M. DESBRIERE now began the investigation. He questioned the porter and
portress, while he studied the salon in detail. Bernardet roamed about,
examining at very close range each and every object in the room, as a
dog sniffs and scents about for a trail.
"What kind of a man was your lodger?" was the first question.
Moniche replied in a tone which showed that he felt that his tenant had
been accused of something.
"Oh! Monsieur le Commissaire, a very worthy man, I swear it!"
"The best man in the world," added his wife, wiping her eyes.
"I am not inquiring about his moral qualities," M. Desbriere said. "What
I want to know is, how did he live and whom did he receive?"
"Few people. Very few," the porter answered. "The poor man liked
solitude. He lived here eight years. He received a few friends, but, I
repeat, a very small number."
M. Rovere had rented the apartment in 1888, he installed himself in his
rooms, with his pictures and books. The porter was much astonished at
the number of pictures and volumes which the new lodger brought. It
took a long time to settle, as M. Rovere was very fastidious and
personally superintended the hanging of his canvases and the placing of
his books. He thought that he must have been an artist, although he said
that he was a retired merchant. He had heard him say one day that he had
been Consul to some foreign country--Spain or South America.
He lived quite simply, although they thought that he must be rich. Was
he a miser? Not at all. Very generous, on the contrary. But, plainly, he
shunned the world. He had chosen their apartment because it was in a
retired spot, far from the Parisian boulevards. Four or five years
before a woman, clothed in black, had come there. A woman who seemed
still young--he had not seen her face, which was covered with a heavy
black veil--she had visited M. Rovere quite often. He always accompanied
her respectfully to the door when she went away. Once or twice he had
gone out with her in a carriage. No, he did not know her name. M.
Rovere's life was regulated with military precision. He usually held
himself upright--of late sickness had bowed him somewhat; he went out
whenever he was able, going as far as the Bois and back. Then, after
breakfasting, he shut himself up in his library and read and wrote. He
passed nearly all of his evenings at home.
"He never made us wait up for him, as he never went to the theatre,"
said Moniche.
The malady from which he suffered, and which puzzled the physicians, had
seized him on his return from a Summer sojourn at Aix-les-Bains for his
health. The neighbors had at once noticed the effect produced by the
cure. When he went away he had been somewhat troubled with rheumatism,
but when he returned he was a confirmed sufferer. Since the beginning of
September he had not been out, receiving no visits, except from his
doctor, and spending whole days in his easy chair or upon his lounge,
while Mme. Moniche read the daily papers to him.
"When I say that he saw no one," said the porter, "I make a mistake.
There was that gentleman"----
And he looked at his wife.
"What gentleman?"
Mme. Moniche shook her head, as if he ought not to answer.
"Of whom do you speak?" repeated the Commissary, looking at both of
them.
At this moment, Bernardet, standing on the threshold of the library
adjoining the salon, looked searchingly about the room in which M.
Rovere ordinarily spent his time, and which he had probably left to meet
his fate. His ear was as quick to hear as his eye to see, and as he
heard the question he softly approached and listened for the answer.
"What gentleman? and what did he do?" asked the Commissary, a little
brusquely, for he noticed a hesitation to reply in both Moniche and his
wife.
"Well, and what does this mean?"
"Oh, well, Monsieur le Commissaire, it is this--perhaps it means
nothing," and the concierge went on to tell how, one evening, a very
fine gentleman, and very polished, moreover, had come to the house and
asked to see M. Rovere; he had gone to his apartment, and had remained a
long time. It was, he thought, about the middle of October, and Mme.
Moniche, who had gone upstairs to light the gas, met the man as he was
coming out of M. Rovere's rooms, and had noticed at the first glance the
troubled air of the individual. (Moniche already called the gentleman
_the 'individual,'_) who was very pale and whose eyes were red.
Then, at some time or other, the individual had made another visit to M.
Rovere. More than once the portress had tried to learn his name. Up to
this moment she had not succeeded. One day she asked M. Rovere who it
was, and he very shortly asked her what business it was of hers. She did
not insist, but she watched the individual with a vague doubt.
"Instinct. Monsieur; my instinct told me"----
"Enough," interrupted M. Desbriere; "if we had only instinct to guide us
we should make some famous blunders."
"Oh, it was not only by instinct, Monsieur."
"Ah! ah! let us hear it"----
Bernardet, with his eyes fastened upon Mme. Moniche, did not lose a
syllable of her story, which her husband occasionally interrupted to
correct her or to complete a statement, or to add some detail. The
corpse, with mouth open and fiery, ferocious eyes, seemed also to
listen.
Mme. Moniche, as we already know, entered M. Rovere's apartment whenever
she wished. She was his landlady, his reader, his friend. Rovere was
brusque, but he was good. So it was nothing strange when the woman,
urged by curiosity, suddenly appeared in his rooms, for him to say: "Ah,
you here? Is that you? I did not call you." An electric bell connected
the rooms with the concierge lodge. Usually she would reply: "I thought
I heard the bell." And she would profit by the occasion to fix up the
fire, which M. Rovere, busy with his reading or writing, had forgotten
to attend to. She was much attached to him. She did not wish to have him
suffer from the cold, and recently had entered as often as possible,
under one pretext or another, knowing that he was ill, and desiring to
be at hand in case of need. When, one evening, about eight days before,
she had entered the room while the visitor, whom Moniche called the
individual, was there, the portress had been astonished to see the two
men standing before Rovere's iron safe, the door wide open and both
looking at some papers spread out on the desk.
Rovere, with his sallow, thin face, was holding some papers in his hand,
and the other was bent over, looking with eager eyes at--Mme. Moniche
had seen them well--some rent rolls, bills and deeds. Perceiving Mme.
Moniche, who stood hesitating on the threshold, M. Rovere frowned,
mechanically made a move as if to gather up the scattered papers. But
the portress said, "Pardon!" and quickly withdrew. Only--ah! only--she
had time to see, to see plainly the iron safe, the heavy doors standing
open, the keys hanging from the lock, and M. Rovere in his dressing
gown; the official papers, yellow and blue, others bearing seals and a
ribbon, lying there before him. He seemed in a bad humor, but said
nothing. Not a word.
"And the other one?"
The other man was as pale as M. Rovere. He resembled him, moreover. It
was, perhaps, a relative. Mme. Moniche had noticed the expression with
which he contemplated those papers and the fierce glance which he cast
at her when she pushed open the door without knowing what sight awaited
her. She had gone downstairs, but she did not at once tell her husband
about what she had seen. It was some time afterward. The individual had
come again. He remained closeted with M. Rovere for some hours. The
sick man was lying on the lounge. The portress had heard them through
the door talking in low tones. She did not know what they said. She
could hear only a murmur. And she had very good ears, too. But she heard
only confused sounds, not one plain word. When, however, the visitor was
going away she heard Rovere say to him: "I ought to have told all
earlier."
Did the dead man possess a secret which weighed heavily upon him, and
which he shared with that other? And the other? Who was he? Perhaps an
accomplice. Everything she had said belonged to the Commissary of Police
and to the press. She had told her story with omissions, with timorous
looks, with sighs of doubts and useless gestures. Bernardet listened,
noting each word, the purposes of this portress, the melodramatic gossip
in certain information in which he verified the precision--all this was
engraven on his brain, as earlier in the day the expression of the dead
man's eyes had been reflected in the kodak.
He tried to distinguish, as best he could, the undeniable facts in this
first deposition, when a woman of the people, garrulous, indiscreet,
gossiping and zealous, has the joy of playing a role. He mentally
examined her story, with the interruptions which her husband made when
she accused the individual. He stopped her with a look, placing his hand
on her arm and said: "One must wait! One does not know. He had the
appearance of a worthy man." The woman, pointing out with a grand
gesture, the body lying upon the floor, said: "Oh, well! And did not M.
Rovere have the appearance of a worthy man also? And did it hinder him
from coming to that?"
Over Bernardet's face a mocking little smile passed.
"He always had the appearance of a worthy man," he said, looking at the
dead man, "and he even seemed like a worthy man who looked at rascals
with courage. I am certain," slowly added the officer, "that if one
could know the last thought in that brain which thinks no more, could
see in those unseeing eyes the last image upon which they looked, one
would learn all that need be known about that individual of whom you
speak and the manner of his death."
"Possibly he killed himself," said the Commissary.
But the hypothesis of suicide was not possible, as Bernardet remarked to
him, much to the great contempt of the reporters who were covering their
notebooks with a running handwriting and with hieroglyphics. The wound
was too deep to have been made by the man's own hand. And, besides, they
would find the weapon with which that horrible gash had been made, near
at hand. There was no weapon of any kind near the body. The murderer
had either carried it away with him in his flight or he had thrown it
away in some other part of the apartment. They would soon know.
They need not even wait for an autopsy to determine that it was an
assassination. "That is evident," interrupted the Commissary; "the
autopsy will be made, however."
And, with an insistence which surprised the Commissary a little,
Bernardet, in courteous tones, evidently haunted by one particular idea,
begged and almost supplicated M. Desbriere to send for the Attorney for
the Republic, so that the corpse could be taken as soon as possible to
the Morgue.
"Poor man!" exclaimed Mme. Moniche. "To the Morgue! To the Morgue!"
Bernardet calmed her with a word.
"It is necessary. It is the law. Oh, Monsieur le Commissaire, let us do
it quickly, quickly. I will tell you why. Time will be gained--I mean to
say, saved--and the criminal found."
Then, while M. Desbriere sent an officer to the telephone office to ask
for the Attorney for the Republic to come as quickly as possible to the
Boulevard de Clichy, Mme. Moniche freed her mind to the reporters in
regard to some philosophical considerations upon human destiny, which
condemned in so unforeseen, so odiously brutal a manner, a good lodger,
as respectable as M. Rovere, to be laid upon a slab at the Morgue, like
a thief or a vagabond--he who went out but seldom, and who "loved his
home so much."
"The everlasting antithesis of life!" replied Paul Rodier, who made a
note of his reflection.