THE Abbé Bruneau, who gave his shaven head in atonement for unnumbered
crimes, was a finished exponent of duplicity. In the eye of day and of
Entrammes he shone a miracle of well-doing; by night he prowled in the
secret places of Laval. The world watched him, habited in the decent
black of his calling; no sooner was he beyond sight of his parish than
his valise was opened, and he arrayed himself--under the hedge, no
doubt--in a suit of jaunty grey. The pleasures for which he sacrificed
the lives of others and his own were squalid enough, but they were the
best a provincial brain might imagine; and he sinned the sins of a hedge
priest with a courage and effrontery which his brethren may well envy.
Indeed, the Man in the Grey Suit will be sent down the ages with a
grimmer scandal, if with a staler mystery, than the Man in the Iron
Mask.
He was born of parents who were certainly poor, and possibly honest,
at Assé-le-Berenger. He counted a dozen Chouans among his ancestry,
and brigandage swam in his blood. Even his childhood was crimson with
crimes, which the quick memory of the countryside long ago lost in the
pride of having bred a priest. He stained his first cure of souls with
the poor, sad sin of arson, which the bishop, fearful of scandal and
loth to check a promising career, condoned with a suitable advancement.
At Entrammes, his next benefice, he entered into his full inheritance of
villainy, and here it was--despite his own protest--that he devised the
grey suit which brought him ruin and immortality. To the wild, hilarious
dissipation of Laval, the nearest town, he fell an immediate and
unresisting prey. Think of the glittering lamps, the sparkling taverns,
the bright-eyed women, the manifold fascinations, which are the
character and delight of this forgotten city! Why, if the Abbé Bruneau
doled out comfort and absolution at Entrammes--why should he not enjoy
at Laval the wilder joys of the flesh? Lack of money was the only
hindrance, since our priest was not of those who could pursue bonnes
fortunes; ever he sighed for 'booze and the blowens,' but 'booze and the
blowens' he could only purchase with the sovereigns his honest calling
denied him. There was no resource but thievery and embezzlement, sins
which led sometimes to falsehood or incendiarism, and at a pinch to
the graver enterprise of murder. But Bruneau was not one to boggle at
trifles. Women he would encounter--young or old, dark or fair, ugly or
beautiful, it was all one to him--and the fools who withheld him riches
must be punished for their niggard hand. For a while a theft here and
there, a cunning extortion of money upon the promise of good works,
sufficed for his necessities, but still he hungered for a coup, and
patiently he devised and watched his opportunity.
Meanwhile his cunning protected him, and even if the gaze of suspicion
fell upon him he contrived his orgies with so neat a discretion that the
Church, which is not wont to expose her malefactors, preserved a
timid and an innocent silence. The Abbé disappeared with a commendable
constancy, and with that just sense of secrecy which should compel even
an archiepiscopal admiration. He was not of those who would drag his
cloth through the mire. Not until the darkness he loved so fervently
covered the earth would he escape from the dull respectability of
Entrammes, nor did he ever thus escape unaccompanied by his famous
valise. The grey suit was an effectual disguise to his calling, and
so jealous was he of the Church's honour that he never--unless in his
cups--disclosed his tonsure. One of his innumerable loves confessed in
the witness-box that Bruneau always retained his hat in the glare of
the Café, protesting that a headache rendered him fatally susceptible
to draught; and such was his thoughtful punctilio that even in the
comparative solitude of a guilty bed-chamber he covered his shorn locks
with a nightcap.
And while his conduct at Laval was unimpeachable, he always proved a
nice susceptibility in his return. A cab carried him within a discreet
distance of his home, whence, having exchanged the grey for the more
sober black, he would tramp on foot, and thus creep in tranquil and
unobserved. But simple as it is to enjoy, enjoyment must still be
purchased, and the Abbé was never guilty of a meanness. The less guilty
scheme was speedily staled, and then it was that the Abbé bethought him
of murder.
His first victim was the widow Bourdais, who pursued the honest calling
of a florist at Laval. Already the curate was on those terms of intimacy
which unite the robber with the robbed; for some months earlier he had
imposed a forced loan of sixty francs upon his victim. But on the 15th
of July 1893, he left Entrammes, resolved upon a serious measure. The
black valise was in his hand, as he set forth upon the arid, windy road.
Before he reached Laval he had made the accustomed transformation, and
it was no priest, but a layman, doucely dressed in grey, that awaited
Mme. Bourdais' return from the flower-market. He entered the shop with
the coolness of a friend, and retreated to the door of the parlour when
two girls came to make a purchase. No sooner had the widow joined him
than he cut her throat, and, with the ferocity of the beast who loves
blood as well as plunder, inflicted some forty wounds upon her withered
frame. His escape was simple and dignified; he called the cabman, who
knew him well, and who knew, moreover, what was required of him; and
the priest was snugly in bed, though perhaps exhausted with blood and
pleasure, when the news of the murder followed him to his village.
Next day the crime was common gossip, and the Abbé's friends took
counsel with him. One there was astonished that the culprit remained
undiscovered. 'But why should you marvel?' said Bruneau. 'I could kill
you and your wife at your own chimney-corner without a soul knowing. Had
I taken to evil courses instead of to good I should have been a terrible
assassin.' There is a touch of the pride which De Quincey attributes
to Williams in this boastfulness, and throughout the parallel is
irresistible. Williams, however, was the better dandy; he put on a
dress-coat and patent-leather pumps because the dignity of his work
demanded a fitting costume. And Bruneau wore the grey suit not without
a hope of disguise. Yet you like to think that the Abbé looked
complacently upon his valise, and had forethought for the cut of his
professional coat; and if he be not in the first flight of artistry,
remember his provincial upbringing, and furnish the proper excuse.
Meanwhile the scandal of the murdered widow passed into forgetfulness,
and the Abbé was still impoverished. Already he had robbed his vicar,
and the suspicion of the Abbé Fricot led on to the final and the
detected crime. Now Fricot had noted the loss of money and of bonds, and
though he refrained from exposure he had confessed to a knowledge of
the criminal. M. Bruneau was naturally sensitive to suspicion, and he
determined upon the immediate removal of this danger to his peace. On
January 2, 1894, M. Fricot returned to supper after administering the
extreme unction to a parishioner. While the meal was preparing, he
went into his garden in sabots and bareheaded, and never again was seen
alive. The supper cooled, the vicar was still absent; the murderer,
hungry with his toil, ate not only his own, but his victim's share of
the food, grimly hinting that Fricot would not come back. Suicide was
dreamed of, murder hinted; up and down the village was the search made,
and none was more zealous than the distressed curate.
At last a peasant discovered some blocks of wood in the well, and before
long blood-stains revealed themselves on the masonry. Speedily was the
body recovered, disfigured and battered beyond recognition, and the
voice of the village went up in denunciation of the Abbé Bruneau.
Immunity had made the culprit callous, and in a few hours suspicion
became certainty. A bleeding nose was the lame explanation given for
the stains which were on his clothes, on the table, on the keys of
his harmonium. A quaint and characteristic folly was it that drove the
murderer straight to the solace of his religion. You picture him, hot
and red-handed from murder, soothing his battered conscience with some
devilish Requiem for the unshrived soul he had just parted from its
broken body, and leaving upon the harmonium the ineradicable traces of
his guilt. Thus he lived, poised between murder and the Church, spending
upon the vulgar dissipation of a Breton village the blood and money of
his foolish victims. But for him 'les tavernes et les filles' of Laval
meant a veritable paradise, and his sojourn in the country is proof
enough of a limited cunning. Had he been more richly endowed, Paris had
been the theatre of his crimes. As it is, he goes down to posterity as
the Man in the Grey Suit, and the best friend the cabmen of Laval ever
knew. Them, indeed, he left inconsolable.