What the veteran Paris police officer is patient about is a series of jewel robberies that has been going on for years.The break comes with the murder of a wheelchair-bound suspected criminal, whom Maigret has, also patiently, kept under observation. Palmari may have been in a wheelchair, but Maigret suspected him of still being involved in criminal activity, perhaps even those robberies.
Interviews with the murdered man had been vital just weeks earlier, as told in the previous novel, when Maigret, against orders, investigated unfounded accusations of sexual misconduct against himself. There are many references to the earlier novel in this one.
This case is something like a locked room mystery. Aline, the young woman who cared for Palmari, had gone out, and both she and the building itself were under close police observation. Nobody has gone in or out. Other residents seem to have had no connection with either Palmari or Aline. The man had been killed with his own gun.
Maigret soon gets to the bottom of things, perhaps regretting his patience when a second body is discovered in the building.
All these years after they were written, Simenon's short mystery novels remain top-grade reading.
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