M. de Presles, the examining magistrate in charge of the Court at
Brives, had just arrived at the château of Beaulieu, having been
notified of the tragedy by the police sergeant stationed at Saint-Jaury.
The magistrate was a young, fashionable, and rather aristocratic man of
the world, whose grievance it was to be tied down to work that was
mechanical rather than intellectual. He was essentially modern in his
ideas, and his chief ambition was to get away as quickly as possible
from the small provincial town to which he had been exiled by the
changes and chances of promotion; he was sick of Brives, and now it
occurred to him that a crime like this present one would give him an
opportunity of displaying his gifts of intuition and deduction, prove
his quality, and so might enable him to get another appointment. After
Dollon had received him at the château, the magistrate had first of all
made enquiry as to who was in the house at the time. From the
information given him he was satisfied that it was unnecessary to
subject either Thérèse or Charles Rambert to immediate examination, both
of the young people being much too upset to be able to reply to serious
questions, and both having been taken away to the house of the Baronne
de Vibray. It was, also, clear that M. Rambert senior, who had only
arrived after the crime, could not furnish any interesting information.
"Tell me exactly how you discovered the crime, M. Dollon," he said as,
pale and trembling, the steward accompanied him along the corridor to
the scene of the murder.
"I went this morning as usual, sir," the steward replied, "to say good
morning to Mme. de Langrune and receive her orders for the day. I
knocked at her door as I always did, but got no answer. I knocked
louder, but still there was no answer. I don't know why I opened the
door instead of going away; perhaps I had some kind of presentiment. Oh,
I shall never forget the shock I had when I saw my poor dear mistress
lying dead at the foot of her bed, steeped in blood, and with such a
horrible gash in her throat that for a moment I thought her head was
severed from the trunk."
The police sergeant corroborated the steward's story.
"The murder certainly was committed with peculiarly horrible violence,
sir," he remarked. "The body shows that the victim was struck with the
utmost fury. The murderer must have gone mad over the corpse from sheer
lust of blood. The wounds are shocking."
"Knife wounds?" M. de Presles asked.
"I don't know," said the sergeant uncertainly. "Your worship can form
your own opinion."
The magistrate followed the steward into the room where Dollon had taken
care that nothing was touched.
In its furniture and general arrangement Mme. de Langrune's room
corresponded with the character of the old lady. It was large, and
quietly furnished with old presses, arm-chairs, chairs and old-fashioned
tables. It was evident that she had had no liking for modern fashions,
but had preferred to have her own room stamped with the rather severe,
yet very comfortable character of former days.
The whole of one side of the room was filled by the Marquise's bed. It
was large, and raised upon a kind of dais covered with a carpet of
subdued tones. At the foot of the bed, on the right, was a large window,
fastened half open despite the keen cold, no doubt for hygienic reasons.
In the middle of the room was a round mahogany table with a few small
articles upon it, a blotting-pad, books and so on. In one corner a large
crucifix was suspended from the wall with a prie-Dieu in front of it,
the velvet of which had been worn white by the old lady's knees.
Finally, a little further away, was a small escritoire, half open now,
with its drawers gaping and papers scattered on the floor.
There were only two ways of ingress into the room: one by the door
through which the magistrate had entered, which opened on to the main
corridor on the first floor, and the other by a door communicating with
the Marquise's dressing-room; this dressing-room was lighted by a large
window, which was shut.
The magistrate was shocked by the spectacle presented by the corpse of
the Marquise. It was lying on its back on the floor, with the arms
extended; the head was towards the bed, the feet towards the window. The
body was almost naked. A gash ran almost right across the throat,
leaving the bones exposed. Torrents of blood had saturated the victim's
clothes, and on the carpet round the body a wide stain was still slowly
spreading wider.