The Shadow Puppet

On a corner of the desk, the police gazette lay open, showing twenty or so photographs of wanted individuals. Most of them faces of thugs. Heads that bore the scars of degeneracy . . . And the warning, in red, Dangerous. Is still armed. A fellow who would not sell himself cheaply.

Well! Maigret would have preferred that to all this syrupy greyness, to these family sagas, to this still inexplicable murder which he found mind-boggling.