On Thursday, the 6th of March, 1862, two days after Shrove Tuesday, five
women belonging to the village of La Jonchere presented themselves at
the police station at Bougival.
They stated that for two days past no one had seen the Widow Lerouge,
one of their neighbours, who lived by herself in an isolated cottage.
They had several times knocked at the door, but all in vain. The
window-shutters as well as the door were closed; and it was impossible
to obtain even a glimpse of the interior.
This silence, this sudden disappearance alarmed them. Apprehensive of
a crime, or at least of an accident, they requested the interference of
the police to satisfy their doubts by forcing the door and entering the
house.
Bougival is a pleasant riverside village, peopled on Sundays by crowds
of boating parties. Trifling offences are frequently heard of in its
neighbourhood, but crimes are rare.
The commissary of police at first refused to listen to the women, but
their importunities so fatigued him that he at length acceded to their
request. He sent for the corporal of gendarmes, with two of his
men, called into requisition the services of a locksmith, and, thus
accompanied, followed the neighbours of the Widow Lerouge.
La Jonchere owes some celebrity to the inventor of the sliding railway,
who for some years past has, with more enterprise than profit, made
public trials of his system in the immediate neighbourhood. It is
a hamlet of no importance, resting upon the slope of the hill which
overlooks the Seine between La Malmaison and Bougival. It is about
twenty minutes’ walk from the main road, which, passing by Rueil and
Port-Marly, goes from Paris to St. Germain, and is reached by a steep
and rugged lane, quite unknown to the government engineers.
The party, led by the gendarmes, followed the main road which here
bordered the river until it reached this lane, into which it turned, and
stumbled over the rugged inequalities of the ground for about a hundred
yards, when it arrived in front of a cottage of extremely modest yet
respectable appearance. This cottage had probably been built by some
little Parisian shopkeeper in love with the beauties of nature; for
all the trees had been carefully cut down. It consisted merely of two
apartments on the ground floor with a loft above. Around it extended a
much-neglected garden, badly protected against midnight prowlers, by
a very dilapidated stone wall about three feet high, and broken and
crumbling in many places. A light wooden gate, clumsily held in its
place by pieces of wire, gave access to the garden.
“It is here,” said the women.
The commissary stopped. During his short walk, the number of his
followers had been rapidly increasing, and now included all the
inquisitive and idle persons of the neighbourhood. He found himself
surrounded by about forty individuals burning with curiosity.
“No one must enter the garden,” said he; and, to ensure obedience, he
placed the two gendarmes on sentry before the entrance, and advanced
towards the house, accompanied by the corporal and the locksmith.
He knocked several times loudly with his leaded cane, first at the door,
and then successively at all the window shutters. After each blow, he
placed his ear against the wood and listened. Hearing nothing, he turned
to the locksmith.
“Open!” said he.
The workman unstrapped his satchel, and produced his implements. He had
already introduced a skeleton key into the lock, when a loud exclamation
was heard from the crowd outside the gate.
“The key!” they cried. “Here is the key!”
A boy about twelve years old playing with one of his companions, had
seen an enormous key in a ditch by the roadside; he had picked it up and
carried it to the cottage in triumph.
“Give it to me youngster,” said the corporal. “We shall see.”
The key was tried, and it proved to be the key of the house.
The commissary and the locksmith exchanged glances full of sinister
misgivings. “This looks bad,” muttered the corporal. They entered the
house, while the crowd, restrained with difficulty by the gendarmes,
stamped with impatience, or leant over the garden wall, stretching their
necks eagerly, to see or hear something of what was passing within the
cottage.
Those who anticipated the discovery of a crime, were unhappily not
deceived. The commissary was convinced of this as soon as he crossed the
threshold. Everything in the first room pointed with a sad eloquence to
the recent presence of a malefactor. The furniture was knocked about,
and a chest of drawers and two large trunks had been forced and broken
open.
In the inner room, which served as a sleeping apartment, the disorder
was even greater. It seemed as though some furious hand had taken a
fiendish pleasure in upsetting everything. Near the fireplace, her face
buried in the ashes, lay the dead body of Widow Lerouge. All one side of
the face and the hair were burnt; it seemed a miracle that the fire had
not caught her clothing.
“Wretches!” exclaimed the corporal. “Could they not have robbed, without
assassinating the poor woman?”
“But where has she been wounded?” inquired the commissary, “I do not see
any blood.”
“Look! here between the shoulders,” replied the corporal; “two fierce
blows, by my faith. I’ll wager my stripes she had no time to cry out.”
He stooped over the corpse and touched it.
“She is quite cold,” he continued, “and it seems to me that she is no
longer very stiff. It is at least thirty-six hours since she received
her death-blow.”
The commissary began writing, on the corner of a table, a short official
report.
“We are not here to talk, but to discover the guilty,” said he to the
corporal. “Let information be at once conveyed to the justice of the
peace, and the mayor, and send this letter without delay to the Palais
de Justice. In a couple of hours, an investigating magistrate can be
here. In the meanwhile, I will proceed to make a preliminary inquiry.”
“Shall I carry the letter?” asked the corporal of gendarmes.
“No, send one of your men; you will be useful to me here in keeping
these people in order, and in finding any witnesses I may want. We
must leave everything here as it is. I will install myself in the other
room.”
A gendarme departed at a run towards the station at Rueil; and the
commissary commenced his investigations in regular form, as prescribed
by law.
“Who was Widow Lerouge? Where did she come from? What did she do? Upon
what means, and how did she live? What were her habits, her morals, and
what sort of company did she keep? Was she known to have enemies? Was
she a miser? Did she pass for being rich?”
The commissary knew the importance of ascertaining all this: but
although the witnesses were numerous enough, they possessed but
little information. The depositions of the neighbours, successively
interrogated, were empty, incoherent, and incomplete. No one knew
anything of the victim, who was a stranger in the country. Many
presented themselves as witnesses moreover, who came forward less to
afford information than to gratify their curiosity. A gardener’s wife,
who had been friendly with the deceased, and a milk-woman with whom
she dealt, were alone able to give a few insignificant though precise
details.
In a word, after three hours of laborious investigation, after having
undergone the infliction of all the gossip of the country, after
receiving evidence the most contradictory, and listened to commentaries
the most ridiculous, the following is what appeared the most reliable to
the commissary.
Twelve years before, at the beginning of 1850, the woman Lerouge had
made her appearance at Bougival with a large wagon piled with furniture,
linen, and her personal effects. She had alighted at an inn, declaring
her intention of settling in the neighbourhood, and had immediately gone
in quest of a house. Finding this one unoccupied, and thinking it would
suit her, she had taken it without trying to beat down the terms, at
a rental of three hundred and twenty francs payable half yearly and in
advance, but had refused to sign a lease.
The house taken, she occupied it the same day, and expended about a
hundred francs on repairs.
She was a woman about fifty-four or fifty-five years of age, well
preserved, active, and in the enjoyment of excellent health. No one
knew her reasons for taking up her abode in a country where she was an
absolute stranger. She was supposed to have come from Normandy, having
been frequently seen in the early morning to wear a white cotton cap.
This night-cap did not prevent her dressing very smartly during the day;
indeed, she ordinarily wore very handsome dresses, very showy ribbons
in her caps, and covered herself with jewels like a saint in a chapel.
Without doubt she had lived on the coast, for ships and the sea recurred
incessantly in her conversation.
She did not like speaking of her husband who had, she said, perished
in a shipwreck. But she had never given the slightest detail. On one
particular occasion she had remarked, in presence of the milk-woman and
three other persons, “No woman was ever more miserable than I during my
married life.” And at another she had said, “All new, all fine! A new
broom sweeps clean. My defunct husband only loved me for a year!”
Widow Lerouge passed for rich, or at the least for being very well off
and she was not a miser. She had lent a woman at La Malmaison sixty
francs with which to pay her rent, and would not let her return them.
At another time she had advanced two hundred francs to a fisherman of
Port-Marly. She was fond of good living, spent a good deal on her food,
and bought wine by the half cask. She took pleasure in treating her
acquaintances, and her dinners were excellent. If complimented on her
easy circumstances, she made no very strong denial. She had frequently
been heard to say, “I have nothing in the funds, but I have everything I
want. If I wished for more, I could have it.”
Beyond this, the slightest allusion to her past life, her country, or
her family had never escaped her. She was very talkative, but all she
would say would be to the detriment of her neighbours. She was supposed,
however, to have seen the world, and to know a great deal. She was very
distrustful and barricaded herself in her cottage as in a fortress. She
never went out in the evening, and it was well known that she got tipsy
regularly at her dinner and went to bed very soon afterwards. Rarely had
strangers been seen to visit her; four or five times a lady accompanied
by a young man had called, and upon one occasion two gentlemen, one
young, the other old and decorated, had come in a magnificent carriage.
In conclusion, the deceased was held in but little esteem by her
neighbours. Her remarks were often most offensive and odious in the
mouth of a woman of her age. She had been heard to give a young girl
the most detestable counsels. A pork butcher, belonging to Bougival,
embarrassed in his business, and tempted by her supposed wealth, had at
one time paid her his addresses. She, however, repelled his advances,
declaring that to be married once was enough for her. On several
occasions men had been seen in her house; first of all, a young one, who
had the appearance of a clerk of the railway company; then another,
a tall, elderly man, very sunburnt, who was dressed in a blouse, and
looked very villainous. These men were reported to be her lovers.
Whilst questioning the witnesses, the commissary wrote down their
depositions in a more condensed form, and he had got so far, when the
investigating magistrate arrived, attended by the chief of the detective
police, and one of his subordinates.
M. Daburon was a man thirty-eight years of age, and of prepossessing
appearance; sympathetic notwithstanding his coldness; wearing upon his
countenance a sweet, and rather sad expression. This settled melancholy
had remained with him ever since his recovery, two years before, from a
dreadful malady, which had well-nigh proved fatal.
Investigating magistrate since 1859, he had rapidly acquired the most
brilliant reputation. Laborious, patient, and acute, he knew with
singular skill how to disentangle the skein of the most complicated
affair, and from the midst of a thousand threads lay hold to the right
one. None better than he, armed with an implacable logic, could
solve those terrible problems in which X--in algebra, the unknown
quantity--represents the criminal. Clever in deducing the unknown from
the known, he excelled in collecting facts, and in uniting in a
bundle of overwhelming proofs circumstances the most trifling, and in
appearance the most insignificant.
Although possessed of qualifications for his office so numerous and
valuable, he was tremblingly distrustful of his own abilities and
exercised his terrible functions with diffidence and hesitation. He
wanted audacity to risk those sudden surprises so often resorted to by
his colleagues in the pursuit of truth.
Thus it was repugnant to his feelings to deceive even an accused person,
or to lay snares for him; in fact the mere idea of the possibility of a
judicial error terrified him. They said of him in the courts, “He is
a trembler.” What he sought was not conviction, nor the most probable
presumptions, but the most absolute certainty. No rest for him until the
day when the accused was forced to bow before the evidence; so much
so that he had been jestingly reproached with seeking not to discover
criminals but innocents.
The chief of detective police was none other than the celebrated Gevrol.
He is really an able man, but wanting in perseverance, and liable to be
blinded by an incredible obstinacy. If he loses a clue, he cannot bring
himself to acknowledge it, still less to retrace his steps. His audacity
and coolness, however, render it impossible to disconcert him; and
being possessed of immense personal strength, hidden under a most
meagre appearance, he has never hesitated to confront the most daring of
malefactors.
But his specialty, his triumph, his glory, is a memory of faces, so
prodigious as to exceed belief. Let him see a face for five minutes, and
it is enough. Its possessor is catalogued, and will be recognised at any
time. The impossibilities of place, the unlikelihood of circumstances,
the most incredible disguises will not lead him astray. The reason for
this, so he pretends, is because he only looks at a man’s eyes, without
noticing any other features.
This faculty was severely tested some months back at Poissy, by the
following experiment. Three prisoners were draped in coverings so as
to completely disguise their height. Over their faces were thick veils,
allowing nothing of the features to be seen except the eyes, for which
holes had been made; and in this state they were shown to Gevrol.
Without the slightest hesitation he recognised the prisoners and named
them. Had chance alone assisted him?
The subordinate Gevrol had brought with him, was an old offender,
reconciled to the law. A smart fellow in his profession, crafty as
a fox, and jealous of his chief, whose abilities he held in light
estimation. His name was Lecoq.
The commissary, by this time heartily tired of his responsibilities,
welcomed the investigating magistrate and his agents as liberators. He
rapidly related the facts collected and read his official report.
“You have proceeded very well,” observed the investigating magistrate.
“All is stated clearly; yet there is one fact you have omitted to
ascertain.”
“What is that, sir?” inquired the commissary.
“On what day was Widow Lerouge last seen, and at what hour?”
“I was coming to that presently. She was last seen and spoken to on the
evening of Shrove Tuesday, at twenty minutes past five. She was then
returning from Bougival with a basketful of purchases.”
“You are sure of the hour, sir?” inquired Gevrol.
“Perfectly, and for this reason; the two witnesses who furnished me
with this fact, a woman named Tellier and a cooper who lives hard by,
alighted from the omnibus which leaves Marly every hour, when they
perceived the widow in the cross-road, and hastened to overtake her.
They conversed with her and only left her when they reached the door of
her own house.”
“And what had she in her basket?” asked the investigating magistrate.
“The witnesses cannot say. They only know that she carried two sealed
bottles of wine, and another of brandy. She complained to them of
headache, and said, ‘Though it is customary to enjoy oneself on Shrove
Tuesday, I am going to bed.’”
“So, so!” exclaimed the chief of detective police. “I know where to
search!”
“You think so?” inquired M. Daburon.
“Why, it is clear enough. We must find the tall sunburnt man, the
gallant in the blouse. The brandy and the wine were intended for his
entertainment. The widow expected him to supper. He came, sure enough,
the amiable gallant!”
“Oh!” cried the corporal of gendarmes, evidently scandalised, “she was
very old, and terribly ugly!”
Gevrol surveyed the honest fellow with an expression of contemptuous
pity. “Know, corporal,” said he, “that a woman who has money is always
young and pretty, if she desires to be thought so!”
“Perhaps there is something in that,” remarked the magistrate; “but it
is not what strikes me most. I am more impressed by the remark of this
unfortunate woman. ‘If I wished for more, I could have it.’”
“That also attracted my attention,” acquiesced the commissary.
But Gevrol no longer took the trouble to listen. He stuck to his
own opinion, and began to inspect minutely every corner of the room.
Suddenly he turned towards the commissary. “Now that I think of it,”
cried he, “was it not on Tuesday that the weather changed? It had been
freezing for a fortnight past, and on that evening it rained. At what
time did the rain commence here?”
“At half-past nine,” answered the corporal. “I went out from supper to
make my circuit of the dancing halls, when I was overtaken opposite the
Rue des Pecheurs by a heavy shower. In less than ten minutes there was
half an inch of water in the road.”
“Very well,” said Gevrol. “Then if the man came after half-past nine his
shoes must have been very muddy. If they were dry, he arrived sooner.
This must have been noticed, for the floor is a polished one. Were there
any imprints of footsteps, M. Commissary?”
“I must confess we never thought of looking for them.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the chief detective, in a tone of irritation, “that is
vexatious!”
“Wait,” added the commissary; “there is yet time to see if there are
any, not in this room, but in the other. We have disturbed absolutely
nothing there. My footsteps and the corporal’s will be easily
distinguished. Let us see.”
As the commissary opened the door of the second chamber, Gevrol stopped
him. “I ask permission, sir,” said he to the investigating magistrate,
“to examine the apartment before any one else is permitted to enter. It
is very important for me.”
“Certainly,” approved M. Daburon.
Gevrol passed in first, the others remaining on the threshold. They
all took in at a glance the scene of the crime. Everything, as the
commissary had stated, seemed to have been overturned by some furious
madman. In the middle of the room was a table covered with a fine linen
cloth, white as snow. Upon this was placed a magnificent wineglass of
the rarest manufacture, a very handsome knife, and a plate of the finest
porcelain. There was an opened bottle of wine, hardly touched, and
another of brandy, from which about five or six small glassfuls had been
taken.
On the right, against the wall, stood two handsome walnut-wood
wardrobes, with ornamental locks; they were placed one on each side of
the window; both were empty, and the contents scattered about on all
sides. There were clothing, linen, and other effects unfolded, tossed
about, and crumpled. At the end of the room, near the fireplace, a large
cupboard used for keeping the crockery was wide open. On the other side
of the fireplace, an old secretary with a marble top had been forced,
broken, smashed into bits, and rummaged, no doubt, to its inmost
recesses. The desk, wrenched away, hung by a single hinge. The drawers
had been pulled out and thrown upon the floor.
To the left of the room stood the bed, which had been completely
disarranged and upset. Even the straw of the mattress had been pulled
out and examined.
“Not the slightest imprint,” murmured Gevrol disappointed. “He must have
arrived before half-past nine. You can all come in now.”
He walked right up to the corpse of the widow, near which he knelt.
“It can not be said,” grumbled he, “that the work is not properly done!
the assassin is no apprentice!”
Then looking right and left, he continued: “Oh! oh! the poor devil was
busy with her cooking when he struck her; see her pan of ham and eggs
upon the hearth. The brute hadn’t patience enough to wait for the
dinner. The gentleman was in a hurry, he struck the blow fasting;
therefore he can’t invoke the gayety of dessert in his defense!”
“It is evident,” said the commissary to the investigating magistrate,
“that robbery was the motive of the crime.”
“It is probable,” answered Gevrol in a sly way; “and that accounts for
the absence of the silver spoons from the table.”
“Look here! Some pieces of gold in this drawer!” exclaimed Lecoq, who
had been searching on his own account, “just three hundred and twenty
francs!”
“Well, I never!” cried Gevrol, a little disconcerted. But he soon
recovered from his embarrassment, and added: “He must have forgotten
them; that often happens. I have known an assassin, who, after
accomplishing the murder, became so utterly bewildered as to depart
without remembering to take the plunder, for which he had committed the
crime. Our man became excited perhaps, or was interrupted. Some one may
have knocked at the door. What makes me more willing to think so is,
that the scamp did not leave the candle burning. You see he took the
trouble to put it out.”
“Pooh!” said Lecoq. “That proves nothing. He is probably an economical
and careful man.”
The investigations of the two agents were continued all over the house;
but their most minute researches resulted in discovering absolutely
nothing; not one piece of evidence to convict; not the faintest
indication which might serve as a point of departure. Even the dead
woman’s papers, if she possessed any, had disappeared. Not a letter, not
a scrap of paper even, to be met with. From time to time Gevrol stopped
to swear or grumble. “Oh! it is cleverly done! It is a tiptop piece of
work! The scoundrel is a cool hand!”
“Well, what do you make of it?” at length demanded the investigating
magistrate.
“It is a drawn game monsieur,” replied Gevrol. “We are baffled for the
present. The miscreant has taken his measures with great precaution;
but I will catch him. Before night, I shall have a dozen men in pursuit.
Besides, he is sure to fall into our hands. He has carried off the plate
and the jewels. He is lost!”
“Despite all that,” said M. Daburon, “we are no further advanced than we
were this morning!”
“Well!” growled Gevrol. “A man can only do what he can!”
“Ah!” murmured Lecoq in a low tone, perfectly audible, however, “why is
not old Tirauclair here?”
“What could he do more than we have done?” retorted Gevrol, directing a
furious glance at his subordinate. Lecoq bowed his head and was silent,
inwardly delighted at having wounded his chief.
“Who is old Tirauclair?” asked M. Daburon. “It seems to me that I have
heard the name, but I can’t remember where.”
“He is an extraordinary man!” exclaimed Lecoq. “He was formerly a clerk
at the Mont de Piete,” added Gevrol; “but he is now a rich old fellow,
whose real name is Tabaret. He goes in for playing the detective by way
of amusement.”
“And to augment his revenues,” insinuated the commissary.
“He?” cried Lecoq. “No danger of that. He works so much for the glory
of success that he often spends money from his own pocket. It’s
his amusement, you see! At the Prefecture we have nicknamed him
‘Tirauclair,’ from a phrase he is constantly in the habit of repeating.
Ah! he is sharp, the old weasel! It was he who in the case of that
banker’s wife, you remember, guessed that the lady had robbed herself,
and who proved it.”
“True!” retorted Gevrol; “and it was also he who almost had poor Dereme
guillotined for killing his wife, a thorough bad woman; and all the
while the poor man was innocent.”
“We are wasting our time, gentlemen,” interrupted M. Daburon. Then,
addressing himself to Lecoq, he added:--“Go and find M. Tabaret. I have
heard a great deal of him, and shall be glad to see him at work here.”
Lecoq started off at a run, Gevrol was seriously humiliated. “You have
of course, sir, the right to demand the services of whom you please,”
commenced he, “but yet--”
“Do not,” interrupted M. Daburon, “let us lose our tempers, M. Gevrol.
I have known you for a long time, and I know your worth; but to-day we
happen to differ in opinion. You hold absolutely to your sunburnt man
in the blouse, and I, on my side, am convinced that you are not on the
right track!”
“I think I am right,” replied the detective, “and I hope to prove it. I
shall find the scoundrel, be he whom he may!”
“I ask nothing better,” said M. Daburon.
“Only, permit me, sir, to give--what shall I say without failing in
respect?--a piece of advice?”
“Speak!”
“I would advise you, sir, to distrust old Tabaret.”
“Really? And for what reason?”
“The old fellow allows himself to be carried away too much by
appearances. He has become an amateur detective for the sake of
popularity, just like an author; and, as he is vainer than a peacock,
he is apt to lose his temper and be very obstinate. As soon as he finds
himself in the presence of a crime, like this one, for example, he
pretends he can explain everything on the instant. And he manages to
invent a story that will correspond exactly with the situation. He
professes, with the help of one single fact, to be able to reconstruct
all the details of an assassination, as a savant pictures an
antediluvian animal from a single bone. Sometimes he divines correctly;
very often, though, he makes a mistake. Take, for instance, the case of
the tailor, the unfortunate Dereme, without me--”
“I thank you for your advice,” interrupted M. Daburon, “and will profit
by it. Now commissary,” he continued, “it is most important to ascertain
from what part of the country Widow Lerouge came.”
The procession of witnesses under the charge of the corporal of
gendarmes were again interrogated by the investigating magistrate.
But nothing new was elicited. It was evident that Widow Lerouge had been
a singularly discreet woman; for, although very talkative, nothing in
any way connected with her antecedents remained in the memory of the
gossips of La Jonchere.
All the people interrogated, however, obstinately tried to impart to
the magistrate their own convictions and personal conjectures. Public
opinion sided with Gevrol. Every voice denounced the tall sunburnt man
with the gray blouse. He must surely be the culprit. Everyone remembered
his ferocious aspect, which had frightened the whole neighbourhood. He
had one evening menaced a woman, and another day beaten a child. They
could point out neither the child nor the woman; but no matter: these
brutal acts were notoriously public. M. Daburon began to despair of
gaining the least enlightenment, when some one brought the wife of a
grocer of Bougival, at whose shop the victim used to deal, and a child
thirteen years old, who knew, it was said, something positive.
The grocer’s wife first made her appearance. She had heard Widow Lerouge
speak of having a son still living.
“Are you quite sure of that?” asked the investigating magistrate.
“As of my existence,” answered the woman, “for, on that evening, yes, it
was evening, she was, saving your presence, a little tipsy. She remained
in my shop more than an hour.”
“And what did she say?”
“I think I see her now,” continued the shopkeeper: “she was leaning
against the counter near the scales, jesting with a fisherman of Marly,
old Husson, who can tell you the same; and she called him a fresh water
sailor. ‘My husband,’ said she, ‘was a real sailor, and the proof is,
he would sometimes remain years on a voyage, and always used to bring me
back cocoanuts. I have a son who is also a sailor, like his dead father,
in the imperial navy.’”
“Did she mention her son’s name?”
“Not that time, but another evening, when she was, if I may say so, very
drunk. She told us that her son’s name was Jacques, and that she had not
seen him for a very long time.”
“Did she speak ill of her husband?”
“Never! She only said he was jealous and brutal, though a good man at
bottom, and that he led her a miserable life. He was weak-headed, and
forged ideas out of nothing at all. In fact he was too honest to be
wise.”
“Did her son ever come to see her while she lived here?”
“She never told me of it.”
“Did she spend much money with you?”
“That depends. About sixty francs a month; sometimes more, for she
always buys the best brandy. She paid cash for all she bought.”
The woman knowing no more was dismissed. The child, who was now brought
forward, belonged to parents in easy circumstances. Tall and strong
for his age, he had bright intelligent eyes, and features expressive of
watchfulness and cunning. The presence of the magistrate did not seem to
intimidate him in the least.
“Let us hear, my boy,” said M. Daburon, “what you know.”
“Well, sir, a few days ago, on Sunday last, I saw a man at Madame
Lerouge’s garden-gate.”
“At what time of the day?”
“Early in the morning. I was going to church, to serve in the second
mass.”
“Well,” continued the magistrate, “and this man was tall and sunburnt,
and dressed in a blouse?”
“No, sir, on the contrary, he was short, very fat, and old.”
“You are sure you are not mistaken?”
“Quite sure,” replied the urchin, “I saw him close face to face, for I
spoke to him.”
“Tell me, then, what occurred?”
“Well, sir, I was passing when I saw this fat man at the gate. He
appeared very much vexed, oh! but awfully vexed! His face was red, or
rather purple, as far as the middle of his head, which I could see very
well, for it was bare, and had very little hair on it.”
“And did he speak to you first?”
“Yes, sir, he saw me, and called out, ‘Halloa! youngster!’ as I came
up to him, and he asked me if I had got a good pair of legs? I answered
yes. Then he took me by the ear, but without hurting me, and said,
‘Since that is so, if you will run an errand for me, I will give you
ten sous. Run as far as the Seine; and when you reach the quay, you will
notice a large boat moored. Go on board, and ask to see Captain Gervais:
he is sure to be there. Tell him that he can prepare to leave, that I am
ready.’ Then he put ten sous in my hand; and off I went.”
“If all the witnesses were like this bright little fellow,” murmured the
commissary, “what a pleasure it would be!”
“Now,” said the magistrate, “tell us how you executed your commission?”
“I went to the boat, sir, found the man, and I told him; and that’s
all.”
Gevrol, who had listened with the most lively attention, leaned over
towards the ear of M. Daburon, and said in a low voice: “Will you permit
me, sir, to ask the brat a few questions?”
“Certainly, M. Gevrol.”
“Come now, my little friend,” said Gevrol, “if you saw this man again,
would you know him?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Then there was something remarkable about him?”
“Yes, I should think so! his face was the colour of a brick!”
“And is that all?”
“Well, yes, sir.”
“But you must remember how he was dressed; had he a blouse on?”
“No; he wore a jacket. Under the arms were very large pockets, and from
out of one of them peeped a blue spotted handkerchief.”
“What kind of trousers had he on?”
“I do not remember.”
“And his waistcoat?”
“Let me see,” answered the child. “I don’t think he wore a waistcoat.
And yet,--but no, I remember he did not wear one; he had a long cravat,
fastened near his neck by a large ring.”
“Ah!” said Gevrol, with an air of satisfaction, “you are a bright boy;
and I wager that if you try hard to remember you will find a few more
details to give us.”
The boy hung down his head, and remained silent. From the knitting of
his young brows, it was plain he was making a violent effort of memory.
“Yes,” cried he suddenly, “I remember another thing.”
“What?”
“The man wore very large rings in his ears.”
“Bravo!” cried Gevrol, “here is a complete description. I shall find the
fellow now. M. Daburon can prepare a warrant for his appearance whenever
he likes.”
“I believe, indeed, the testimony of this child is of the highest
importance,” said M. Daburon; and turning to the boy added, “Can you
tell us, my little friend, with what this boat was loaded?”
“No, sir, I couldn’t see because it was decked.”
“Which way was she going, up the Seine or down?”
“Neither, sir, she was moored.”
“We know that,” said Gevrol. “The magistrate asks you which way the prow
of the boat was turned,--towards Paris or towards Marly?”
“The two ends of the boat seemed alike to me.”
The chief of the detective of police made a gesture of disappointment.
“At least,” said he, addressing the child again, “you noticed the name
of the boat? you can read I suppose. One should always know the names of
the boats one goes aboard of.”
“No, I didn’t see any name,” said the little boy.
“If this boat was moored at the quay,” remarked M. Daburon, “it was
probably noticed by the inhabitants of Bougival.”
“That is true, sir,” approved the commissary.
“Yes,” said Gevrol, “and the sailors must have come ashore. I shall find
out all about it at the wine shop. But what sort of a man was Gervais,
the master, my little friend?”
“Like all the sailors hereabouts, sir.”
The child was preparing to depart when M. Daburon recalled him.
“Before you go, my boy, tell me, have you spoken to any one of this
meeting before to-day?”
“Yes, sir, I told all to mamma when I got back from church, and gave her
the ten sous.”
“And you have told us the whole truth?” continued the magistrate. “You
know that it is a very grave matter to attempt to impose on justice. She
always finds it out, and it is my duty to warn you that she inflicts the
most terrible punishment upon liars.”
The little fellow blushed as red as a cherry, and held down his head.
“I see,” pursued M. Daburon, “that you have concealed something from us.
Don’t you know that the police know everything?”
“Pardon! sir,” cried the boy, bursting into tears,--“pardon. Don’t
punish me, and I will never do so again.”
“Tell us, then, how you have deceived us?”
“Well, sir, it was not ten sous that the man gave me, it was twenty
sous. I only gave half to mamma; and I kept the rest to buy marbles
with.”
“My little friend,” said the investigating magistrate, “for this time I
forgive you. But let it be a lesson for the remainder of your life. You
may go now, and remember it is useless to try and hide the truth; it
always comes to light!”