by Michael Sims
It was a modest shop, almost poor, compared with those around it. The front needed badly a painter’s brush. Above, in letters which were formerly gilt, now smoky and blackened, Monistrol’s name was displayed. On the plate-glass windows could be read: “Gold and Imitation.”
Alas! it was principally imitation that was glistening in the show window. On the rods were hanging many plated chains, sets of jet jewelry, diadems studded with rhinestones, then imitation coral necklaces and brooches and rings; and cuff buttons set with imitation stones in all colors.
All in all, a poor display, it could never tempt gimlet thieves.
“Let us enter,” I said to M. Mechinet.
He was less impatient than I, or knew better how to keep back his impatience, for he stopped me by the arm, saying:
“One moment. I should like at least to catch a glimpse of Madame Monistrol.”
In vain did we continue to stand for more than twenty minutes on our observation post; the shop remained empty, Madame Monistrol did not appear.
“Come, Monsieur Godeuil, let us venture,” exclaimed my worthy neighbor at last, “we have been standing in one place long enough.”
IX.
In order to reach Monistrol’s store we had only to cross the street.
At the noise of the door opening, a little servant girl, from fifteen to sixteen years old, dirty and ill combed, came out of the back shop.
“What can I serve the gentlemen with?” she asked.
“Madame Monistrol?”
“She is there, gentlemen; I am going to notify her, because you see—”
M. Mechinet did not give her time to finish. With a movement, rather brutal, I must confess, he pushed her out of the way and entered the back shop saying:
“All right, since she is there, I am going to speak to her.”
As for me, I walked on the heels of my worthy neighbor, convinced that we would not leave without knowing the solution of the riddle.
That back shop was a miserable room, serving at the same time as parlor, dining-room, and bedroom. Disorder reigned supreme; moreover there was that incoherence we notice in the house of the poor who endeavor to appear rich.
In the back there was a bed with blue damask curtains and with pillows adorned with lace; in front of the mantelpiece stood a table all covered with the remains of a more than modest breakfast.
In a large armchair was seated, or rather lying, a very blond young woman, who was holding in her hand a sheet of stamped paper.
It was Madame Monistrol.
Surely in telling us of her beauty, all the neighbors had come far below the reality. I was dazzled.
Only one circumstance displeased me. She was in full mourning, and wore a crape dress, slightly decolleté, which fitted her marvelously.
This showed too much presence of mind for so great a sorrow. Her attire seemed to me to be the contrivance of an actress dressing herself for the role she is to play.
As we entered, she stood up, like a frightened doe, and with a voice which seemed to be broken by tears, she asked:
“What do you want, gentlemen?”
M. Mechinet had also observed what I had noticed.
“Madame,” he answered roughly, “I was sent by the Court; I am a police agent.”
Hearing this, she fell back into her armchair with a moan that would have touched a tiger.
Then, all at once, seized by some kind of enthusiasm, with sparkling eyes and trembling lips, she exclaimed:
“So you have come to arrest me. God bless you. See! I am ready, take me. Thus I shall rejoin that honest man, arrested by you last evening. Whatever be his fate, I want to share it. He is as innocent as I am. No matter! If he is to be the victim of an error of human justice, it shall be for me a last joy to die with him.”
She was interrupted by a low growl coming from one of the corners of the back shop.
I looked, and saw a black dog, with bristling hair and bloodshot eyes, showing his teeth, and ready to jump on us.
“Be quiet, Pluton!” called Madame Monistrol; “go and lie down; these gentlemen do not want to hurt me.”
Slowly and without ceasing to glare at us furiously, the dog took refuge under the bed.
“You are right to say that we do not want to hurt you, madame,” continued M. Mechinet, “we did not come to arrest you.”
If she heard, she did not show it.
“This morning already,” she said, “I received this paper here, commanding me to appear later in the day, at three o’clock, at the court-house, in the office of the investigating judge. What do they want of me? my God! What do they want of me?”
“To obtain explanations which will prove, I hope, your husband’s innocence. So, madame, do not consider me an enemy. What I want is to get at the truth.”
He produced his snuff-box, hastily poked his fingers therein, and in a solemn tone, which I did not recognize in him, he resumed:
“It is to tell you, madame, of what importance will be your answers to the questions which I shall have the honor of asking you. Will it be convenient for you to answer me frankly?”
For a long time she rested her large blue eyes, drowned in tears, on my worthy neighbor, and in a tone of painful resignation she said:
“Question me, monsieur.”
For the third time I repeat it, I was absolutely without experience; I was troubled over the manner in which M. Mechinet had begun this examination.
It seemed to me that he betrayed his perplexity, and that, instead of pursuing an aim established in advance, he was delivering his blows at random.
Ah! if I were allowed to act! Ah! if I had dared.
He, impenetrable, had seated himself opposite Madame Monistrol.
“You must know, madame,” he began, “that it was the night before last, at eleven o’clock, that M. Pigoreau, called Antenor, your husband’s uncle, was murdered.”
“Alas!”
“Where was M. Monistrol at that hour?”
“My God! that is fatality.”
M. Mechinet did not wince.
“I am asking you, madame,” he insisted, “where your husband spent the evening of the day before yesterday?”
The young woman needed time to answer, because she sobbed so that it seemed to choke her. Finally mastering herself, she moaned:
“The day before yesterday my husband spent the evening out of the house.”
“Do you know where he was?”
“Oh! as to that, yes. One of our workmen, who lives in Montrouge, had to deliver for us a set of false pearls, and did not deliver it. We were taking the risk of being obliged to keep the order on our account, which would have been a disaster, as we are not rich. That is why, at dinner, my husband told me: ‘I am going to see that fellow.’ And, in fact, toward nine o’clock, he went out, and I even went with him as far as the omnibus, where he got in in my presence, Rue Richelieu.”
I was breathing more easily. This, perhaps, was an alibi after all.
M. Mechinet had the same thought, and, more gently, he resumed:
“If it is so, your workman will be able to affirm that he saw M. Monistrol at his house at eleven o’clock.”
“Alas! no.”
“How? Why?”
“Because he had gone out. My husband did not see him.”
“That is indeed fatal. But it may be that the concierge noticed M. Monistrol.”
“Our workman lives in a house where there is no concierge.”
That may have been the truth; it was certainly a terrible charge against the unfortunate prisoner.
“And at what time did your husband return?” continued M. Mechinet.
“A little after midnight.”
“Did you not find that he was absent a very long time?”
“Oh! yes. And I even reproved him for it. He told me as an excuse that he had taken the longest way, that he had sauntered on the road, and that he had stopped in a café to drink a glass of beer.”
“How did he look when he came home?”
“It seemed to me that he was vexed; but that was natural.”
“What clothes did he wear?”
“The same he had on when he was arrested.”
“You did not observe in him anything out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing.”
Standing a little behind M. Mechinet, I could, at my leisure, observe Madame Monistrol’s face and catch the most fleeting signs of her emotion.
She seemed overwhelmed by an immense grief, large tears rolled down her pale cheeks; nevertheless, it seemed to me at times that I could discover in the depth of her large blue eyes something like a flash of joy.
Is it possible that she is guilty? And as this thought, which had already come to me before, presented itself more obstinately, I quickly stepped forward, and in a rough tone asked her:
“But you, madame, where were you on that fatal evening at the time your husband went uselessly to Montrouge, to look for his workman?”
She cast on me a long look, full of stupor, and softly answered:
“I was here, monsieur; witnesses will confirm it to you.”
“Witnesses!”
“Yes, monsieur. It was so hot that evening that I had a longing for ice-cream, but it vexed me to eat it alone. So I sent my maid to invite my neighbors, Madame Dorstrich, the bootmaker’s wife, whose store is next to ours, and Madame Rivaille, the glove manufacturer, opposite us. These two ladies accepted my invitation and remained here until half-past eleven. Ask them, they will tell you. In the midst of such cruel trials that I am suffering, this accidental circumstance is a blessing from God.”
Was it really an accidental circumstance?
That is what we were asking ourselves, M. Mechinet and I, with glances more rapid than a flash.
When chance is so intelligent as that, when it serves a cause so directly, it is very hard not to suspect that it had been somewhat prepared and led on.
But the moment was badly chosen for this discovery of our bottom thoughts.
“You have never been suspected, you, madame,” imprudently stated M. Mechinet. “The worst that may be supposed is that your husband perhaps told you something of the crime before he committed it.”
“Monsieur—if you knew us.”
“Wait. Your business is not going very well, we were told; you were embarrassed.”
“Momentarily, yes; in fact—”
“Your husband must have been unhappy and worried about this precarious condition. He must have suffered especially for you, whom he adores; for you who are so young and beautiful; for you, more than for himself, he must have ardently desired the enjoyments of luxury and the satisfactions of self-esteem, procured by wealth.”
“Monsieur, I repeat it, my husband is innocent.”
With an air of reflection, M. Mechinet seemed to fill his nose with tobacco; then all at once he said:
“Then, by thunder! how do you explain his confessions? An innocent man does not declare himself to be guilty at the mere mentioning of the crime of which he is suspected; that is rare, madame; that is prodigious!”
A fugitive blush appeared on the cheeks of the young woman. Up to then her look had been straight and clear; now for the first time it became troubled and unsteady.
“I suppose,” she answered in an indistinct voice and with increased tears, “I believe that my husband, seized by fright and stupor at finding himself accused of so great a crime, lost his head.”
M. Mechinet shook his head.
“If absolutely necessary,” he said, “a passing delirium might be admitted; but this morning, after a whole long night of reflection, M. Monistrol persists in his first confessions.”
Was this true? Was my worthy neighbor talking at random, or else had he before coming to get me been at the prison to get news?
However it was, the young woman seemed almost to faint; hiding her head between her hands, she murmured:
“Lord God! My poor husband has become insane.”
Convinced now that I was assisting at a comedy, and that the great despair of this young woman was nothing but falsehood, I was asking myself whether for certain reasons which were escaping me she had not shaped the terrible determination taken by her husband; and whether, he being innocent, she did not know the real guilty one.
But M. Mechinet did not have the air of a man looking so far ahead.
After having given the young woman a few words of consolation too common to compromise him in any way, he gave her to understand that she would forestall many prejudices by allowing a minute and strict search through her domicile.
This opening she seized with an eagerness which was not feigned.
“Search, gentlemen!” she told us; “examine, search everywhere. It is a service which you will render me. And it will not take long. We have in our name nothing but the back shop where we are, our maid’s room on the sixth floor, and a little cellar. Here are the keys for everything.”
To my great surprise, M. Mechinet accepted; he seemed to be starting on one of the most exact and painstaking investigations.
What was his object? It was not possible that he did not have in view some secret aim, as his researches evidently had to end in nothing.
As soon as he had apparently finished he said:
“There remains the cellar to be explored.”
“I am going to take you down, monsieur,” said Madame Monistrol.
And immediately taking a burning candle, she made us cross a yard into which a door led from the back shop, and took us across a very slippery stairway to a door which she opened, saying:
“Here it is—enter, gentlemen.”
I began to understand.
My worthy neighbor examined the cellar with a ready and trained look. It was miserably kept, and more miserably fitted out. In one corner was standing a small barrel of beer, and immediately opposite, fastened on blocks, was a barrel of wine, with a wooden tap to draw it. On the right side, on iron rods, were lined up about fifty filled bottles. These bottles M. Mechinet did not lose sight of, and found occasion to move them one by one.
And what I saw he noticed: not one of them was sealed with green wax.
Thus the cork picked up by me, and which served to protect the point of the murderer’s weapon, did not come from the Monistrols’ cellar.
“Decidedly,” M. Mechinet said, affecting some disappointment, “I do not find anything; we can go up again.”
We did so, but not in the same order in which we descended, for in returning I was the first.
Thus it was I who opened the door of the back shop. Immediately the dog of the Monistrol couple sprang at me, barking so furiously that I jumped back.
“The devil! Your dog is vicious,” M. Mechinet said to the young woman.
She already called him off with a gesture of her hand.
“Certainly not, he is not vicious,” she said, “but he is a good watchdog. We are jewelers, exposed more than others to thieves; we have trained him.”
Involuntarily, as one always does after having been threatened by a dog, I called him by his name, which I knew:
“Pluton! Pluton!”
But instead of coming near me, he retreated growling, showing his sharp teeth.
“Oh, it is useless for you to call him,” thoughtlessly said Madame Monistrol. “He will not obey you.”
“Indeed! And why?”
“Ah! because he is faithful, as all of his breed; he knows only his master and me.”
This sentence apparently did not mean anything. For me it was like a flash of light. And without reflecting I asked:
“Where then, madame, was that faithful dog the evening of the crime?”
The effect produced on her by this direct question was such that she almost dropped the candlestick she was still holding.
“I do not know,” she stammered; “I do not remember.”
“Perhaps he followed your husband.”
“In fact, yes, it seems to me now I remember.”
“He m
ust then have been trained to follow carriages, since you told us that you went with your husband as far as the omnibus.”
She remained silent, and I was going to continue when M. Mechinet interrupted me. Far from taking advantage of the young woman’s troubled condition, he seemed to assume the task of reassuring her, and after having urged her to obey the summons of the investigating judge, he led me out.
Then when we were outside he said:
“Are you losing your head?”
The reproach hurt me.
“Is it losing one’s head,” I said, “to find the solution of the problem? Now I have it, that solution. Monistrol’s dog shall guide us to the truth.”
My hastiness made my worthy neighbor smile, and in a fatherly tone he said to me:
“You are right, and I have well understood you. Only if Madame Monistrol has penetrated into your suspicions, the dog before this evening will be dead or will have disappeared.”
X.
I had committed an enormous imprudence, it was true. Nevertheless, I had found the weak point; that point by which the most solid system of defense may be broken down.
I, voluntary recruit, had seen clearly where the old stager was losing himself, groping about. Any other would, perhaps, have been jealous and would have had a grudge against me. But not he.
He did not think of anything else but of profiting by my fortunate discovery; and, as he said, everything was easy enough now, since the investigation rested on a positive point of departure.
We entered a neighboring restaurant to deliberate while lunching.
The problem, which an hour before seemed unsolvable, now stood as follows:
It had been proved to us, as much as could be by evidence, that Monistrol was innocent. Why had he confessed to being guilty? We thought we could guess why, but that was not the question of the moment. We were equally certain that Madame Monistrol had not budged from her home the night of the murder. But everything tended to show that she was morally an accomplice to the crime; that she had known of it, even if she did not advise and prepare it, and that, on the other hand, she knew the murderer very well.
Who was he, that murderer?
A man whom Monistrol’s dog obeyed as well as his master, since he had him follow him when he went to the Batignolles.
Therefore, it was an intimate friend of the Monistrol household. He must have hated the husband, however, since he had arranged everything with an infernal skill, so that the suspicion of the crime should fall on that unfortunate.