The Tattoos

Book 3: After the First World War Maigret returns to France and goes to work for the French Police. He loaths the new director of the S. N., Nardon, since he is one of the asses from the First War that led to the French army mutiny. Over a million men died because there was no adjustment made for the machine gun and other improvements made in the technology of war. As a 'new' recruit Maigret gets the morgue duty, calculated to sicken. That however is not its effect on Maigret. On his first visit he notices a tattoo on a freshly recovered corpse that had spent the last week or longer rotting in the Seine. Later another body turns up with the same tattoo and Maigret's guide to his first day at the morgue calls him up to come and see it. Maigret notices a curious feature about the tattoo and on the off chance sends a letter to his father. His father recognizes the symbol on the tattoo and realizes that the number on what appears to be a bar is the number of a gold bar missing from a Belgium bank. The bank lost nearly 200 bars to looting during the German retreat from Belgium. Thinking this might lead to the recovery of those missing bars Maigret is asked by his father to investigate. Nothing comes of it until another body turns up with the same tattoo, this time in rural France. The victim is the headmaster of a girl's school that he and his wife ran. By this time Maigret is in more trouble with Nardon who gets rid of him by sending him to investigate the new body. Later when Nardon discovers that Maigret only went because he hoped this new body might lead to the recovery of the gold, which it does not, he is furious. Another version of the tattoo turns up in Paris and this on the slimmest of leads leads to recovering the gold from the villain of Maigret's first case, The Circle Game. For this Maigret receives some commendation from Belgium's king and a promotion from Nardon's brother who runs the French Police. Nardon gets rid of Maigret by posting him to rural France where Maigret solves two cases before resigning and moving to England (A Case of Hysteria and The Seven Sisters). Eugene's version of the tattoos once published convinces Nardon that Maigret has acted outside the law, and given his dislike of Maigret, Nardon does everything in his power to catch Maigret and prosecute him. This may be another reason for the move back to England. The murder that Maigret investigates is something of a psychological horror story, that has much in common with a similar murder reported as Les Diabolique, or The Devils.