The Maigret Project (9) A man's head

Penguin Books is currently publishing the entire series of Georges Simenon’s novels starring Inspector Maigret, chronologically and at a rhythm of one per month. 

In "The Maigret Project" I share some observations about each novel.

One of the joys of a Maigret novel is the feeling of coming home.

The general atmosphere of Maigret’s Quai des Orfèvres office, of Paris in the rain. Maigret’s interchangeable subordinates. Little scènes with Madame Maigret or judge Coméliau. And last but not least, a special woman, capturing the inspector’s attention. 

All of this is pleasantly familiar. And yet I think the best Maigret’s offer a slight, an ever so slight departure from the formula. Not “Maigret arrives at the scene of the crime” but a different opening scene, unsettling the reader right from the start. A man’s head (as well as the next episode, The dancer at the Gai-Moulin) are such variations on the Maigret formula. 

In the first chapter of A man’s head [La tête d’un homme, 1931], Maigret orchestrates the escape from prison of a death row prisoner. He is convinced the man is innocent. The only way he can think of solving the crime – the murder of two elderly ladies – is to let the innocent man escape and wait for the true culprit or culprits to react. Of course, the best-laid plans... In a matter of days, Joseph Heurtin has not only escaped prison but also the police offers who were supposed to follow his every move. Examining magistrate Coméliau is not amused; even less so, when an anonymous letter informs the newspapers that Heurtin’s escape was orchestrated by Maigret. 

The latter seems lost for ideas, on the verge of resigning. However, following the trail of the anonymous letter, Maigret bumps not only into his escaped prisoner but also into a most curious young man, who has no intention whatsoever to hide that he is behind the double murder. Why would he indeed, when he knows the police has no proof against him? 

Although this episode opens with a three chapter chase, the rest is the book is a sort of Cold War, a war of wits against the mysterious Radek and a stubborn Maigret. A man’s head is, to my mind, an essential Maigret episode, because the level of drama is far higher than in other episodes. What we have here, is the drama of a highly intelligent mind that is applied in the wrong way, forced towards evil and perversion by society. ‘In Paris a man who has a name which carries a certain cachet can get by perfectly well without money’, Radek tells Maigret at some point. Radek describes the idle life of one of these men, a certain Crosby, ending with the bitter afterthought: 

And during all that time, Joseph Heurtin was earning 600 francs a month pushing his three-weeled carrier around Paris for ten or twelve hours a day!

Taunting Maigret, Radek inquires after his salary: ‘what does a chief inspector of the Police Judiciaire earn these days? A couple of thousand? Three? Half of what Crosby spent on drinks?’ For people who haven’t been born with such a name, however, society is far less lenient. 

With Maigret on his heels, Radek demonstrates the power of money, subjecting the people around him to various humiliations, e.g. making girls fight for a 1,000-francs note he casually throws on the floor: ‘The girl who gets it keeps it.’ The message is clear: money, not talent or intelligence, is what rules the world. 

‘Twenty years ago, he would have become a militant anarchist’, Maigret resumes in the final chapter. ‘You’d have found him throwing a bomb in a capital city somewhere. But that’s no longer the fashion.’ And: ‘Nowadays, surrounded by the excitable, slightly unhinged denizens of Montparnasse, he found it far more amusing to pull of a perfect crime.’ 

It’s a bottom line that rings true, even more than half a century later: these days, Radek would be fighting in Syria, like so many young men, embittered by the rejection of their talents. 

Stray observations: 

• Maigret knows how to lose and how to win. He doesn’t show any emotions when confronted by an angry Coméliau, and refrains from gloating when in the end, of course, he is proven right all along.
• Simenon’s prose may be self-consciously easy, every so often he does indulge in a bit of audience-friendly poetry. In the final scene, when the true culprit finds himself about to be hanged, the man’s ‘eyes were clear and on them, in the morning greyness, were the infinite reflections of the oceans.’ 

Translated by David Coward.

Next episode: The dancer at the Gai-Moulin.