The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  “At any rate, as Monsieur Gaspard listened, he became aware that the altercation sounded as though it were approaching a climax. He could distinguish no words, but it was clear that two men were angry, and one was menacing the other.

  “Monsieur Gaspard became alarmed, and ran rather to get advice than to get help. He hurried down stairs, and poured out his story to the old suisse, who has been with the household since before the first Revolution.”

  “You have taken this man’s evidence, of course?”

  “Yes – and the evidence of all who were in a position to be witnesses. Well, to proceed: the suisse expressed the view that all should repair, with the utmost despatch, to the bedroom, and there call out – in case Monsieur Cuvillier-Millot required assistance in repelling anyone who was threatening him.”

  “One moment, please! Why did not Monsieur Gaspard open the door of his uncle’s bedroom, and just walk in?”

  “He says that he had a nervousness as regards his uncle. The banker was rather a martinet, a domestic tyrant. I can well believe that the nephew may have hesitated to expose himself to the shame of an embarrassing situation. In any case, as was proved later, the door was locked.”

  “Yes, but he cannot say whether or not the bedroom-door was locked when he passed it – or, say, when he halted to listen to the stranger menacing his uncle.”

  “No, he cannot say. I put the question to him, but he could not answer it, one way or the other.”

  “Hem! So, merely observing that this precious Monsieur Gaspard strikes me as rather a poltroon, let us go on. The suisse had no sooner been asked his advice by this far too fastidious nephew than the domestic called for the footmen, and, probably accompanied now by the other servants, led the party to the door of their master’s bedroom. Or – stay! – did Monsieur Gaspard, shamed into at least the affectation of resolution, lead the way? Ah, he did lead! Good! And what did the suisse and all the domestics have to tell you of the quality of the voices heard through the strong but thin door?”

  “Well now, here we strike a formidable difficulty. I had hoped that we might have some evidence which would help us to trace the assassin through someone’s recognition of his voice.”

  “But now there was only silence? The voices had ceased?”

  “Just so.”

  “The banker was dead – and the assassin had fled through the window?”

  “Impossible! Just as Monsieur Gaspard and the footmen were readying themselves to break open the door – I mentioned, did I not, that Monsieur Gaspard tried the handle and found the door locked? – just as they had come to the decision to break down the door – ”

  “One moment, please! Why had they come to this serious decision? Did they not first call out and ask Monsieur Cuvillier-Millot if aught were wrong? Ah, you forgot to mention that? Pray continue.”

  “You were right to remind me of what I had overlooked. It is true that when the group arrived outside the door, Monsieur Gaspard called out, several times, ‘Uncle, is anything the matter?’ – or words to that effect. But there was no answer; and, at a sign from Monsieur Gaspard, the footmen then advanced to throw themselves against the door. At that moment the shot was heard – just one shot; very clear, though not, as the witnesses say, very loud.”

  “But unmistakably a shot? On which, with commendable courage – for the man with the firearm might have been waiting inside the bedroom for them – the footmen hurled themselves against the door, the lock broke, the door opened, and they fell headlong into the room, to see what you have already described to me – nothing. Now, a most important point. After the shot had been fired, did anyone hear the footsteps of the assassin as he ran across the room to the window? Did anyone hear the window opened?”

  “No. The reason is easy to comprehend. On hearing the shot, the female domestics, led by the cook, set up such a cry of shock and terror that an army might have tramped across the room and gone unheard.”

  “So! And though but one person – Monsieur Gaspard – can testify that voices were raised in quarrel, many can testify that a shot was fired immediately before the door was broken down?”

  “All, in fact, who were present. Not only did they hear the report of the firearm, they entered a room full of smoke, to say nothing of the characteristic odor of gunpowder.”

  “We must recover the ball – if it still be in the dead man’s head. Is it?”

  “Is it still in the dead man’s head? Yes, there is but one wound – that of entry. Evidently the ball did not penetrate with sufficient force to pass through the skull.”

  “Do you not find that fact remarkable?” Dupin asked.

  “How so? It merely means that the charge was a light one; the muscles at the back of the head are very thick and tough – I have known many cases where they have stopped a ball.”

  “Perhaps. But have you known them to stop a ball fired against the skin? No matter, all these points will be resolved later. What I should like you first to do is to cause a police surgeon to probe for the bullet, and – having found it – to remove it without damaging it in any way. Can this be done?”

  G— looked dubious. “The family’s friends will not approve. The dead banker is even now lying in state in his drawing-room. But – yes, of course, Dupin, you shall have the bullet. Why do you wish it?”

  “I desire to know the type of firearm from which it came.”

  Dupin and I were present when the two surgeons attached to the Prefecture of Police carried out the post-mortem examination of the deceased banker. The formal permission of the dead man’s nearest relative – in this case, Monsieur Gaspard – had to be obtained; but, though the young man began to voice objections, G— soon silenced them by representing the necessity of the autopsy in the interests of justice.

  The cadaver was decently carried into a small room adjoining the drawing-room, and here the surgeons prepared to extract the ball in whose nature Dupin had evinced so keen an interest.

  The corpse had, of course, been washed, and made presentable by those cosmetic arts in which our modern morticians excel.

  Having expressed a wish to examine the body – but more particularly the head – before the surgeons cut into it with their scalpels and bistouries, Dupin went carefully over the entire anatomy with a strong magnifying glass. Rising from the most minute inspection of the wound in the neck, Dupin asked G— if the witnesses who had first discovered the body had noticed the characteristic blackening of a gunshot wound.

  “Yes, without doubt. It is not present now, I see, but the undertaker’s woman would have washed the burnt powder off.”

  “So thoroughly? The skin, too, does not appear to have been scorched at all. Diable, this is a most singular wound to have been caused by a pistol-ball! Monsieur le Préfet, a word with you, please.”

  Dupin led the Prefect to the far corner of the room, out of hearing of the surgeons, and said, “Unless this household is very different from other households, the washing will be done on a Monday. Today is Thursday. Let an agent be instructed to impound all the dirty linen at present awaiting the week’s wash. What shall he look for? Well, in the first place, a particularly dirty handkerchief.”

  No more would Dupin say on this point; and when G—, after having issued the requisite instructions, came back to the room, Dupin took him by the arm and called his attention to the wound, handing over his powerful magnifying glass so that G— might see what my friend had already noticed.

  “Observe,” said Dupin, “the curious reddening, in perfectly circular form, which rims the wound. This is not the customary scorching which occurs with gunshot wounds, but something altogether different. Another point: has either of you gentlemen” – addressing himself to the surgeons – “ever known of a case where, the weapon being brought sufficiently close to the body to cause scorching, there was not some serious derangement of the skin, caused by the escape of gases into the wound opened by the ball? No, gentlemen, and neither have I. Monsieur G— suggested that the curi
ous nature of this wound might be due to the assassin’s having used only a small charge of powder – for what reason, I cannot suggest. It may be so. But now, let us proceed.”

  “To open the cranium, sir?” the elder of the two surgeons asked, a scalpel in his hand.

  “Not yet, sir. First, I should like the stomach evacuated. We have with us, I take it, a stomach-pump?”

  A stomach-pump having been produced the contents of the dead man’s stomach were soon transferred to a covered dish, and to this disagreeable material, Dupin, to whom, in the interests of justice, nothing proved an obstacle, gave his minute attention. Indeed, it was with an air of noticeable triumph that he turned to us, and said, “I am astonished that we did not smell it on the man’s breath! What, Monsieur G— ! You, with your sharp scent! Yes, gentlemen – laudanum, and in a very copious draught. Of one thing we may be sure, our dead banker was not very coherent at half-past seven on Tuesday morning, no matter what Monsieur Gaspard heard through the closed door.

  “Did the dead man’s physician prescribe laudanum? No matter, we shall find out. And now, before you cut, gentlemen, may I beg of you very carefully to probe the wound, and tell me exactly how far beneath the surface the ball is lying?”

  Watched by a puzzled G— and (I confess it) by a no more enlightened me, the senior surgeon introduced a fine but strong wire probe into the wound, and pushed it gently forward until, encountering an unyielding surface, he assumed that the ball had been reached. Noting the length of wire which had entered the wound before reaching the ball, Dupin quickly translated this length, by means of a pocket rule, into terms of centimetres.

  “Just over seven-and-a-half centimetres – three inches” – for, in those days, the old measurements were more commonly employed than the new. “Now, gentlemen, cut, if you please – and I beg of you not to damage the ball in any way.”

  After a few minutes of the surgeons’ grisly labors a leaden ball was placed in Dupin’s hand. He examined it with his powerful glass, and uttered a small cry of satisfaction before proffering both ball and glass to G—.

  “What do you see, Monsieur le Préfet?”

  “How very – how excessively – odd!” said G—, staring at the ball resting on his thick palm. “It is – how very curious! I see what appears to be a set of teeth-marks in a small circle. Dupin, how do you explain this? Could the firing of the pistol have marked the lead of the ball in this most unusual way?”

  Dupin did not answer. Taking back the ball from G—, he dropped it into a pocket of his waistcoat, and said briskly. “The body can now be restored to a seemly appearance, and taken back for its lying-in-state. Monsieur G—, I should be infinitely obliged by a sight of the dead man’s sleeping chamber, and, in particular, of the cupboard in which he kept his medicines.”

  “We walked up stairs, having dismissed the servants who, out of well-trained habit, sought to accompany us. Dupin carefully surveyed the room in which Monsieur Cuvillier-Millot had died.

  One had the impression, in watching my friend at work, that those eyes of his observed everything – what was of importance, and what was not – and took away a complete record of visual, auditory, and tactile impressions (not forgetting, of course, the olfactory), to be analyzed and indexed at leisure, over his favorite pipe, in the peace of our little book-closet in the Rue Dunôt.

  As we walked across the room to the small dressing-room adjoining, in which it was to be presumed that Monsieur Cuvillier-Millot had kept his medicines, Dupin said idly, “You will already have made some inquiries relative to the character and standing of Monsieur Gaspard? I venture to suggest that you have uncovered some scandalous information?”

  “Indeed. I can hardly believe he would have continued in his uncle’s favor had the news of his extravagances and debts come to the ears of the worthy banker. What is more, he was – is, I suppose one should say – being strongly pressed for settlement. There is an expensive young person with whom he has contracted one of those alliances generally as costly as they are irregular. However, he may now whistle at his creditors, with all the banker’s millions in his pocket. A happy accident – for him, I mean – that the assassin should have put a fortune in his way.”

  “I see,” said Dupin, opening the medicine-chest, which stood on a side-table, “that the late Monsieur Cuvillier-Millot was obviously not a valetudinarian. There is no medicine here that one would not find in most if not all households. Indeed, there is much absent that one might expect to find. Flowers of sulphur. I take this blood-purifier myself. So, I imagine, do most people. Chlorate of potash. Excellent as a throat-gargle. But did Monsieur Cuvillier-Millot suffer from sore throats?

  “I can find out. But I suggest that, as he sang in the choir of La Madeleine – yes, he did; does that surprise you? – he had a constant use for chlorate of potash. What else? No laudanum. Well, I hardly expected it. But we shall find it somewhere in the house.”

  We walked to the window through which the assassin had made his miraculous escape. We opened the casements and leaned out. It was difficult indeed to see how the man could have escaped at all, let alone so quickly that no one had even seen him. I expressed my opinion, and G— concurred.

  “When I shall have explained that to you,” Dupin said, with a smile, “you will be in possession of all the facts in this extraordinary case. Now I have seen what I need to see. With your permission, Monsieur le Préfet, I shall borrow this iron door-stop.”

  “Door-stop? But why should you wish to borrow that?”

  “When you call at our house this afternoon at five o’clock, precisely, you shall find out why. May I call your attention to this splendid clock on the mantel-shelf? Yes, by Bréguet, of course. I wonder if, with all this upset, the servant entrusted with the duty has remembered to wind it? Now, where is the key? Ah, yes, here it is – in its proper place behind the clock.”

  Dupin held it up for the attention of our perfectly mystified eyes. It was an ordinary steel clock-key, of the fashion of some fifty years or more earlier, but of a type which is still favored by the horologists of Paris. A short tube, which fitted into a hole in the clock’s face, was attached to a little crank-handle, with a polished wooden knob.

  Dupin took out his pocket-glass and most minutely examined this commonplace article of domestic use. “Indeed, someone is to be felicitated on the care with which even the clock-key has been wiped. Still, I have a use for this, and I shall also borrow it, if I may.”

  “You may borrow what you like, Dupin,” said G— in a surly tone. “Your whimsicalities are quite beyond my poor powers of comprehension. But I’m not so sure the servants haven’t been upset by all this to-do–in spite of what you say. For instance, that door-stop that you propose to borrow: I take it that you didn’t notice that it was not standing by the door, but had been moved to the fire-place – within the steel-fender?”

  “Ah!” said Dupin, with a pleased expression, “so you did notice that! Bravo! Did you also notice another trivial proof of the servants’ unusual neglect – this?”

  “What is it?” said G—, coming closer, to peer at the object which my friend was holding between two fingers. “Ah, yes. What is it? A short length of black pack-thread? Is it important? Where did you find it?”

  “It may be important. And I found it caught in the handle of the bell-pull just to the side of the fire-place.”

  At Dupin’s request I did not accompany him back to our house, but made my way idly in the direction of the river. I walked down the Rue Royale, crossed the Rue St. Honoré, and, finding myself in the Place de la Concorde, obeyed a whim and paid my ten sous to enter the Navalorama, a spectacle I had never seen before.

  This ingenious naval panorama, at the entrance of the Champs Elysées, exhibits a truly convincing representation of some of the most famous battles of history, from Salamis to Navarino, with the vessels and the water in motion, and the guns firing most realistically. So full of interest did I find this panorama – one of the many in Paris �
�� that the time passed quickly, and I had to hail a fiacre in order to keep my appointment with Dupin and G— in the Faubourg St. Germain.

  The clock in the belfry of St. Germain-des-Prés was just striking five as I entered the vestibule of our house, where I was greeted by Hyacinthe with the intelligence that G— had already arrived – a supererogatory piece of news, since I had seen G—’s spanking English tilbury in our courtyard; and that Monsieur le Chevalier awaited me in the drawing room.

  “Bravo!” said Dupin sarcastically, as I entered the drawingroom. “You are learning the English idea of punctuality – which is to be so punctiliously on time as to give the impression of being late! However, since we are now all present, let us go upstairs to our little back library. I am sorry, Monsieur G—, to put you under the necessity of climbing another pair of stairs, but I have something above well worth your seeing. Pray follow me, please.”

  Obviously in obedience to some instructions given to him while I was absent, Hyacinthe did not accompany us; and, with Dupin leading the way, we came at last to our favorite room on the third floor. The door, as usual, was closed.

  Dupin placed his hand on the door-knob, but, no sooner had he done so than a loud report, as of a pistol’s discharge, sounded from within the room.

  Dupin flung wide the door, and shouted, “The assassin! After him!!”

  The window was open – the muslin curtains billowing in the breeze from without and the draught of the opened door from within. Dupin literally hurled himself across the room, to lean half out of the casement, pointing his finger downward, and gesticulating wildly. We crowded after him, thrust ourselves to each side of him, to catch a glance of – what?

  “He has vanished!” said Dupin, with a comical expression of disgust. “He must have – no, he cannot have hooked his finger nails into the cracks in the brickwork – yes, I have it! – he must have escaped in one of Mr. Green’s balloons. Quick, G—, look up, to see if you can catch a sight of the miscreant disappearing into the clouds!”

  G— threw himself into a fauteuil with an angry exclamation.