'Maigret' Recap: Episode 1

Maigret airs Sundays at 8:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream on the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the following episode.
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There have been three bank robberies in less than two months. Maigret has been promoted to chief inspector even as he has failed to make any progress in the case. But he’s more concerned with the death of a thief than stolen money.

He’s called to examine the dead body – which was found by the Seine but not killed there, judging from the lack of blood – by Inspector Foulon, who worries that not enough resources will be devoted to the case. Foulon is not wrong: when police prosecutor Kernaval arrives at the scene, she tells Maigret to devote his attention to the robberies, not the murder, which she suspects is gang- or drug-related, despite the victim’s fancy shoes. But Maigret thinks a life is more important than money, and resolves to secretly help Foulon.

Although the victim’s face is mutilated beyond recognition – he was hit in the head ten times with a heavy limestone object – Maigret recognizes a distinctive seahorse tattoo and identifies the victim as Honoré Cuendet. Maigret first met Cuendet when he pulled him over for running a red light 12 years ago and discovered stolen suits in his car. Cuendet’s home, which he shared with his mother, was filled with more stolen goods, mostly too low-value for the police to pursue – except for a Cezanne. 

Cuendet was careful in his thieving, always wearing gloves and a hoodie and knowing the alarm response times, except when stealing the Cezanne. He seemed to have a special appreciation for objects of beauty. Maigret encountered him again five years ago, after Cuendet spent two years in prison, when a slew of wealthy homes were broken into while the owners slept. Only jewelry and artwork was taken, and sometimes nothing was taken, as if nothing had been deemed worthy. 

Maigret interviewed Cuendet, who argued that beauty should be accessible to everyone, not just the rich few. But Maigret only had circumstantial evidence and had to let Cuendet go free. The detective liked the thief. 

So he visits the apartment of Cuendet’s mother. Cuendet collected magazines, but the most recent is from six months ago, suggesting Cuendet hasn’t lived there for some time. His mother won’t answer many questions, and is devastated to learn of her son’s death. She lets Maigret borrow an unusual feathered hat that he suspects Cuendet, with his love for beauty, stole.

The feathers are sourced from South America, and only one importer in Paris deals in them; he immediately directs Foulon to the hatmaker Evelyne Schneider. She tells Maigret and Foulon that she gave the hat to Cuendet; she made it for his mother. Cuendet has been living with Schneider, when he’s not traveling – he told her he’d be gone for a month, but it has already been longer than that. She didn’t know he was a thief. 

Maigret notices a stack of magazines, with the page turned down on a photo of a bejewelled necklace in one. Schneider says Cuendet asked her if she liked the necklace.

A jeweler identifies it as the Monaco pendant, which was sold six months ago to the Syrian businessman Azhar Rafik for two million euros. Rafik bought it for his girlfriend, Lida Buondonno. 

Maigret suspects Cuendet wanted to steal the necklace, and sends Foulon to search hotels near Rafik’s home; Cuendet likely has been living in one, surveying Rafik’s home, since he left Schneider. Foulon tracks down a room taken out by Cuendet, and it has a view of Rafik’s mansion. There are guards and sensors protecting it. 

Maigret is doing all this investigation into Cuendet’s murder while also looking into the bank robberies. A tourist captured an angle of the most recent one while filming herself at a cafe; she posted the video on social media. A car crashes into the bank at 9:46 AM; taxis stolen the night before pull up soon after to whisk the robbers away. First responders would have been there in time to chase the taxis if not for a garbage truck that blocked their way for a time. The blockage wasn’t an accident; orange trucks like the one in the video are owned by a private company that provides trash pick-up in a different arrondissement. It was in the wrong place.

Maigret thinks Gustave Fernand is behind the robberies, as it bears hallmarks of his jobs. But Maigret himself put Fernand behind bars, where he remains. So the team looks at recent cellmates. Cavre, a rival who wants a promotion like Maigret, believes Henri Bezieux is the culprit. Bezieux was released from his cell with Fernand recently, and is now wanted for robbing a bank in Lyon. 

But Maigret is more interested in Nicholas Traude, an ex-military man sent to prison for running drugs. Fernand’s wife Rosalie used to visit Fernand ten times a month until six months ago – when Traude was Fernand’s cellmate. She has only visited twice since then. 

Maigret visits Rosalie’s home and finds the door open, so he lets himself in to find her swimming in a pool, nude. Maigret’s colleague Lucas quickly throws her a robe, fearing flirtation.

Maigret is married, although he and his wife Louise are often ships in the night, since she has been working double shifts as a nurse even while taking progesterone shots to try to get pregnant. In one of their brief meetings, Maigret tells her about a dream: his father wakes him as a child to serve as an altar boy; when he arrives at the church, the autumn leaves from outside are also on the floor inside. Sophie – his first crush – turns to him and asks, “When are you coming home?”

Back at the Fernand household, Rosalie slaps Maigret when he suggests a Porsche at the house is a lover’s; she insists she loves her husband. 

Maigret and Lucas have to rush off just as Rosalie receives a phone call she seems eager to hide. The robbers have struck again, this time at a jeweler’s, and there have been casualties. A Serbian businessman was inside when they entered, and his bodyguard started firing shots, hitting one of the robbers but also bystanders, one of whom dies. A second later dies from wounds. Kernaval is beginning to question Maigret’s leadership of the case. 

Maigret is surprised that the robbers targeted a jeweler. He lets Cavre follow up on Fernand’s former cellmate Bezieux, who is a jewel thief, but doesn’t believe Bezieux is involved. Maigret visits Fernand in prison, borrowing a woman’s phone to make some calls while he waits at the prison – his own phone is dead. He promises to repay her kindness, if she ever needs anything.

Fernand knows Maigret visited Rosalie, and tells the inspector that he’s the reason Rosalie has visited less frequently lately: he wanted her to move on with her life. He agrees that the robberies use his methods, but he would never target a jeweler. Maigret thinks Traude learned Fernand’s methods while sharing a cell, and is now using them himself.

The robber who was shot at the jeweler’s is under police guard at the hospital. He is Jacques Raison, and was a member of the same military unit as Traude. His pregnant fiancée Monique Delacroix visits him at the hospital and denies that he’s a criminal – he’s an Uber driver. He hated the army, and doesn’t have any friends from his time in it. 

The detectives can’t question Jacques himself because he’s about to go into surgery. Maigret appoints Cavre to watch him. But Cavre leaves to follow his own leads regarding Bezieux, and Jacques disappears from the hospital while he’s gone: people dressed as medics with fake papers took him.