Medico-Legal Institute

The Medico-Legal Institute, formerly known as the Morgue, is the place where the murdered young woman’s body receives its formal medical examination. Its importance lies not in resolving the case by itself, but in converting an anonymous death into findings that can be tested and carried back into the investigation. The examination establishes a cause of death, identifies traces that may point toward a struggle, and records details of the woman’s past, while leaving both the killer’s identity and the precise weapon uncertain.

Institutional Setting and Arrival

After the photographs have been taken at the scene, a doctor is able to turn the body over and examine the face. The first medical assessment identifies a skull fracture and reports that the young woman was struck several times, with a heavy object among the possible causes. The estimated time of death is between two and three in the morning, though the doctor leaves a more exact determination to the post-mortem. These preliminary findings establish the immediate questions for the investigation without pretending to settle them.

A van from the Institute arrives to transport the body. Maigret authorizes its removal, and later goes to the Institute, which he knows Janvier means when he asks whether he is going there. At half-past four, Maigret and Janvier enter; Dr. Paul has just arrived and is preparing for the post-mortem. The movement from the outdoor discovery to the Institute marks a change in the inquiry: the body is no longer being assessed only at the scene, but is now subject to a more sustained examination.

The Post-Mortem and Its Findings

Maigret and Janvier wait while Dr. Paul works. Their discomfort and the passage of three quarters of an hour make the examination a consequential interval in the investigation, even though the narrative withholds its details. When the door opens, the body is no longer visible; an employee is closing one of the metal drawers used to store corpses. Dr. Paul then gives Maigret his findings, separating what he can establish from what remains conjectural.

The post-mortem confirms that death resulted from a skull fracture and that the woman received at least three forceful blows. Dr. Paul cannot identify the weapon: it may have been a tool or another heavy, hard object. That uncertainty matters. The Institute supplies a medical account of the injuries, not a definitive reconstruction of the assault. The number and force of the blows sharpen the picture of the death, but the evidence does not name the object or the person who wielded it.

Dr. Paul also finds dark wool fibers beneath the victim’s fingernails. He interprets them as evidence that she fell to her knees and tried to cling to someone, and he considers it likely that the material came from a man’s clothing. He sends the fibers to the laboratory. The physical trace therefore offers a possible connection between the victim and another person, but it does not, on its own, identify that person or prove whose clothing the fibers came from. The Institute’s contribution is both significant and bounded: it gives the investigation a sample to pursue while preserving the distinction between observation and inference.

What the Examination Can Establish

The examination reaches beyond the immediate cause of death. Dr. Paul studies the woman’s hands and concludes that she had done some housework, though not much, and was neither a typist nor a dressmaker. He also identifies evidence of an appendectomy performed three or four years earlier by what he calls a second-rate surgeon. These observations provide fragments of a former life, but they do not amount to an identity. The Institute can describe signs carried by the body; it cannot make those signs tell a full personal history without further investigation.

This distinction between medical evidence and personal identification gives the location a particular role in the case. The Institute confirms the violence of the death and records clues that may be compared with other evidence, yet the woman remains unnamed at this stage. Later, photographs provide a different kind of investigative knowledge: one image presents her as she might have appeared on the evening before her death, rather than as Maigret saw her in the rain or on the Institute’s marble slab. The contrast makes clear that a medical examination and a likeness answer different questions. One establishes physical findings; the other may help someone recognize the person behind them.

Place in the Investigation

The Institute is not shown as a source of certainty about every question Maigret faces. Dr. Paul promises a fuller report in the morning, and the initial examination itself leaves the weapon unresolved. Even its useful findings require further steps: the fibers must be sent for laboratory analysis, and the details about the woman’s hands and past health must be interpreted alongside evidence gathered elsewhere. The Institute supplies a disciplined starting point for those inquiries, rather than a complete solution.

Its narrative significance comes from this measured transition between the anonymous body and the developing case. The young woman first appears as someone found dead in a public place; at the Institute, the cause and circumstances of her death become more legible, though her name and history do not immediately follow. The metal drawer, the post-mortem, and the provisional findings all mark a process of investigation in which evidence accumulates in pieces. The Institute makes those pieces available to Maigret, while the gaps between them remain the work of the wider inquiry.