by Graeme Davis
When he had finished, he said:
“Here it is, and may you succeed in speedily finding this great criminal.”
“Oh, he’ll find him,” cried the Corbeil policeman.
“I hope so, at least. As to how I shall go to work, I don’t know yet. I will arrange my plan of battle to-night.”
The detective then took leave of M. Domini and retired, followed by M. Plantat. The doctor remained with the judge to make arrangements for Sauvresy’s exhumation.
M. Lecoq was just leaving the court-house when he felt himself pulled by the arm. He turned and found that it was Goulard who came to beg his favor and to ask him to take him along, persuaded that after having served under so great a captain he must inevitably become a famous man himself. M. Lecoq had some difficulty in getting rid of him; but he at length found himself alone in the street with the old justice of the peace.
“It is late,” said the latter. “Would it be agreeable to you to partake of another modest dinner with me, and accept my cordial hospitality?”
“I am chagrined to be obliged to refuse you,” replied M. Lecoq. “But I ought to be in Paris this evening.”
“But I—in fact, I—was very anxious to talk to you—about—”
“About Mademoiselle Laurence?”
“Yes; I have a plan, and if you would help me—”
M. Lecoq affectionately pressed his friend’s hand.
“I have only known you a few hours,” said he, “and yet I am as devoted to you as I would be to an old friend. All that is humanly possible for me to do to serve you, I shall certainly do.”
“But where shall I see you? They expect me to-day at Orcival.”
“Very well; to-morrow morning at nine, at my rooms. No—Rue Montmartre.”
“A thousand thanks; I shall be there.”
When they had reached the Belle Image they separated.
* The home of the Count de Tremorel.
† A hardware store.
‡ French: “Kindly Gardener.”
§ According to online sources, 1,000 francs in 1876 would have the same value as about U.S. $13,000 today.
¶ A hotel in Corbeil, where de Tremorel had been seen to quarrel with her.
# A district on the edge of Paris.
MR. POLICEMAN AND THE COOK
by Wilkie Collins
1880
Wilkie Collins is another writer credited with the creation of the detective genre. His 1859 novel The Woman in White has been hailed as the first great English mystery novel, although it might be argued that it really belongs in the earlier category of “sensation fiction,” from which the detective story emerged. Walter Hartright, the novel’s protagonist, is a drawing teacher, an everyman character who, while he turns out to be a capable investigator, is unexceptional compared to Dupin and Holmes.
In 1868, Collins published The Moonstone, another novel which has been hailed as the first English detective novel. Called “A Romance” on its flyleaf, The Moonstone features a fabulous jewel, a party in an English country house, and an elaborate plot involving robbery, revenge, and other features that came to characterize detective fiction: a brilliant detective outwitting the bungling local constabulary, a liberal sprinkling of red herrings, a large number of suspects, and a twist that pins the crime on the least likely of them. On the basis of The Moonstone, T. S. Eliot credited Collins with creating the English detective novel, “a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe.” Dorothy L. Sayers, a leading light of the so-called “Golden Age of Detective Fiction,” called it “probably the very finest detective story ever written.”
Both The Moonstone and The Woman in White are widely available, but Collins’s shorter fiction is less well-known. This tale was first published as a serial in The Spirit of the Times, under the title “Who Killed Zebedee?” It was later collected in his three-volume collection Little Novels. It takes the form of a deathbed confession, as an unnamed police officer remembers a case from the beginning of his career, which has haunted him for his whole life.
A FIRST WORD FOR MYSELF.
Before the doctor left me one evening, I asked him how much longer I was likely to live. He answered: “It’s not easy to say; you may die before I can get back to you in the morning, or you may live to the end of the month.”
I was alive enough on the next morning to think of the needs of my soul, and (being a member of the Roman Catholic Church) to send for the priest.
The history of my sins, related in confession, included blameworthy neglect of a duty which I owed to the laws of my country. In the priest’s opinion—and I agreed with him—I was bound to make public acknowledgment of my fault, as an act of penance becoming to a Catholic Englishman. We concluded, thereupon, to try a division of labor. I related the circumstances, while his reverence took the pen and put the matter into shape.
Here follows what came of it:
I.
When I was a young man of five-and-twenty, I became a member of the London police force. After nearly two years’ ordinary experience of the responsible and ill-paid duties of that vocation, I found myself employed on my first serious and terrible case of official inquiry—relating to nothing less than the crime of Murder.
The circumstances were these:
I was then attached to a station in the northern district of London—which I beg permission not to mention more particularly. On a certain Monday in the week, I took my turn of night duty. Up to four in the morning, nothing occurred at the station-house out of the ordinary way. It was then springtime, and, between the gas and the fire, the room became rather hot. I went to the door to get a breath of fresh air—much to the surprise of our Inspector on duty, who was constitutionally a chilly man. There was a fine rain falling; and a nasty damp in the air sent me back to the fireside. I don’t suppose I had sat down for more than a minute when the swinging-door was violently pushed open. A frantic woman ran in with a scream, and said: “Is this the station-house?”
Our Inspector (otherwise an excellent officer) had, by some perversity of nature, a hot temper in his chilly constitution. “Why, bless the woman, can’t you see it is?” he says. “What’s the matter now?”
“Murder’s the matter!” she burst out. “For God’s sake, come back with me. It’s at Mrs. Crosscapel’s lodging-house, number 14 Lehigh Street. A young woman has murdered her husband in the night! With a knife, sir. She says she thinks she did it in her sleep.”
I confess I was startled by this; and the third man on duty (a sergeant) seemed to feel it too. She was a nice-looking young woman, even in her terrified condition, just out of bed, with her clothes huddled on anyhow. I was partial in those days to a tall figure—and she was, as they say, my style. I put a chair for her; and the sergeant poked the fire. As for the Inspector, nothing ever upset him. He questioned her as coolly as if it had been a case of petty larceny.
“Have you seen the murdered man?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Or the wife?”
“No, sir. I didn’t dare go into the room; I only heard about it!”
“Oh? And who are You? One of the lodgers?”
“No, sir. I’m the cook.”
“Isn’t there a master in the house?”
“Yes, sir. He’s frightened out of his wits. And the housemaid’s gone for the doctor. It all falls on the poor servants, of course. Oh, why did I ever set foot in that horrible house?”
The poor soul burst out crying, and shivered from head to foot. The Inspector made a note of her statement, and then asked her to read it, and sign it with her name. The object of this proceeding was to get her to come near enough to give him the opportunity of smelling her breath. “When people make extraordinary statements,” he afterward said to me, “it sometimes saves trouble to satisfy yourself that they are not drunk. I’ve known them to be mad—but not often. You will generally find that in their eyes.”
She roused herself and signed her name—“Priscilla Thurlby.” The Inspector’s o
wn test proved her to be sober; and her eyes—a nice light blue color, mild and pleasant, no doubt, when they were not staring with fear, and red with crying—satisfied him (as I supposed) that she was not mad. He turned the case over to me, in the first instance. I saw that he didn’t believe in it, even yet.
“Go back with her to the house,” he says. “This may be a stupid hoax, or a quarrel exaggerated. See to it yourself, and hear what the doctor says. If it is serious, send word back here directly, and let nobody enter the place or leave it till we come. Stop! You know the form if any statement is volunteered?”
“Yes, sir. I am to caution the persons that whatever they say will be taken down, and may be used against them.”
“Quite right. You’ll be an Inspector yourself one of these days. Now, miss!” With that he dismissed her, under my care.
Lehigh Street was not very far off—about twenty minutes’ walk from the station. I confess I thought the Inspector had been rather hard on Priscilla. She was herself naturally angry with him. “What does he mean,” she says, “by talking of a hoax? I wish he was as frightened as I am. This is the first time I have been out at service, sir—and I did think I had found a respectable place.”
I said very little to her—feeling, if the truth must be told, rather anxious about the duty committed to me. On reaching the house the door was opened from within, before I could knock. A gentleman stepped out, who proved to be the doctor. He stopped the moment he saw me.
“You must be careful, policeman,” he says. “I found the man lying on his back, in bed, dead—with the knife that had killed him left sticking in the wound.”
Hearing this, I felt the necessity of sending at once to the station. Where could I find a trustworthy messenger? I took the liberty of asking the doctor if he would repeat to the police what he had already said to me. The station was not much out of his way home. He kindly granted my request.
The landlady (Mrs. Crosscapel) joined us while we were talking. She was still a young woman; not easily frightened, as far as I could see, even by a murder in the house. Her husband was in the passage behind her. He looked old enough to be her father; and he so trembled with terror that some people might have taken him for the guilty person. I removed the key from the street door, after locking it; and I said to the landlady: “Nobody must leave the house, or enter the house, till the Inspector comes. I must examine the premises to see if any one has broken in.”
“There is the key of the area gate,” she said, in answer to me. “It’s always kept locked. Come downstairs and see for yourself.” Priscilla went with us. Her mistress set her to work to light the kitchen fire. “Some of us,” says Mrs. Crosscapel, “may be the better for a cup of tea.” I remarked that she took things easy, under the circumstances. She answered that the landlady of a London lodging-house could not afford to lose her wits, no matter what might happen.
I found the gate locked, and the shutters of the kitchen window fastened. The back kitchen and back door were secured in the same way. No person was concealed anywhere. Returning upstairs, I examined the front parlor window. There, again, the barred shutters answered for the security of that room. A cracked voice spoke through the door of the back parlor. “The policeman can come in,” it said, “if he will promise not to look at me.” I turned to the landlady for information. “It’s my parlor lodger, Miss Mybus,” she said, “a most respectable lady.” Going into the room, I saw something rolled up perpendicularly in the bed curtains. Miss Mybus had made herself modestly invisible in that way. Having now satisfied my mind about the security of the lower part of the house, and having the keys safe in my pocket, I was ready to go upstairs.
On our way to the upper regions I asked if there had been any visitors on the previous day. There had been only two visitors, friends of the lodgers—and Mrs. Crosscapel herself had let them both out. My next inquiry related to the lodgers themselves. On the ground floor there was Miss Mybus. On the first floor (occupying both rooms) Mr. Barfield, an old bachelor, employed in a merchant’s office. On the second floor, in the front room, Mr. John Zebedee, the murdered man, and his wife. In the back room, Mr. Deluc; described as a cigar agent, and supposed to be a Creole gentleman from Martinique. In the front garret, Mr. and Mrs. Crosscapel. In the back garret, the cook and the housemaid. These were the inhabitants, regularly accounted for. I asked about the servants. “Both excellent characters,” says the landlady, “or they would not be in my service.”
We reached the second floor, and found the housemaid on the watch outside the door of the front room. Not as nice a woman, personally, as the cook, and sadly frightened of course. Her mistress had posted her, to give the alarm in the case of an outbreak on the part of Mrs. Zebedee, kept locked up in the room. My arrival relieved the housemaid of further responsibility. She ran downstairs to her fellow-servant in the kitchen.
I asked Mrs. Crosscapel how and when the alarm of the murder had been given.
“Soon after three this morning,” says she, “I was woke by the screams of Mrs. Zebedee. I found her out here on the landing, and Mr. Deluc, in great alarm, trying to quiet her. Sleeping in the next room he had only to open his door, when her screams woke him. ‘My dear John’s murdered! I am the miserable wretch—I did it in my sleep!’ She repeated these frantic words over and over again, until she dropped in a swoon. Mr. Deluc and I carried her back into the bedroom. We both thought the poor creature had been driven distracted by some dreadful dream. But when we got to the bedside—don’t ask me what we saw; the doctor has told you about it already. I was once a nurse in a hospital, and accustomed, as such, to horrid sights. It turned me cold and giddy, notwithstanding. As for Mr. Deluc, I thought he would have had a fainting fit next.”
Hearing this, I inquired if Mrs. Zebedee had said or done any strange things since she had been Mrs. Crosscapel’s lodger.
“You think she’s mad?” says the landlady. “And anybody would be of your mind, when a woman accuses herself of murdering her husband in her sleep. All I can say is that, up to this morning, a more quiet, sensible, well-behaved little person than Mrs. Zebedee I never met with. Only just married, mind, and as fond of her unfortunate husband as a woman could be. I should have called them a pattern couple, in their own line of life.”
There was no more to be said on the landing. We unlocked the door and went into the room.
II.
He lay in bed on his back as the doctor had described him. On the left side of his nightgown, just over his heart, the blood on the linen told its terrible tale. As well as one could judge, looking unwillingly at a dead face, he must have been a handsome young man in his lifetime. It was a sight to sadden anybody—but I think the most painful sensation was when my eyes fell next on his miserable wife.
She was down on the floor, crouched up in a corner—a dark little woman, smartly dressed in gay colors. Her black hair and her big brown eyes made the horrid paleness of her face look even more deadly white than perhaps it really was. She stared straight at us without appearing to see us. We spoke to her, and she never answered a word. She might have been dead—like her husband—except that she perpetually picked at her fingers, and shuddered every now and then as if she was cold. I went to her and tried to lift her up. She shrank back with a cry that well-nigh frightened me—not because it was loud, but because it was more like the cry of some animal than of a human being. However quietly she might have behaved in the landlady’s previous experience of her, she was beside herself now. I might have been moved by a natural pity for her, or I might have been completely upset in my mind—I only know this, I could not persuade myself that she was guilty. I even said to Mrs. Crosscapel, “I don’t believe she did it.”
While I spoke there was a knock at the door. I went downstairs at once, and admitted (to my great relief) the Inspector, accompanied by one of our men.
He waited downstairs to hear my report, and he approved of what I had done. “It looks as if the murder had been committed by somebody in the house.
” Saying this, he left the man below, and went up with me to the second floor.
Before he had been a minute in the room, he discovered an object which had escaped my observation.
It was the knife that had done the deed.
The doctor had found it left in the body—had withdrawn it to probe the wound—and had laid it on the bedside table. It was one of those useful knives which contain a saw, a corkscrew, and other like implements. The big blade fastened back, when open, with a spring. Except where the blood was on it, it was as bright as when it had been purchased. A small metal plate was fastened to the horn handle, containing an inscription, only partly engraved, which ran thus: “To John Zebedee, from—” There it stopped, strangely enough.
Who or what had interrupted the engraver’s work? It was impossible even to guess. Nevertheless, the Inspector was encouraged.
“This ought to help us,” he said—and then he gave an attentive ear (looking all the while at the poor creature in the corner) to what Mrs. Crosscapel had to tell him.
The landlady having done, he said he must now see the lodger who slept in the next bed-chamber.
Mr. Deluc made his appearance, standing at the door of the room, and turning away his head with horror from the sight inside.
He was wrapped in a splendid blue dressing-gown, with a golden girdle and trimmings. His scanty brownish hair curled (whether artificially or not, I am unable to say) in little ringlets. His complexion was yellow; his greenish-brown eyes were of the sort called “goggle”—they looked as if they might drop out of his face, if you held a spoon under them. His mustache and goat’s beard were beautifully oiled; and, to complete his equipment, he had a long black cigar in his mouth.
“It isn’t insensibility to this terrible tragedy,” he explained. “My nerves have been shattered, Mr. Policeman, and I can only repair the mischief in this way. Be pleased to excuse and feel for me.”