Maigret wasn't necessarily following a logical order because nothing struck him as logical in this case, and he moved from one subject to another as if looking for the one spot.
--Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Old People, (translated by Shaun Whiteside, Penguin 1960)
This is one of the best Maigret novels I have read recently (Simenon wrote seventy-five novels about detective Mairget), as Maigret finds himself in a circle of wealthy and aristocratic old people when one of them is murdered just before he had a chance to marry the woman he had loved from afar for almost fifty years, during which they wrote to each other every day without ever meeting in person. Maigret has barely figured out how these people thought and felt when he decides to do a paraffin test on Mademoiselle Larrieu, who had been the murdered man's housekeeper for forty-six years. It comes back positive but Larrieu won't talk and only when her priest comes to visit her does the truth come out.
As always in Simenon there is much important detail, from the furnishing of a room to the food that is eaten and what the weather is like in Paris. Everyone that Maigret questions is vividly described in terms of appearance and character and the long romance between the murdered man, the Count of Saint-Hiliare, and Isabelle, Princess of V-----, is beautifully portrayed in the letters Maigret finds and reads.
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