The Two-Penny Bar

The Two-Penny Bar (Fr. La Guinguette à deux sous, "the two-penny guinguette") is a detective novel by Belgian writer Georges Simenon, featuring his character Inspector Jules Maigret.

Maigret visits a condemned man is prison who tells him that six years earlier he had witnessed a body being dumped it in the Canal Saint-Martin. Maigret's investigations bring him to a "two-penny bar" on the Seine at Morsang. A man is shot outside the bar and the suspect escapes police custody. Now Maigret has two deaths to investigate. He discovers a story of blackmail, adultery and financial ruin before the killers confess.

The novel has been twice translated into English and twice filmed.

Maigret visits a prisoner awaiting execution. The prisoner tells him that six years ago he and a friend witnessed a stranger dumping a body in the Canal Saint-Martin. They blackmailed him for two years then lost track of him. He says that he saw the man again three months ago at a "guinguette à deux sous" ("two-penny bar").

Maigret later overhears a man saying that he is going to a party at the Two-Penny Bar. Maigret follows him and discovers that he is a wealthy coal dealer named Basso who is having an affair. Basso eventually leads him to a party at an inn on the Seine at Morsang. Basso, his wife and young son are at the party. So is a man named Feinstein and his wife. Maigret realises that Feinstein's wife is the woman he saw with Basso. A shot is fired and Maigret discovers the dying Feinstein. Basso is holding a gun but swears he didn’t shoot Feinstein.

Basso is arrested but escapes. James, a friend of Basso, knows where Basso is hiding. He borrows a friend's car and takes Basso's wife and son to Basso's hideout.

Maigret discovers that the man whose body was dumped six years earlier was a Jewish money lender named Ulrich. Feinstein owed Ulrich 32,000 francs just before Ulrich disappeared. Maigret visits Mrs Feinstein and finds James there. She confesses that James was her lover six years previously, but she now loves Basso and plans to marry him. Maigret later discovers that Basso had known Ulrich about 15 years earlier.

A policeman discovers the Basso family's hideout by chance. Maigret questions Basso who explains that he killed Feinstein accidentally. Feinstein had asked him for money and threatened to shoot himself. When Basso wrestled the gun from him, it went off. Maigret asks him if he killed Ulrich. Basso breaks down, saying he loves his wife and son and regrets his affair with Feinstein's wife. He says that he borrowed money from Ulrich twelve years ago but did not kill him.

Maigret takes James to see Basso in his police cell. James is distressed to see his friend suspected of the murder of Ulrich. James confesses to the murder, explaining that he had borrowed money from Ulrich to pay the expenses of his affair with Mrs Feinstein. When Ulrich demanded his repayments, James killed him.

Simenon describes Maigret's view of the turning point in an investigation; where it goes from a frustrating search for any lead at all, to the point where they start to come thick and fast.

He also describes an investigation as a matter of painstaking labour and good luck; how after instigating a county-wide search for a suspect, he was eventually found when an off-duty policeman became suspicious of an old woman buying 22f worth of ham, far more than she would need for herself.^[1]

The book has been translated twice into English: In 1940, by Geoffrey Sainsbury (and reprinted variously as "Maigret to the Rescue", "A Spot by the Seine", and "Maigret and the Tavern by the Seine") and in 2003 by David Watson as "The Bar on the Seine" (reprinted in 2015 as "The Two-Penny Bar").^[2]

The story has been dramatized twice; in 1962 as The Wedding Guest (with Rupert Davies in the main role), and in 1975 as La Guinguette à deux sous (Jean Richard).^[3]

• Georges Simenon The Two-Penny Bar (1931; translated G Sainsbury, reprinted 2014) Penguin Classics, London ISBN 9780141977935

• Guinguette a Deux Sous: plot summary at trussel.com