The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien

First published as Le Pendu de St Pholien, this early Simenon records how Maigret unwittingly drove a little man to suicide. You'd have said that Louis Jeunet was a down-at-heel layabout, but he was packeting up over 30,000 francs when Maigret first spotted him in Brussels. When he posted the money, unregistered, as 'Printed Matter', Maigret followed him for fun. He took a train for the north. At the German frontier Maigret switched suitcases, in a spirit of idle curiosity, but when Jeunet discovered his loss at Bremen he took out a gun and shot himself, and Maigret was left to cope with his own culpability. His subsequent inquiries provoked two attempts on his life and eventually led to Liege, Simenon's birthplace, where in a crazy slum he taps the source of a macabre story which is reminiscent of Francois Villon.