"Étoile du Nord" - star of the north
"Étoile du Nord" - Star of the North (original title Étoile du Nord ) is a story by Georges Simenon , in which Commissioner Maigret investigates in a shabby Paris hotel. The work belonging to the series of Maigret novels and stories was written either in April 1938 in La Rochelle or in the winter of 1939/40 in Nieul-sur-Mer . The story was published in book form after the preprint in the magazine Police-Film on September 23 and 30, 1938, in 1944 in the volume of stories Les Nouvelles Enquêtes de Maigret by Gallimard . In the German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau, the story was first published in 1976 by Kiepenheuer and Witsch under the title Stern des Nordens , in a new translation by Elfriede Riegler in 1987 by Diogenes Verlag in the anthology Six New Cases for Maigret . With the title of the book, Simenon was referring to the Étoile du Nord express train, which ran between Paris and Brussels at the time .
action
Inspector Maigret is about to retire after 30 years with the Paris police; his wife is already at the joint retirement home in Meung-sur-Loire . In a fourth-class hotel, the L'Etoile du Nord on Rue de Maubeuge near the Gare du Nord , the corpse of a traveling salesman, Georges Bompard, about 45 years old, is found; he was murdered with a knife. The attack must have come as a surprise to him, as he had not resisted and was only wearing pajamas. The suspicion is directed at a young woman, 19-year-old Celine Germain, who admits to be a prostitute and to have been in the room with the victim, but not to be guilty of the crime. Maigret interrogates her for hours in his office on the Quai-des-Orfèvres. She insults him as a lecher in front of his employees and torpedoes his interrogation methods by lying on the floor and falling asleep. She then provides Maigret with one story of lies after the other and is careful not to reveal anything about herself. Further research reveals that Joseph Dufieu, the night porter at the hotel, and Lucienne Jouffroy, the housekeeper, both come from Moissac (Tarn-et-Garonne), a place where Georges Bompard also stayed regularly. Joseph Dufieu gives Maigret the necessary explanations: Lucienne Jouffroy blamed Bompard for the death of her daughter six years ago. Maigret is soon convinced that Lucienne Jouffroy killed Bompard in revenge; Celine Germain was the only witness. It also turns out that the young Celine also comes from Moissac, she fell in love with Bompard and followed him to Paris. Celine also admits that her real name is Geneviève Blanchon, the daughter of a judge from Moissac.
expenditure
After being preprinted in Police-Film magazine (n ° 4 du 20 may 1938), the story was published in Les nouvelles enquêtes de Maigret (Paris, Gallimard, NRF., 1944). It was included in the Simenon works Œuvres complètes (Lausanne, Editions Rencontre, 1967–1973) in Volume IX, in Tout Simenon (Paris, Presses de la Cité, 1988–1993) in Volume 25 and in Tout Simenon (Paris, Omnibus, 2002–2004) included in volume 25. It is available in German translation in the anthology, All Maigret Stories ( ISBN 978-3-257-06682-1 ) published by Diogenes in 2009 .
adaptation
- Maigret et l'Étoile du Nord - episode 54 of the TV series Maigret (director: Charles Nemes ), with Bruno Cremer as Maigret, broadcast in 2005.