"Maigret and the Burglar’s Wife" - No body, no proof—just Maigret’s instinct and quiet persistence

Описание: Classic Old Time Radio, Vintage radio shows, the Golden Age of radio, murder, mystery, drama, comedy, sci-fi, westerns.

When Ernestine, the wife of a small-time burglar known as "Sad Freddie," bursts into Maigret’s office with a tale of a corpse discovered during a botched robbery, the inspector is skeptical—but intrigued. Freddie has vanished abroad, terrified by what he saw, and Ernestine insists her husband is no killer. Maigret, recalling Ernestine from his early days on the force, senses truth behind her story and begins to investigate the house where the alleged body was found.

The trail leads to Guillaume Serre, a cold, penny-pinching dentist whose wife has mysteriously disappeared. Serre claims she’s returned to Amsterdam, but Maigret suspects foul play. With no body and only circumstantial clues, Maigret must rely on relentless interrogation and psychological pressure to unravel the truth. The case becomes a tense battle of wits, as Maigret peels back layers of domestic dysfunction and deception to expose a chilling possibility.

27 - 'Maigret and the Burglar's Wife' (Monday 19th April 2004 @ 2:15 p.m.)

One of Maigret's old "customers", Ernestine Micou, who he'd arrested 17 years earlier, comes to Maigret to tell of her's husband's misadventure. She'd married Alfred Jussiaume, "Sad Freddie", a safecracker, and while he'd been doing a job in Neuilly, with his usual bad luck, he'd discovered the body of a dead woman and fled. When Maigret goes to the house, where a dentist, Guillaume Serre and his mother live, they claim there's been no burglarly, and of course, no murder. However Serre's Dutch wife, the former Maria Van Aerts, supposedly left on the day Alfred saw the body, returning indefinitely to Holland. The doctor explaines that the newly replaced window pane, which Alfred had presumably removed to break in, was broken in the recent storm.

Maigret must choose to believe Ernestine's story about a murdered woman discovered by her burglar husband, or believe the respectable dentist who denies there ever was a burglary. He is ready to drop the case, when he stops in at the hardware store, and learns that Serre had bought another pane, two days later, the day after the break in.

First published in 1951 as "Maigret et la Grande Perche". First translated in 1955 as "Maigret and the Burglar's Wife" by J. Maclaren-Ross and later by Alice Hart from which this programme was dramatised for radio by Alison Joseph.

With Nicholas Le Provost [Chief Inspector Jules Maigret], Julian Barnes [Georges Simenon], Julie Legrand [Madame Louise Maigret], Jill Johnson [Mme Serre], Philip Franks [Guillaume Serre], Rachel Atkins [Ernestine Micou], Tom George [Inspector Janvier], Scott Brooksbank [The Ironmonger's Lad], Jennie Stoller [Mme Gertrude Oosting], and Philip Fox [Moers].

Music by Lucinda Mason Brown, performed by the Viper's Dream Quartet.
Produced and directed by Ned Chaillet
45 minutes

Georges Simenon, the prolific Belgian writer who created the iconic detective Jules Maigret. Simenon wrote 75 Maigret novels and 28 short stories, blending psychological depth with atmospheric settings and understated suspense. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages and adapted across radio, television, and film—making him one of the most widely read European authors of the 20th century.