FBI

The FBI enters the case as a distant but consequential source of verification. Near the close of Maigret’s investigation, a call to Clark in Washington connects the Paris murder inquiry with Julius Van Cram’s American record and with money concealed in Brooklyn. The contact helps establish what happened to Van Cram and where the remaining funds may be, but the novel distinguishes carefully between facts confirmed during the call and recoveries that are only expected to follow.

A Cross-Border Point of Contact

Maigret asks what time it is in Washington and calculates that a priority call will not go through until nearly nine in the morning there. He instructs his colleague to ask for the FBI and to try to reach Clark if Clark is available. The wait is expected to take time: Maigret removes his coat and hat, puts them away, and tells the others to settle in. The details make the contact feel like a practical extension of the inquiry, shaped by distance and the time difference rather than by any dramatic intervention from abroad.

When Clark is reached, the exchange is personal as well as official. Maigret has not seen him for several years, and their conversation moves between Maigret’s poor English and Clark’s poor French, each trying to speak the other’s language. That imperfect bilingual exchange is the channel through which the Paris detective checks the American information. The FBI’s role in this episode is therefore concrete but bounded: Clark is the contact who can help confirm a trail, while Maigret supplies the names and questions that make the confirmation possible.

Confirming Van Cram’s Identity and Fate

Before Clark understands the purpose of the call, Maigret recites the succession of names associated with Julius Van Cram: Lemke, Stieb, Ziegler, Marek, Spangler, and Donley, among others. The aliases turn the call into a check against a deliberately shifting identity. The decisive confirmation is that Van Cram had been buried under the name Donley a month earlier in Sing Sing Penitentiary, where he had been serving an eight-year sentence for fraud.

This answer closes one line of uncertainty in the investigation. The man whose many names had made his history difficult to follow is no longer simply missing from the chain of events: the American information identifies the name under which he was buried, the institution where he died, and the sentence he was serving. The call does not, however, resolve every consequence of his past. When Maigret asks whether the money was found, the answer is that only a little of it had been recovered. The distinction matters: identification and death are established, but the disposition of the larger sum remains open.

The Brooklyn Money and Its Intended Recipient

Maigret explains that the money is in Brooklyn with a Polish tailor named Lukasek, who may not know what he is holding. Lukasek has been instructed to give the package to a young woman named Louise Laboine. In the context of the call, this information links the concealed money not only to Van Cram’s history but also to the dead woman at the center of the Paris case. Maigret can tell Clark that Louise will not come for it: she died in Paris that week.

The FBI’s anticipated role in what follows is described as a likely outcome, not a completed recovery. Maigret expects that the FBI will find the dollars and return them to a banker to whom they belonged, or perhaps to an insurance company if the banker had insured against the theft. He also predicts that Lukasek will go to jail for acting as a go-between. These consequences remain prospective at the time of the conversation; the text does not say that the money has already been found or returned.

What the Call Resolves—and What It Cannot Undo

The call gives the case an international reach without shifting its emotional center away from Louise. It confirms Van Cram’s final identity and fate, places the money in Brooklyn, and identifies the person meant to receive it. Yet the information arrives too late to benefit her. The intended recipient is dead, and the package’s route now points toward recovery and legal consequences rather than the help it might have offered her.

The aftermath also extends beyond the immediate question of the dollars. Maigret believes Jimmy O’Malley may be sent back to Sing Sing for acting as a go-between instead of seeing his daughter married in Baltimore. That, too, is presented as a probability rather than a settled result. The FBI’s part in the ending is thus both investigative and consequential: its connection to Clark makes American confirmation available, while the facts disclosed on the call reveal how a concealed fortune, a chain of assumed names, and Louise’s death converge. The institution can help trace what remains; it cannot reverse the fact that the money was meant for someone who will never claim it.