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 he investigates the death of Monsieur Gallet, Inspector Maigret discovers that much of the man's life was a lie, and the strange behavior of his widow and son suggests that there is more to this family than meets the eye.

The extraordinarily patient Maigret cracks a most perplexing case, comme ca. For more than two decades, daring daylight jewelry store heists has plagued the Parisian inspector. When a Corsican immigrant, ex-pimp and sometime police informer, is found shot in the head in his wheelchair with his own gun, an entire generation of conspiracy begins to unravel.