by Michael Sims
The man stood up, staggering on his legs, his eyes bloodshot, his mouth foaming, prey to a veritable attack of rage.
“Yes, it was I,” he interrupted; “I alone. How many times will I have to repeat it? Already, a while ago, a judge came; I confessed everything and signed my confession. What more do you ask? Go on, I know what awaits me, and I am not afraid. I killed, I must be killed! Well, cut my head off, the sooner the better.”
Somewhat stunned at first, M. Mechinet soon recovered.
“One moment. You know,” he said, “they do not cut people’s heads off like that. First they must prove that they are guilty; after that the courts admit certain errors, certain fatalities, if you will, and it is for this very reason that they recognize ‘extenuating circumstances.’ ”
An inarticulate moan was Monistrol’s only answer. M. Mechinet continued:
“Did you have a terrible grudge against your uncle?”
“Oh, no.”
“Then why?”
“To inherit; my affairs were in bad shape—you may make inquiry. I needed money; my uncle, who was very rich, refused me some.”
“I understand; you hoped to escape from justice?”
“I was hoping to.”
Until then I had been surprised at the way M. Mechinet was conducting this rapid examination, but now it became clear to me. I guessed rightly what followed; I saw what trap he was laying for the accused.
“Another thing,” he continued suddenly, “where did you buy the revolver you used in committing the murder?”
No surprise appeared on Monistrol’s face.
“I had it in my possession for a long time,” he answered.
“What did you do with it after the crime?”
“I threw it outside on the boulevard.”
“All right,” spoke M. Mechinet gravely, “we will make search and will surely find it.”
After a moment of silence he added:
“What I can not explain to myself is, why is it that you had your dog follow you?”
“What! How! My dog?”
“Yes, Pluton. The concierge recognized him.”
Monistrol’s fists moved convulsively; he opened his mouth as if to answer, but a sudden idea crossing his mind, he threw himself back on his bed, and said in a tone of firm determination:
“You have tortured me enough; you shall not draw another word from me.”
It was clear that to insist would be taking trouble for nothing.
We then withdrew.
Once outside on the quay, grasping M. Mechinet’s arm, I said:
“You heard it, that unfortunate man does not even know how his uncle died. Is it possible to still doubt his innocence?”
But he was a terrible skeptic, that old detective.
“Who knows?” he answered. “I have seen some famous actors in my life. But we have had enough of it for to-day. This evening I will take you to eat soup with me. To-morrow it will be daylight, and we shall see.”
VII.
It was not far from ten o’clock when M. Mechinet, whom I was still accompanying, rang at the door of his apartment.
“I never carry any latch-key,” he told me. “In our blessed business you can never know what may happen. There are many rascals who have a grudge against me, and even if I am not always careful for myself, I must be so for my wife.”
My worthy neighbor’s explanation was superfluous. I had understood. I even observed that he rang in a peculiar way, which must have been an agreed signal between his wife and himself.
It was the amiable Madame Mechinet who opened the door.
With a quick movement, as graceful as a kitten, she threw herself on her husband’s neck, exclaiming:
“Here you are at last! I do not know why, but I was almost worried.”
But she stopped suddenly; she had just noticed me. Her joyous expression darkened, and she drew back. Addressing both me and her husband:
“What!” she continued, “you come from the café at this hour? That is not common sense!”
M. Mechinet’s lips wore the indulgent smile of the man who is sure of being loved, who knows how to appease by a word the quarrel picked with him.
“Do not scold us, Caroline,” he answered; by this “us” associating me with his case. “We do not come from the café, and neither have we lost our time. They sent for me for an affair; for a murder committed at Batignolles.”
With a suspicious look the young woman examined us—first her husband and then me; when she had persuaded herself that she was not being deceived, she said only:
“Ah!”
But it would take a whole page to give an inventory of all that was contained in that brief exclamation.
It was addressed to M. Mechinet, and clearly signified:
“What? you confided in this young man! You have revealed to him your position; you have initiated him into our secrets?”
Thus I interpreted that eloquent “Ah!” My worthy neighbor, too, must have interpreted it as I did, for he answered:
“Well, yes. Where is the wrong of it? I may have to dread the vengeance of wretches whom I give up to justice, but what have I to fear from honest people? Do you imagine perhaps that I hide myself; that I am ashamed of my trade?”
“You misunderstood me, my friend,” objected the young woman.
M. Mechinet did not even hear her.
He had just mounted—I learned this detail later—on a favorite hobby that always carried the day.
“Upon my word,” he continued, “you have some peculiar ideas, madame, my wife. What! I one of the sentinels of civilization! I, who assure society’s safety at the price of my rest and at the risk of my life, and should I blush for it? That would be far too amusing. You will tell me that against us of the police there exist a number of absurd prejudices left behind by the past. What do I care? Yes, I know that there are some sensitive gentlemen who look down on us. But sacrebleu! How I should like to see their faces if tomorrow my colleagues and I should go on a strike, leaving the streets free to the army of rascals whom we hold in check.”
Accustomed without doubt to explosions of this kind, Madame Mechinet did not say a word; she was right in doing so, for my good neighbor, meeting with no contradiction, calmed himself as if by magic.
“But enough of this,” he said to his wife. “There is now a matter of far greater importance. We have not had any dinner yet; we are dying of hunger; have you anything to give us for supper?”
What happened that night must have happened too often for Madame Mechinet to be caught unprepared.
“In five minutes you gentlemen will be served,” she answered with the most amiable smile.
In fact, a moment afterward we sat down at table before a fine cut of cold beef, served by Madame Mechinet, who did not stop filling our glasses with excellent Macon wine.
And while my worthy neighbor was conscientiously plying his fork I, looking at that peaceable home, which was his, that pretty, attentive little wife, which was his, kept asking myself whether I really saw before me one of those “savage” police agents who have been the heroes of so many absurd stories.
However, hunger soon satisfied, M. Mechinet started to tell his wife about our expedition. And he did not tell her about it lightly, but with the most minute details. She had taken a seat beside him, and by the way she listened and looked understandingly, asking for explanations when she had not well understood, one could recognize in her a plain “Egeria,” accustomed to be consulted, and having a deliberative vote.
When M. Mechinet had finished, she said to him:
“You have made a great mistake, an irreparable mistake.”
“Where?”
“It is not to Police Headquarters you should have gone, abandoning Batignolles.”
“But Monistrol?”
“Yes, you wanted to examine him. What advantage did you get from that?”
“It was of use to me, my dear friend.”
“For nothing. It was to the
Rue Vivienne that you should have hurried, to the wife. You would have surprised her in a natural agitation caused by her husband’s arrest, and if she is his accomplice, as we must suppose, with a little skill you would have made her confess.”
At these words I jumped from my chair.
“What! madame,” I exclaimed, “do you believe Monistrol guilty?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she answered:
“Yes.”
Then she added very vivaciously:
“But I am sure, do you hear, absolutely sure, that the murder was conceived by the woman. Of twenty crimes committed by men, fifteen have been conceived, planned and inspired by woman. Ask Mechinet. The concierge’s deposition ought to have enlightened you. Who is that Madame Monistrol? They told you a remarkably beautiful person, coquettish, ambitious, affected with covetousness, and who was leading her husband by the end of his nose. Now what was her position? Wretched, tight, precarious. She suffered from it, and the proof of it is that she asked her uncle to loan her husband a hundred thousand francs. He refused them to her, thus shattering her hopes. Do you not think she had a deadly grudge against him? And when she kept seeing him in good health and sturdy as an oak, she must have said to herself fatally: ‘He will live a hundred years; by the time he leaves us his inheritance we won’t have any teeth left to munch it, and who knows even whether he will not bury us!’ Is it so very far from this point to the conception of a crime? And the resolution once taken in her mind, she must have prepared her husband a long time before, she must have accustomed him to the thought of murder, she must have put, so to say, the knife in his hand. And he, one day, threatened with bankruptcy, crazed by his wife’s lamentations, delivered the blow.”
“All that is logical,” approved M. Mechinet, “very logical, without a doubt, but what becomes of the circumstances brought to light by us?”
“Then, madame,” I said, “you believe Monistrol stupid enough to denounce himself by writing down his name?”
She slightly shrugged her shoulders and answered:
“Is that stupidity? As for me, I maintain that it is not. Is not that point your strongest argument in favor of his innocence?”
This reasoning was so specious that for a moment I remained perplexed. Then recovering, I said, insisting:
“But he confesses his guilt, madame?”
“An excellent method of his for getting the authorities to prove him innocent.”
“Oh!”
“You yourself are proof of its efficacy, dear M. Godeuil.”
“Eh! madame, the unfortunate does not even know how his uncle was killed!”
“I beg your pardon; he seemed not to know it, which is not the same thing.”
The discussion was becoming animated, and would have lasted much longer, had not M. Mechinet put an end to it.
“Come, come,” he simply said to his wife, “you are too romantic this evening.”
And addressing me, he continued:
“As for you, I shall come and get you to-morrow, and we shall go together to call on Madame Monistrol. And now, as I am dying for sleep, good night.”
He may have slept. As for me, I could not close my eyes.
A secret voice within me seemed to say that Monistrol was innocent.
My imagination painted with painful liveliness the tortures of that unfortunate man, alone in his prison cell.
But why had he confessed?
VIII.
What I then lacked—I have had occasion to realize it hundreds of times since—was experience, business practise, and chiefly an exact knowledge of the means of action and of police investigation.
I felt vaguely that this particular investigation had been conducted wrongly, or rather superficially, but I would have been embarrassed to say why, and especially to say what should have been done.
None the less I was passionately interested in Monistrol.
It seemed to me that his cause was also mine, and it was only natural—my young vanity was at stake. Was it not one of my own remarks that had raised the first doubts as to the guilt of this unfortunate man?
I owed it to myself, I said, to prove his innocence.
Unfortunately the discussions of the evening troubled me to such an extent that I did not know precisely on which fact to build up my system.
And, as always happens when the mind is for too long a time applied to the solution of a problem, my thoughts became tangled, like a skein in the hands of a child; I could no longer see clearly; it was chaos.
Buried in my armchair, I was torturing my brain, when, at about nine o’clock in the morning, M. Mechinet, faithful to his promise of the evening before, came for me.
“Come, let us go,” he said, shaking me suddenly, for I had not heard him enter. “Let us start!”
“I am with you,” I said, getting up.
We descended hurriedly, and I noticed then that my worthy neighbor was more carefully dressed than usual.
He had succeeded in giving himself that easy and well-to-do appearance which more than anything else impresses the Parisian shopkeeper.
His cheerfulness was that of a man sure of himself, marching toward certain victory.
We were soon in the street, and while walking he asked me:
“Well, what do you think of my wife? I pass for a clever man at Police Headquarters, and yet I consult her—even Molière consulted his maid—and often I find it to my advantage. She has one weakness: for her, unreasonable crimes do not exist, and her imagination endows all scoundrels with diabolical plots. But as I have exactly the opposite fault, as I perhaps am a little too much matter-of-fact, it rarely happens that from our consultation the truth does not result somehow.”
“What!” I exclaimed, “you think to have solved the mystery of the Monistrol case!”
He stopped short, drew out his snuffbox, inhaled three or four of his imaginary pinches, and in a tone of quiet vanity, answered:
“I have at least the means of solving it.”
In the mean time we reached the upper end of the Rue Vivienne, not far from Monistrol’s business place.
“Now look out,” said M. Mechinet to me. “Follow me, and whatever happens do not be surprised.”
He did well to warn me. Without the warning I would have been surprised at seeing him suddenly enter the store of an umbrella dealer.
Stiff and grave, like an Englishman, he made them show him everything there was in the shop, found nothing suitable, and finally inquired whether it was not possible for them to manufacture for him an umbrella according to a model which he would furnish.
They answered that it would be the easiest thing in the world, and he left, saying he would return the day following.
And most assuredly the half hour he spent in this store was not wasted.
While examining the objects submitted to him, he had artfully drawn from the dealers all they knew about the Monistrol couple.
Upon the whole, it was not a difficult task, as the affair of the “little old man of Batignolles” and the arrest of the imitation jeweler had deeply stirred the district and were the subject of all conversation.
“There, you see,” he said to me, when we were outside, “how exact information is obtained. As soon as the people know with whom they are dealing, they pose, make long phrases, and then good-by to strict truth.”
This comedy was repeated by Mr. Mechinet in seven or eight stores of the neighborhood.
In one of them, where the proprietors were disagreeable and not much inclined to talk, he even made a purchase amounting to twenty francs.
But after two hours of such practise, which amused me very much, we had gauged public opinion. We knew exactly what was thought of M. and Mme. Monistrol in the neighborhood, where they had lived since their marriage, that is, for the past four years.
As regards the husband, there was but one opinion—he was the most gentle and best of men, obliging, honest, intelligent, and hardworking. If he had not made a success in his busines
s it was because luck does not always favor those who most deserve it. He did wrong in taking a shop doomed to bankruptcy, for, in the past fifteen years, four merchants had failed there.
Everybody knew and said that he adored his wife, but this great love had not exceeded the proper limits, and therefore no ridicule resulted for him.
Nobody could believe in his guilt.
His arrest, they said, must be a mistake made by the police.
As to Madame Monistrol, opinion was divided.
Some thought she was too stylish for her means; others claimed that a stylish dress was one of the requirements, one of the necessities, of a business dealing in luxuries.
In general, they were convinced that she loved her husband very much. For instance, they were unanimous in praising her modesty, the more meritorious, because she was remarkably beautiful, and because she was besieged by many admirers. But never had she given any occasion to be talked about, never had her immaculate reputation been glanced at by the lightest suspicion.
I noticed that this especially bewildered M. Mechinet.
“It is surprising,” he said to me, “not one scandal, not one slander, not one calumny. Oh! this is not what Caroline thought. According to her, we were to find one of those lady shopkeepers, who occupy the principal place in the office, who display their beauty much more than their merchandise, and who banish to the back shop their husband—a blind idiot, or an indecent obliging scoundrel. But not at all.”
I did not answer; I was not less disconcerted than my neighbor.
We were now far from the evidence the concierge of the Rue de Lecluse had given; so greatly varies the point of view according to the location. What at Batignolles is considered to be a blamable coquetry, is in the Rue Vivienne nothing more than an unreasonable requirement of position.
But we had already employed too much time for our investigations to stop and exchange impressions and to discuss our conjectures.
“Now,” said M. Mechinet, “before entering the place, let us study its approaches.”
And trained in carrying out discreet investigations in the midst of Paris bustle, he motioned to me to follow him under a carriage entrance, exactly opposite Monistrol’s store.