Insp Maigret The Saint-Fiacre Affair Inspector Maigret #13

Early work from 1932 and arresting for its bleak atmosphere. Commissaire Maigret returns to the village of his birth and to the castle whose farms and grounds his father managed for the aristocratic feudal estate of the Saint Fiacre family. He returns because of a murder foretold, with two weeks to spare. When? On All Souls, 1 November 1931 during early mass. Who will be killed? For the time being, that remains a mystery. On the eve of the fateful morning Maigret leaves Paris and at dawn attends mass in the village of his childhood, where, turned a sturdy man of 42 and smoking a pipe, nobody recognizes him anymore. And sure enough, someone dies during mass, someone he admired as a child, the Countess Saint Fiacre… But was she really murdered?
Maigret is one of several highly emotional main characters in the aftermath of her death. He is angry about the decline of the estate and whoever was or were responsible. Others are distraught for other reasons and few of them come out smelling of roses. Simenon acknowledges Sir Walter Scott as the original source of the Gothic-style finale of this family tragedy, with all likely suspects plus some innocent key witnesses, wining and dining in a candle-lit room in the castle, the deceased laying in state above them on the next floor and her only son Maurice about to give the performance of his life…
Lovely intermezzo between hi tech and dark web thrillers. As in much of the rest of Europe, in Simenon’s early 1930s rural France inns or homes often had no electricity and were poorly heated; few people enjoyed hot showers. Telephones were rare and a call to Paris took 15 minutes to get through. Catholicism was quite dominant and so was inequality between landowners and landless, masters and servants.
Finally, Simenon always wrote at breakneck speed. Aged 29, this was his 13th about Maigret after producing ten (10) titles in 1931. It follows that readers intent on justice for all with no loose ends remaining, are occasionally disappointed. Read earlier his 1939 “The Burgomaster of Furnes”, a psychological novel and found that novel really good. “The Saint Fiacre Affair” is a page turner and highly amusing because of Maigret’s personal feelings and all the pathos and human frailty described.