“Pull up Castel. Do you hear them?” cried the “tyrant”, eyes starting out of his head.
“Yes, there’s a devil of a row.”
“Listen. It seems as if they’re shouting: ‘Down with....’ Listen, I say, Castel. Can’t you hear them shouting: ‘Down with the “tyrant”!’?”
“What an idea! And besides we shall find out as soon as we get down there! I know people say you pay those chaps in La Torre to annoy them. But I told them that it’s not in your line and you don’t fork out your money like that!”
“If only my wife and daughter weren’t there!”
“I’ll start the engine again. It was not worth while to come along at such a pace to stop now....”
“Are you sure they’ll let you through.”
“As sure as you are sitting there.”
“Well, I’m not so sure as you are, for the very reason that I am sitting here.”
“Perhaps you would like me to put you down. In any case, you know, I can’t take you back to Nice. I’ve got my work to do to-morrow morning.”
“Look here, Castel, you must put me inside the van and not open it until we get to La Patentaine.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
The “tyrant” stepped down and allowed himself to be locked in the van with the goods. Castel drove off once more; he wanted to make up for lost time. The incident had no particular effect on him. He was still young and not easily moved. He had been through the war. On that particular evening — as was elicited at the trial — he had an assignation with a girl friend in La Fourca.
When he reached the outskirts he at once realized that not only was the whole of La Fourca Nova in a tumult, but that the people of the upper part of the town had come down, too. He had some difficulty in threading his way through. At a turn in the road he saw that Mme. Bibi’s cottage was on fire. The old woman was weeping a few paces away, seated on a stone between her two goats nestling against her as though to comfort her. No one knew how the fire had originated. Her little shop with all Titin’s fine paintings had blazed up like match-wood.
The La Fourca people round her were in a state of indescribable frenzy. When they recognized the Bella Nissa delivery van they made quick work of it; for, they attributed the calamity to Titin’s enemies, chief of whom was the “tyrant.” They made a rush, shot Castel to the ground, and pushed the van towards the fire. Castel yelled incoherently like a madman. Suddenly the wings of the van door opened, staved in, and an appalling figure leapt out. It was the “tyrant” making a dash to escape the flames.
He fell into a hundred hands which flung him back into the fire, and his life would not have been worth a moment’s purchase had not four stalwarts seized him in time and shielded him from popular fury. They were Aiguardente, Tantifla, Tony Bouta, and Pistafun.
Pistafun not only possessed powerful biceps but a stentorian voice and managed to master the crowd:
“No need to make so much row,” he roared. “The “tyrant” belongs to Titin. Titin will know how to deal with him.”
Murmurs arose among the crowd, but without waiting for any expression of opinion the four men elbowed their way through the scuffle with their prisoner more dead than alive, and guided his steps to La Patentaine, where they rang the bell and banged at the door. But no one came to open it. Then the “tyrant” remembered that he had his keys.
He opened the garden gate, entered and closed it after him, omitting to thank his benefactors, and passed the lodge at the window of which he perceived the ghostly face of Mme. Cioasa, whom the cries and conflagration outside had kept indoors and who would not have stirred for a kingdom. Then staring wildly round him he reached the villa and went in.
Groping his way he opened a door which happened to be the drawing-room. He took a few steps forward. But suddenly he started back. He had come upon something... some obstacle which had yielded and then swung back — some obstacle that “offered no resistance.” He wondered if he were going mad. He dared not go forward, he dared not shout for assistance. A few endless seconds ensued. Then it occurred to him that the incidents of the past few minutes had affected his brain. He remembered that he had a cigar-lighter in his pocket. He took it out with a trembling hand. Not until the third attempt was he able to strike a light. At once a hoarse cry broke in his throat, the lighter fell from his hands, and he sank to the floor....
Half an hour later a man fought his way through the crowd still pressing round the smoking wreckage of Mme. Bibi’s hovel. He went up to the mayor and dragged him away, spluttering disconnected words in which could be made out: “Horrible!... horrible disaster!” It was Hippothadee his face contorted.
Some of them recognized him. They followed him and the mayor to La Patentaine. When they reached the drawing-room, lit by a lamp near which stood Mme. Cioasa like a statue of terror, a terrible cry arose from the group crowding round the door. The mayor himself made a movement as if to escape.
In an arm chair where he looked like a dislocated puppet, arms dangling, head sunk, eyes half-closed, sat the “tyrant”. On the divan, in a fainting fit, wrapped in a dressing gown, lay Thélise. In the window recess hanging from a thin rope was the dead body of Caroline bearing a card round her neck with the inscription: “You have brought this on yourself ‘tyrant’,” signed “Hardigras.”
CHAPTER XXII
TERROR IN LA FOURCA
THE POOR GIRL was clad in a long nightgown which wrapped her about like a shroud.
“Cut her down! Cut her down!” cried twenty voices.
No one ventured to step forward.
“When I discovered the horrible crime, the poor child was already cold,” said Hippothadee to the mayor who seemed not to hear him, so greatly the successive misfortunes that had befallen his little town had benumbed his faculties. “But I was conscious that I had a dead body in my arms, and I hurried away to fetch you.”
They all stared at him. He was a pitiful sight, half-dressed, without waistcoat, having hurriedly thrown on his trousers and coat, his unbuttoned shirt exposing his long vulture-like neck, sharp, wizened face, disordered hair, cruel nose, trembling lips, and bloodshot eyes. All that had made up the elegance of Prince Hippothadee, his clear-cut profile, his somewhat lean figure — all these things had disappeared giving way to this bird of ill-omen, ravaged and despoiled by the storm.
“In any case we can’t leave her like this,” groaned the mayor.
“Don’t touch anything,” said Tulip. “This gentleman is quite right. It is now a matter for the police.”
At that moment Thélise, to whom no one was paying any attention, heaved a sigh and opened her eyes. She came to herself, and a terrible sight she was. She gave way to a fit of hysterical sobbing. They had to hold her down for she threatened to kill herself.
“Take her away! Take her away!” they cried.
She was carried to her bedroom in spite of her fierce outbursts and struggles. And then she swooned again. The “tyrant” had risen like a broken mechanical toy which yields to the last impulsion of its spring. With a stupefied look, his head still sunk, he cast a side glance at the people perhaps without seeing them, perhaps in order to see them, and fell upon a seat beside the bed where Thélise was laid.
“Leave us,” he said.
Out of doors everyone knew what had happened. The crowd, dismayed, kept silent — a silence which was broken by the arrival, like a meteor, of firemen from Grasse, followed almost immediately by a car containing the Commissary of Police, the Deputy Public Prosecutor, and a clerk. They had assumed from a telephone message from La Fourca that their business was to inquire into a charge of arson. They were about to draw up the first depositions in one of the most extraordinary cases of the day.
La Patentaine was cleared and the crowd dispersed, dejected and oppressed, as though weighed down by a mysterious fate. Not a soul went to bed that night. They all wanted to know the details. The mayor remained at Patentaine with the authorities. The firemen from Grasse finished d
eluging the ruins of Mme. Bibi’s shop. Giaousé managed to take her away with him; her goats would not leave her. Every now and then she lifted the stick on which she leant.
“Where are you, Titin? Is it God’s truth there’ll be no more dancing at the fête? Come back. I want you.”
“Take it from me he’ll come back,” Giaousé told her. “He’s not dead. Meantime, as Nathalie has left me, there’s room in my house. We’ll look after you. Titin and me — it’s the same thing.”
“No, no, it’s not the same thing,” said the old woman, shaking her head.
A number of young men joined the four friends of Mme.
Pieronella’s inn, which had reopened its doors. When a man has done his duty he is thirsty, and a crust of bread and cheese is not to be despised. Mme. Pieronella was an elderly woman of jovial and kindly temperament.
Tantifla, Pistafun, Aiguardente, and Tony Bouta had retired to the inn after the excitement of rescuing M. Supia from the fire. They were able to chat together quietly over a glass of white wine. The inn stood in the upper part of La Fourca and nothing was known there of the fatality until groups of people, coming from La Patentaine, told the four men of the discovery of Caroline’s body bearing the card round her neck signed “Hardigras.”
“It was not Titin who did that,” was the unanimous opinion.
“It was done by some cursed devil who has taken this roundabout way of making people believe in the lie,” said Tony Bouta. “He ought to be hanged in the same place. He deserves it.”
“Yes, yes, he deserves it,” they all repeated.
Tantifla and Pistafun alone remained silent. They exchanged glances by stealth, their faces pale with anxiety. Their silence passed unnoticed at the time but was remembered afterwards. Meantime other groups of people came in and argued over words used by the mayor. After the departure of the police officials the mayor observed in gloomy tones: “There’s no making anything of it,” meaning thereby that the case was an utterly baffling one.
Nevertheless, the result of a preliminary inquiry at which M. Supia and Prince Hippothadee were questioned — Thélise not being in fit state to give evidence — was clear. It was established that Prince Hippothadee had been sent to La Fourca by M. Supia to bring back the ladies to Nice. He had slept on the first floor in a room looking on to the passage at the end of which was Caroline’s room. Mme. Supia’s room was on the ground floor and led directly to the drawing-room. The three of them had a hurried supper in the kitchen. The ladies wished to retire to bed at an early hour, being worn out by the excitement of the evening. They were to leave La Fourca at daybreak. The Prince borrowed a book to read, from Mme. Supia, and it was found in his room.
M. Supia reached La Patentaine, in his turn, about midnight, escorted by the four friends. On entering the drawing-room he stumbled against his daughter’s body and fell in a dead faint. The crime, therefore, must have been committed between nine o’clock and midnight.
The murderer, who seemed well acquainted with La Patentaine and the position of the rooms, must have got in through the kitchen door, which was not locked. He had then made straight for Mlle. Supia’s room where the crime was committed; for it was inconceivable that he had carried his victim, even if she were gagged, to the drawing-room and hanged her there without the sound of her struggles awakening the Prince whose door he would have to pass in going down stairs, or Mme. Supia, sleeping in the room next to the drawing-room. Moreover, the disorder in the room pointed to the fact that the tragedy had taken place in that room; and an examination of the body seemed to show that the young girl was strangled and then hanged.
It was ostentatiously to parade his crime that the infamous Hardigras, who had written to M. Supia threatening personal violence and knew that M. Supia, on receiving his letter, would hasten to La Fourca, had hanged his victim in the drawing-room. In that way the hapless father might at once be confronted by his daughter’s dead body. That is, indeed, what actually did occur at midnight. How long had the poor child been dead? That was a question which the medical experts would determine on the morrow.
M. Supia at once had fainted. When he recovered consciousness he crawled along in the darkness, attempted to stand up, but fell to the floor again, with no more strength than to moan like an animal at bay. He called out for his wife, in a weak voice. It was these moans that had aroused Mme. Supia. She recognized her husband’s voice, got out of bed, terrified, lit a lamp, opened the door, saw at first only her husband on the floor, ran up to him, and suddenly caught sight of the horrible thing.
It was not until then that the Prince, awakened by a terrible cry, followed by the sound of a heavy fall, darted into the drawing-room, lit by a lamp from Mme. Supia’s room, the door of which was open. He at first stumbled over M. Supia, stretched on the floor. Over against him Mme. Supia lay huddled, gasping for breath. Between them was the hanging body of their daughter, bearing round her neck the frightful words: “You have brought this on yourself, ‘tyrant’,” and signed “Hardigras.”
The Prince seized Caroline and lifted her in his arms. But life was extinct. M. Supia’s evidence left no room for doubt on that point. As to Mme. Cioasa, she had heard nothing. On leaving La Patentaine to fetch the mayor the Prince knocked on her window, telling her to go to the villa at once as a great calamity had befallen them. Lastly, nothing more had been seen of Castel, the chauffeur. Next morning it was ascertained that terrified by what had occurred, and fearing lest the fanatics, who had burnt his van, were about to set fire to La Patentaine, he had slipped away to La Costa, a village hard by, and had stayed the night with Jean Jose Scaliero.
It is easy to picture the commotion roused by the event which, however, was only the beginning of a series of calamities that for some months brought this part of the country, regarded hitherto as a paradise on earth, into turmoil and notoriety.
The excitement in Nice was intense. As at La Fourca, it did not enter the minds of persons knowing and associating with Titin to hold him guilty of such a deed. At Caroline’s funeral, attended by the whole town, Antoinette was seen for the first time since her marriage. And this delightful flower of Provence, but lately a beautiful rosebud, seemed like a pitiful stalk. At the cemetery she said aloud: “Titin did not commit this crime.” Her heart was heavy, though she deemed it wise to let them all know what she thought.
The judicial investigation conducted by the Nice Public Prosecutor, daily made things look blacker for Titin. His former threats were carefully noted. They all tended to incriminate him. His madness in abducting Toinetta on her wedding day, the manner in which he behaved when he restored her to her family, his remarks at Caramagna’s restaurant and elsewhere, declaring that had he been Hardigras it would not have been in effigy that he would have hanged M. Supia, and other wild speeches, were all brought up in evidence against him.
Souques and Ordinal who had come down from Paris when they heard of the new crime, performed a showy piece of work in disclosing that Hardigras’s much-talked-of writing in capital letters was exactly similar to that on the sign-boards painted by Titin in La Fourca. Three hand-writing experts proved conclusively that Hardigras’s and Titin’s writing was the work of one and the same man.
Meantime, M. Bezaudin, the Commissary of Police, blamed for having displayed such unaccountable indulgence towards a youth too ready to play the fool and now become a criminal, was placed on the retired list. Nor could the obstinate silence of Princess Antoinette of Transylvania, summoned to appear at the inquiry, weigh to any extent in Titin’s favor. On the other hand, had she been able to speak she would not have failed to emphasize the difference between the Hardigras who had abducted her and the Titin who had brought her home. To every question put to her she made answer that if she had anything to say she would say it at the Criminal Court.
The general public, refusing as yet to abandon Titin, leaned to the opinion that some criminal had merely imitated Titin’s handwriting in order to cover up his own tracks. But the three handwrit
ing experts asserted that there was no difference between the handwriting on Hardigras’s first manifesto, the early letters received by M. Supia, the last letter found by him among his mail on the eve of the crime, and the letter received at “Le Père la Bique” when the appointment was made with Nathalie. The fact that Titin had taken away at the time Hardigras’s letter to Nathalie, making this appointment, was not in his favor. Lastly, her disappearance led people to think that they had linked their fates together, a point which was turned to account to persuade Toinetta to speak. But she, none the less, kept silent. No one knew what to think. If Titin were still alive why did he not come forward and answer the charge?
Mme. Bibi went into mourning. And all his friends mourned for him in their hearts. But the heaviest blow, to those who still pinned their faith to him, was struck by Souques and Ordinal who gloated over their revenge. They were in a transport of delight. The day on which they put the handcuffs on Pistafun was certainly a red-letter day for them. They arrested him by a ruse when his three friends were far away, for had they been together the detectives would never have succeeded in their purpose. But, it must be admitted, it was a master stroke. Souques and Ordinal discovered that it was Pistafun who posted at La Fourca the letter received by M. Supia on the eve of the crime.
Pistafun could not deny posting the letter. The postmistress’s assistant had seen him put the letter in the pillar-box some minutes before the collection. She remembered quite well the envelope with its peculiar handwriting. She said to herself: “Another of Titin’s practical jokes!” Now, the envelope bore the mark of a big black thumb — Pistafun at that time was helping to deliver coal. Souques and Ordinal, after obtaining the envelope from M. Supia, sent it with Pistafun’s finger-prints to the Criminal Investigation Department and received a conclusive reply.
Pistafun, questioned by the examining magistrate, answered that Titin had not handed him the letter and that he did not know Hardigras, though for some time past, on the initiative of a third party whom he refused to name, he had done certain jobs for him; he could not refuse him since he owed him some return for the pleasure which he had given them all at the last Carnival.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 427