The auction

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The auction (original title: Vente à la bougie ) is a story by Georges Simenon , in which Commissioner Maigret identified as a member of the Brigades Special in the Vendée department . The work belonging to the series of Maigret novels and stories was created in Nieul-sur-Mer in 1939 and appeared in the volume of short stories Maigret et les petits cochons sans queue by Presses de la Cité in 1950 . The German translation of the story first appeared in 1980 in a translation by Linde Birk in the volume Maigret stories, first episode in Diogenes.

action

A crime has occurred in a lonely bar in Pont-du-Grau, a small town in the marshland of the Vendée. Borchain, a farmer from the Angoulème area, is dead; the mattress burns and his money is gone. Borchain was in Pont-du-Grau when the auction of a farm with thirty hectares of marsh meadows was to take place the following day. The evening before the auction were present: Fred Michaux, the landlord, 49 years old and ex-boxer, his partner Julia, a shabby ex-prostitute, then Thérésa, the 18-year-old housemaid with whom Michaux hopes to start a new life to be able to start, then Nicolas, a fisherman and alcoholic, Groux, a squat peasant whose property is to be auctioned, then Canut, another interested party for the farm, and Gentil, a not very serious customs officer. Maigret, who had come to the scene of the crime from Nantes, interrogated this society for three days and tried to reconstruct the events of the evening of the murder. Maigret soon realized: the fire in Borchain's room was only set so that the guests present would be suspected. Eventually, the victim's purse is found in a hiding place that only Michaux and Julia could know. Julia admits that she killed Borchain because she wanted his money. Her intention was to show Michaux that she was useful to him and thus prevent him from becoming attached to the young Thérésa and escaping with her.

expenditure

The story was pre-published in the newspaper Sept Jours (20 et 27 avril 1941), in book form in Maigret et les petits cochons sans queue (Presse de la Cité, 1950). It is in the Simenon editions Œuvres complètes (Lausanne, Editions Rencontre, 1967–1973) in Volume XV, in Tout Simenon (Paris, Presses de la Cité, 1988–1993) in Volume 4 and in Tout Simenon (Paris, Omnibus, 2002–2004) also contained in Volume 4. It is available in German translation in the anthology, All Maigret Stories ( ISBN 978-3-257-06682-1 ) published by Diogenes in 2009 .

Adaptations

  • Maigret et la Vente à la bougie . Episode 17 of the Maigret series, French TV film (director: Pierre Granier-Deferre ), with Bruno Cremer as Maigret, broadcast in 1995.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.trussel.com/maig/Maigret-in-France/vente1.htm