Maigret and the Beanstalk (radio play, 1961)

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Maigret and the Beanstalk
(orig.Maigret et la Grande Perche )
Shipment logo
Radio play from Germany
original language French
Year of production 1961
publication 2005
genre Thriller
Duration 59 min
production BR
Publisher / label The audio publishing house
Contributors
author Georges Simenon
Machining Gert Westphal
Director Heinz-Günter Stamm
music Herbert Jarczyk
speaker

Maigret and the Beanstalk is a radio play based on the detective novel of the same name by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon , which was produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk in 1961 with Paul Dahlke in the title role after a translation by Ernst Sander in 1956 . As early as 1959 there was a production by Südwestfunk under the direction of Gert Westphal with an identical text template and different speakers, which, however, is still not available on phonograms.

In the detective novel, the title hero Jules Maigret solves the murder of a dentist's wife thanks to the help of a former prostitute who is nicknamed “the beanpole”, although at the beginning there is not even a corpse.

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The radio play is set in the summer months of the early 1950s in Paris or its Neuilly suburb . On a midsummer Thursday, Maigret and his colleagues in the Quai des Orfèvres are already suffering from the heat in the morning. The Commissioner receives an unexpected visitor.

Ernestine Jussiaume, née Micou, called the “beanstalk” because of her length, a “former” asks the inspector for help. Ten years earlier he had let his gendarmes wrap her naked in a tablecloth on the rue de Lune because she refused to appear in the headquarters for an interrogation in a property crime and therefore refused to dress. At that time she wanted to protect her friend Lulu by refusing to testify. The way Maigret resolutely withdrew from the situation earned him the woman's respect. Ernestine is very worried about her husband Alfred, "the funeral lump".

The former employee of the safe company Blanchard has "worked" for years on the "other side" on his own account, using his knowledge and skills to loot his former employer's safes, especially those that he installed himself years ago. One night when he was in his study breaking into the safe of the dentist Guilleaume Serre in Neuilly, the light fell briefly on the face of a female corpse with blood on her chest and a telephone receiver in her hand. In a panic, he flees the country by train so as not to be linked to the murder. He confesses to Ernestine about what he had experienced by telephone only shortly before his departure from the Gare du Nord and stays in contact with her with coded postcards. Since the commissioner has not been notified of a missing person, a break-in or a murder case in this area, Maigret has to question the evidence. Thus Maigret makes his way to the Serres house to get an idea of ​​the possible case and initially only to follow the possible break-in.

In Neuilly he is welcomed in the rue de la Ferme by the mother of the landlord, an old lady in her mid-70s, who definitely denies that they had been broken into. The window would have broken in a storm a week earlier. But then it would have been restored by her son himself, who repairs everything in the house on his own. Serre himself is dismissive to the point of rudeness ("My son does not attach too much importance to walk-in customers.") And wants to disgrace Maigret, which the inspector counters confidently. When Maigret learns that Serre's wife Marie wanted to leave her husband forever this weekend, the investigator gradually suspects that there may be more to Ernestine's story. But both mother and son Serre emphasize that the separation took place by mutual consent - they even had dinner together before Monsieur Serre drove his wife to the train station in his car.

Maigret now learns the decisive next clues from the family's housemaid, Eugénie: the marriage between the native Dutch or North Frisian Marie von Aerts and Guilliaume Serre was unhappy because of the cold feeling and the undisguised jealousy of the mother-in-law, Serre's first wife died at a young age a heart attack , he and Marie have heart problems, his own father also died of a heart attack when Guilliaume was in his teens . In both cases he inherited a not inconsiderable sum. Since further questioning of the residents and a house search did not provide any further evidence of a murder, Maigret had the house observed and the Serres car in the garage was secretly examined by a forensic technician : But apart from noticeable scratches from a heavy suitcase on the loading sill, there was nothing Finding something conspicuous. Thanks to a statement from an attentive neighbor, Maigret can prove that Monsieur Serre moved his car again that night. The Commissioner's hands are still tied. Only the correspondence with Marie's closest friend in Amsterdam , Gertrude Coostine, and her further statements help him in two ways, since he can finally start real investigations with the Dutch authorities with her official missing person report. Gertrude tells him, along with many details, that Marie had a small pistol , which she would use if she had another fit of weakness, as she was afraid that her mother-in-law would poison her. When Marie threatened Madame Serre senior with this, she insisted through her son that the bullets must be removed from the weapon. However, Marie had reserve ammunition with which she immediately reloaded the weapon.

When Maigret checked at the nearby household goods retailer whether Serre, who had an account there due to his numerous “do-it-yourself” work, had also purchased the materials on the day in question, he found that Serre did the same again a little later Must have repaired the window. When confronted with the account book, Serre caves in during the interrogation at headquarters and initially claims that it was about foreign exchange smuggling and tax evasion , in which Marie herself participated on her previous trips to her fatherland, which also the heavy suitcase with a false bottom would have explained. Since the inspector is interrogating Madame Serre senior at the same time and indirectly exerting pressure as an allegedly brutal police officer through an Ernestine placed in the witness room, Monsieur Serre wants to take the blame for Marie's death on himself. But Maigret provokes his mother who, out of greed, killed both her own husband and her daughters-in-law in order to remain the first and only woman in Guilliaume's life. Since Marie drew her weapon in defense and Monsieur Serre shot her to protect his mother in turn, the Serres had to deal with a corpse this time that could not be passed off as a natural death. Thus, her body was sunk inside the suitcase in the nearby Seine . However, as Maigret finally pointed out, Madame Serre Sr. had even considered giving her own son the wrong dose of heart medication during an interrogation break in order to keep himself safe. This also explains her relentless insistence to meet her son. Her actual motive was therefore not motherly love , but greed .

Now that the murder has been solved, the "funeral lair" can come back to Paris. Thanks to Maigret, he doesn't have to fear further prosecution in this case, even if his Ernestine doubts that at some point he will give up his dream of the perfect break-in so that both can live in the country.

background

Georges Simenon, 1963, photo by Erling Mandelmann

Neuilly is a suburb of Paris where Rue de la Ferme runs parallel to Boulevard Richard-Wallace. Between 1936 and 1938 the writer Simenon rented an apartment on Boulevard Richard-Wallace, so he was familiar with the area.

Unlike in many other Maigret novels, Madame Maigret appears frequently in the story, but not as a catalyst of the story, but merely to emphasize through her comments how seldom she gets to see her husband. The inspector even goes so far as to invite his wife to an improvised dinner in the pub near the crime scene, because on the one hand you can have "an excellent beer" there and on the other hand you can stay close to further surveillance. In general, the inspector sometimes seems to place more value on the cooling refreshment through various alcoholic beverages (“a nice cool beer from the brasserie ?” - “until it's here, it's warm!”; “Nothing new boss!” - Yes , Let's have a nice cold beer in the pub! ”[5:15:15]) than is the case in many other novels in the series and, as always, takes care of his tobacco pouch .

In his investigations, Maigret relies on the one hand on his direct discussions with the Serres and on the other hand on the support of his investigating officers. However, Simenon always lets his novelist inquire about the interesting clues himself, even if the all-important clue, i.e. the entry in the household goods retailer's account book, comes more from the "principle of chance". In addition, the telephone, with which he receives the relevant information from the Netherlands and maintains contact with his investigating officers, plays a decisive role, even if at the beginning of the 1950s all calls were still being made via the switchboard .

Both German-language radio play adaptations from 1959 and 1961, which were played by different radio stations and speakers, were based on Sander's translation and Gert Westphal's adaptation. The latter version was more prominent with Dahlke, Hans Clarin , Rolf Boysen and Hanne Wieder and is still the only one that is available on phonograms, as Audio Verlag published it in a special edition in 2005 together with four other Maigret radio plays. The other radio plays in the special edition were, for example, Maigret and the yellow dog and Maigret and his scruples .

Leading actress Gertrud Spalke died a year after this radio play recording, which makes it one of the last sound documents of her voice to be upgraded. In general, the elaborate speech duels between her and Paul Dahlke are the key points of the radio play.

review

In connection with the radio play adaptations, the underlying calm of the cases described was praised: “The delightful thing about Simenon's works is the calm they radiate. Simenon has never written action crime novels. The narrative style resembles a slowly flowing river. Here the people involved have enough time to develop clearly before the eyes of the reader. "

Other voices compared the adaptation more to the style of the contemporary Paul Temple adaptations of Francis Durbridge's crime novels with René Deltgen : “ Inspector Maigret, who is played by the well-known actor Paul Dahlke, is a rather unpleasant contemporary. His appearance shows less of the manners of a gentleman like Paul Temple, but rather of the kind of 'Me boss - you nothing'. The person Maigret is not conveyed through emotions, because Maigret even keeps a bitter distance from his own wife, as he always addresses her as 'Frau Maigret'. The stories themselves are entertaining and all extend over a CD. So it is of course not surprising that the plot does not get a great deal of depth and that the circle of people is kept relatively manageable and small. Although it is not possible to predict who will be the culprit in the end, there is no real surprise either. Maigret's cases manage without blood, with a few shots and with unspectacular corpses. "

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Detailed information on www.hoerdat.in-berlin.de , accessed on June 25, 2012.
  2. ↑ http://www.meinebuecher.net/2011/05/georges-simenon-maigret-die-besten-falle/
  3. ↑ Review of the radio play. On: www.der-hoerwurm.de. August 8, 2005 ( memento from December 17, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ). Retrieved June 25, 2012.