An anonymous note to the police reports that a body has been burnt in the furnace of the bookbinder, Frans Steuvels, on the Rue de Turenne. Preliminary investigations turn up suspicious details, and two human teeth are found in the furnace, of a man who'd been alive not long before. Steuvels is held in custody. Meanwhile Mrs. Maigret has had a strange experience while waiting for her dentist appointment. A woman she had often met on the bench while waiting, with a young child, suddenly leaves the child in Mrs. Maigret's care and disappears for over an hour, returning to take the child and disappearing without explanation.
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By coincidence, it seems the two cases are related. A woman matching her description had been seen in Steuvels' wife Fernande Steuvels' hometown, and probably sent the telegram which lured her away the day of the alleged crime. Maigret discovers that one of the men with the woman was Steuvels' brother, Alfred Moss, and Mrs. Maigret discovers that the hat had been bought by the elderly Countess Panetti, who has also disappeared. The woman fits the description of her maid, Gloria Lotti. Maigret finds the house where Moss had been living, and realized that Moss had seen a magazine with Mrs. Maigret's picture in it on the day everyone disappeared. Moss had gotten his brother involved in a passport forging scheme, and they'd met every week when Fernande was doing the laundry. Countess Panetti had been murdered for her jewels, and the man in the furnace had been her ex-son-in-law, Krynker, killed by the gang's boss, known as Schwartz, at Steuvels' house.
The review of this Book prepared by Dana Samson
