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 vic- tim 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, armchairs, 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 ex- posed. Torrents of blood had saturated the victim's clothes, and on the carpet round the body a wide stain was still slowly spreading wider.
M. de Presles stooped over the dead woman.
"What an appalling wound!" he muttered. "The medical evidence will explain what weapon it was made with; but no doctor is required to point out the violence of the blow or the fury of the murderer." He turned to the old steward who, at sight of his mistress, could hardly restrain his tears. "Nothing has been moved in the room, eh?"
"Nothing, sir."
The magistrate pointed to the escritoire with its open drawers.
"That has not been touched?"
"No, sir."
"I suppose that is where Mme. de Langrune kept her
valuables?"
The steward shook his head.
"The Marquise could not have had any large sum of money in
the house: a few hundred francs perhaps for daily expenses, but certainly no more."
"So you do not think robbery was the motive of the crime?" The steward shrugged his shoulders.
"The murderer may have thought that Mme. de Langrune
had money here, sir. But anyhow he must have been dis- turbed, because he did not take away the rings the Marquise had laid upon the dressing-table before she got into bed."
The magistrate walked slowly round the room.
"This window was open?" he asked.
"The Marquise always left it like that; she liked all the fresh
air she could get."
"Might not the murderer have got in that way?" The steward shook his head.
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"It is most unlikely, sir. See: the windows are fitted outside with a kind of grating pointing outwards and downwards, and I think that would prevent anyone from climbing in."
M. de Presles saw that this was so. Continuing his investiga- tion, he satisfied himself that there was nothing about the fur- niture in that room, or in the dressing-room, to show that the murderer had been through them, except the disorder on and about the little escritoire. At last he came to the door which opened on to the corridor.
"Ah!" he exclaimed: "this is interesting!" and with a finger he pointed to the inner bolt on the door, the screws of which were wrenched half out, showing that an attempt had been made to force the door. "Did Mme. de Langrune bolt her door every night?" he asked.
"Yes, always," Dollon answered. "She was very nervous, and if I was the first to come to bid her good morning I always heard her unfasten that bolt when I knocked."
M. de Presles made no reply. He made one more tour of the room, minutely considering the situation of each single article.
"M. Dollon, will you kindly take me where I can have the use of a table and inkstand, and anything else I may need to get on with my preliminary enquiry?"
"Your clerk is waiting for you in the library, sir," the steward replied. "He has everything ready for you there."
"Very well. If it is convenient to you we will join him now."
M. de Presles followed Dollon down to the library on the ground floor, where his enterprising clerk had already es- tablished himself. The magistrate took his seat behind a large table and called to the police sergeant.
"I shall ask you to be present during my enquiry, sergeant. The first investigations will devolve upon you, so it will be well for you to hear all the details the witnesses can furnish me with. I suppose you have taken no steps as yet?"
"Beg pardon, sir: I have sent my men out in all directions, with orders to interrogate all tramps and to detain any who do not give a satisfactory account of their time last night."
"Good! By the way, while I think of it, have you sent off the telegram I gave you when I arrived—the telegram to the police head-quarters in Paris, asking for a detective to be sent down?"
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"I took it to the telegraph office myself, sir."
His mind made easy on this score, the young magistrate turned to Dollon.
"Will you please take a seat, sir?" he said and, disregarding the disapproving looks of his clerk, who had a particular pre- dilection for all the long circumlocutions and red tape of the law, he pretermitted the usual questions as to name and age and occupation of the witnesses, and began his enquiry by questioning the old steward. "What is the exact plan of the château?" was his first enquiry.
"You know it now, sir, almost as well as I do. The pa**age from the front door leads to the main staircase, which we went up just now, to the first floor where the bedroom of the Mar- quise is situated. The first floor contains a series of rooms sep- arated by a corridor. On the right is Mlle. Thérèse's room, and then come guest-chambers which are not occupied now. On the left is the bedroom of the Marquise, followed by her dressing- room on the same side, and after that there is another dressing-room and then the bedroom occupied by M. Charles Rambert."
"Good. And the floor above: how is that arranged?"
"The second floor is exactly like the first floor, sir, except that there are only servants' rooms there. They are smaller, and there are more of them."
"What servants sleep in the house?"
"As a general rule, sir, the two maid-servants, Marie the housemaid and Louise the cook, and also Hervé the butler; but Hervé did not sleep in the château last night. He had asked the mistress's permission to go into the village, and she had given it to him on condition that he did not come back that night."
"What do you mean?" enquired the magistrate, rather surprised.
"The Marquise was rather nervous, sir, and did not like the idea of anyone being able to get into the house at night; so she was always careful to double-lock the front door and the kit- chen door herself every night. She went round all the rooms too every night, and made sure that all the iron shutters were properly fastened, and that it was impossible for anyone to get into the house. When Hervé goes out in the evenings he either
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sleeps in the village and does not return till the following morning, which is what he did to-day, or else he asks the coachman to leave the yard door unlocked, and sleeps in a room above the stables which as a rule is not occupied."
"That is where the other servants sleep, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir. The gardeners, the coachman, and the keepers all live in the out-buildings. With regard to myself, I have a small cottage a little farther away in the park."
M. de Presles sat silent for a few moments, thinking deeply. The only sound in the room was the irritating squeak of the clerk's quill pen, as he industriously wrote down all the steward's replies. At last M. de Presles looked up.
"So, on the night of the crime the only persons sleeping in the château were Mme. de Langrune, her granddaughter Mlle. Thérèse, M. Charles Rambert and the two maids. Is that so?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then it does not seem likely that the crime was committed by anyone living in the château?"
"That is so, sir:—and yet I do not believe that anybody got in- to the château; only two people had a key of the front door—the Marquise and myself. When I got to the house this morning I found the door open, because Mlle. Thérèse went out early with M. Charles Rambert to meet M. Rambert, senior, at the station, and she opened the door with the keys that the Marquise had given into her care the night before; but she told me herself that when she started to meet the train at five o'clock the door was shut. Mlle. Thérèse had put her keys un- der her pillow, and my bunch had never left my possession."
"Is it not possible," the magistrate suggested, "that someone may have got in during the day, hidden himself, and have com- mitted the crime when night came? Remember, M. Dollon, the bolt inside Mme. de Langrune's bedroom door has been wrenched away: that means that the murderer made his en- trance by that door, and made it by force."
But the steward shook his head.
"No, sir, nobody could have secreted himself in the château during the day; people are always coming to the kitchen, so the back door is under constant supervision; and all yesterday af- ternoon there were gardeners at work on the lawn in front of the main entrance; if any stranger had presented himself there he would certainly have been seen; and finally, Mme. de Lan- grune had given orders, which I always attended to myself, to keep the door locked through which one gets down to the cel- lars. So the murderer could not have hidden in the basement, and where else could he have hidden? Not in the rooms on the ground floor: there was company to dinner last night, and all the rooms were used more or less; the Marquise, or some one of the guests, would certainly have discovered him. So he would have had to be upstairs, either on the first or second floor: that is most unlikely: it would have been very risky; be- sides, the big house-dog is fastened up at the foot of the stair- case during the day, and he would not have let any stranger pa** him: either the dog must have known the man, or at all events some meat must have been thrown to him; but there are no traces to show that anything of the sort was done."
The magistrate was much perplexed.
"Then the crime is inexplicable, M. Dollon. You have just told me yourself that there was no one in the château but Mme. de Langrune, the two young people Thérèse and Charles, and the two maids: it certainly is not any one of those who can be the guilty person, for the way in which the crime was commit- ted, and the force of the blows dealt, show that the criminal was a man—a professional murderer in fact. Consequently the guilty person must have got in from outside. Come now, have you no suspicions at all?"
The steward raised his arms and let them fall in utter dejection.
"No," he replied at last, "I do not suspect anybody! I cannot suspect anybody! But, sir, as far as I am concerned, I feel cer- tain that although the murderer was not one of those who oc- cupied the château last night he nevertheless did not come in from outside. It was not possible! The doors were locked and the shutters were fastened."
"Nevertheless," M. de Presles remarked, "inasmuch as someone has committed a murder, it must necessarily be the fact, either that that someone was hidden inside the château when Mme. de Langrune herself locked the front door, or else that he got in during the night. Do you not see yourself, M. Dol- lon, that one or other of these two hypotheses must be correct?"
The steward hesitated.
"It is a mystery, sir," he declared at last. "I swear to you, sir, that nobody could have got in, and yet it is perfectly clear also that neither M. Charles nor Mlle. Thérèse, nor yet either of the two maids, Marie and Louise, is the murderer."
M. de Presles sat wrapped in thought for a few minutes and then desired the old steward to fetch the two women servants.
"Come back, yourself," he added, as the old man went away; "I may require further particulars from you."
Dollon left the room, and Gigou, the clerk, leant forward to- wards the magistrate: tact was not the most shining of M. Gigou's qualities.
"When your enquiry is finished, sir—presently—we shall have to pay a visit to the Mayor of Saint-Jaury. That is in accordance with the usual procedure. And then he cannot do less than in- vite us to stay to dinner!"