The dubious Monsieur Owen
The dubious Monsieur Owen (original title: L'Improbable Monsieur Owen ) is a story by Georges Simenon , in which Commissioner Maigret investigates during his vacation in the Mediterranean. Maigret is already retired at the time and is staying in a luxury hotel at the invitation of his friend Louis. Against his will, he becomes involved in the investigation of a murder and reveals the fictional identity of Mr. Owen.
The work belonging to the series of Maigret novels and stories was created in Porquerolles in the winter of 1937/38 and was published in 1967 in the new edition of the book of stories Les nouvelles enquêtes de Maigret by Rencontres. The German translation of the story first appeared in the translation by Ingrid Altrichter in 1989 by Diogenes in the volume Maigret and the most stubborn guest in the world . L'improbable Monsieur Owen , along with Liberty Bar (1932) and Mon ami Maigret (1949), is one of the Maigret stories and novels set in the Mediterranean.
action
The now retired Commissioner Maigret spends his holidays on the Côte d'Azur at the Excelsior , a luxury hotel on the Croisette in Cannes , while his wife stays with a dying aunt in Brittany. The hotel porter Monsieur Louis is an old friend of the commissioner from Paris. Louis now regularly informs the vacationer about a crime that has taken place in the hotel. By pointing out that he has inside knowledge, he wants to get the hesitant Maigret to take a closer look at the mysterious case. A certain Monsieur Owen had disappeared; An unknown corpse was found in his bathtub in room 412 and was found to be addicted to morphine . Owen's companion, a pretty nurse named Germaine Devon, was picked up in Nice when she was about to deliver a letter with a blank sheet of paper. Maigret learns from Louis that Germaine's first boss, a Swede named Owen, died ten years ago and that a Pole, a certain Mr Saft, left the hotel that morning. Meanwhile Mme Germaine was back in the room in question, but she was still under police surveillance. A tilt window was cut open in the hotel room's toilet, leading to a fire escape . An empty whiskey bottle was also found, although otherwise only mineral water was ordered.
In the evening Maigret calls Maigret at Germaine and tells her that she can have the whiskey bottle back, she must be interested in that. He then asks the porter to listen in on the phone calls coming from room 413. In the meantime, Germaine was connected to a hotel in Geneva. Since the conversation was conducted in an Eastern European language, Maigret could only understand so much that a Mister Smith reproached Germaine. After Maigret has had an empty whiskey bottle brought, Germaine comes into Maigret's room and suspects that he is a blackmailer . Germaine soon realizes, however, that the commissioner is not after her money. The conversation turns more and more into an interrogation; Maigret believes that Germaine had a friend who was addicted to morphine and thus became dependent on a Russian named Saft or Smith. So it came about that the young friend was to play the role of a wealthy middle-aged Swede. But at some point he saw through the game and threatened to go to the police.
Maigret now holds against Germaine for having left traces that were too transparent with the disc that was removed and the whiskey. She just made up the story with Mr. Owen. She then killed her addicted lover not as Mr. Owen, but in his true form, and then faked as the crime of a certain Monsieur Owen.
effect
The Belgian writer Thomas Owen (actually Gérald Bertot , 1910-2002) chose his pseudonym in relation to Simenon's figure.
expenditure
The story was first published on July 15, 1938 in the magazine Police-Film / Police-Roman , (première série n ° 12). The book was only published in 1967 in the new edition of the short story volume Les nouvelles enquêtes du commissaire Maigret . The story is contained in the work editions Tout Simenon (Paris, Presses de la Cité, 1988–1993) in volume 25 and in Tout Simenon (Paris, Omnibus, 2002–2004) also in volume 25. It is included in the German translation Diogenes' anthology, Complete Maigret Stories ( ISBN 978-3-257-06682-1 ), published in 2009 .
Adaptations
- Episode 27 of the television series Maigret : Maigret et l'Improbable Monsieur Owen , director: Pierre Koralnik , with Bruno Cremer as Maigret and Bernard Haller as Monsieur Louis, broadcast in 1997
Web links
- Repérages
- Tout Simenon
- Maigret of the month. L'improbable Monsieur Owen
- Maigret et l'improbable Monsieur Owen in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Anne Begenat-Neuschäfer: Comic's literature in Belgium from its beginnings to today . Peter Lang, 2009, page 13
- ↑ http://www.association-jacques-riviere-alain-fournier.com/reperage/simenon/notice_maigret/note_maigret_Improbable%20M%20Owen.htm
