A retired manufacturer is found murdered with his own pistol in his favorite armchair, shattering the tranquility of a quiet Paris community. The neighbors describe the Josselin household as a bastion of bourgeois compatibility, and Inspector Maigret is stymied by the absence of motive and by the reticence of the bereaved wife. It is not until a chance witness recalls an odd encounter between the deceased and a man in a bistro that the veil of propriety protecting the killer begins to dissolve. Maigret suspects that he’s not being given all the facts in this case as he is drawn deeper into the complex web of family dramas and lies at the heart of it. In , he must rely on his famous intuition above all to uncover the shocking truth.