[Henry Gastonard makes an urgent appeal to Jules Farman, of the Rue du
Quatre Septembre, Paris.]
4, The Walk, Hampstead,
October 11th, 1905.
Dear M. Farman,--Your response to my urgent telegram that you should
leave Paris and come to me immediately, brings the reply that you
cannot leave until to-morrow. I am therefore writing you this letter
with what composure I can in the face of this dreadful event, that you
may be in possession of all the facts before you leave Paris, and able
to deal with them there, if they are of service to you.
It was at nine o’clock last Sunday night that I first discovered the
crime which had been committed in my house. I had been absent, perhaps
the best part of an hour, making a call upon a friend who desired to
consult me upon a French picture he purchased recently. We returned
from Brighton upon the previous afternoon, my wife apparently having
overcome those hallucinations which have troubled her for some weeks
past, and being quite reconciled to the prospect of a continued
residence at Hampstead. She was in no way unhappy at the thought of
being alone, nor did I have any scruples about leaving her. My
suspicions were first awakened when I discovered that my friend had
not written to me at all, and that the letter which I received from
him was a clever but undoubted forgery.
You may imagine with what haste I went back to Hampstead. I had left
my wife at the piano in the sitting-room, where, the weather being
chilly, a bright fire burned; but I perceived immediately I approached
the house that it was in darkness, although a glimmer upon the blind
still spoke of the firelight. This alarmed me greatly. I tried to open
the front door with my latchkey, but found that the bolt had been
slipped. A loud knock and ring obtained no answer. I was now seriously
alarmed, as you may suppose, and being determined to obtain instant
admittance to the house, I smashed the large pane of glass in the
sitting-room, and entered without further delay.
I have told you that I left my wife in this room, seated at the piano
in the further corner near the French window by which you pass out to
the garden. That she had been called away without warning was proved
by the fact that one of the candles still guttered in its socket,
though too faintly to give any light, and that the sheet of music lay
upon the floor, indicating that she had been turning the very page
when the summons came to her. Save for the fact that the fire burned
low and that the electric light was switched off, there was nothing
else in this place to excite suspicion. I called my wife loudly by
name, going to the window and hoping to find her in the garden. She
did not answer me. I returned to the hall, and immediately discovered
the body of the man.
Some of the newspapers, I remember, say that he was a Spaniard. I
should pronounce him nothing of the kind, but one of your own
countrymen who had lived long in the South. When I found him he was
quite dead, and had fallen forward upon a wicker seat at the foot of
the stairs. To this, perhaps, he had staggered after the blow was
struck. I could not at the first detect any mark upon his body, nor
did I wish to believe that he was dead; but, running out into the
street to give the alarm, I sent one of my neighbours for the police,
another for a doctor. The latter told us the worst immediately. The
man had been struck down by a heavy implement; his skull had been
fractured, and he was dead.
It is not my intention, in such a letter as this, to dwell upon my own
state of mind at such a moment, or to relate to you the trivial
incidents of such a momentous hour. My wife’s disappearance, the
evidence of a conflict in the hall, the wild tales told by the
neighbours, were but the first fruits of a tragedy which paralysed my
faculties. To all their questions I could give only the vaguest
answers. I told them that I knew nothing of the wretched man who had
been struck down in my house; I could give them no clue as to the
purpose of his visit. I had never seen him before, did not know him,
could not imagine any business which should bring him to my house.
To the police I confessed Madame Mimi’s story of men who watched her
and of vague fears which had haunted her. They pressed me for
particulars more minute, and I could not answer them. Nor did I
perceive their drift then as I perceive it now. They believe,
incredible as the supposition is, that the murdered man had been one
of my wife’s lovers in Paris, that he visited her secretly, and that
for some reason at present undisclosed she has murdered him.
I must tell you the plain truth: I can keep nothing from you. London
speaks of little else than this appalling crime; nor am I sure that
the voice of popular opinion does not agree with the cruel assumptions
of those officially in charge of this case.
I have, my dear Farman, been associated with you in much that concerns
my private life, and always in the cause of one dear to me and to whom
my happiness is for ever linked. You will imagine my situation this
day in England. I am alone in my house, and there is a hue and cry in
the streets for the woman I love more than anything on earth. I can
say nothing to which the world will listen in her defence. My letter
to the newspapers is printed by some, by others withheld as
indiscreet. The police themselves but repeat a parrot’s tale--“The man
came to the house; he was my wife’s lover; he was killed by her,
aided, it may be, by some of the disreputable friends she knew in
Paris and who are now hiding her for their own ends.”
Admit, my friend, the preposterous nature of this assumption. You have
known the child that the Butte called Mimi La Godiche. Is not her
whole story a refutation of this calumny most base? Did she not guard
her virtue in a circle where the very name of virtue has long been
forgotten? Were not her gentleness, her charity, her forbearance the
wonder even of the outcasts among whom she was thrown? And this child
is now charged with a lover and with his murder! Oh, monstrous, I say!
most monstrous and damnable, as I will presently prove to them.
In a common way, I have now no right to speak of fortune; but I have
been saving of my resources, and still possess a few thousand pounds
of my own, every penny of which goes to the purpose of my wife’s
vindication. If others fail, I will find her. If these vigilant police
cannot track her down, I will do so, going by night and day to my task
until the truth is known and justice accomplished. Be you my friend in
this, I beg of you. By all that is of old association and friendship,
stand by me now and bring your magnificent resources to my aid.
I should tell you that the murdered man was apparently forty years of
age, small of stature, with a trimmed black beard and a wealth of
black hair slightly speckled with grey. He was very well dressed,
apparently a man of the world--but there is nothing on the body to
tell us who he was nor any clue as yet to his identity. Cross to
London, I beg of you, and help us to identify him. Our work will begin
when that is done; it cannot begin before.
So I repeat, come without delay to a man whose friends stand apart
from him but whose faith is unshaken.
Henry Gastonard.