The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories

by Michael Sims

  That was also the judge’s opinion, for he murmured:

  “How can we, after all this, doubt Monistrol’s guilt?”

  As for me, though I was confounded, my convictions were still firm. I was just about to open my mouth to venture an objection, when M. Mechinet forestalled me.

  “All that is well and good,” exclaimed he. “Only if we admit that Monistrol is the murderer, we are forced also to admit that it was he who wrote his name there on the floor—and—well, that’s a hard nut.”

  “Bosh!” interrupted the commissary, “since the accused confessed, what is the use of bothering about a circumstance which will be explained at the trial?”

  But my neighbor’s remark had again roused perplexities in the mind of the judge, and without committing himself, he said:

  “I am going to the Prefecture. I want to examine Monistrol this very evening.”

  And after telling the commissary to be sure and fulfil all formalities and to await the arrival of the physicians called for the autopsy of the body, he left, followed by his clerk and by the officer who had come to inform us of the successful arrest.

  “Provided these devils of doctors do not keep me waiting too long,” growled the commissary, who was thinking of his dinner.

  Neither M. Mechinet nor I answered him. We remained standing, facing one another, evidently beset by the same thought.

  “After all,” murmured my neighbor, “perhaps it was the old man who wrote—”—“With the left hand, then? Is that possible? Without considering that this poor fellow must have died instantly.”—“Are you certain of it?”—“Judging by his wound I would take an oath on it. Besides, the physicians will come; they will tell you whether I am right or wrong.”

  With veritable frenzy M. Mechinet pretended to take snuff.

  “Perhaps there is some mystery beneath this,” said he; “that remains to be seen.”

  “It is an examination to be gone over again.”—“Be it so, let us do it over; and to begin, let us examine the concierge.”

  Running to the staircase, M. Mechinet leaned over the balustrade, calling: “Concierge! Hey! Concierge! Come up, please.”

  V.

  While waiting for the concierge to come up, M. Mechinet proceeded with a rapid and able examination of the scene of the crime.

  It was principally the lock of the main door to the apartment which attracted his attention; it was intact, and the key turned without difficulty. This circumstance absolutely discarded the thought that an evil-doer, a stranger, had entered during the night by means of false keys.

  For my part, I had involuntarily, or rather inspired by the astonishing instinct which had revealed itself in me, picked up the cork, partly covered with green wax, which I had noticed on the floor.

  It had been used, and on the side where the wax was showed traces of the corkscrew; but on the other end could be seen a kind of deepish notch, evidently produced by some sharp and pointed instrument.

  Suspecting the importance of my discovery, I communicated it to M. Mechinet, and he could not avoid an exclamation of joy.

  “At last,” he exclaimed, “at last we have a clue! This cork, it’s the murderer who dropped it here; he stuck in it the brittle point of the weapon he used. The conclusion is, that the instrument of the murder is a dagger with a fixed handle and not one of those knives which shut up. With this cork, I am certain to reach the guilty one, no matter who he is!”

  The police commissary was just finishing his task in the room, M. Mechinet and I had remained in the parlor, when we were interrupted by the noise of heavy breathing.

  Almost immediately appeared the powerful woman I had noticed holding forth in the hall in the midst of the tenants.

  It was the concierge, if possible redder than at the time of our arrival.

  “In what way can I serve you, monsieur?” she asked of M. Mechinet.

  “Take a seat, madame,” he answered.

  “But, monsieur, I have people downstairs.”

  “They will wait for you. I tell you to sit down.”

  Nonplused by M. Mechinet’s tone, she obeyed.

  Then looking straight at her with his terrible, small, gray eyes, he began:

  “I need certain information, and I’m going to question you. In your interest, I advise you to answer straightforwardly. Now, first of all, what is the name of this poor fellow who was murdered?”

  “His name was Pigoreau, kind sir, but he was mostly known by the name of Antenor, which he had formerly taken as more suitable to his business.”

  “Did he live in this house a long time?”

  “The last eight years.”

  “Where did he reside before?”

  “Rue Richelieu, where he had his store; he had been a hairdresser, and it was in that business that he made his money.”

  “He was then considered rich?”

  “I heard him say to his niece that he would not let his throat be cut for a million.”

  As to this, it must have been known to the investigating magistrate, as the papers of the poor old man had been included in the inventory made.

  “Now,” M. Mechinet continued, “what kind of a man was this M. Pigoreau, called Antenor?”

  “Oh! the cream of men, my dear, kind sir,” answered the concierge. “It is true he was cantankerous, queer, as miserly as possible, but he was not proud. And so funny with all that. One could have spent whole nights listening to him, when he was in the right mood. And the number of stories he knew! Just think, a former hairdresser, who, as he said, had dressed the hair of the most beautiful women in Paris!”

  “How did he live?”

  “As everybody else; as people do who have an income, you know, and who yet cling to their money.”

  “Can you give me some particulars?”

  “Oh! As to that, I think so, since it was I who looked after his rooms, and that was no trouble at all for me, because he did almost everything himself—swept, dusted, and polished. Yes, it was his hobby. Well, every day at noon, I brought him up a cup of chocolate. He drank it; on top of that he took a large glass of water; that was his breakfast. Then he dressed and that took him until two o’clock, for he was a dandy, and careful of his person, more so than a newly married woman. As soon as he was dressed, he went out to take a walk through Paris. At six o’clock he went to dinner in a private boarding-house, the Mademoiselles Gomet, in the Rue de la Paix. After dinner he used to go to the Café Guerbois for his demitasse and to play his usual game, and at eleven he came home to go to bed. On the whole, the poor fellow had only one fault; he was fond of the other sex. I even told him often: ‘At your age, are you not ashamed of yourself?’ But no one is perfect, and after all it could be easily understood of a former perfumer, who in his life had had a great many good fortunes.”

  An obsequious smile strayed over the lips of the powerful concierge, but nothing could cheer up M. Mechinet.

  “Did M. Pigoreau receive many calls?” he asked.

  “Very few. I have hardly seen anybody call on him except his nephew, M. Monistrol, whom he invited every Sunday to dinner at Lathuile’s.”

  “And how did they get along together, the uncle and the nephew?”

  “Like two fingers of the same hand.”

  “Did they ever have any disputes?”

  “Never, except that they were always wrangling about Madame Clara.”

  “Who is that Madame Clara?”

  “Well, M. Monistrol’s wife, a superb creature. The deceased, old Antenor, could not bear her. He said that his nephew loved that woman too much; that she was leading him by the end of his nose, and that she was fooling him in every way. He claimed that she did not love her husband; that she was too high and mighty for her position, and that finally she would do something foolish. Madame Clara and her uncle even had a falling out at the end of last year. She wanted the good fellow to lend a hundred thousand francs to M. Monistrol, to enable him to buy out a jeweler’s stock at the Palais Royal. But he refus
ed, saying that after his death they could do with his money whatever they wanted, but that until then, since he had earned it, he intended to keep and enjoy it.”

  I thought that M. Mechinet would dwell on this circumstance, which seemed to me very important. But no, in vain did I increase my signals; he continued:

  “It remains now to be told by whom the crime was first discovered.”

  “By me, my kind monsieur, by me,” moaned the concierge. “Oh! it is frightful! Just imagine, this morning, exactly at twelve, I brought up to old Antenor his chocolate, as usual. As I do the cleaning, I have a key to the apartment. I opened, I entered, and what did I see? Oh! my God!”

  And she began to scream loudly.

  “This grief proves that you have a good heart, madame,” gravely said M. Mechinet. “Only, as I am in a great hurry, please try to overcome it. What did you think, seeing your tenant murdered?”

  “I said to any one who wanted to hear: ‘It is his nephew, the scoundrel, who has done it to inherit.’ ”

  “What makes you so positive? Because after all to accuse a man of so great a crime, is to drive him to the scaffold.”

  “But, monsieur, who else would it be? M. Monistrol came to see his uncle last evening, and when he left it was nearly midnight. Besides, he nearly always speaks to me, but never said a word to me that night, neither when he came, nor when he left. And from that moment up to the time I discovered everything, I am sure nobody went up to M. Antenor’s apartment.”

  I admit this evidence confused me. I would not have thought of continuing the examination. Fortunately, M. Mechinet’s experience was great, and he was thoroughly master of the difficult art of drawing the whole truth from witnesses.

  “Then, madame,” he insisted, “you are certain that Monistrol came yesterday evening?”

  “I am certain.”

  “Did you surely see him and recognize him?”

  “Ah! wait. I did not look him in the face. He passed quickly, trying to hide himself, like the scoundrel he is, and the hallway is badly illuminated.”

  At this reply, of such incalculable importance, I jumped up and, approaching the concierge, exclaimed:

  “If it is so, how dare you affirm that you recognized M. Monistrol?”

  She looked me over from head to foot, and answered with an ironical smile:

  “If I did not see the master’s face, I did see the dog’s nose. As I always pet him, he came into my lodge, and I was just going to give him a bone from a leg of mutton when his master whistled for him.”

  I looked at M. Mechinet, anxious to know what he thought of this, but his face faithfully kept the secret of his impressions.

  He only added:

  “Of what breed is M. Monistrol’s dog?”

  “It is a loulou, such as the drovers used formerly, all black, with a white spot over the ear; they call him ‘Pluton.’ ”

  M. Mechinet rose.

  “You may retire,” he said to the concierge; “I know all I want.”

  And when she had left, he remarked:

  “It seems to me impossible that the nephew is not the guilty one.”

  During the time this long examination was taking place, the physicians had come. When they finished the autopsy they reached the following conclusion:

  “M. Pigoreau’s death had certainly been instantaneous.” So it was not he who had lined out the five letters, MONIS, which we saw on the floor near the body.

  So I was not mistaken.

  “But if it was not he,” exclaimed M. Mechinet, “who was it then? Monistrol—that is what nobody will ever succeed in putting into my brain.”

  And the commissary, happy at being free to go to dinner at last, made fun of M. Mechinet’s perplexities—ridiculous perplexities, since Monistrol had confessed. But M. Mechinet said:

  “Perhaps I am really nothing but an idiot; the future will tell. In the mean time, come, my dear Monsieur Godeuil, come with me to Police Headquarters.”

  VI.

  In like manner, as in going to Batignolles, we took a cab also to go to Police Headquarters.

  M. Mechinet’s preoccupation was great. His fingers continually traveled from the empty snuffbox to his nose, and I heard him grumbling between his teeth:

  “I shall assure myself of the truth of this! I must find out the truth of this.”

  Then he took from his pocket the cork which I had given him, and turned it over and over like a monkey picking a nut, and murmured:

  “This is evidence, however; there must be something gained by this green wax.”

  Buried in my corner, I did not breathe. My position was certainly one of the strangest, but I did not give it a thought. Whatever intelligence I had was absorbed in this affair; in my mind I went over its various and contradictory elements, and exhausted myself in trying to penetrate the secret of the tragedy, a secret of which I had a presentiment.

  When our carriage stopped, it was night—dark.

  The Quai des Orfèvres was deserted and quiet; not a sound, not a passer-by. The stores in the neighborhood, few and far between, were closed. All the life of the district had hidden itself in the little restaurant which almost forms the corner of the Rue de Jerusalem, behind the red curtains, on which were outlined the shadows of the patrons.

  “Will they let you see the accused?” I asked M. Mechinet.

  “Certainly,” he answered. “Am I not charged with the following up of this affair? Is it not necessary, in view of unforeseen requirements at the inquest, that I be allowed to examine the prisoner at any hour of the day or night?”

  And with a quick step he entered under the arch, saying to me:

  “Come, come, we have no time to lose.”

  I did not require any encouragement from him. I followed, agitated by indescribable emotions and trembling with vague curiosity.

  It was the first time I had ever crossed the threshold of the Police Headquarters, and God knows what my prejudices were then.

  There, I said to myself, not without a certain terror, there is the secret of Paris!

  I was so lost in thought, that, forgetting to look where I was going, I almost fell.

  The shock brought me back to a sense of the situation.

  We were going along an immense passageway, with damp walls and an uneven pavement. Soon my companion entered a small room where two men were playing cards, while three or four others, stretched on cots, were smoking pipes. M. Mechinet exchanged a few words with them—I could not hear, for I had remained outside. Then he came out again, and we continued our walk.

  After crossing a court and entering another passageway, we soon came before an iron gate with heavy bolts and a formidable lock.

  At a word from M. Mechinet, a watchman opened this gate for us; at the right we passed a spacious room, where it seemed to me I saw policemen and Paris guards; finally we climbed up a very steep stairway.

  At the top of the stairs, at the entrance to a narrow passage with a number of small doors, was seated a stout man with a jovial face, that certainly had nothing of the classical jailer about it.

  As soon as he noticed my companion, he exclaimed:

  “Eh! it is M. Mechinet. Upon my word, I was expecting you. I bet you came for the murderer of the little old man of Batignolles.”

  “Precisely. Is there anything new?”

  “No.”

  “But the investigating judge must have come.”

  “He has just gone.”

  “Well?”

  “He did not stay more than three minutes with the accused, and when he left he seemed very much satisfied. At the bottom of the stairs he met the governor, and said to him: ‘This is a settled case; the murderer has not even attempted to deny.’ ”

  M. Mechinet jumped about three feet; but the jailer did not notice it, and continued:

  “But then, that did not surprise me. At a mere glance at the individual as they brought him I said: ‘Here is one who will not know how to hold out.’ ”

  “And wh
at is he doing now?”

  “He moans. I have been instructed to watch him, for fear he should commit suicide, and as is my duty, I do watch him, but it is mere waste of time. He is another one of those fellows who care more for their own skin than for that of others.”

  “Let us go and see him,” interrupted M. Mechinet; “and above all, no noise.”

  At once all three advanced on tiptoe till we reached a solid oak door, through which had been cut a little barred window about a man’s height from the ground.

  Through this little window could be seen everything that occurred in the cell, which was illuminated by a paltry gasburner.

  The jailer glanced in first, M. Mechinet then looked, and at last my turn came.

  On a narrow iron couch, covered with a gray woolen blanket with yellow stripes, I perceived a man lying flat, his head hidden between his partly folded arms.

  He was crying; the smothered sound of his sobs reached me, and from time to time a convulsive trembling shook him from head to foot.

  “Open now,” ordered M. Mechinet of the watchman.

  He obeyed, and we entered.

  At the sound of the grating key, the prisoner had raised himself and, sitting on his pallet, his legs and arms hanging, his head inclined on his chest, he looked at us stupidly.

  He was a man of thirty-five or thirty-eight years of age; his build a little above the average, but robust, with an apoplectic neck sunk between two broad shoulders. He was ugly; smallpox had disfigured him, and his long, straight nose and receding forehead gave him somewhat the stupid look of a sheep. However his blue eyes were very beautiful, and his teeth were of remarkable whiteness.

  “Well! M. Monistrol,” began M. Mechinet, “we are grieving, are we?”

  As the unfortunate man did not answer, he continued:

  “I admit that the situation is not enlivening. Nevertheless, if I were in your place, I would prove that I am a man. I would have common sense, and try to prove my innocence.”

  “I am not innocent.”

  This time there could not be any mistake, nor could the intelligence of the officer be doubted; it was from the very mouth of the accused that we gathered the terrible confession.

  “What!” exclaimed M. Mechinet, “it was you who—”