des affaires assez déplaisantes

Maigret chez le ministre (1954) begins with a minister seeking an urgent private consultation with le commissaire Maigret. The latter is not enthusiastic. 

Tout le temps [que Mme. Maigret] parlait, Maigret la regardait, les sourcils toujours froncés, avec un air qui proclamait sa méfiance de la politique. Il était arrivé plusieurs fois, au cours de sa carrière, qu'un homme d'Etat, un deputé, un sénateur ou quelque personnage en place fasse appel à lui, mais toujours cela avait été par les voies régulières, chaque fois il avait été appelé chez le chef et, chaque fois, la conversation avait commencé par :

 — Je m'excuse, mon pauvre Maigret, de vous charger d'une affaire qui va vous déplaire. 

Invariablement, en effet, c'étaient des affaires assez déplaisantes. 

(Maigret chez le ministre, Chapter 1)

All the while Mme. Maigret was speaking, Maigret looked at her, his brows knitted, with a face expressing his wariness of politics. Several times in the course of his career it had happened that a statesman, deputy, senator or some other person in authority had called for his aid, but it had always been through official channels; each time he had been summoned to the chief and each time the conversation had begun with

"I'm sorry, my poor Maigret, for saddling you with a job you're not going to like."

Invariably they were indeed somewhat unpleasant affairs. 

  

Simenon never over-explains. It's evident, though, that Maigret's wariness is about moral uncertainty, about good and bad being inextricably mixed, about motives never being single, about being unsure whether you're working for the right side. 

*

The scenario here is much like Grenfell Tower. A flagship institutional building has collapsed due to flooding, a hundred orphans have died, and now it's a question of who knew about the risks and chose to ignore them. 

Back when construction was being mooted, there was an unfavourable report warning of precisely this catastrophe; evidently, it was "buried". 

Here, then, are the building magnates and senior politicians desperate that the report never comes to light. But Maigret, like other members of the public, never really sees them directly. He only catches ideas of them through media reports, always cloaked in deniability. He supposes that a whole class of politicians is implicated but he never knows who they are. 

More tangible are those behind the indignant editorials clamouring for the report's publication. The député Joseph Mascoulin, for instance. But he, the real villain of the piece, has no intention of publishing the report, only of deploying its threat to exert power over the powerful. 

In the story Point, the minister of Public Works, summons Maigret after he receives the explosive report, reads it, but then finds it stolen before he can act on it. He knows he will be accused of destroying it himself. 

Maigret saves the good Auguste Point's reputation (Point has had enough, though; he will resign and leave politics). But he cannot bring the report to the public, nor expose Mascoulin. The refusals of Point and Maigret to shake hands with the "mains sales" (of Mascoulin and others like him) are victories of gesture and personal integrity. But at the end the corrupt edifice of politics, press and capitalism remains in full control. 

*

Point tells Maigret of his meeting with the Président du Conseil (i.e. the Prime Minister, now termed Premier ministre), prior to facing the press. He has offered his resignation. 

[»] Il m'a déclaré que ma démission n'arrangerait rien, qu'elle sera considérée comme un aveu de culpabilité et que tout ce que j'avais à faire était de dire la vérité.

—Y compris sur le contenu du rapport Calame ? questionna le commissaire.

Point parvint à sourire.

—Non. Pas exactement. Au moment où je croyais la conversation terminée, il a ajouté :

» — Je suppose qu’on vous demandera si vous avez lu le rapport. 

» J’ai répondu :

» — Je l’ai lu.

» — C’est ce que j’ai cru comprendre. C’est un rapport assez volumineux, bourré, je suppose, de détails techniques sur un sujet qui n’est pas nécessairement familier à un homme de loi. Il serait plus exact de prétendre que vous l’avez parcouru. Vous n’avez plus le rapport sous la main pour vous rafraîchir la mémoire. Ce que je vous en dis, cher ami, c’est pour vous éviter des ennuis plus graves que ceux qui vous attendent. Parlez du contenu du rapport, mettez des gens en cause, qui que ce soit – cela ne me regarde pas et je n’en ai cure – et on vous accusera de lancer des accusations que vous n’êtes pas en mesure de soutenir. Vous me comprenez ? 

(Chapter 5)

'... He told me that my resignation wouldn't fix anything, that it would be taken as an admission of guilt and that all I had to do was tell the truth.'

'Including about the contents of the Calame report?' the inspector asked.

Point managed a smile.

'No. Not exactly. Just when I thought the conversation was over, he added:

'"I imagine they will ask you if you have read the report."

'I replied:

'"I have read it."

'"That's what I thought I understood. It is a quite voluminous report, stuffed, I suppose, with technical detail that is not necessarily familiar to a man of the law. It would be more correct to say that you have looked through it. You no longer have the report to hand to refresh your memory. What I'm saying to you, my dear friend, is to keep you out of worse trouble than you're in now. Speak about the contents of the report, implicate people, whoever they may be -- that's none of my business, and I don't care -- and you'll be accused of making allegations you can't back up. You understand me?"'

*

Both Maigret and Point are conspiracists, in the way that most thoughtful people are. They have abundant evidence for the existence of serial conspiracies, even a culture of conspiracy, within the corrupt edifice of politics, media and capital. But they don't have full visibility of any of these conspiracies and their allegations, should they ever become specific, are "groundless". 

*

From Bill Alder's book Maigret, Simenon and France (2013), p. 159:

[Maigret] distrusts politicians: although Auguste Point, the government minister of Maigret chez le ministre (1954), is himself an honest man (and, perhaps significantly, from the conservative heartland of the Vendée), the bourgeois democracy of the Fourth Republic is seen as a dirty business, symbolized by the ambitious and corrupt député Mascoulin. In this, Maigret's view seems to reflect that of his creator:

In Maigret chez le ministre ... we discover the moral that can be drawn throughout the whole of Simenon's writings concerning political activity ... An honest man cannot engage in a political career without risking the worst. The lesson is a hard one and it is probably for this reason that the minister and the commissaire "had the same heavy sad look, the same hunching of their shoulders" [Gallot, 1999, 211, cited in Baronian et al., 2004-2007, "Le film dans le texte," 49].

*

The French text of Maigret chez le ministre is easily available online, but probably not legally. 

*

You can watch the Michael Gambon TV episode "Maigret and the Minister" online, if you can tolerate thirty seconds of adverts every four minutes. It first aired in April 1993. It has some deft moments, but its alterations (e.g. the character of the minister, the report is published, Mascoulin is exposed) sacrifice the essence of Simenon's moral fable.  

There are other TV versions: an earlier British one (Rupert Davies, 1962, now part of a Blueray set), two French ones (Jean Richard 1987, Bruno Crémer 2002), a Japanese one (1978), and a Soviet one (1987).