Maigret has never seen anything like this in his 30-year career in the police force!
When a frightened girl, Nicole, suddenly asks for his help, he acts like a gentleman and gets the drunken daughter of the DA to safety. The next day, however, he is accused of attempted rape, and the young police prefect, whose arrogant behaviour the commissioner detests to death, puts him off duty. Maigret realizes he has fallen into a trap. But who set him up? Despite the ban, he is forced to investigate on his own. All indications are that the affair is the work of the cunning gangster Manuel Palmari, whom he has long suspected of stealing jewels from Parisian jewellery shops. The characters of the gangster Palmari and his wife Alina also appear in the loosely related novel Maigret's Patience.