Monsieur Lecoq, v. 1, Emile Gaboriau [books to get back into reading .txt] 📗

began the victims were regaling themselves with the familiar mixture of water, wine, and sugar, known round about the barrieres as vin a la Frangaise. After the salad-bowl, the two men picked up five of the weighty glasses ordinarily used in wine-shops, and which, while looking as though they would contain half a bottle, are in point of fact so thick at the bottom that they hold next to nothing. Three of these glasses were broken, two were whole. All of them had contained wine—the same vin a la Frangaise. This was plain, but for greater surety, Lecoq applied his tongue to the bluish mixture remaining in the bottom of each glass. “The deuce!” he muttered, with an astonished air.

Then he examined successively the surfaces of the three overturned tables. Upon one of these, the one nearest the fireplace and the window, the still wet marks of the five glasses, of the salad-bowl, and even of the spoons could be distinguished. Lecoq very properly regarded this circumstance as a matter of the greatest importance, for it proved clearly enough that five persons had emptied the salad-bowl in company. Who were these five persons?

“Oh! oh!” suddenly exclaimed Lecoq in two entirely different tones. “Then the two women could not have been with the murderer!”

A very simple mode of discovery had presented itself to his mind. It was to ascertain if there were any other glasses, and what they had contained. After a fresh search on the floor, a sixth glass was found, similar in form to the others, but much smaller. Its smell showed that it had contained brandy. Then these two women had not been with the murderer, and therefore he could not have fought because the other men had insulted them. This discovery proved the inaccuracy of Lecoq’s original suppositions. It was an unexpected check, and he was mourning over it in silence, when Father Absinthe, who had not ceased ferreting about, uttered a cry of surprise.

The young man turned; he saw that his companion had become very pale. “What is it?” he asked.

“Some one has been here in our absence.”

“Impossible!”

It was not impossible—it was true. When Gevrol had torn the apron off Widow Chupin’s head he had thrown it upon the steps of the stairs; neither of the police agents had since touched it. And yet the pockets of this apron were now turned inside out; this was a proof, this was evidence. At this discovery Lecoq was overcome with consternation, and the contraction of his features revealed the struggle going on in his mind. “Who could have been here?” he murmured. “Robbers? That is improbable.”

Then, after a long silence which his companion took good care not to interrupt, he added: “The person who came here, who dared to penetrate into this abode and face the corpses of these murdered men—this person could have been none other than the accomplice. But it is not enough to suspect this, it is necessary to know it. I must—I will know it!”

They searched for a long time, and it was not until after an hour of earnest work that, in front of the door forced open by the police, they discovered in the mud, just inside the marks made by Gevrol’s tread, a footprint that bore a close resemblance to those left by the man who had entered the garden. They compared the impressions and recognized the same designs formed by the nails upon the sole of the boot.

“It must have been the accomplice!” exclaimed Lecoq. “He watched us, he saw us go away, and then he entered. But why? What pressing, irresistible necessity made him decide to brave such imminent danger?” He seized his companion’s hand, nearly crushing it in his excitement: “Ah! I know why!” continued he, violently. “I understand only too well. Some article that would have served to throw light on this horrible affair had been left or forgotten, or lost here, and to obtain it, to find it, he decided to run this terrible risk. And to think that it was my fault, my fault alone, that this convincing proof escaped us! And I thought myself so shrewd! What a lesson! The door should have been locked; any fool would have thought of it—” Here he checked himself, and remained with open mouth and distended eyes, pointing with his finger to one of the corners of the room.

“What is the matter?” asked his frightened companion.

Lecoq made no reply, but slowly, and with the stiff movements of a somnambulist, he approached the spot to which he had pointed, stooped, picked up something, and said: “My folly is not deserving of such luck.”

The object he had found was an earring composed of a single large diamond. The setting was of marvelous workmanship. “This diamond,” declared Lecoq, after a moment’s examination, “must be worth at least five or six thousand francs.”

“Are you in earnest?”

“I think I could swear to it.”

He would not have troubled about such a preamble as “I think” a few hours before, but the blunder he had made was a lesson that would not be forgotten so long as he lived.

“Perhaps it was that same diamond earring that the accomplice came to seek,” ventured Father Absinthe.

“The supposition is scarcely admissible. In that case, he would not have sought for it in Mother Chupin’s apron. No, he must have been seeking for something else—a letter, for example.”

The older man was not listening; he had taken the earring, and was examining it in his turn. “And to think,” he murmured, astonished by the brilliancy of the stone, “to think that a woman who had ten thousand francs’ worth of jewels in her ears would have come to the Poivriere. Who would have believed it?”

Lecoq shook his head thoughtfully. “Yes, it is very strange, very improbable, very absurd. And yet we shall see many things quite as strange if we ever arrive—which I very much doubt—at a solution of this mysterious affair.”

Day was breaking, cold, cheerless, and gloomy, when Lecoq and his colleague concluded their investigation. There was not an inch of space that had not been explored, carefully examined and studied, one might almost say, with a magnifying glass. There now only remained to draw up the report.

The younger man seated himself at the table, and, with the view of making his recital as intelligible as possible, he began by sketching a plan of the scene of the murder.

[[Graphic Omitted]]

It will be seen that in the memoranda appended to this explanatory diagram, Lecoq had not once written his own name. In noting the things that he had imagined or discovered, he referred to himself simply as one of the police. This was not so much modesty as calculation. By hiding one’s self on well-chosen occasions, one gains greater notoriety when one emerges from the shade. It was also through cunning that he gave Gevrol such a prominent position. These tactics, rather subtle, perhaps, but after all perfectly fair, could not fail to call attention to the man who had shown himself so efficient when the efforts of his chief had been merely confined to breaking open the door.

The document Lecoq drew up was not a proces-verbal, a formal act reserved