The players from the "Grand Café"
The players from the "Grand-Café" (original title Ceux du Grand Café ) is a story by Georges Simenon in which the now retired Commissioner Maigret is investigating the province. The work belonging to the series of Maigret novels and stories was written in La Rochelle in April 1938 or a month earlier in Porquerolles . The story appeared after the preprint on August 12, 1938 in the magazine Police-Film, in book form in the volume of stories Les Nouvelles Enquêtes de Maigret by Gallimard in the 1967 edition. In a German translation by Inge Giese, it first appeared in 1989 as one of four Stories in the volume Maigret and Stan the Killer in Diogenes.
action
Maigret, who is now retired and lives in the provincial town of Meung-sur-Loire , has made a habit of playing cards with the regular visitors to the local Grand-Café . He gets to know the pillars of the city: the mayor, the gas station owner, the butcher and the landlord. The problems in the marriages of the landlord and the butcher are not hidden from him. The ex-commissioner enjoys retirement until one day a drama occurs in the small town: Hubert, the butcher from Meung, one of his evening play partners, is found dead on the outskirts in the driver's cab of his truck, allegedly with a bullet in his chest Murder, possibly because he went to his notary to deposit a large sum of money, which he recklessly told in the grand café . Maigret suspects, however, that it could be a love affair with Angèle, the maid in the grand café . The city leaders of Meung urge the former commissioner to deal with the case, although Maigret initially strictly rejects it. He ignores any information that is brought to him. He rejects all confessions and confessions that villagers make to him. Because of his indifference in this case, he almost falls out with his wife. In order to have his peace and quiet, Maigret now turns down the cards in the Grand Café and hides in his house. But that doesn't prevent him from continuing to deal with the case.
The official investigation is not progressing. The city knows that the butcher and the owner of the grand café , Urbain, were after Angèle. It was, however, the landlord's advances that made the maid too willing to go abroad. Hubert was completely disillusioned and desperate that Angèle was snatched away from him. So he decided to end his life without harming his wife and son. He took out life insurance to cover his family , but suicide would have led to the insurance being canceled . Therefore Hubert carefully disguised it as murder. The official investigation into the case never closed; the butcher's wife left Meung with her son. Three years later, Maigret explained to his wife why he was keeping the matter quiet.
expenditure
The story was first published in 1938 and 1967 in the Simenon work editions 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) in volume 25. It is available in German translation from Diogenes in the volume Maigret und Stan der Killer ( ISBN 3-257-21741-2 ) published in 1989 and in the anthology Complete Maigret Stories ( ISBN 978-3-257-06682-1 ) published in 2009 .
Web links
- The players from the »Grand Café« at Maigret.de
- Repérages
- Tout Simenon
- Maigret of the month: Ceux du Grand Café
Individual evidence
- ^ Georges Simenon: Complete Maigret Stories . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN ISBN 978-3-257-06682-1 , p. 1083.