Maigret and the Millionaires

Exclusive hotels and nightclubs and jet setter hot spots form the milieu that Maigret must frequent in order to solve this case. He needs to do some jetting about himself, and resign himself occasionally to a very dry martini instead of a beer. Happily for the reader, he doesn't change his appearance. He still lurks about in his usual drab garb, looking like "a large sick animal." Colonel Ward, a multi-millionaire, has been drowned in his bathtub in the Hotel George V, a luxury hotel in Paris. His lover, the Countess Paverini, tries (but not too hard) to commit suicide that same night, and then flees the hospital where she's recovering. She was the victim's lover, and Maigret feels obliged to chase after her as she jets about Europe in a frenzy. But the little Countess is only one possibility, for there are three ex-wives, two children and various friends and associates. Maigret is warned repeatedly to tread lightly. The victim is an important man in this the world of celebrities and international playboys that journalists follow everywhere. Maigret may not be comfortable among the millionaires, but his resentment and bemusement make fun reading. And the superintendent is at the top of his game in this book with his psychological insights and risky methods. Maigret and the Millionaires is also available in a collection of mysteries under the title Maigret Among the Rich.

Although this work, completed in 1957, seems to be out of print, it's a fine example of Simenon's wonderful skill at creating a whole class of people you and I will never meet. It's the multimillionaire class when such a group were members of an exclusive club. The same people traveled the same circuit, from hotel to club to watering hole to lavish locations around the globe. They are today's "beautiful people," protected by a subclass of syncophants, lawyers, and "fixers." When one of the biggies is found naked and dead in a hotel bath tub one night, Maigret's headaches begin. The intrepid detective has to deal not only with the murder, about which there is no doubt, but with the press, with all those who had a vested interest in the deceased's untold wealth, with the rest of the wealthy eccentric class who traveled in the deceased's circles, and with his own feelings of repulsion and inadequacy as he rubs shoulders with scoundrels, arrogant power brokers, and loose neurotic women clinging to their sugar daddies. He also feels a good deal of resentment toward the injustices inherent in this class structure as he is continuously made aware of his own "peasant" stock. This work is quite entertaining and could have been pulled straight from one of Dominick Dunne's books or TV shows. I'm surprised it has lain dormant for so long. Maigret fans should try to find it either in their local library or a dusty used book shop. It's worth the search. I found it in a larger collection called "Maigret Among the Rich," which features this story as well as "Maigret in Society" and "Maigret in Retirement."