Signed, Picpus
A review of Signed, Picpus by Georges Simenon – 250206
It is about five years since I last read a Maigret novel and so it was high time that I dipped into another. Signed, Picpus, which also goes under the titles of To Any Lengths and Maigret and the Fortune Teller, was originally published in 1944. It was, however, written in 1941 and serialized in thirty-four instalments between December 11, 1941 and January 21, 1942. Simenon then decided to auction off the manuscript in 1943 to benefit prisoners of war.
The twenty-third in Simenon’s series has now been reissued by Penguin Books as part of their project to reignite interest in the Belgian author, using a new translation by David Coward which is both sympathetic and highly readable. It is a mystery within a mystery and one of the intriguing parts of the book for me is that Maigret is taken by and spends an enormous amount of his physical and mental effort in solving what is a subplot to the whole.
Maigret is investigating the murder of a clairvoyant, which has been foretold by a message signed by Picpus, an impression of which was found on a blotter by Mascouvin in a café. When he arrives at the murder scene, he finds an old man in a confused state who has been locked in the kitchen adjacent. Does he know something about the murder or was he, indeed, the murderer. Mascouvin then attempts to commit suicide by jumping over a bridge, claiming that he stole money from his work place, something that his firm claim was impossible to do.
As his investigations develop Maigret discovers that the clairvoyant, Mademoiselle Jeanne whose real name is Marie Picard, and Mascouvin are involved in a shady scheme controlled by a Monsieur Blaise and enforced by a man who drives a flash green car and whom a young dairy maid, Emma, who has just moved to Paris from Rouen has been taken with. Murder is what happens when the worm turns.
Maigret, though, is more fascinated by the old man whose trail leads to the Le Cloaguen family who, thanks to the medical expertise of the head of the family, Octave, are the beneficiaries of an annual stipend of 200,000 francs a year from a grateful (and rich) Argentinian family. The old man purports to by Octave who has now gone into a mental decline. The truth, though, is starker and more disturbing.
In order to maintain the legacy even after Oscar’s death, Madame Le Cloaguen and her daughter are using the old man as a substitute, ill-treating him and keeping him as a virtual captive along the way. Maigret is appalled by the situation and determines that the Le Cloaguens should pay for their crimes. However, he is ultimately thwarted by the insouciance of an Argentinian heiress with more money than sense who views the scheme to defraud her as all a bit of a hoot. While the old man appears to be ancillary to the murder, there is a deeper and more tragic link to the fate of the clairvoyant.
This is a short book, almost novella rather than novel, with short, staccato-like sentences, mostly in the present tense. We follow Maigret, share his thoughts, his actions, his frustrations, his highs and lows, his need for a drink, and admire his dogged determination. He gets to the answer by acute observation, and while, by the standards of the genre, the puzzle is not complicated, it is engaging enough. The identity of Picpus, though, did make me smile.
What I found particularly fascinating was that given when it was written and what was happening at the time, there is a certain wistfulness and sympathetic longing for the way of Parisian life that Simenon is portraying, one then lost under the Nazi jackboot. There is very much a sense of timelessness about the story which no doubt enhanced its popularity at a time when the death of a clairvoyant was pretty small beer.
