Death Threats

With the exception of the reference to La péniche aux deux pendus (Note 3), where the title was noted in the Tout Simenon edition, these notes were created for this translation.

1

In Chapter 1 of Les mémoires de Maigret [Maigret's Memoirs], Maigret reminisced that "this particular Chief was, in my eyes, the real Chief in the fullest sense of the word, the Chief under whom I had served my first term at Police Headquarters, who, without actually protecting me, had kept a discreet eye on me from above, and whom I had watched, in his black coat and bowler hat, walking alone under fire towards the door of the house in which Bonnot and his gang had for two days been resisting police and gendarmes. I am referring to Xavier Guichard, with his mischievous eyes and his white hair, as long as a poet's." In Chapter 8 of La maison du juge [Maigret in Exile] Maigret referred to this case, recalling that "…back in the days of the Bonnot case, when he had been thin, and had sported a waxed mustache and a little pointed beard, and worn four-inch-high starched collars and a top hat… his boss, Chief Chief Inspector Xavier Guichard, later to become Chief Commissioner of the Police Judiciaire, had said to him, 'all this talk of flair… is just a publicity stunt… what really matters is evidence.'"

Jules Joseph Bonnot (born Oct. 14, 1876, Pont-de-Roide, Doubs, E France), led of a band of French anarchists, "tragic bandits", who robbed banks in the spirit of redistribution of the wealth, credited with being the first to put the motor-car to use in crime. The gang mounted major terroristic blows at society, especially from December 1911-April 1912, and were finally stopped on April 27, 1912, after a 5-hour armed siege at Choisy-le-Roi (SSE suburb of Paris on the left bank of the Seine), in which the public was armed and the Republican guard called in. It ended with the dynamiting of the garage in which they were hiding. Bonnot died of his wounds in the hospital the next day; four surviving members his band were sentenced to death the following year.

2

The Rue du Chemin-Vert, in the 11^e, between Boulevard Beaumarchais and the Avenue de la République, was close to Maigret's apartment in the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, and is frequently mentioned in Maigret cases. For example, Louis Jeunet, who shot himself in Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets (1930-31), had rented a room for his wife's mother there; Julien Foucrier, the man who shot Janvier in Maigret takes a Room (1951) lived in the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, on the corner of Rue de Chemin-Vert, a few houses along from Maigret; Loraine Martin, whose niece was the little girl with the broken leg in Maigret's Christmas (1950), lived across the street from Maigret, and did her shopping in the Rue du Chemin-Vert; Victor Cadet, the diver who came up with the body parts in Maigret and the Headless Corpse (1955) lived there. In Maigret has Doubts (1959), Dr. Pardon often received wrong number calls for the nearby Bal des Vertus, a dancehall in the Rue du Chemin-Vert which had a similar phone number, and Gino Pagliati, who first came upon the body in Maigret and the Killer (1969) had his small grocery store on the corner of Rue du Chemin-Vert and the Rue Popincourt.

3

In La péniche aux deux pendus [Two Bodies on a Barge], (written October 1936) Maigret had been called to the lock at Le Coudray, where a barge, the Astrolabe, had drifted, with two dead bodies aboard. He went upstream to La Citanguette, where the drama had started, and investigated in the bistro there.

4

This case does not appear in any of the published Maigret chronicles. However, if it had not been a Russian, it would have fit well with M. Gallet décédé [Maigret Stonewalled].

5

Pope-Joan. A card game resembling Michigan and fan-tan, using a regular deck, but a special round board with eight compartments. Maigret played the game with his brother- and sister-in-law and Mme Maigret at the very end of L'Ombre Chinoise [Maigret Mystified].

6

A reference to the legend of Saint Anthony, the first Christian monk, born in Egypt in the 3rd century, who was said to have struggled to keep to his meditations on the Scriptures when beset by demons in the shape of horrid beasts, beautiful ladies and hideous giants, all sent by the devil to distract him. A popular theme in art, "The Temptation of Saint Anthony" is the title of famous paintings by Bosch, Breughel, Cranach, Dali… and many others.

7

In Chapter 10 of Le pendu de Saint-Pholien [Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets], Maurice Belloir speaks of "…the mandarin problem. You know… 'If all you had to do was press an electric button to kill a very rich mandarin in the heart of China and become his heir, would you do it?'…"

8

Recherches dans l'intérêt des familles was a theme in La pipe de Maigret, and the title of Chapter 3 of that work, where Maigret put it to rhythm, as on a train: Re-cher-ches-dans-l'in-té-rêt-des-fa-mil-les… In Jean Stewart's translation [Maigret's Pipe] he rendered it as "inquiries on behalf of next of kin". Maigret also refers to it at the end of La première enquête de Maigret [Maigret's First Case], the investigation on behalf of Lise Gendreau-Balthazar 22 years later, "investigations undertaken on behalf of private families".