June 1, 2021

Cocktail Talk: Mademoiselle Berthe and Her Lover

maigret's-pipeWe’re going to continue from last week’s Maigret moment into a little Maigret-a-thon, starting with a few Cocktail Talks (hey, don’t miss all the Chief Inspector Maigret Cocktail Talks, by the way) from the story collection Maigret’s Pipe, which has a host of hits starring George Simenon’s Parisian Chief Inspector, mainly leaning towards the latter part of his career and even into retirement (where he can’t stop solving crimes even if no longer on the French force). The story the below quote comes from is actually in the retirement phase, though with him back in Paris, drinking wine, and having one of his favorite dishes.

 

As Maigret paid for the drinks, he was already looking sprightlier than he had been earlier that morning, for he felt things had begun to move.

 

Roughly speaking, his impression was that the police were over-simplifying the situation and Mademoiselle Berthe was complicating it. Not far off there was a small restaurant favoured by taxi-drivers, with a couple of tables on the terrace, and as one them was free he sat down and discovered on the menu fricandeau a l’oseille, veal with sorrel, one of his favorite dishes.

 

The atmosphere was so redolent of spring, with light puffs of air so warm and fragrant that, particularly after a bottle of Beaujolais, he felt light-headed and wanted nothing better than to lie down on the grass with a newspaper over his head.

 

–George Simenon, “Mademoiselle Bertha and her Lover”

 

Rathbun on Film