I would recommend using Email::Folder (Or one of its relatives) to access the collection of e-mails rather than doing it yourself like that:

use Email::Folder;
my $dir = ".";
my $folder = Email::Folder->new($dir);
foreach my $message ( @{$folder->messages()})
{
    print $message->body();
}
[download]

(Untested as I don't have a maildir delivery)

/J\