A tray with a single card on it, one corner turned down

Passages from The Late Monsieur Gallet by Georges Simenon.

Describing the weather.

The village was glaring white in the stormy light of that late afternoon. Chickens and geese crossed the main road, and fifty metres away two men in aprons were shoeing a horse.

A France so near in time but so long gone.

Two items from Simenon's description of Maigret calling at a home in mourning.

Maigret had not expected so much pomp and ceremony. To the left, in the corridor, there was a tray with a single card on it, one corner turned down, from the Mayor of Saint- Fargeau.

[snip]

Maigret moved forward in silence, dipped a sprig of box into holy water and sprinkled the water over the coffin.

The first line sparks a memory of there being significance in the markings of calling cards, as in this instance of the corner turned down. Some googling turns up:

Special significance was given to the turning down of the card’s corners:

A visit in person (as opposed to being sent by a servant): the right hand upper corner
A congratulatory visit: the left hand upper corner
A condolence visit: the left hand lower corner
Taking leave (if you were going on a long trip): right hand lower corner
If there were two or more ladies in the household, the gentleman turned down a corner of the card to indicate that the call was designed for the whole family.

So in this instance Simenon is telling his readers (in the 1930s) that the Mayor had called in person, that those in mourning were of sufficient status for the Mayor to call upon them in person. To a reader in 2014, that social norm is so long gone that the author's message may not convey any meaning.

And the sprig of box? Apparently an old French funerary custom. From page 71 of Funeral Ceremonies in France, 1851, describing a priest officiating at a funeral. .

. . . sometimes the whole concludes, after another sprinkling of holy water on the coffin. The sprig of yew or box, which he had used as the sprinkler, is passed from one to the other of a few of the nearest friends , who each successively advance to the grave, sprinkling the remaining drops of water towards the departed one - a sad and affecting mode of bidding the last adieus.

Here's another long lost practice. Maigret is investigating a murder out in a small resort town in the country.

The sergeant from the gendarmerie must have formed a seductive idea that morning of the kind of life led by a police officer from Paris. He himself had been up at four in the morning and had already cycled some thirty kilometres, first in the early-morning cold, then in increasingly hot sunlight, when he reached the Hotel de la Loire for the periodic check carried out on the register of its guests.

Still no cars for policemen in the 1930s then. And for anyone who has been on bicycling camping trips, you know exactly what Simenon is talking about regarding the morning cold and hot sunlight.

But it is the periodic check of registers that is arresting. I am old enough to recall travelling in Europe in the 1960s and occasionally having hotels require that you leave your passport with them while checked in, though the practice must have been antiquated even then. But the idea of a local police officer making the rounds and checking the registers of local hotels? It must have been the practice, but what a different time.