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In "Detective Lecoq - Complete Murder Mysteries," Émile Gaboriau unravels a series of intricately plotted criminal cases that heralded the birth of the detective fiction genre. With a keen eye for detail, Gaboriau employs a meticulous narrative style, blending vivid characterizations with gripping prose that invites readers into a web of deceit and intellectual intrigue. The book's intricate structure mirrors the methodical processes of its protagonist, the astute detective Lecoq, embodying the early tendencies of the police procedural and reflecting the anxieties of a society grappling with modernity and crime in the 19th century. Émile Gaboriau, often regarded as the father of the detective novel, drew inspiration from real-life criminal cases and the burgeoning fields of criminology and forensic science. His experiences as a journalist, combined with a profound understanding of human nature, equipped him to explore the moral complexities of crime and justice. Gaboriau's literary prowess was crucial in shaping the detective genre, influencing contemporaries like Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. "Detective Lecoq - Complete Murder Mysteries" is a must-read for enthusiasts of detective fiction and anyone fascinated by the interplay of psychology, crime, and the rise of modernity. Gaboriau's compelling narratives not only offer engaging mysteries but also provide insightful commentary on the cultural milieu of his time, ensuring a rich reading experience. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Detective Lecoq - Complete Murder Mysteries
Table of Contents
Introduction
This collection, Detective Lecoq - Complete Murder Mysteries, gathers eight full-length crime novels by Émile Gaboriau, presented here in their entirety. Written for nineteenth-century newspaper serialization and later issued in book form, these narratives helped define the modern investigative novel in France. The volume’s scope is deliberately comprehensive for readers seeking the core arc of Gaboriau’s police investigations: The Widow Lerouge, The Mystery of Orcival, File No. 113, Monsieur Lecoq, The Honor of the Name, Slaves of Paris, Caught in the Net, and The Champdoce Mystery. Together they showcase Gaboriau’s sustained engagement with detection, culpability, and the city as a theater of mystery.
These works are novels of detection and social crime, not short stories or essays, and their unity lies in method and milieu. At their center stands the figure of the professional investigator, epitomized by Monsieur Lecoq of the Paris Sûreté, whose inquiries proceed by observation, patient interrogation, and the piecing together of small material traces. Gaboriau’s narrative signature blends procedural detail with the rhythms of serial publication: cliffhangers, shifting vantage points, and carefully managed revelations. Beyond puzzles, the books anatomize the city’s institutions—police, courts, salons, and streets—and show how ambition, secrecy, and reputation intersect to produce crimes that demand systematic reasoning.
Opening the sequence, The Widow Lerouge confronts investigators with the brutal killing of a woman on the fringes of Paris, a case that exposes how buried histories and false appearances complicate the search for truth. The Mystery of Orcival shifts to a provincial setting near the capital, where a shocking crime unsettles a seemingly tranquil community and draws in both official agents and shrewd civilian insight. In both novels, Gaboriau focuses attention on witness statements, timelines, and the pressure of social standing, making the investigative act as much a study of manners and memory as a pursuit of physical evidence.
File No. 113 begins with an apparently inexplicable theft from a banker’s strongbox, a breach that suggests intimate knowledge and forces the police to disentangle elaborate identities and motives. Monsieur Lecoq foregrounds the Sûreté’s rising talent, tracing an inquiry that demands disguises, surveillance, and the disciplined testing of hypotheses. The Honor of the Name, while centered on domestic loyalties and the weight of reputation, remains firmly within Gaboriau’s world of crime and consequence, where private histories collide with public justice. Read together, these narratives demonstrate how the author enlarges the detective novel from simple riddle to a fuller anatomy of society.
With Slaves of Paris, Caught in the Net, and The Champdoce Mystery, the canvas widens from isolated crimes to schemes that entangle households, businesses, and the demi-monde. Instead of a single culprit, readers encounter networks that trade in influence, information, and human vulnerability, drawing naïve youths and established names into perilous bargains. Initial situations pivot on manipulation and debt, on secrets that make people pliable, and on the exploitation of appearances. The investigative lens remains steady, yet Gaboriau emphasizes how systemic pressures—money, status, and desire—create the conditions under which crime thrives and detection becomes a test of endurance and insight.
Across the collection, unifying themes recur: the fragility of alibis, the interpretive power of documents, and the masking effects of fashion, rank, and rumor. Gaboriau’s style privileges lucid causality and incremental proof, making dossiers, interviews, and reconstructive experiments the engine of plot rather than mere ornament. He is attentive to institutional realities—the chain of command within the Sûreté, the magistrate’s oversight, the pressures of the press—yet he never loses sight of individual motives born of love, ambition, resentment, or fear. The result is fiction that respects readers’ intelligence while revealing how justice depends on patience, method, and imagination.
These novels retain their relevance because they map a transition: from intuition to procedure, from rumor to evidentiary reasoning, in ways that shaped the tradition of detective fiction that followed. Their serial origins lend them propulsion and breadth, while their careful architecture rewards close reading. Presented here as complete novels, the works can be enjoyed individually or as an unfolding exploration of Parisian crime and its investigation, with Lecoq serving as a touchstone of professional method. Returning to Gaboriau now clarifies how the genre learned to balance suspense with sociological insight, and why these inquiries continue to compel contemporary readers.
Historical Context
Émile Gaboriau wrote his Lecoq cycle amid France’s Second Empire (1852–1870), when Parisian life, policing, and print culture were rapidly transforming. The Sûreté, created in 1811 and popularized by Eugène François Vidocq’s memoirs (1828–1829), supplied a model of professional detection that Gaboriau fictionalized in the character of Lecoq. Expanding newspapers and the feuilleton marketplace allowed intricate investigations—like those spanning The Widow Lerouge, The Mystery of Orcival, and File No. 113—to unfold serially before a mass audience. This convergence of urban growth, bureaucratic policing, and sensational reportage grounded Gaboriau’s blend of methodical inquiry, courtroom drama, and social portraiture, distinguishing his narratives from earlier Gothic intrigue.
Baron Haussmann’s vast remaking of Paris (1853–1870) supplied both scenery and social dynamics that recur throughout the Lecoq investigations. New boulevards, railway terminals, and working-class suburbs facilitated criminal mobility while enabling police surveillance; at the same time, demolition and displacement created an anxious demimonde of uprooted workers, courtesans, and speculators. Slaves of Paris and Caught in the Net tap this nexus of glittering façades and hidden warrens, where anonymity could be bought and reputations ruined overnight. Gaboriau’s attention to addresses, timetables, and topography mirrors a city mapped by modern administration, coupling clues to the rhythms of cafés, omnibus lines, and nocturnal gaslit streets.
The Second Empire’s boom in finance and credit—driven by ventures like the Pereire brothers’ Crédit Mobilier (1852), the founding of Crédit Lyonnais (1863), and Société Générale (1864)—fed Gaboriau’s fascination with paper trails. Notarial archives, bank ledgers, and forged signatures become plot engines in File No. 113 and reverberate through aristocratic disputes in The Honor of the Name and The Champdoce Mystery. As speculation swelled fortunes and ruined households, the detective’s craft mirrored accountants’ routines: verifying identities, tracing securities, and reconstructing transactions. In a society mediated by documents, truth is bureaucratic as much as moral, a premise that lent contemporary bite to Gaboriau’s exposés of fraud.
French legal procedure under the Napoleonic Code, especially the juge d’instruction established by the Code d’instruction criminelle (1808), frames many scenes where Lecoq collaborates or clashes with magistrates. Gaboriau followed courtroom news in the Gazette des Tribunaux (founded 1825), whose detailed case reports shaped his emphasis on depositions, timelines, and evidentiary chains. Contemporary sciences fed such realism: toxicology after Mathieu Orfila, microscopy in medical jurisprudence, and the growing use of photography and telegraphy by the Prefecture of Police in the 1860s. These tools deepened the plausibility of reconstructions in The Mystery of Orcival and Monsieur Lecoq, aligning fiction with procedural modernity.
Gaboriau’s success depended on the nineteenth-century press. Mass-circulation dailies—Le Petit Journal (founded 1863) among them—nurtured the feuilleton, where cliffhangers converted readers into steady subscribers and elevated the fait divers into a cultural obsession. Publishers like E. Dentu issued the novels in volume soon after serialization, cementing a broad petit-bourgeois audience. The climate of relative press liberalization from the late 1860s widened the scope for depicting corruption. He drew on transnational models—Poe’s Dupin, Eugène Sue’s Mystères de Paris, and Paul Féval’s conspiratorial cycles—yet emphasized procedural causality over melodramatic coincidence, a shift that prepared French readers to embrace the detective as a rational public servant.
The novels repeatedly probe legitimacy and inheritance within the strictures of the Napoleonic Code, which subordinated married women’s legal identities and made dissolution of marriage impossible until divorce returned in 1884. In such a regime, dowries, guardianship, and notarized wills governed social mobility, and the concealment of births or names could decide a lineage’s survival. The Widow Lerouge, The Honor of the Name, and The Champdoce Mystery exploit these constraints to stage battles over recognition, secrecy, and patrimony. Gaboriau’s readers, alert to scandals involving foundlings and contested estates, recognized how intimate choices were managed by law, reputation, and the ledger.
Political volatility also framed the series’ concerns with order and deviance. The Second Empire’s authoritarian policing coexisted with cautious liberalization—the right to strike in 1864 and press reforms in 1868—yielding both surveillance and public debate about crime. The Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the Siege of Paris, and the Paris Commune intensified fears of social breakdown that colored readers’ reception of Gaboriau’s later installments. Even when set before those crises, works like Monsieur Lecoq and Slaves of Paris were reread as parables of authority restoring coherence. The notion of “dangerous classes,” common in mid-century discourse, underpins plots balancing compassion with disciplinarian closure.
The Lecoq stories move between Paris and the provinces—Orcival’s countryside or noble estates—mirroring a nation knitted by rail expansion from the 1850s through 1870. Trains compress distance, create alibis, and place rural hierarchies under metropolitan scrutiny, while centralized administration extends the state’s reach. This faith in coordinated knowledge echoes contemporary positivism and shaped the detective’s authority as an empirical observer rather than a mere adventurer. Rapid translation in the 1870s carried Gaboriau’s method abroad; later, Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet (1887) acknowledged Lecoq even while demoting him, signaling how the French model had inaugurated a transnational grammar for criminal investigation.
Synopsis (Selection)
The Widow Lerouge
The murder of a seemingly ordinary widow exposes long-concealed ties among respectable households, reconstructed through timelines, material traces, and conflicting testimony.
Cool, methodical inquiry rises into melodrama, probing class masquerade, parental secrecy, and the danger of judging by appearances.
The Mystery of Orcival
A body discovered near a quiet village opens an aristocratic scandal, as investigators follow alibis, footprints, and social tensions from countryside to capital.
Gaboriau blends pastoral calm with judicial rigor, exploring honor, desire, and the burden of reputation under the law’s gaze.
File No. 113
A bank theft built on forged identities draws the Sûreté into a maze of aliases and records, with the numbered dossier itself shaping the chase.
The tone is crisp and procedural, turning bureaucracy, handwriting, and financial paper trails into instruments that expose modern crime and social pretense.
Monsieur Lecoq and The Honor of the Name
A sordid tavern crime masks a noble past, pushing Lecoq’s formative investigation to rely on disguises, reenactments, and iterative hypothesis-testing against a master of concealment.
Paired with a sweeping family chronicle, the diptych contrasts legal truth with inherited honor, marking a shift from pure puzzle toward character history and moral causation.
Slaves of Paris, including Caught in the Net and The Champdoce Mystery
Interlinked tales map a Parisian marketplace of secrets where blackmail, seduction, and debt ensnare victims as tightly as chains, drawing compromised heirs and schemers into the same net.
The focus turns from single culprits to criminal networks and social critique, refining recurring motifs of imposture, surveillance, and entrapment with a darker, more panoramic tone.
Detective Lecoq - Complete Murder Mysteries
The Widow Lerouge
Émile Gaboriau
Table of Contents
Chapter I.
On Thursday, the 6th of March, 1862, two days after Shrove Tuesday, five women belonging to the village of La Jonchere presented themselves at the police station at Bougival.
They stated that for two days past no one had seen the Widow Lerouge, one of their neighbours, who lived by herself in an isolated cottage. They had several times knocked at the door, but all in vain. The window-shutters as well as the door were closed; and it was impossible to obtain even a glimpse of the interior.
This silence, this sudden disappearance alarmed them. Apprehensive of a crime, or at least of an accident, they requested the interference of the police to satisfy their doubts by forcing the door and entering the house.
Bougival is a pleasant riverside village, peopled on Sundays by crowds of boating parties. Trifling offences are frequently heard of in its neighbourhood, but crimes are rare.
The commissary of police at first refused to listen to the women, but their importunities so fatigued him that he at length acceded to their request. He sent for the corporal of gendarmes, with two of his men, called into requisition the services of a locksmith, and, thus accompanied, followed the neighbours of the Widow Lerouge.
La Jonchere owes some celebrity to the inventor of the sliding railway, who for some years past has, with more enterprise than profit, made public trials of his system in the immediate neighbourhood. It is a hamlet of no importance, resting upon the slope of the hill which overlooks the Seine between La Malmaison and Bougival. It is about twenty minutes’ walk from the main road, which, passing by Rueil and Port–Marly, goes from Paris to St. Germain, and is reached by a steep and rugged lane, quite unknown to the government engineers.
The party, led by the gendarmes, followed the main road which here bordered the river until it reached this lane, into which it turned, and stumbled over the rugged inequalities of the ground for about a hundred yards, when it arrived in front of a cottage of extremely modest yet respectable appearance. This cottage had probably been built by some little Parisian shopkeeper in love with the beauties of nature; for all the trees had been carefully cut down. It consisted merely of two apartments on the ground floor with a loft above. Around it extended a much-neglected garden, badly protected against midnight prowlers, by a very dilapidated stone wall about three feet high, and broken and crumbling in many places. A light wooden gate, clumsily held in its place by pieces of wire, gave access to the garden.
“It is here,” said the women.
The commissary stopped. During his short walk, the number of his followers had been rapidly increasing, and now included all the inquisitive and idle persons of the neighbourhood. He found himself surrounded by about forty individuals burning with curiosity.
“No one must enter the garden,” said he; and, to ensure obedience, he placed the two gendarmes on sentry before the entrance, and advanced towards the house, accompanied by the corporal and the locksmith.
He knocked several times loudly with his leaded cane, first at the door, and then successively at all the window shutters. After each blow, he placed his ear against the wood and listened. Hearing nothing, he turned to the locksmith.
“Open!” said he.
The workman unstrapped his satchel, and produced his implements. He had already introduced a skeleton key into the lock, when a loud exclamation was heard from the crowd outside the gate.
“The key!” they cried. “Here is the key!”
A boy about twelve years old playing with one of his companions, had seen an enormous key in a ditch by the roadside; he had picked it up and carried it to the cottage in triumph.
“Give it to me youngster,” said the corporal. “We shall see.”
The key was tried, and it proved to be the key of the house.
The commissary and the locksmith exchanged glances full of sinister misgivings. “This looks bad,” muttered the corporal. They entered the house, while the crowd, restrained with difficulty by the gendarmes, stamped with impatience, or leant over the garden wall, stretching their necks eagerly, to see or hear something of what was passing within the cottage.
Those who anticipated the discovery of a crime, were unhappily not deceived. The commissary was convinced of this as soon as he crossed the threshold. Everything in the first room pointed with a sad eloquence to the recent presence of a malefactor. The furniture was knocked about, and a chest of drawers and two large trunks had been forced and broken open.
In the inner room, which served as a sleeping apartment, the disorder was even greater. It seemed as though some furious hand had taken a fiendish pleasure in upsetting everything. Near the fireplace, her face buried in the ashes, lay the dead body of Widow Lerouge. All one side of the face and the hair were burnt; it seemed a miracle that the fire had not caught her clothing.
“Wretches!” exclaimed the corporal. “Could they not have robbed, without assassinating the poor woman?”
“But where has she been wounded?” inquired the commissary, “I do not see any blood.”
“Look! here between the shoulders,” replied the corporal; “two fierce blows, by my faith. I’ll wager my stripes she had no time to cry out.”
He stooped over the corpse and touched it.
“She is quite cold,” he continued, “and it seems to me that she is no longer very stiff. It is at least thirty-six hours since she received her death-blow.”
The commissary began writing, on the corner of a table, a short official report.
“We are not here to talk, but to discover the guilty,” said he to the corporal. “Let information be at once conveyed to the justice of the peace, and the mayor, and send this letter without delay to the Palais de Justice. In a couple of hours, an investigating magistrate can be here. In the meanwhile, I will proceed to make a preliminary inquiry.”
“Shall I carry the letter?” asked the corporal of gendarmes.
“No, send one of your men; you will be useful to me here in keeping these people in order, and in finding any witnesses I may want. We must leave everything here as it is. I will install myself in the other room.”
A gendarme departed at a run towards the station at Rueil; and the commissary commenced his investigations in regular form, as prescribed by law.
“Who was Widow Lerouge? Where did she come from? What did she do? Upon what means, and how did she live? What were her habits, her morals, and what sort of company did she keep? Was she known to have enemies? Was she a miser? Did she pass for being rich?”
The commissary knew the importance of ascertaining all this: but although the witnesses were numerous enough, they possessed but little information. The depositions of the neighbours, successively interrogated, were empty, incoherent, and incomplete. No one knew anything of the victim, who was a stranger in the country. Many presented themselves as witnesses moreover, who came forward less to afford information than to gratify their curiosity. A gardener’s wife, who had been friendly with the deceased, and a milk-woman with whom she dealt, were alone able to give a few insignificant though precise details.
In a word, after three hours of laborious investigation, after having undergone the infliction of all the gossip of the country, after receiving evidence the most contradictory, and listened to commentaries the most ridiculous, the following is what appeared the most reliable to the commissary.
Twelve years before, at the beginning of 1850, the woman Lerouge had made her appearance at Bougival with a large wagon piled with furniture, linen, and her personal effects. She had alighted at an inn, declaring her intention of settling in the neighbourhood, and had immediately gone in quest of a house. Finding this one unoccupied, and thinking it would suit her, she had taken it without trying to beat down the terms, at a rental of three hundred and twenty francs payable half yearly and in advance, but had refused to sign a lease.
The house taken, she occupied it the same day, and expended about a hundred francs on repairs.
She was a woman about fifty-four or fifty-five years of age, well preserved, active, and in the enjoyment of excellent health. No one knew her reasons for taking up her abode in a country where she was an absolute stranger. She was supposed to have come from Normandy, having been frequently seen in the early morning to wear a white cotton cap. This night-cap did not prevent her dressing very smartly during the day; indeed, she ordinarily wore very handsome dresses, very showy ribbons in her caps, and covered herself with jewels like a saint in a chapel. Without doubt she had lived on the coast, for ships and the sea recurred incessantly in her conversation.
She did not like speaking of her husband who had, she said, perished in a shipwreck. But she had never given the slightest detail. On one particular occasion she had remarked, in presence of the milk-woman and three other persons, “No woman was ever more miserable than I during my married life.” And at another she had said, “All new, all fine! A new broom sweeps clean. My defunct husband only loved me for a year!”
Widow Lerouge passed for rich, or at the least for being very well off and she was not a miser. She had lent a woman at La Malmaison sixty francs with which to pay her rent, and would not let her return them. At another time she had advanced two hundred francs to a fisherman of Port–Marly. She was fond of good living, spent a good deal on her food, and bought wine by the half cask. She took pleasure in treating her acquaintances, and her dinners were excellent. If complimented on her easy circumstances, she made no very strong denial. She had frequently been heard to say, “I have nothing in the funds, but I have everything I want. If I wished for more, I could have it.”
Beyond this, the slightest allusion to her past life, her country, or her family had never escaped her. She was very talkative, but all she would say would be to the detriment of her neighbours. She was supposed, however, to have seen the world, and to know a great deal. She was very distrustful and barricaded herself in her cottage as in a fortress. She never went out in the evening, and it was well known that she got tipsy regularly at her dinner and went to bed very soon afterwards. Rarely had strangers been seen to visit her; four or five times a lady accompanied by a young man had called, and upon one occasion two gentlemen, one young, the other old and decorated, had come in a magnificent carriage.
In conclusion, the deceased was held in but little esteem by her neighbours. Her remarks were often most offensive and odious in the mouth of a woman of her age. She had been heard to give a young girl the most detestable counsels. A pork butcher, belonging to Bougival, embarrassed in his business, and tempted by her supposed wealth, had at one time paid her his addresses. She, however, repelled his advances, declaring that to be married once was enough for her. On several occasions men had been seen in her house; first of all, a young one, who had the appearance of a clerk of the railway company; then another, a tall, elderly man, very sunburnt, who was dressed in a blouse, and looked very villainous. These men were reported to be her lovers.
Whilst questioning the witnesses, the commissary wrote down their depositions in a more condensed form, and he had got so far, when the investigating magistrate arrived, attended by the chief of the detective police, and one of his subordinates.
M. Daburon was a man thirty-eight years of age, and of prepossessing appearance; sympathetic notwithstanding his coldness; wearing upon his countenance a sweet, and rather sad expression. This settled melancholy had remained with him ever since his recovery, two years before, from a dreadful malady, which had well-nigh proved fatal.
Investigating magistrate since 1859, he had rapidly acquired the most brilliant reputation. Laborious, patient, and acute, he knew with singular skill how to disentangle the skein of the most complicated affair, and from the midst of a thousand threads lay hold to the right one. None better than he, armed with an implacable logic, could solve those terrible problems in which X— in algebra, the unknown quantity — represents the criminal. Clever in deducing the unknown from the known, he excelled in collecting facts, and in uniting in a bundle of overwhelming proofs circumstances the most trifling, and in appearance the most insignificant.
Although possessed of qualifications for his office so numerous and valuable, he was tremblingly distrustful of his own abilities and exercised his terrible functions with diffidence and hesitation. He wanted audacity to risk those sudden surprises so often resorted to by his colleagues in the pursuit of truth.
Thus it was repugnant to his feelings to deceive even an accused person, or to lay snares for him; in fact the mere idea of the possibility of a judicial error terrified him. They said of him in the courts, “He is a trembler.” What he sought was not conviction, nor the most probable presumptions, but the most absolute certainty. No rest for him until the day when the accused was forced to bow before the evidence; so much so that he had been jestingly reproached with seeking not to discover criminals but innocents.
The chief of detective police was none other than the celebrated Gevrol. He is really an able man, but wanting in perseverance, and liable to be blinded by an incredible obstinacy. If he loses a clue, he cannot bring himself to acknowledge it, still less to retrace his steps. His audacity and coolness, however, render it impossible to disconcert him; and being possessed of immense personal strength, hidden under a most meagre appearance, he has never hesitated to confront the most daring of malefactors.
But his specialty, his triumph, his glory, is a memory of faces, so prodigious as to exceed belief. Let him see a face for five minutes, and it is enough. Its possessor is catalogued, and will be recognised at any time. The impossibilities of place, the unlikelihood of circumstances, the most incredible disguises will not lead him astray. The reason for this, so he pretends, is because he only looks at a man’s eyes, without noticing any other features.
This faculty was severely tested some months back at Poissy, by the following experiment. Three prisoners were draped in coverings so as to completely disguise their height. Over their faces were thick veils, allowing nothing of the features to be seen except the eyes, for which holes had been made; and in this state they were shown to Gevrol.
Without the slightest hesitation he recognised the prisoners and named them. Had chance alone assisted him?
The subordinate Gevrol had brought with him, was an old offender, reconciled to the law. A smart fellow in his profession, crafty as a fox, and jealous of his chief, whose abilities he held in light estimation. His name was Lecoq.
The commissary, by this time heartily tired of his responsibilities, welcomed the investigating magistrate and his agents as liberators. He rapidly related the facts collected and read his official report.
“You have proceeded very well,” observed the investigating magistrate. “All is stated clearly; yet there is one fact you have omitted to ascertain.”
“What is that, sir?” inquired the commissary.
“On what day was Widow Lerouge last seen, and at what hour?”
“I was coming to that presently. She was last seen and spoken to on the evening of Shrove Tuesday, at twenty minutes past five. She was then returning from Bougival with a basketful of purchases.”
“You are sure of the hour, sir?” inquired Gevrol.
“Perfectly, and for this reason; the two witnesses who furnished me with this fact, a woman named Tellier and a cooper who lives hard by, alighted from the omnibus which leaves Marly every hour, when they perceived the widow in the cross-road, and hastened to overtake her. They conversed with her and only left her when they reached the door of her own house.”
“And what had she in her basket?” asked the investigating magistrate.
“The witnesses cannot say. They only know that she carried two sealed bottles of wine, and another of brandy. She complained to them of headache, and said, ‘Though it is customary to enjoy oneself on Shrove Tuesday, I am going to bed.’”
“So, so!” exclaimed the chief of detective police. “I know where to search!”
“You think so?” inquired M. Daburon.
“Why, it is clear enough. We must find the tall sunburnt man, the gallant in the blouse. The brandy and the wine were intended for his entertainment. The widow expected him to supper. He came, sure enough, the amiable gallant!”
“Oh!” cried the corporal of gendarmes, evidently scandalised, “she was very old, and terribly ugly!”
Gevrol surveyed the honest fellow with an expression of contemptuous pity. “Know, corporal,” said he, “that a woman who has money is always young and pretty, if she desires to be thought so!”
“Perhaps there is something in that,” remarked the magistrate; “but it is not what strikes me most. I am more impressed by the remark of this unfortunate woman. ‘If I wished for more, I could have it.’”
“That also attracted my attention,” acquiesced the commissary.
But Gevrol no longer took the trouble to listen. He stuck to his own opinion, and began to inspect minutely every corner of the room. Suddenly he turned towards the commissary. “Now that I think of it,” cried he, “was it not on Tuesday that the weather changed? It had been freezing for a fortnight past, and on that evening it rained. At what time did the rain commence here?”
“At half-past nine,” answered the corporal. “I went out from supper to make my circuit of the dancing halls, when I was overtaken opposite the Rue des Pecheurs by a heavy shower. In less than ten minutes there was half an inch of water in the road.”
“Very well,” said Gevrol. “Then if the man came after half-past nine his shoes must have been very muddy. If they were dry, he arrived sooner. This must have been noticed, for the floor is a polished one. Were there any imprints of footsteps, M. Commissary?”
“I must confess we never thought of looking for them.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the chief detective, in a tone of irritation, “that is vexatious!”
“Wait,” added the commissary; “there is yet time to see if there are any, not in this room, but in the other. We have disturbed absolutely nothing there. My footsteps and the corporal’s will be easily distinguished. Let us see.”
As the commissary opened the door of the second chamber, Gevrol stopped him. “I ask permission, sir,” said he to the investigating magistrate, “to examine the apartment before any one else is permitted to enter. It is very important for me.”
“Certainly,” approved M. Daburon.
Gevrol passed in first, the others remaining on the threshold. They all took in at a glance the scene of the crime. Everything, as the commissary had stated, seemed to have been overturned by some furious madman. In the middle of the room was a table covered with a fine linen cloth, white as snow. Upon this was placed a magnificent wineglass of the rarest manufacture, a very handsome knife, and a plate of the finest porcelain. There was an opened bottle of wine, hardly touched, and another of brandy, from which about five or six small glassfuls had been taken.
On the right, against the wall, stood two handsome walnut-wood wardrobes, with ornamental locks; they were placed one on each side of the window; both were empty, and the contents scattered about on all sides. There were clothing, linen, and other effects unfolded, tossed about, and crumpled. At the end of the room, near the fireplace, a large cupboard used for keeping the crockery was wide open. On the other side of the fireplace, an old secretary with a marble top had been forced, broken, smashed into bits, and rummaged, no doubt, to its inmost recesses. The desk, wrenched away, hung by a single hinge. The drawers had been pulled out and thrown upon the floor.
To the left of the room stood the bed, which had been completely disarranged and upset. Even the straw of the mattress had been pulled out and examined.
“Not the slightest imprint,” murmured Gevrol disappointed. “He must have arrived before half-past nine. You can all come in now.”
He walked right up to the corpse of the widow, near which he knelt.
“It can not be said,” grumbled he, “that the work is not properly done! the assassin is no apprentice!”
Then looking right and left, he continued: “Oh! oh! the poor devil was busy with her cooking when he struck her; see her pan of ham and eggs upon the hearth. The brute hadn’t patience enough to wait for the dinner. The gentleman was in a hurry, he struck the blow fasting; therefore he can’t invoke the gayety of dessert in his defense!”
“It is evident,” said the commissary to the investigating magistrate, “that robbery was the motive of the crime.”
“It is probable,” answered Gevrol in a sly way; “and that accounts for the absence of the silver spoons from the table.”
“Look here! Some pieces of gold in this drawer!” exclaimed Lecoq, who had been searching on his own account, “just three hundred and twenty francs!”
“Well, I never!” cried Gevrol, a little disconcerted. But he soon recovered from his embarrassment, and added: “He must have forgotten them; that often happens. I have known an assassin, who, after accomplishing the murder, became so utterly bewildered as to depart without remembering to take the plunder, for which he had committed the crime. Our man became excited perhaps, or was interrupted. Some one may have knocked at the door. What makes me more willing to think so is, that the scamp did not leave the candle burning. You see he took the trouble to put it out.”
“Pooh!” said Lecoq. “That proves nothing. He is probably an economical and careful man.”
The investigations of the two agents were continued all over the house; but their most minute researches resulted in discovering absolutely nothing; not one piece of evidence to convict; not the faintest indication which might serve as a point of departure. Even the dead woman’s papers, if she possessed any, had disappeared. Not a letter, not a scrap of paper even, to be met with. From time to time Gevrol stopped to swear or grumble. “Oh! it is cleverly done! It is a tiptop piece of work! The scoundrel is a cool hand!”
“Well, what do you make of it?” at length demanded the investigating magistrate.
“It is a drawn game monsieur,” replied Gevrol. “We are baffled for the present. The miscreant has taken his measures with great precaution; but I will catch him. Before night, I shall have a dozen men in pursuit. Besides, he is sure to fall into our hands. He has carried off the plate and the jewels. He is lost!”
“Despite all that,” said M. Daburon, “we are no further advanced than we were this morning!”
“Well!” growled Gevrol. “A man can only do what he can!”
“Ah!” murmured Lecoq in a low tone, perfectly audible, however, “why is not old Tirauclair here?”
“What could he do more than we have done?” retorted Gevrol, directing a furious glance at his subordinate. Lecoq bowed his head and was silent, inwardly delighted at having wounded his chief.
“Who is old Tirauclair?” asked M. Daburon. “It seems to me that I have heard the name, but I can’t remember where.”
“He is an extraordinary man!” exclaimed Lecoq. “He was formerly a clerk at the Mont de Piete,” added Gevrol; “but he is now a rich old fellow, whose real name is Tabaret. He goes in for playing the detective by way of amusement.”
“And to augment his revenues,” insinuated the commissary.
“He?” cried Lecoq. “No danger of that. He works so much for the glory of success that he often spends money from his own pocket. It’s his amusement, you see! At the Prefecture we have nicknamed him ‘Tirauclair,’ from a phrase he is constantly in the habit of repeating. Ah! he is sharp, the old weasel! It was he who in the case of that banker’s wife, you remember, guessed that the lady had robbed herself, and who proved it.”
“True!” retorted Gevrol; “and it was also he who almost had poor Dereme guillotined for killing his wife, a thorough bad woman; and all the while the poor man was innocent.”
“We are wasting our time, gentlemen,” interrupted M. Daburon. Then, addressing himself to Lecoq, he added:—“Go and find M. Tabaret. I have heard a great deal of him, and shall be glad to see him at work here.”
Lecoq started off at a run, Gevrol was seriously humiliated. “You have of course, sir, the right to demand the services of whom you please,” commenced he, “but yet —”
“Do not,” interrupted M. Daburon, “let us lose our tempers, M. Gevrol. I have known you for a long time, and I know your worth; but today we happen to differ in opinion. You hold absolutely to your sunburnt man in the blouse, and I, on my side, am convinced that you are not on the right track!”
“I think I am right,” replied the detective, “and I hope to prove it. I shall find the scoundrel, be he whom he may!”
“I ask nothing better,” said M. Daburon.
“Only, permit me, sir, to give — what shall I say without failing in respect? — a piece of advice?”
“Speak!”
“I would advise you, sir, to distrust old Tabaret.”
“Really? And for what reason?”
“The old fellow allows himself to be carried away too much by appearances. He has become an amateur detective for the sake of popularity, just like an author; and, as he is vainer than a peacock, he is apt to lose his temper and be very obstinate. As soon as he finds himself in the presence of a crime, like this one, for example, he pretends he can explain everything on the instant. And he manages to invent a story that will correspond exactly with the situation. He professes, with the help of one single fact, to be able to reconstruct all the details of an assassination, as a savant pictures an antediluvian animal from a single bone. Sometimes he divines correctly; very often, though, he makes a mistake. Take, for instance, the case of the tailor, the unfortunate Dereme, without me —”
“I thank you for your advice,” interrupted M. Daburon, “and will profit by it. Now commissary,” he continued, “it is most important to ascertain from what part of the country Widow Lerouge came.”
The procession of witnesses under the charge of the corporal of gendarmes were again interrogated by the investigating magistrate.
But nothing new was elicited. It was evident that Widow Lerouge had been a singularly discreet woman; for, although very talkative, nothing in any way connected with her antecedents remained in the memory of the gossips of La Jonchere.
All the people interrogated, however, obstinately tried to impart to the magistrate their own convictions and personal conjectures. Public opinion sided with Gevrol. Every voice denounced the tall sunburnt man with the gray blouse. He must surely be the culprit. Everyone remembered his ferocious aspect, which had frightened the whole neighbourhood. He had one evening menaced a woman, and another day beaten a child. They could point out neither the child nor the woman; but no matter: these brutal acts were notoriously public. M. Daburon began to despair of gaining the least enlightenment, when some one brought the wife of a grocer of Bougival, at whose shop the victim used to deal, and a child thirteen years old, who knew, it was said, something positive.
The grocer’s wife first made her appearance. She had heard Widow Lerouge speak of having a son still living.
“Are you quite sure of that?” asked the investigating magistrate.
“As of my existence,” answered the woman, “for, on that evening, yes, it was evening, she was, saving your presence, a little tipsy. She remained in my shop more than an hour.”
“And what did she say?”
“I think I see her now,” continued the shopkeeper: “she was leaning against the counter near the scales, jesting with a fisherman of Marly, old Husson, who can tell you the same; and she called him a fresh water sailor. ‘My husband,’ said she, ‘was a real sailor, and the proof is, he would sometimes remain years on a voyage, and always used to bring me back cocoanuts. I have a son who is also a sailor, like his dead father, in the imperial navy.’”
“Did she mention her son’s name?”
“Not that time, but another evening, when she was, if I may say so, very drunk. She told us that her son’s name was Jacques, and that she had not seen him for a very long time.”
“Did she speak ill of her husband?”
“Never! She only said he was jealous and brutal, though a good man at bottom, and that he led her a miserable life. He was weak-headed, and forged ideas out of nothing at all. In fact he was too honest to be wise.”
“Did her son ever come to see her while she lived here?”
“She never told me of it.”
“Did she spend much money with you?”
“That depends. About sixty francs a month; sometimes more, for she always buys the best brandy. She paid cash for all she bought.”
The woman knowing no more was dismissed. The child, who was now brought forward, belonged to parents in easy circumstances. Tall and strong for his age, he had bright intelligent eyes, and features expressive of watchfulness and cunning. The presence of the magistrate did not seem to intimidate him in the least.
“Let us hear, my boy,” said M. Daburon, “what you know.”
“Well, sir, a few days ago, on Sunday last, I saw a man at Madame Lerouge’s garden-gate.”
“At what time of the day?”
“Early in the morning. I was going to church, to serve in the second mass.”
“Well,” continued the magistrate, “and this man was tall and sunburnt, and dressed in a blouse?”
“No, sir, on the contrary, he was short, very fat, and old.”
“You are sure you are not mistaken?”
“Quite sure,” replied the urchin, “I saw him close face to face, for I spoke to him.”
“Tell me, then, what occurred?”
“Well, sir, I was passing when I saw this fat man at the gate. He appeared very much vexed, oh! but awfully vexed! His face was red, or rather purple, as far as the middle of his head, which I could see very well, for it was bare, and had very little hair on it.”
“And did he speak to you first?”
“Yes, sir, he saw me, and called out, ‘Halloa! youngster!’ as I came up to him, and he asked me if I had got a good pair of legs? I answered yes. Then he took me by the ear, but without hurting me, and said, ‘Since that is so, if you will run an errand for me, I will give you ten sous. Run as far as the Seine; and when you reach the quay, you will notice a large boat moored. Go on board, and ask to see Captain Gervais: he is sure to be there. Tell him that he can prepare to leave, that I am ready.’ Then he put ten sous in my hand; and off I went.”
“If all the witnesses were like this bright little fellow,” murmured the commissary, “what a pleasure it would be!”
“Now,” said the magistrate, “tell us how you executed your commission?”
“I went to the boat, sir, found the man, and I told him; and that’s all.”
Gevrol, who had listened with the most lively attention, leaned over towards the ear of M. Daburon, and said in a low voice: “Will you permit me, sir, to ask the brat a few questions?”
“Certainly, M. Gevrol.”
“Come now, my little friend,” said Gevrol, “if you saw this man again, would you know him?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Then there was something remarkable about him?”
“Yes, I should think so! his face was the colour of a brick!”
“And is that all?”
“Well, yes, sir.”
“But you must remember how he was dressed; had he a blouse on?”
“No; he wore a jacket. Under the arms were very large pockets, and from out of one of them peeped a blue spotted handkerchief.”
“What kind of trousers had he on?”
“I do not remember.”
“And his waistcoat?”
“Let me see,” answered the child. “I don’t think he wore a waistcoat. And yet — but no, I remember he did not wear one; he had a long cravat, fastened near his neck by a large ring.”
“Ah!” said Gevrol, with an air of satisfaction, “you are a bright boy; and I wager that if you try hard to remember you will find a few more details to give us.”
The boy hung down his head, and remained silent. From the knitting of his young brows, it was plain he was making a violent effort of memory. “Yes,” cried he suddenly, “I remember another thing.”
“What?”
“The man wore very large rings in his ears.”
“Bravo!” cried Gevrol, “here is a complete description. I shall find the fellow now. M. Daburon can prepare a warrant for his appearance whenever he likes.”
“I believe, indeed, the testimony of this child is of the highest importance,” said M. Daburon; and turning to the boy added, “Can you tell us, my little friend, with what this boat was loaded?”
“No, sir, I couldn’t see because it was decked.”
“Which way was she going, up the Seine or down?”
“Neither, sir, she was moored.”
“We know that,” said Gevrol. “The magistrate asks you which way the prow of the boat was turned — towards Paris or towards Marly?”
“The two ends of the boat seemed alike to me.”
The chief of the detective of police made a gesture of disappointment.
“At least,” said he, addressing the child again, “you noticed the name of the boat? you can read I suppose. One should always know the names of the boats one goes aboard of.”
“No, I didn’t see any name,” said the little boy.
“If this boat was moored at the quay,” remarked M. Daburon, “it was probably noticed by the inhabitants of Bougival.”
“That is true, sir,” approved the commissary.
“Yes,” said Gevrol, “and the sailors must have come ashore. I shall find out all about it at the wine shop. But what sort of a man was Gervais, the master, my little friend?”
“Like all the sailors hereabouts, sir.”
The child was preparing to depart when M. Daburon recalled him.
“Before you go, my boy, tell me, have you spoken to any one of this meeting before today?”
“Yes, sir, I told all to mamma when I got back from church, and gave her the ten sous.”
“And you have told us the whole truth?” continued the magistrate. “You know that it is a very grave matter to attempt to impose on justice. She always finds it out, and it is my duty to warn you that she inflicts the most terrible punishment upon liars.”
The little fellow blushed as red as a cherry, and held down his head.
“I see,” pursued M. Daburon, “that you have concealed something from us. Don’t you know that the police know everything?”
“Pardon! sir,” cried the boy, bursting into tears — “pardon. Don’t punish me, and I will never do so again.”
“Tell us, then, how you have deceived us?”
“Well, sir, it was not ten sous that the man gave me, it was twenty sous. I only gave half to mamma; and I kept the rest to buy marbles with.”
“My little friend,” said the investigating magistrate, “for this time I forgive you. But let it be a lesson for the remainder of your life. You may go now, and remember it is useless to try and hide the truth; it always comes to light!”
Chapter II.
The two last depositions awakened in M. Daburon’s mind some slight gleams of hope. In the midst of darkness, the humblest rush-light acquires brilliancy.
“I will go at once to Bougival, sir, if you approve of this step,” suggested Gevrol.
“Perhaps you would do well to wait a little,” answered M. Daburon. “This man was seen on Sunday morning; we will inquire into Widow Lerouge’s movements on that day.”
Three neighbours were called. They all declared that the widow had kept her bed all Sunday. To one woman who, hearing she was unwell, had visited her, she said, “Ah! I had last night a terrible accident.” Nobody at the time attached any significance to these words.
“The man with the rings in his ears becomes more and important,” said the magistrate, when the woman had retired. “To find him again is indispensable: you must see to this, M. Gevrol.”
“Before eight days, I shall have him,” replied the chief of detective police, “if I have to search every boat on the Seine, from its source to the ocean. I know the name of the captain, Gervais. The navigation office will tell me something.”
He was interrupted by Lecoq, who rushed into the house breathless. “Here is old Tabaret,” he said. “I met him just as he was going out. What a man! He wouldn’t wait for the train, but gave I don’t know how much to a cabman; and we drove here in fifty minutes!”
Almost immediately, a man appeared at the door, whose aspect it must be admitted was not at all what one would have expected of a person who had joined the police for honour alone. He was certainly sixty years old and did not look a bit younger. Short, thin, and rather bent, he leant on the carved ivory handle of a stout cane. His round face wore that expression of perpetual astonishment, mingled with uneasiness, which has made the fortunes of two comic actors of the Palais–Royal theatre. Scrupulously shaved, he presented a very short chin, large and good natured lips, and a nose disagreeably elevated, like the broad end of one of Sax’s horns. His eyes of a dull gray, were small and red at the lids, and absolutely void of expression; yet they fatigued the observer by their insupportable restlessness. A few straight hairs shaded his forehead, which receded like that of a greyhound, and through their scantiness barely concealed his long ugly ears. He was very comfortably dressed, clean as a new franc piece, displaying linen of dazzling whiteness, and wearing silk gloves and leather gaiters. A long and massive gold chain, very vulgar-looking, was twisted thrice round his neck, and fell in cascades into the pocket of his waistcoat.
M. Tabaret, surnamed Tirauclair, stood at the threshold, and bowed almost to the ground, bending his old back into an arch, and in the humblest of voices asked, “The investigating magistrate has deigned to send for me?”
“Yes!” replied M. Daburon, adding under his breath; “and if you are a man of any ability, there is at least nothing to indicate it in your appearance.”
“I am here,” continued the old fellow, “completely at the service of justice.”
“I wish to know,” said M. Daburon, “whether you can discover some clue that will put us upon the track of the assassin. I will explain the —”
“Oh, I know enough of it!” interrupted old Tabaret. “Lecoq has told me the principal facts, just as much as I desire to know.”
“Nevertheless —” commenced the commissary of police.
“If you will permit me, I prefer to proceed without receiving any details, in order to be more fully master of my own impressions. When one knows another’s opinion it can’t help influencing one’s judgment. I will, if you please, at once commence my researches, with Lecoq’s assistance.”
As the old fellow spoke, his little gray eyes dilated, and became brilliant as carbuncles. His face reflected an internal satisfaction; even his wrinkles seemed to laugh. His figure became erect, and his step was almost elastic, as he darted into the inner chamber.
He remained there about half an hour; then came out running, then re-entered and then again came out; once more he disappeared and reappeared again almost immediately. The magistrate could not help comparing him to a pointer on the scent, his turned-up nose even moved about as if to discover some subtle odour left by the assassin. All the while he talked loudly and with much gesticulation, apostrophising himself, scolding himself, uttering little cries of triumph or self-encouragement. He did not allow Lecoq to have a moment’s rest. He wanted this or that or the other thing. He demanded paper and a pencil. Then he wanted a spade; and finally he cried out for plaster of Paris, some water and a bottle of oil.
When more than an hour had elapsed, the investigating magistrate began to grow impatient, and asked what had become of the amateur detective.
“He is on the road,” replied the corporal, “lying flat in the mud, and mixing some plaster in a plate. He says he has nearly finished, and that he is coming back presently.”
He did in fact return almost instantly, joyous, triumphant, looking at least twenty years younger. Lecoq followed him, carrying with the utmost precaution a large basket.
“I have solved the riddle!” said Tabaret to the magistrate. “It is all clear now, and as plain as noon-day. Lecoq, my lad, put the basket on the table.”
Gevrol at this moment returned from his expedition equally delighted.
“I am on the track of the man with the earrings,” said he; “the boat went down the river. I have obtained an exact description of the master Gervais.”
“What have you discovered, M. Tabaret!” asked the magistrate.
The old fellow carefully emptied upon the table the contents of the basket — a big lump of clay, several large sheets of paper, and three or four small lumps of plaster yet damp. Standing behind this table, he presented a grotesque resemblance to those mountebank conjurers who in the public squares juggle the money of the lookers-on. His clothes had greatly suffered; he was covered with mud up to the chin.
“In the first place,” said he, at last, in a tone of affected modesty, “robbery has had nothing to do with the crime that occupies our attention.”
“Oh! of course not!” muttered Gevrol.
“I shall prove it,” continued old Tabaret, “by the evidence. By-and-by I shall offer my humble opinion as to the real motive. In the second place, the assassin arrived here before half-past nine; that is to say, before the rain fell. No more than M. Gevrol have I been able to discover traces of muddy footsteps; but under the table, on the spot where his feet rested, I find dust. We are thus assured of the hour. The widow did not in the least expect her visitor. She had commenced undressing, and was winding up her cuckoo clock when he knocked.”
“These are absolute details!” cried the commissary.
“But easily established,” replied the amateur. “You see this cuckoo clock above the secretary; it is one of those which run fourteen or fifteen hours at most, for I have examined it. Now it is more than probable, it is certain, that the widow wound it up every evening before going to bed. How, then, is it that the clock has stopped at five? Because she must have touched it. As she was drawing the chain, the assassin knocked. In proof, I show this chair standing under the clock, and on the seat a very plain foot-mark. Now look at the dress of the victim; the body of it is off. In order to open the door more quickly, she did not wait to put it on again, but hastily threw this old shawl over her shoulders.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed the corporal, evidently struck.
“The widow,” continued the old fellow, “knew the person who knocked. Her haste to open the door gives rise to this conjecture; what follows proves it. The assassin then gained admission without difficulty. He is a young man, a little above the middle height, elegantly dressed. He wore on that evening a high hat. He carried an umbrella, and smoked a trabucos cigar in a holder.”
“Ridiculous!” cried Gevrol. “This is too much.”
“Too much, perhaps,” retorted old Tabaret. “At all events, it is the truth. If you are not minute in your investigations, I cannot help it; anyhow, I am, I search, and I find. Too much, say you? Well deign to glance at these lumps of damp plaster. They represent the heels of the boots worn by the assassin, of which I found a most perfect impression near the ditch, where the key was picked up. On these sheets of paper, I have marked in outline the imprint of the foot which I cannot take up, because it is on some sand. Look! heel high, instep pronounced, sole small and narrow — an elegant boot, belonging to a foot well cared for evidently. Look for this impression all along the path; and you will find it again twice. Then you will find it five times repeated in the garden where no one else had been; and these footprints prove, by the way, that the stranger knocked not at the door, but at the window-shutter, beneath which shone a gleam of light. At the entrance to the garden, the man leapt to avoid a flower bed! the point of the foot, more deeply imprinted than usual, shows it. He leapt more than two yards with ease, proving that he is active, and therefore young.”
Old Tabaret spoke in a low voice, clear and penetrating: and his eye glanced from one to the other of his auditors, watching the impression he was making.
“Does the hat astonish you, M. Gevrol?” he pursued. “Just look at the circle traced in the dust on the marble top of the secretary. Is it because I have mentioned his height that you are surprised? Take the trouble to examine the tops of the wardrobes and you will see that the assassin passed his hands across them. Therefore he is taller than I am. Do not say that he got on a chair, for in that case, he would have seen and would not have been obliged to feel. Are you astonished about the umbrella? This lump of earth shows an admirable impression not only of the end of the stick, but even of the little round piece of wood which is always placed at the end of the silk. Perhaps you cannot get over the statement that he smoked a cigar? Here is the end of a trabucos that I found amongst the ashes. Has the end been bitten? No. Has it been moistened with saliva? No. Then he who smoked it used a cigar-holder.”
Lecoq was unable to conceal his enthusiastic admiration, and noiselessly rubbed his hands together. The commissary appeared stupefied, while M. Daburon was delighted. Gevrol’s face, on the contrary, was sensibly elongated. As for the corporal, he was overwhelmed.
