’t even his job. He was the one who had chosen to come, because a teacher had waited for him for hours in Purgatory at the Police Judiciare.” 

I think that description gives you a very good insight into Maigret. And I think it’s one of the reasons why readers like me come back again and again to Simenon’s novels. Maigret Goes to School  has been republished by Penguin with a fine translation by Linda Coverdale, and I think you will enjoy it.

Comments

[Colin McGuigan]

I just finished this, Les, and quite liked it. Maigret gets very nostalgic and consumes an awful lot of wine! I return to Maigret from time to time but like to space them out as the books can be a bit dour - this one was OK in that respect though.

[Les Blatt]

I agree, Colin, the Maigret books can indeed be more than a little dour. I like him best when he shows some basic feelings, as he does in this one, even if he doesn't always understand the source of those feelings.