by Otto Penzler
An absolute silence filled the room. We glanced at one another in a dazed way, wondering if we dared credit what our ears had heard. Then suddenly joy flamed up in the faces of the two young people—the loveliest thing I have ever seen. But I turned away my head. We all did. We heard them cry each other’s names.
“Philippa!”
“George!”
Presently Madame Storey said: “Mrs. Poor, are the facts not as I have stated?”
The wretched woman sat huddled in her chair like a demented person. I was glad her face was hidden. Suddenly she straightened up and cried out:
“Yes, it’s true. It’s true. I killed him. I shot him just as you say. Thank God, I’ve told it! I can sleep now.”
Once the bonds upon speech were broken she could not stop herself. “Yes, I killed him. I killed him,” she repeated over and over. “I couldn’t stand it any longer. I’m not sorry for it. Who’s going to blame me? What kind of a life did I lead? What kind of a wife was I? An object of scorn to my own servants! No one will ever know what I put up with.… Oh, I know what they said: ‘The proud, cold Mrs. Poor, she doesn’t feel anything.’ Proud! Cold! Oh, my God! When I was burning up! When I died a thousand deaths daily! What do gabbling women know of what such a woman as I can suffer?”
This was unspeakably painful for us to listen to. Madame Storey looked significantly at Mr. Barron. He, whose attitude toward Mrs. Poor had undergone a great change during the past few minutes, now stepped forward and touched her arm.
She drew away from him with a sharp, new cry of terror: “No! No! Not that! Not that!” Throwing aside her veil again, she turned to Grantland with outstretched arms. “George, don’t let them take me away!” she cried. “George, help me! Help me!”
The young man walked to the window. Mrs. Poor was led out, still crying pitifully upon his name.
Madame Storey turned quickly to Mrs. Batten. “Will you go with her? She needs a woman near.”
The good little body hurried after.
Grantland went back to Philippa. Drawing her hand under his arm he brought her up to Madame Storey’s table. After their terrible ordeal they were gravely happy; it seemed not to be necessary for these to speak to each other: the look in their eyes told all.
The young man said to my employer: “How can we ever thank you?”
Madame Storey put on a brisk air to hide the fact that she was moved, too. “Nonsense! You owe me nothing. I got my reward in taking the wind out of the assistant district attorney’s sails.”
“What a wonderful woman you are!” murmured the girl.
“That’s what people always say,” said Madame Storey ruefully. “It makes me feel like a side-show.”
Philippa looked at her lieutenant. “What a fool I was to believe he could have done it!”
He looked back. “I was the bigger fool.”
“Wonderful liars, both of you!” said Madame Storey dryly. “You had me guessing more than once. Like all really good liars, you stuck close to the truth. His story was true up to the point where he said he crawled into the library on hands and knees. That was just a little overdone, lieutenant. As a matter of fact when Philippa didn’t come back, you returned to the housekeeper’s room to look for her. By the way, that touch about the second revolver was masterly.”
Grantland blushed.
Madame Storey turned to Philippa. “You told the truth up to the point where you said you got your pistol out of the drawer. It wasn’t there, of course. After searching frantically for it, you were afraid to return to the library without it, and you stole down the back stairs, knowing you would be safe with your young man anyhow.”
They bade her a grateful farewell and went out. They made an uncommonly handsome pair.
Mr. Barron returned to the room. He had a highly self-conscious air that betrayed him.
“Oh, I thought you’d gone,” said Madame Storey.
“No, I sent Mrs. Poor down-town in her own car with my men. I’ll follow directly. I want to speak to you.”
“Go ahead,” said Madame Storey.
“It’s a private matter,” he said, with a venomous glance in my direction.
Madame Storey, with a whimsical twinkle in her eye, signified that I might leave. I knew she was going to turn on the dictagraph. She had no mercy on that man.
I heard him say: “Well, Rose, I take off my hat to you. In this case you certainly beat me to it. I confess it. I couldn’t say fairer than that, could I?”
“It’s not necessary to say anything, Walter.”
“But I want you to know the kind of fellow I am. I’m a generous-minded man, Rosie. The trouble is you provoke me so I fly in a rage when I’m with you, and you don’t get the right idea of me. I’m gentle as a lamb if you take me right.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Walter.”
“Take me for good, Rosie. You and I need each other. Your intuition is all right. With your intuition and my logic we’ll make an unbeatable pair. I’ll tell you all my cases, Rosie, and let you advise me. Honest, I will. Give me a smile, Rosie. I don’t mean that kind of smile. From the heart. You cut the ground from under my feet with that wicked little smile. Smile kindly on me, Rosie——”
It was indecent to listen to a man making such a fool of himself. I took the headpiece off and laid it down. The next minute Mr. Barron, very red about the gills, banged out of Madame Storey’s room, stamped across my office and downstairs.
Madame Storey rang for me. She was imperturbably lighting a cigarette.
“I’m ready to take up the Cornwall case,” she said. “Bring me the papers from the file.”
THE LITTLE HOUSE AT CROIX-ROUSSE
WHILE IT IS CERTAINLY TRUE that the Belgian author Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (1903–1989) was prolific, estimates of the number of works he produced have been exaggerated, some alleged scholars of crime fiction putting the figure at five hundred or more. In fact, his output was less than half that—still a remarkable achievement. His series about the Paris policeman Jules Maigret totals about eighty novels and a modest number of short stories, beginning with The Death of Monsieur Gallet (1932). The work he considered more serious than the Maigret series may be categorized as psychological crime and has been counted as one hundred twenty-six books. He also produced lesser work under various pseudonyms, including Christian Brulls, Jean du Perry, and Georges Sim. Although the Maigret series has been more successful in England and the United States, in France Simenon’s reputation soared with his crime novels. Andre Gide proclaimed him “perhaps the greatest and most truly ‘novelistic’ novelist in France today.” Many of Simenon’s books have been filmed, mainly in France but also in England and the United States, including the highly regarded RKO motion picture The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949), which starred Charles Laughton as Maigret, Franchot Tone, and Burgess Meredith, who also directed. Among the non-Maigret works adapted for the screen in English are Temptation Harbor (1947), based on Affairs of Destiny (1942); Midnight Episode (1950), based on Monsieur La Souris (1938); The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (1952; American title: Paris Express), based on The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (1938); and The Bottom of the Bottle (1956), based on the 1954 novel of the same title. Mystery Writers of America presented Simenon with the Grand Master award in 1966.
“The Little House at Croix-Rousse” was translated by Anthony Boucher and first published in English in the November 1947 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; an earlier translation was published in Esquire in 1935 under the title “The Case of Dr. Ceccioni.”
GEORGES SIMENON
I HAD NEVER SEEN Joseph Leborgne at work before. I received something of a shock when I entered his room that day.
His blond hair, usually plastered down, was in complete disorder. The individual hairs, stiffened by brilliantine, stuck out all over his head. His face was pale and worn. Nervous twitches distorted his features.
He threw a grudging glare at me which almost drove me from the room. But
since I could see that he was hunched over a diagram, my curiosity was stronger than my sensitivity. I advanced into the room and took off my hat and coat.
“A fine time you’ve picked!” he grumbled.
This was hardly encouraging. I stammered, “A tricky case?”
“That’s putting it mildly. Look at that paper.”
“It’s the plan of a house? A small house?”
“The subtlety of your mind! A child of four could guess that. You know the Croix-Rousse district in Lyons?”
“I’ve passed through there.”
“Good! This little house lies in one of the most deserted sections of the district—not a district, I might add, which is distinguished by its liveliness.”
“What do these black crosses mean, in the garden and on the street?”
“Policemen.”
“Good Lord! And the crosses mark where they’ve been killed?”
“Who said anything about dead policemen? The crosses indicate policemen who were on duty at these several spots on the night of the eighth-to-ninth. The cross that’s heavier than the others is Corporal Manchard.”
I dared not utter a word or move a muscle. I felt it wisest not to interrupt Leborgne, who was favoring the plan with the same furious glares which he had bestowed upon me.
“Well? Aren’t you going to ask me why policemen were stationed there—six of them, no less—on the night of the eighth-to-ninth? Or maybe you’re going to pretend that you’ve figured it out?”
I said nothing.
“They were there because the Lyons police had received, the day before, the following letter:
“Dr. Luigi Ceccioni will be murdered, at his home, on the night of the eighth-to-ninth instant.”
“And the doctor had been warned?” I asked at last.
“No! Since Ceccioni was an Italian exile and it seemed more than likely that the affair had political aspects, the police preferred to take their precautions without warning the party involved.”
“And he was murdered anyway?”
“Patience! Dr. Ceccioni, fifty years of age, lived alone in this wretched little hovel. He kept house for himself and ate his evening meal every day in an Italian restaurant nearby. On the eighth he left home at seven o’clock, as usual, for the restaurant. And Corporal Manchard, one of the best police officers in France and a pupil, to boot, of the great Lyons criminologist Dr. Eugène Locard, searched the house from basement to attic. He proved to himself that no one was hidden there and that it was impossible to get in by any other means than the ordinary doors and windows visible from the outside. No subterranean passages nor any such hocus-pocus. Nothing out of a mystery novel … You understand?”
I was careful to say nothing, but Leborgne’s vindictive tone seemed to accuse me of willfully interpolating hocus-pocus.
“No one in the house! Nothing to watch but two doors and three windows! A lesser man than Corporal Manchard would have been content to set up the watch with only himself and one policeman. But Manchard requisitioned five, one for each entrance, with himself to watch the watchers. At nine p.m. the shadow of the doctor appeared in the street. He re-entered his house, absolutely alone. His room was upstairs; a light went on in there promptly. And then the police vigil began. Not one of them dozed! Not one of them deserted his post! Not one of them lost sight of the precise point which he had been delegated to watch!
“Every fifteen minutes Manchard made the round of the group. Around three a.m. the petroleum lamp upstairs went out slowly, as though it had run out of fuel. The corporal hesitated. At last he decided to use his lock-picking gadget and go in. Upstairs, in the bedroom, seated—or rather half lying—on the edge of the bed was Dr. Luigi Ceccioni. His hands were clutched to his chest and he was dead. He was completely dressed, even to the cape which still hung over his shoulders. His hat had fallen to the floor. His underclothing and suit were saturated with blood and his hands were soaked in it. One bullet from a six-millimeter Browning had penetrated less than a centimeter above his heart.”
I gazed at Joseph Leborgne with awe. I saw his lip tremble.
“No one had entered the house! No one had left!” he groaned. “I’ll swear to that as though I’d stood guard myself: I know my Corporal Manchard. And don’t go thinking that they found the revolver in the house. There wasn’t any revolver! Not in sight and not hidden. Not in the fireplace, or even in the roof gutter. Not in the garden—not anywhere at all! In other words, a bullet was fired in a place where there was no one save the victim himself and where there was no firearm!
“As for the windows, they were closed and undamaged; a bullet fired from outside would have shattered the panes. Besides, a revolver doesn’t carry far enough to have been fired from outside the range covered by the cordon of policemen. Look at the plan! Eat it up with your eyes! And you may restore some hope of life to poor Corporal Manchard, who has given up sleeping and looks upon himself virtually as a murderer.”
I timidly ventured, “What do you know about Ceccioni?”
“That he used to be rich. That he’s hardly practiced medicine at all, but rather devoted himself to politics—which made it healthier for him to leave Italy.”
“Married? Bachelor?”
“Widower. One child, a son, at present studying in Argentina.”
“What did he live on in Lyons?”
“A little of everything and nothing. Indefinite subsidies from his political colleagues. Occasional consultations, but those chiefly gratis among the poor of the Italian colony.”
“Was anything stolen from the house?”
“Not a trace of any larcenous entry or of anything stolen.”
I don’t know why, but at this moment I wanted to laugh. It suddenly seemed to me that some master of mystification had amused himself by presenting Joseph Leborgne with a totally impossible problem, simply to give him a needed lesson in modesty.
He noticed the broadening of my lips. Seizing the plan, he crossed the room to plunge himself angrily into his armchair.
“Let me know when you’ve solved it!” he snapped.
“I can certainly solve nothing before you,” I said tactfully.
“Thanks,” he observed.
I began to fill my pipe. I lit it, disregarding my companion’s rage which was reaching the point of paroxysm.
“All I ask of you is that you sit quietly,” he pronounced. “And don’t breathe so loudly,” he added.
Ten minutes passed as unpleasantly as possible. Despite myself, I called up the image of the plan, with the six black crosses marking the policemen.
And the impossibility of this story, which had at first so amused me, began to seem curiously disquieting.
After all, this was not a matter of psychology or of detective flair, but of pure geometry.
“This Manchard,” I asked suddenly. “Has he ever served as a subject for hypnotism?”
Joseph Leborgne did not even deign to answer that one.
“Did Ceccioni have many political enemies in Lyons?”
Leborgne shrugged.
“And it’s been proved that the son is in Argentina?”
This time he merely took the pipe out of my mouth and tossed it on the mantelpiece.
“You have the names of all the policemen?”
He handed me a sheet of paper:
Jérôme Pallois, 28, married
Jean-Joseph Stockman, 31, single
Armand Dubois, 26, married
Hubert Trajanu, 43, divorced
Germain Garros, 32, married
I reread these lines three times. The names were in the order in which the men had been stationed around the building, starting from the left.
I was ready to accept the craziest notions. Desperately I exclaimed at last, “It is impossible!”
And I looked at Joseph Leborgne. A moment before his face had been pale, his eyes encircled, his lips bitter. Now, to my astonishment, I saw him smilingly head for a pot of jam.
As he passed a mirro
r he noticed himself and seemed scandalized by the incongruous contortions of his hair. He combed it meticulously. He adjusted the knot of his cravat.
Once again Joseph Leborgne was his habitual self. As he looked for a spoon with which to consume his horrible jam of leaves-of-God-knows-what, he favored me with a sarcastic smile.
“How simple it would always be to reach the truth if preconceived ideas did not falsify our judgment!” he sighed. “You have just said, ‘It is impossible!’ So therefore …”
I waited for him to contradict me. I’m used to that.
“So therefore,” he went on, “it is impossible. Just so. And all that we needed to do from the very beginning was simply to admit that fact. There was no revolver in the house, no murderer hidden there. Very well: then there was no shot fired there.”
“But then …?”
“Then, very simply, Luigi Ceccioni arrived with the bullet already in his chest. I’ve every reason to believe that he fired the bullet himself. He was a doctor; he knew just where to aim—‘less than a centimeter above the heart,’ you’ll recall—so that the wound would not be instantly fatal, but would allow him to move about for a short time.”
Joseph Leborgne closed his eyes.
“Imagine this poor hopeless man. He has only one son. The boy is studying abroad, but the father no longer has any money to send him. Ceccioni insures his life with the boy as beneficiary. His next step is to die—but somehow to die with no suspicion of suicide, or the insurance company will refuse to pay.
“By means of an anonymous letter he summons the police themselves as witnesses. They see him enter his house where there is no weapon and they find him dead several hours later.
“It was enough, once he was seated on his bed, to massage his chest, forcing the bullet to penetrate more deeply, at last to touch the heart …”
I let out an involuntary cry of pain. But Leborgne did not stir. He was no longer concerned with me.
It was not until a week later that he showed me a telegram from Corporal Manchard: