Hurrying back towards the château with the sergeant, Juve ran into M. de
Presles outside the park gate. The magistrate had just arrived from
Brives in a motor-car which he had commandeered for his personal use
during the last few days.
"Well," said Juve in his quiet, measured tones, "have you heard the
news?" And as the magistrate looked at him in surprise he went on: "I
gather from your expression that you have not. Well, sir, if you will
kindly fill up a warrant we will arrest M. Charles Rambert."
Juve briefly repeated to the magistrate what the sergeant had reported
to him, and the sergeant added a few further details. The three men had
now reached the foot of the steps before the house and were about to go
up when the door of the château was opened and Dollon appeared. He
hurried towards them, with unkempt hair and haggard face, and excitedly
exclaimed:
"Didn't you meet the Ramberts? Where are they? Where are they?"
The magistrate, who was bewildered by what Juve had told him, was trying
to form a coherent idea of the whole sequence of events, but the
detective realised the situation at once, and turned to the sergeant.
"The bird has flown," he said. The sergeant threw up his hands in
dismay.
* * * * *
Inside the hall Juve and M. de Presles ordered Dollon to give them an
exact account of the discovery made by Thérèse in the course of the
previous night.
"Well, gentlemen," said the old fellow, who was greatly upset by the
discovery of the murderer of the Marquise de Langrune, "when I got to
the château early this morning I found the two old servants, Marie and
Louise, entirely occupied attending to the young mistress. Marie slept
in an adjoining room to hers last night, and was awakened about five
o'clock by the poor child's inarticulate cries. Mlle. Thérèse was bathed
in perspiration; her face was all drawn and there were dark rings under
her eyes; she was sleeping badly and evidently having a dreadful
nightmare. She half woke up several times and muttered some
unintelligible words to Marie, who thought that it was the result of
over-excitement. But about six o'clock, just as I arrived, Mlle. Thérèse
really woke up, and bursting into a fit of sobbing and crying, repeated
the names of her grandmother and the Ramberts and the Baronne de Vibray.
She kept on saying, 'The murderer! the murderer!' and making all sorts
of signs of terror, but we were not able to get from her a clear
statement of what it was all about. I felt her pulse and found she was
very feverish, and Louise prepared a cooling drink, which she persuaded
her to take. In about twenty minutes--it was then nearly half-past
six--Mlle. Thérèse quietened down, and managed to tell us what she had
heard during the night, and the dreadful interview and conversation
between M. Rambert and his son which she had seen and overheard."
"What did you do then?" enquired M. de Presles.
"I was dreadfully upset myself, sir, and I sent Jean, the coachman, to
Saint-Jaury to fetch the doctor and also to let Sergeant Doucet know.
Sergeant Doucet got here first; I told him all I knew, and then I went
upstairs with the doctor to see Mlle. Thérèse."
The magistrate turned to the police-sergeant and questioned him.
"Directly M. Dollon told me his story," the sergeant replied, "I thought
it my duty to report to M. Juve, who I knew was not far from the
château, on his way to Verrières: M. Juve told me last night that he
meant to explore that part in the early morning. I left Morand on duty
at the entrance to the château, with orders to prevent either of the
Ramberts from leaving."
"And Morand did not see them going away?" the magistrate asked.
Juve had already divined what had happened, and replied for the
sergeant.
"Morand did not see them go out for the obvious reason that they had
left long before--in the middle of the night, directly after their
altercation: in a word, before Mlle. Thérèse woke up." He turned to the
sergeant. "What has been done since then?"
"Nothing, Inspector."
"Well, sergeant," said Juve. "I imagine his worship will order you to
send out your men at once after the runaways." As a matter of courtesy
he glanced at the magistrate as if asking for his approval, but he only
did so out of politeness, for he took it for granted.
"Of course!" said the magistrate; "please do so at once." The sergeant
turned on his heel and left the hall.
"Where is Mlle. Thérèse?" M. de Presles asked Dollon, who was standing
nervously apart.
"She is sleeping quietly just now, sir," said the steward, coming
forward. "The doctor is with her, and would rather she were not
disturbed, if you have no objection."
"Very well," said the magistrate. "Leave us, please," and Dollon also
went away.
Juve and M. de Presles looked at one another. The magistrate was the
first to break the silence.
"So it is finished?" he remarked. "So this Charles Rambert is the
culprit?"
Juve shook his head.
"Charles Rambert? Well, he ought to be the culprit."
"Why that reservation?" enquired the magistrate.
"I say 'ought to be,' for all the circumstances point to that
conclusion, and yet in my bones I don't believe he is."
"Surely the presumptions of his guilt, his pseudo-confession, or at
least his silence in face of his father's formal accusation, may make us
sure he is," said M. de Presles.
"There are some presumptions in favour of his innocence too," Juve
replied, but with a slight hesitation.
The magistrate pressed his point.
"Your investigations formally demonstrated the fact that the crime was
committed by some person who was inside the house."
"Possibly," said Juve, "but not certainly. The probabilities do not
allow us to assert it as a fact."
"Explain yourself."
"Not so fast, sir," Juve replied, and getting up he added: "There is
nothing for us to do here, sir; shall we go up to the room Charles
Rambert occupied?"
M. de Presles followed the detective, and the two men went into the
room, which was as plainly furnished as that of any young girl. The
magistrate installed himself comfortably in an easy chair and lighted a
cigar, while Juve walked up and down, scrutinising everything with
quick, sharp glances, and began to talk:
"I said 'not so fast' just now, sir, and I will tell you why: in my
opinion there are two preliminary points in this affair which it is
important to clear up: the nature of the crime, and the motive which can
have actuated the criminal. Let us take up these two points, and first
of all ask ourselves how the murder of the Marquise de Langrune ought to
be 'classified' in the technical sense. The first conclusion which must
be impressed upon the mind of any observant person who has visited the
scene of the crime and examined the corpse of the victim is, that this
murder must be placed in the category of crapulous crimes. The murderer
seems to have left the implicit mark of his character upon his victim;
the very violence of the blows dealt shows that he is a man of the lower
orders, a typical criminal, a professional."
"What do you deduce that from?" M. de Presles enquired.
"Simply from the nature of the wound. You saw it, as I did. Mme. de
Langrune's throat was almost entirely severed by the blade of some
cutting instrument. The breadth and depth of the wound absolutely prove
that it was not made with one stroke; the murderer must have gone amok
and dealt several blows--have gone on striking even when death had
finished his work, or at least was quite inevitable; that shows clearly
that the murderer belongs to a class of individuals who feel no
repugnance for their horrid work, but who kill without horror, and even
without excitement. Again, the nature of the wound shows that the
murderer is a strong man; you no doubt know that weak men with feeble
muscles strike 'deep' by choice, that is to say with a pointed weapon
and aiming at a vital organ, whereas powerful murderers have a
predilection for blows dealt 'superficially,' and for broad, ghastly
wounds. Besides, that is only following a natural law; a weak man
finesses with death, tries to make sure of it at some precise point,
penetrating the heart or severing an artery; a brutal man does not care
where he hits, but trusts to his own brute strength to achieve his
purpose.
"We have next to determine the sort of weapon with which the murder was
committed. We have not got it, at any rate up to the present; I have
given orders for the drains to be emptied, and the pond to be dragged
and the shrubberies to be searched, but, whether our search is crowned
with success or not, I am convinced that the instrument was a knife, one
of those common knives with a catch lock that apaches always carry. If
the murderer had had a weapon whose point was its principal danger, he
would have stabbed, and stabbed to the heart, instead of cutting; but he
used the edge, the part of a knife that is most habitually used, and he
actually cut. When the first wound was made he did not strike anywhere
else, but continued working away at the wound and enlarging it. It is a
point of capital importance that this murder was committed with a knife,
not with a dagger or stiletto, and therefore this is a crapulous crime."
"And what conclusion do you draw from the fact that the crime is a
crapulous one?" the magistrate proceeded to enquire.
"Merely that it cannot have been committed by Charles Rambert," Juve
answered very gravely. "He is a young man who has been well brought up,
he comes of very good stock, and his age makes it most improbable that
he can be a professional criminal."
"Obviously, obviously!" murmured the magistrate, not a little
embarrassed by the keen logic of the detective.
"And now let us consider the motive or motives of the crime," Juve
continued. "Why did the man commit this murder?"
"Doubtless for purposes of robbery," said the magistrate.
"What did he want to steal?" Juve retorted. "As a matter of fact, Mme.
de Langrune's diamond rings and watch and purse were all found on her
table, in full view of everybody; in the drawers that had been broken
open I found other jewels, over twenty pounds in gold and silver, and
three bank-notes in a card-case. What is your view, sir, of a crapulous
robber who sees valuables like that within his reach, and who does not
take them?"
"It is certainly surprising," the magistrate admitted.
"Very surprising; and goes to show that although the crime in itself is
a common, sordid one, the criminal may have had higher, or at any rate
different, aspirations from those which would lead an ordinary ruffian
to commit murder for the sake of robbery. The age and social position
and personality of Mme. de Langrune make it very unlikely that she had
enemies, or was the object of vengeance, and therefore if she was got
rid of, it was very likely that she might be robbed--but robbed of what?
Was there something more important than money or jewels to be got? I
frankly admit that although I put the question I am at a loss how to
answer it."
"Obviously," murmured the magistrate again, still more puzzled by all
these logical deductions.
Juve proceeded with the development of his ideas.
"And now suppose we are face to face with a crime committed without any
motive, as a result of some morbid impulse, a by no means uncommon
occurrence, monomania or temporary insanity?
"In that case, although, in consequence of the crapulous nature of the
crime, I had previously dismissed the very serious presumption of guilt
attaching to young Rambert, I should be inclined to reconsider my
opinion and think it possible that he might be the culprit. We know very
little about the young fellow from the physiological point of view; in
fact we don't know him at all; but it seems that his family is not
altogether normal, and I understand that his mother's mental condition
is precarious. If for a moment we regard Charles Rambert as a
hysterical subject, we can associate him with the murder of the Marquise
de Langrune without thereby destroying our case that the crime is a
crapulous one, for a man of only medium physical strength, when
suffering from an attack of mental alienation, has his muscular power
increased at least tenfold during his paroxysms. Under such influence as
that Charles Rambert might have committed murder with all the fierce
brutality of a giant!
"But I shall soon be in possession of absolutely accurate knowledge as
to the muscular strength of the murderer," Juve proceeded. "Quite lately
M. Bertillon invented a marvellous dynamometer which enables us not only
to ascertain what kind of lever has been used to force a lock or a piece
of furniture, but also to determine the exact strength of the individual
who used the tools. I have taken samples of the wood from the broken
drawer, and I shall soon have exact information."
"That will be immensely important," M. de Presles agreed. "Even if it
does away with our present certainty of Charles Rambert's guilt, we
shall be able to find out whether the murder was committed by any other
occupant of the house--still assuming that it was committed by some
member of the household."
"With regard to that," said Juve, "we can proceed with our method of
deduction and eliminate from our field of observation everybody who has
a good alibi or other defence; it will be so much ground cleared. For my
own part I find it impossible to suspect the two old maidservants,
Louise and Marie; the tramps whom we have detained and subsequently
released are too simple-minded, elementary people to have been capable
of devising the minute precautions which demonstrate the subtle
cleverness of the man who murdered the Marquise. Then there is Dollon;
but I imagine you will agree with me in thinking that his alibi removes
him from suspicion--more especially as the medical evidence proves that
the murder was committed during the night, between two and three
o'clock."
"Only M. Etienne Rambert is left," the magistrate put in, "and about
nine o'clock that evening he left the d'Orsay station in the slow train
which reaches Verrières at 6.55 A.M. He spent the whole night in the
train, for he certainly arrived by that one. He could not have a better
alibi."
"Not possibly," Juve replied. "So we need only trouble ourselves with
Charles Rambert," and warming up to the subject the detective proceeded
to pile up a crushing indictment against the young man. "The crime was
committed so quietly that not the faintest sound was heard; therefore
the murderer was in the house; he went to the Marquise's room and
announced his arrival by a cautious tap on the door; the Marquise then
opened the door to him, and was not surprised to see him, for she knew
him quite well; he went into her room with her and----"
"Oh, come, come!" M. de Presles broke in; "you are romancing now, M.
Juve; you forget that the bedroom door was forced, the best proof of
that being the bolt, which was found wrenched away and hanging literally
at the end of the screws."
"I was expecting you to say that, sir," said Juve with a smile. "But
before I reply I should like to show you something rather quaint." He
led the way across the passage and went into the bedroom of the
Marquise, where order had now been restored; the dead body had been
removed to the library, which was transformed into a _chapelle ardente_,
and two nuns were watching over it there. "Have a good look at this
bolt," he said to M. de Presles. "Is there anything unusual about it?"
"No," said the magistrate.
"Yes, there is," said Juve; "the slide-bolt is out, as when the bolt is
fastened, but the socket into which the slide-bolt slips to fasten the
door to the wall is intact. If the bolt really had been forced, the
socket would have been wrenched away too." Juve next asked M. de Presles
to look closely at the screws that were wrenched halfway out of the
door. "Do you see anything on those?"
The magistrate pointed to their heads.
"There are tiny scratches on them," he said, rather hesitatingly, for in
his inmost heart he knew the detective's real superiority over himself,
"and from those I must infer that the screws have not been wrenched out
by the pressure exerted on the bolt, but really unscrewed, and
therefore----"
"And therefore," Juve broke in, "this is a mere blind, from which we may
certainly draw the conclusion that the murderer wished to make us
believe that the door was forced, whereas in reality it was opened to
him by the Marquise. Therefore the murderer was personally known to
her!"
"The murderer was personally known to her," he repeated. "Now I should
like to remind you of young Charles Rambert's equivocal behaviour in the
course of the evening that preceded the crime. It struck President
Bonnet and shocked the priest. I also recall his hereditary antecedents,
his mother's insanity, and finally----" Juve broke off abruptly and
unceremoniously dragged the magistrate out of the room and into Charles
Rambert's bedroom. He hurried into the dressing-room adjoining, went
down on his knees on the floor, and laid a finger on the middle of the
oil-cloth that was laid over the boards. "What do you see there, sir?"
he demanded.
The magistrate adjusted his eyeglass and, looking at the place indicated
by the detective, saw a little black stain; he wetted his finger, rubbed
it on the spot, and then, holding up his hand, observed that the tip of
his finger was stained red.
"It is blood," he muttered.
"Yes, blood," said Juve, "and I gather from this that the story of the
blood-stained towel which M. Rambert senior found among his son's
things, and the sight of which so greatly impressed Mlle. Thérèse, was
not an invention on that young lady's part, but really existed; and it
forms the most damning evidence possible against the young man. He
obviously washed his hands after the crime in the water from the tap
over this wash-hand basin here, but one drop of blood falling on the
towel and dripping on to the floor has been enough to give him away."
The magistrate nodded.
"It is conclusive," he said. "You have just proved to demonstration, M.
Juve, that Charles Rambert is the guilty party. It is beyond argument.
It is conclusive--conclusive!"
There were a couple of seconds of silence, and then Juve suddenly said
"No!"
"No!" he repeated; "it is quite true that we can adduce perfectly
logical arguments to show that the murder was committed by some member
of the household and that, therefore, Charles Rambert is the only
possible culprit; but we can adduce equally logical arguments to show
that the crime was committed by some person who got in from outside:
there is nothing to prove that he did not walk into the house through
the front door."
"The door was locked," said the magistrate.
"That's nothing," said Juve with a laugh. "Don't forget that there isn't
such a thing as a real safety lock nowadays--since all locks can be
opened with an outside key. If I had found one of the good old-fashioned
catch locks on the door, such as they used to make years ago, I should
have said to you: nobody got in, because the only way to get through a
door fastened with one of those locks is to break the door down. But
here we have a lock that can be opened with a key. Now the key does not
exist of which one cannot get an impression, and there is not such a
thing as an impression from which one cannot manufacture a false key.
The murderer could easily have got into the house with a duplicate key."
The magistrate raised a further objection.
"If the murderer had got in from outside he would inevitably have left
some traces round about the château, but there aren't any."
"Yes there are," Juve retorted. "First of all there is this piece of an
ordnance map which I found yesterday between the château and the
embankment." He took it from his pocket as he spoke. "It is an odd
coincidence that this scrap shows the neighbourhood of the château of
Beaulieu."
"That doesn't prove anything," said the magistrate. "To find a piece of
a map of our district in our district is the most natural thing
possible. Now if you were to discover the rest of this map in anybody's
possession, then----"
"You may rest assured that I shall try to do so with the least possible
delay," said Juve gently. "But this is not the only argument I have to
support my theory. This morning, when I was walking near the embankment,
I found some very suspicious footprints. It is true there are any number
of footprints near the end of the Verrières tunnel, where the navvies
are at work. But at the other end of the tunnel, where there is no
occasion for anyone to pass by, I found that the earth of the
embankment, which was crisp with the frost, had been disturbed, showing
that someone had clambered up the embankment; the tips of his shoes had
been driven into the earth, and I could see distinctly where his feet
had been placed; but unfortunately the soil there is so dry that the
footprints were too faint for me to hope to be able to identify the
maker of them. But the fact remains that someone did climb up the
embankment, someone who was making for the railway."
The magistrate did not seem to be impressed by Juve's discovery.
"And pray what conclusion do you think ought to be drawn from that?" he
enquired.
Juve sat down in an easy chair, threw back his head and closed his eyes
as if he were about to indulge in a long soliloquy, and began to express
his thoughts aloud.
"Suppose we were to combine the two hypotheses into one; to wit, that
the murderer was in the château prior to the accomplishment of the crime
and left the château directly it was accomplished. What should you say,
sir, of a criminal completing his deed, then hurrying over the couple of
miles that separate Beaulieu from the railway, and catching a passing
train, and on his way climbing the embankment at the spot where I found
the footprints I mentioned."
"I should say," the magistrate replied, "that you can't jump into a
moving train as you can into a passing tram, and further, that at night
none but express trains run between Brives and Cahors."
"All right," said Juve: "I will merely point out that owing to the work
on the line at present, all trains have stopped at the beginning of the
tunnel for the last two months. If the murderer had planned to escape in
that way he might very well have been aware of this regular stoppage."
The magistrates confidence was a little shaken by these new deductions
on the part of the detective, but he submitted yet another objection.
"We have not found any traces round about the château."
"Strictly speaking, no, we have not," Juve admitted; "but it is clear
that if the murderer walked on the grass, and he probably did so, he
walked on it during the night, that is to say, before the morning dew.
Now everybody knows that when the dew rises in the early morning, grass
that has been bent down by any passing man or animal, stands up again in
its original position, thereby destroying all traces; so if the murderer
did walk on the lawn when he was getting away, nobody could tell that he
had done so. Nevertheless, on the lawn in front of the window of the
room where the murder was committed I have observed, not exactly
footprints, but signs that the earth has been disturbed at that spot. I
imagine that if I were to jump out of a first floor window on to the
soft surface of a lawn, and wanted to efface the marks of my boots, I
should smooth the earth and the grass around them in just the same way
that the little piece of lawn I speak of seems to have been smoothed."
"I should like to have a look at that," said M. de Presles.
"Well, there's no difficulty about it," Juve replied. "Come along."
The two men hurried down the staircase and out of the house. When they
reached the patch of grass which the inspector said had been "made up,"
they crouched down and scrutinised it closely. Just by the side of the
grass, even overhanging it a little, a large rhubarb plant outspread its
thick, dentelated leaves almost parallel with the soil. Juve happened to
glance casually at the nearest leaf, and uttered an exclamation of
surprise and gratification.
"Gad, here's something interesting!" and he drew the magistrate's
attention to some little pilules of earth with which the plant was
peppered.
"What is that?" enquired M. de Presles.
"Earth," said Juve, who had swept the top of the leaf with the palm of
his hand; "ordinary earth, like the rest ten inches below, on the
grass."
"Well, what about it?" said the puzzled magistrate.
"Well," said Juve with a smile, "I imagine that ordinary earth, or any
kind of earth, has no power to move of its own volition, much less to
jump up ten inches into the air and settle on the top of a leaf, even a
rhubarb leaf! So I conclude that since this earth did not get here by
itself it was brought here. How? That is very simple! Somebody has
jumped on to the grass there, M. de Presles; he has removed the marks of
his feet by smoothing the earth with his hands; the earth soiled his
hands, and he rubbed one against the other quite mechanically; the earth
which was on his hands fell off in little balls on to the rhubarb leaf,
and remained there for us to discover. And so it is certain--this is one
proof more--that even if the murderer did not get in from outside, he
did at any rate take to flight after he had committed the crime."
"So it can't be Charles Rambert after all," said the magistrate.
"It 'ought to be' Charles Rambert!" was Juve's baffling reply.
The magistrate waxed irritable.
"My dear sir, your everlasting contradictions end by being rather
absurd! You have hardly finished building up one laborious theory before
you start knocking it down again. I fail to understand you."
Juve smiled at M. de Presles' sudden irritability, but quickly became
grave again.
"I am anxious not to be led away by any preconceived opinion. I put the
hypothesis that so and so is guilty, and examine all the arguments in
support of that theory; then I submit that the crime was committed by
somebody else, and proceed in the same way. My method certainly has the
objection that it confronts every argument with a diametrically opposite
one, but we are not concerned with establishing any one case in
preference to another--it is the truth, and nothing else, that we have
to discover."
"And that is tantamount to saying that in spite of the overwhelming
circumstantial evidence, and in spite of the fact that he has run away,
Charles Rambert is innocent?"
"Charles Rambert is the culprit, sir," Juve replied brightly. "If he
were not, whom else could we possibly suspect?"
The detective's placidity and his perpetual self-contradictions
exasperated M. de Presles. He held his tongue, and was silently
revolving the case in his mind when Juve made yet one more suggestion.
"There is one final hypothesis which I feel obliged to put before you.
Do you realise, sir, that this is a typical Fantômas crime?"
M. de Presles shrugged his shoulders as the detective pronounced this
half-mythical name.
"Upon my word, M. Juve, I should never have expected you to invoke
Fantômas! Why, Fantômas is the too obvious subterfuge, the cheapest
device for investing a case with mock honours. Between you and me, you
know perfectly well that Fantômas is merely a legal fiction--a lawyers'
joke. Fantômas has no existence in fact!"
Juve stopped in his stride. He paused a moment before replying; then
spoke in a restrained voice, but with an emphasis on his words that
always marked him when he spoke in all seriousness.
"You are wrong to laugh, sir; very wrong. You are a magistrate and I am
only a humble detective inspector, but you have three or four years'
experience, perhaps less, while I have fifteen years' work behind me. I
know that Fantômas does exist, and I do anything but laugh when I
suspect his intervention in a case."