Albert Falconi and Bianchi

Albert Falconi and Bianchi are criminal collaborators whose plan turns Louise Laboine’s letter into an opportunity to take money hidden in the United States. Albert brings the letter to Bianchi for help; together they wait for Louise at Pickwick’s Bar and attempt to seize her handbag. The operation is meant to secure her identity documents for a substitution scheme, but it ends with Louise dead. Their relationship is revealed not through a sustained account of their lives but through the operational details Albert discloses under Maigret’s questioning: Bianchi supplies criminal expertise and takes direct action, while Albert is implicated in the plan and its concealment.

How the Partnership Emerges

Albert’s connection to Bianchi becomes explicit when Maigret asks whom he consulted. Albert first hesitates, then admits that he showed the letter to a pal and identifies Bianchi. The exchange establishes more than acquaintance: Albert has brought a document central to the scheme to someone he trusts to help carry it out. The letter’s importance lies in the possibility of obtaining the money Louise was meant to collect, and Albert does not approach Bianchi as a casual recipient of information but as a collaborator.

Bianchi’s standing gives the partnership a criminal context. Maigret knows him as a suspected leader of the Corsican gang and says he has arrested him at least ten times, though only once managed to have him jailed, for five years. That history does not by itself establish every detail of Bianchi’s association with the gang, but it explains why Maigret treats his involvement as consequential. Albert’s appeal to Bianchi connects the letter’s financial opportunity to a practiced criminal network and to someone Maigret already regards as difficult to bring to justice.

The Plan for Louise’s Identity

The scheme depends on more than stealing cash directly. Maigret reasons that Bianchi could not send just anyone to the United States to approach Lukasek and ask for the money: the man holding it would likely have instructions and would demand proof of the claimant’s identity. The address Albert recalls, 1214 Thirty-seventh Street, anchors this practical part of the plan in a specific destination. According to Maigret’s reconstruction, the collaborators therefore wait until Louise comes to Pickwick’s Bar, where they can obtain her identity card.

The intended next step is substitution. Once they have Louise’s identification, the men expect to secure a passport for a female accomplice who could pose as her and claim the money. This makes Louise’s identity, rather than the letter alone, the essential instrument of the fraud. Bianchi is present in the bar, and Albert confirms that their plan concerns taking the handbag. The evidence presents the operation as organized around a sequence—secure the documents, arrange a substitute, and send that substitute to collect the money—rather than an improvised theft for immediate gain.

The Attempt and Its Fatal Reversal

Maigret’s questioning establishes that Bianchi personally takes part in the attempt. He and his companion drive past Louise; Bianchi gets out as she comes level with the car and grabs for the handbag. Its chain is twisted around Louise’s wrist, so the intended snatch does not proceed as expected. When she falls and tries to call for help, Bianchi strikes her and then uses a blackjack. Louise is killed in the attack.

Albert says that they did not mean to kill her, and Maigret accepts that this was not the original objective. That distinction does not lessen their responsibility for the plan or its outcome: they had arranged to intercept Louise and take the bag, and Bianchi’s attempt to do so escalated into fatal violence. The chain that connects the bag to Louise frustrates the simple theft the men appear to have anticipated and becomes the point at which their scheme changes irreversibly. Their objective may have been the identity card and the money beyond it, but the consequence is Louise’s death and the destruction of the very opportunity they were trying to exploit.

Exposure and the Limits of the Alliance

The partnership also depends on concealment. Albert has invented a story about a second American, Maigret establishes, in order to get Lognon out of the way. The false lead shows Albert actively managing what the police know, and Maigret’s question ties that deception to the practical need to protect the operation. Albert’s willingness to misdirect the investigation demonstrates that his role extends beyond introducing Bianchi to the letter: he helps shield their actions after the plan has gone wrong.

The account nevertheless gives Bianchi the clearest direct role in the attack, while Albert’s precise actions at the scene remain unspecified. It does not establish who drove the car, or give a full account of how the two men coordinated before or after the killing. Nor does it describe the partnership’s longer history or eventual fate. What it does establish is a functional alliance: Albert brings the letter and participates in the effort to exploit it; Bianchi contributes the criminal plan, is present at Pickwick’s Bar, and makes the attempt on Louise’s bag. Their method depends on Louise remaining an instrument of the scheme, first as the source of valid identity documents and then as a person to be impersonated. Her death exposes the human cost of that calculation and brings their covert arrangement into the open.