Georges Simenon

When a corpse turns up, shot by Maigret's stolen gun, his search for the killer takes him to London to investigate one murder - and prevent another.

What was the woman doing here? In a stable, wearing pearl earrings, her stylish bracelet and white buckskin shoes! She must have been alive when she got there because the crime had been committed after ten in the evening. But how? And why? And no one had heard a thing! She had not screamed. The two carters had not woken up. Maigret is standing in the pouring rain by a canal. A well-dressed woman, Mary Lampson, has been found strangled in a stable...

When Inspector Maigret finds the man that he was following dead by his own hand in a hotel room, his investigations begin to reveal a sordid secret from the man's past that some people will try to keep at any cost.