Within an Inch of His Life

E >> Emile Gaboriau >> Within an Inch of His Life


"But, I beg your pardon--that letter. Miss Dionysia surely has not
handed it over to them?"

"No; but the prosecution is aware of its existence. M. de Chandore and
M. Seneschal have spoken of it in the hope of exculpating you, and have
even mentioned the contents. And M. Galpin knows it so well, that he had
repeatedly mentioned it to you, and you have confessed all that he could
desire."

The young advocate looked among his papers; and soon he had found what
he wanted.

"Look here," he said, "in your third examination, I find this,--"

"'QUESTION.--You were shortly to marry Miss Chandore?

ANSWER.--Yes.

Q--For some time you had been spending your evenings with her?

A.--Yes, all.

Q.--Except the one of the crime?

A.--Unfortunately.

Q.--Then your betrothed must have wondered at your absence?

A.--No: I had written to her.'"

"Do you hear, Jacques?" cried M. Magloire. "Notice that M. Galpin takes
care not to insist. He does not wish to rouse your suspicions. He has
got you to confess, and that is enough for him."

But, in the meantime, M. Folgat had found another paper.

"In your sixth examination," he went on, "I have noticed this,--

"'Q.--You left your house with your gun on your shoulder, without any
definite aim?

A.--I shall explain that when I have consulted with counsel.

Q.--You need no consultation to tell the truth.

A.--I shall not change my resolution.

Q.--Then you will not tell me where you were between eight and midnight?

A.--I shall answer that question at the same time with the other.

Q.--You must have had very strong reasons to keep you out, as you were
expected by your betrothed, Miss Chandore?

A.--I had written to her not to expect me.'"

"Ah! M. Galpin is a clever fellow," growled M. Magloire.

"Finally," said M. Folgat, "here is a passage from your last but one
examination,--

"'Q.--When you wanted to send anybody to Sauveterre, whom did you
usually employ?

A.--The son of one of my tenants, Michael.

Q.--It was he, I suppose, who, on the evening of the crime, carried the
letter to Miss Chandore, in which you told her not to expect you?

A.--Yes.

Q.--You pretended you would be kept by some important business?

A.--That is the usual pretext.

Q.--But in your case it was no pretext. Where had you to go? and where
did you go?

A.--As long as I have not seen counsel I shall say nothing.

Q.--Have a care: the system of negation and concealment is dangerous.

A.--I know it, and I accept the consequences.'"

Jacques was dumfounded. And necessarily every accused person is equally
surprised when he hears what he has stated in the examination. There is
not one who does not exclaim,--

"What, I said that? Never!"

He has said it, and there is no denying it; for there it is written, and
signed by himself. How could he ever say so?

Ah! that is the point. However clever a man may be, he cannot for many
months keep all his faculties on the stretch, and all his energy up to
its full power. He has his hours of prostration and his hours of hope,
his attacks of despair and his moments of courage; and the impassive
magistrate takes advantage of them all. Innocent or guilty, no prisoner
can cope with him. However powerful his memory may be, how can he
recall an answer which he may have given weeks and weeks before? The
magistrate, however, remembers it; and twenty times, if need be,
he brings it up again. And as the small snowflake may become an
irresistible avalanche, so an insignificant word, uttered at haphazard,
forgotten, then recalled, commented upon, and enlarged may become
crushing evidence.

Jacques now experienced this. These questions had been put to him so
skilfully, and at such long intervals of time, that he had totally
forgotten them; and yet now, when he recalled his answers, he had to
acknowledge that he had confessed his purpose to devote that evening to
some business of great importance.

"That is fearful!" he cried.

And, overcome by the terrible reality of M. Folgat's apprehension, he
added,--

"How can we get out of that?"

"I told you," replied M. Folgat, "we must find some plausible
explanation."

"I am sure I am incapable of that."

The young lawyer seemed to reflect a moment, and then he said,--

"You have been a prisoner while I have been free. For a month now I have
thought this matter over."

"Ah!"

"Where was your wedding to be?"

"At my house at Boiscoran."

"Where was the religious ceremony to take place?"

"At the church at Brechy."

"Have you ever spoken of that to the priest?"

"Several times. One day especially, when we discussed it in a pleasant
way, he said jestingly to me, 'I shall have you, after all in my
confessional.'"

M. Folgat almost trembled with satisfaction, and Jacques saw it.

"Then the priest at Brechy was your friend?"

"An intimate friend. He sometimes came to dine with me quite
unceremoniously, and I never passed him without shaking hands with him."

The young lawyer's joy was growing perceptibly.

"Well," he said, "my explanation is becoming quite plausible. Just hear
what I have positively ascertained to be the fact. In the time from nine
to eleven o'clock, on the night of the crime, there was not a soul at
the parsonage in Brechy. The priest was dining with M. Besson, at his
house; and his servant had gone out to meet him with a lantern."

"I understand," said M. Magloire.

"Why should you not have gone to see the priest at Brechy, my dear
client? In the first place, you had to arrange the details of the
ceremony with him; then, as he is your friend, and a man of experience,
and a priest, you wanted to ask him for his advice before taking so
grave a step, and, finally, you intended to fulfil that religious duty
of which he spoke, and which you were rather reluctant to comply with."

"Well said!" approved the eminent lawyer of Sauveterre,--"very well
said!"

"So, you see, my dear client, it was for the purpose of consulting the
priest at Brechy that you deprived yourself of the pleasure of spending
the evening with your betrothed. Now let us see how that answers
the allegations of the prosecution. They ask you why you took to the
marshes. Why? Because it was the shortest way, and you were afraid of
finding the priest in bed. Nothing more natural; for it is well known
that the excellent man is in the habit of going to bed at nine o'clock.
Still you had put yourself out in vain; for, when you knocked at the
door of the parsonage, nobody came to open."

Here M. Magloire interrupted his colleague, saying,--

"So far, all is very well. But now there comes a very great
improbability. No one would think of going through the forest of
Rochepommier in order to return from Brechy to Boiscoran. If you knew
the country"--

"I know it; for I have carefully explored it. And the proof of it is,
that, having foreseen the objection, I have found an answer. While M. de
Boiscoran knocked at the door, a little peasant-girl passed by, and told
him that she had just met the priest at a place called the Marshalls'
Cross-roads. As the parsonage stands quite isolated, at the end of the
village, such an incident is very probable. As for the priest, chance
led me to learn this: precisely at the hour at which M. de Boiscoran
would have been at Brechy, a priest passed the Marshalls' Cross-roads;
and this priest, whom I have seen, belongs to the next parish. He also
dined at M. Besson's, and had just been sent for to attend a dying
woman. The little girl, therefore, did not tell a story; she only made a
mistake."

"Excellent!" said M. Magloire.

"Still," continued M. Folgat, "after this information, what did M. de
Boiscoran do? He went on; and, hoping every moment to meet the priest,
he walked as far as the forest of Rochepommier. Finding, at last, that
the peasant-girl had--purposely or not--led him astray, he determined to
return to Boiscoran through the woods. But he was in very bad humor
at having thus lost an evening which he might have spent with his
betrothed; and this made him swear and curse, as the witness Gaudry has
testified."

The famous lawyer of Sauveterre shook his head.

"That is ingenious, I admit; and I confess, in all humility, that
I could not have suggested any thing as good. But--for there is a
but--your story sins by its very simplicity. The prosecution will say,
'If that is the truth, why did not M. de Boiscoran say so at once? And
what need was there to consult his counsel?'"

M. Folgat showed in his face that he was making a great effort to meet
the objection. After a while, he replied,--

"I know but too well that that is the weak spot in our armor,--a very
weak spot, too; for it is quite clear, that, if M. de Boiscoran had
given this explanation on the day of his arrest, he would have been
released instantly. But what better can be found? What else can be
found? However, this is only a rough sketch of my plan, and I have never
put it into words yet till now. With your assistance, M. Magloire, with
the aid of Mechinet, to whom I am already indebted for very valuable
information, with the aid of all our friends, in fine, I cannot help
hoping that I may be able to improve my plan by adding some mysterious
secret which may help to explain M. de Boiscoran's reticence. I thought,
at one time, of calling in politics, and to pretend, that, on account of
the peculiar views of which he is suspected, M. de Boiscoran preferred
keeping his relations with the priest at Brechy a secret."

"Oh, that would have been most unfortunate!" broke in M. Magloire.
"We are not only religious at Sauveterre, we are devout, my good
colleague,--excessively devout."

"And I have given up that idea."

Jacques, who had till now kept silent and motionless, now raised himself
suddenly to his full height, and cried, in a voice of concentrated
rage,--

"Is it not too bad, is it not atrocious, that we should be compelled
to concoct a falsehood? And I am innocent! What more could be done if I
were a murderer?"

Jacques was perfectly right: it was monstrous that he should be
absolutely forced to conceal the truth. But his counsel took no notice
of his indignation: they were too deeply absorbed in examining minutely
their system of defence.

"Let us go on to the other points of the accusation," said M. Magloire.

"If my version is accepted," replied M. Folgat, "the rest follows as a
matter of course. But will they accept it? On the day on which he was
arrested, M. de Boiscoran, trying to find an excuse for having been
out that night, has said that he had gone to see his wood-merchant at
Brechy. That was a disastrous imprudence. And here is the real danger.
As to the rest, that amounts to nothing. There is the water in which M.
de Boiscoran washed his hands when he came home, and in which they
have found traces of burnt paper. We have only to modify the facts very
slightly to explain that. We have only to state that M. de Boiscoran is
a passionate smoker: that is well known. He had taken with him a goodly
supply of cigarettes when he set out for Brechy; but he had taken
no matches. And that is a fact. We can furnish proof, we can produce
witnesses, we had no matches; for we had forgotten our match-box, the
day before, at M. de Chandore's,--the box which we always carry about
on our person, which everybody knows, and which is still lying on the
mantelpiece in Miss Dionysia's little boudoir. Well, having no matches,
we found that we could go no farther without a smoke. We had gone quite
far already; and the question was, Shall we go on without smoking, or
return? No need of either! There was our gun; and we knew very well what
sportsmen do under such circumstances. We took the shot out of one of
our cartridges, and, in setting the powder on fire, we lighted a piece
of paper. This is an operation in which you cannot help blackening your
fingers. As we had to repeat it several times, our hands were very much
soiled and very black, and the nails full of little fragments of burnt
paper."

"Ah! now you are right," exclaimed M. Magloire. "Well done!"

His young colleague became more and more animated; and always employing
the profession "we," which his brethren affect, he went on,--

"This water, which you dwell upon so much, is the clearest evidence of
our innocence. If we had been an incendiary, we should certainly
have poured it out as hurriedly as the murderer tries to wash out the
blood-stains on his clothes, which betray him."

"Very well," said M. Magloire again approvingly.

"And your other charges," continued M. Folgat, as if he were standing in
court, and addressing the jury,--"your other charges have all the same
weight. Our letter to Miss Dionysia--why do you refer to that? Because,
you say, it proves our premeditation. Ah! there I hold you. Are we
really so stupid and bereft of common sense? That is not our reputation.
What! we premeditate a crime, and we do not say to ourselves that we
shall certainly be convicted unless we prepare an _alibi_! What! we
leave home with the fixed purpose of killing a man, and we load our gun
with small-shot! Really, you make the defence too easy; for your charges
do not stand being examined."

It was Jacques's turn, this time, to testify his approbation.

"That is," he said, "what I have told Galpin over and over again; and he
never had any thing to say in reply. We must insist on that point."

M. Folgat was consulting his notes.

"I now come to a very important circumstance, and one which I should,
at the trial, make a decisive question, if it should be favorable to our
side. Your valet, my dear client,--your old Anthony,--told me that he
had cleaned and washed your breech-loader the night before the crime."

"Great God!" exclaimed Jacques.

"Well, I see you appreciate the importance of the fact. Between that
cleaning and the time when you set a cartridge on fire, in order to burn
the letters of the Countess Claudieuse, did you fire your gun? If you
did, we must say nothing more about it. If you did not, one of the
barrels of the breech-loader must be clean, and then you are safe."

For more than a minute, Jacques remained silent, trying to recall the
facts; at last he replied,--

"It seems to me, I am sure, I fired at a rabbit on the morning of the
fatal day."

M. Magloire looked disappointed.

"Fate again!" he said.

"Oh, wait!" cried Jacques. "I am quite sure, at all events, that I
killed that rabbit at the first shot. Consequently, I can have fouled
only one barrel of the gun. If I have used the same barrel at Valpinson,
to get a light, I am safe. With a double gun, one almost instinctively
first uses the right-hand barrel."

M. Magloire's face grew darker.

"Never mind," he said, "we cannot possibly make an argument upon such
an uncertain chance,--a chance which, in case of error, would almost
fatally turn against us. But at the trial, when they show you the gun,
examine it, so that you can tell me how that matter stands."

Thus they had sketched the outlines of their plan of defence. There
remained nothing now but to perfect the details; and to this task the
two lawyers were devoting themselves still, when Blangin, the jailer,
called to them through the wicket, that the doors of the prison were
about to be closed.

"Five minutes more, my good Blangin!" cried Jacques.

And drawing his two friends aside, as far from the wicket as he could,
he said to them in a low and distressed voice,--

"A thought has occurred to me, gentlemen, which I think I ought to
mention to you. It cannot be but that the Countess Claudieuse must be
suffering terribly since I am in prison. However, sure she may be of
having left no trace behind her that could betray her, she must tremble
at the idea that I may, after all, tell the truth in self-defence. She
would deny, I know, and she is so sure of her prestige, that she knows
my accusation would not injure her marvellous reputation. Nevertheless,
she cannot but shrink from the scandal. Who knows if she might not give
us the means to escape from the trial, to avoid such exposure? Why might
not one of you gentleman make the attempt?"

M. Folgat was a man of quick resolution.

"I will try, if you will give me a line of introduction."

Jacque immediately sat down, and wrote,--

"I have told my counsel, M. Folgat, every thing. Save me, and I swear to
you eternal silence. Will you let me perish, Genevieve, when you know I
am innocent?

"JACQUES." "Is that enough?" he asked, handing the lawyer the note.

"Yes; and I promise you I will see the Countess Claudieuse within the
next forty-eight hours."

Blangin was becoming impatient; and the two advocates had to leave the
prison. As they crossed the New-Market Square, they noticed, not far
from them, a wandering musician, who was followed by a number of boys
and girls.

It was a kind of minstrel, dressed in a sort of garment which was no
longer an overcoat and had not yet assumed the shape of a shortcoat.
He was strumming on a wretched fiddle; but his voice was good, and the
ballad he sang had the full flavor of the local accent:--

"In the spring, mother Redbreast
Made her nest in the bushes,
The good lady!
Made her nest in the bushes,
The good lady!"

Instinctively M. Folgat was fumbling in his pocket for a few cents, when
the musician came up to him, held out his hat as if to ask alms, and
said,--

"You do not recognize me?"

The advocate started.

"You here!" he said.

"Yes, I myself. I came this morning. I was watching for you; for I
must see you this evening at nine o'clock. Come and open the little
garden-gate at M. de Chandore's for me."

And, taking up his fiddle again, he wandered off listlessly, singing
with his clear voice,--

"And a few, a few weeks later,
She had a wee, a wee bit birdy."



XXIV.

The great lawyer of Sauveterre had been far more astonished at the
unexpected and extraordinary meeting than M. Folgat. As soon as the
wandering minstrel had left them, he asked his young colleague,--

"You know that individual?"

"That individual," replied M. Folgat, "is none other than the agent
whose services I have engaged, and whom I mentioned to you."

"Goudar?"

"Yes, Goudar."

"And did you not recognize him?"

The young advocate smiled.

"Not until he spoke," he replied. "The Goudar whom I know is tall, thin,
beardless, and wears his hair cut like a brush. This street-musician is
low, bearded, and has long, smooth hair falling down his back. How could
I recognize my man in that vagabond costume, with a violin in his hand,
and a provincial song set to music?"

M. Magloire smiled too, as he said,--

"What are, after all, professional actors in comparison with these men!
Here is one who pretends having reached Sauveterre only this morning,
and who knows the country as well as Trumence himself. He has not been
here twelve hours, and he speaks already of M. de Chandore's little
garden-gate."

"Oh! I can explain that circumstance now, although, at first, it
surprised me very much. When I told Goudar the whole story, I no doubt
mentioned the little gate in connection with Mechinet."

Whilst they were chatting thus, they had reached the upper end of
National Street. Here they stopped; and M. Magloire said,--

"One word before we part. Are you quite resolved to see the Countess
Claudieuse?"

"I have promised."

"What do you propose telling her?"

"I do not know. That depends upon how she receives me."

"As far as I know her, she will, upon looking at the note, merely order
you out."

"Who knows! At all events, I shall not have to reproach myself for
having shrunk from a step which in my heart I thought it my duty to
take."

"Whatever may happen, be prudent, and do not allow yourself to get
angry. Remember that a scene with her would compel us to change our
whole line of defence, and that that is the only one which promises any
success."

"Oh, do not fear!"

Thereupon, shaking hands once more, they parted, M. Magloire returning
to his house, and M. Folgat going up the street. It struck half-past
five, and the young advocate hurried on for fear of being too late. He
found them waiting for him to go to dinner; but, as he entered the room,
he forgot all his excuses in his painful surprise at the mournful and
dejected appearance of the prisoner's friends and relatives.

"Have we any bad news?" he asked with a hesitating voice.

"The worst we had to fear," replied the Marquis de Boiscoran. "We had
all foreseen it; and still, as you see, it has surprised us all, like a
clap of thunder."

The young lawyer beat his forehead, and cried,--

"The court has ordered the trial!"

The marquis only bent his head, as if his voice, had failed him to
answer the question.

"It is still a great secret," said Dionysia; "and we only know it,
thanks to the indiscretion of our kind, our devoted Mechinet. Jacques
will have to appear before the Assizes."

She was interrupted by a servant, who entered to announce that dinner
was on the table.

They all went into the dining-room; but the last event made it well-nigh
impossible for them to eat. Dionysia alone, deriving from feverish
excitement an amazing energy, aided M. Folgat in keeping up the
conversation. From her the young advocate learned that Count Claudieuse
was decidedly worse, and that he would have received, in the day, the
last sacrament, but for the decided opposition of Dr. Seignebos, who had
declared that the slightest excitement might kill his patient.

"And if he dies," said M. de Chandore, "that is the finishing
stroke. Public opinion, already incensed against Jacques, will become
implacable."

However, the meal came to an end; and M. Folgat went up to Dionysia,
saying,--

"I must beg of you, madam, to trust me with the key to the little
garden-gate."

She looked at him quite astonished.

"I have to see a detective secretly, who has promised me his
assistance."

"Is he here?"

"He came this morning."

When Dionysia had handed him the key, M. Folgat hastened to reach
the end of the garden; and, at the third stroke of nine o'clock, the
minstrel of the New-Market Square, Goudar, pushed the little gate, and,
his violin under his arm, slipped into the garden.

"A day lost!" he exclaimed, without thinking of saluting the young
lawyer,--"a whole day; for I could do nothing till I had seen you."

He seemed to be so angry, that M. Folgat tried to soothe him.

"Let me first of all compliment you on your disguise," he said. But
Goudar did not seem to be open to praise.

"What would a detective be worth if he could not disguise himself! A
great merit, forsooth! And I tell you, I hate it! But I could not think
of coming to Sauveterre in my own person, a detective. Ugh! Everybody
would have run away; and what a pack of lies they would have told me! So
I had to assume that hideous masquerade. To think that I once took
six months' lessons from a music-teacher merely to fit myself for that
character! A wandering musician, you see, can go anywhere, and nobody is
surprised; he goes about the streets, or he travels along the high-road;
he enters into yards, and slips into houses; he asks alms: and in so
doing, he accosts everybody, speaks to them, follows them. And as to my
precious dialect, you must know I have been down here once for half a
year, hunting up counterfeiters; and, if you don't catch a provincial
accent in six months, you don't deserve belonging to the police. And
I do belong to it, to the great distress of my wife, and to my own
disgust."

"If your ambition is really what you say, my dear, Goudar," said M.
Folgat, interrupting him, "you may be able to leave your profession very
soon--if you succeed in saving M. de Boiscoran."

"He would give me his house in Vine Street?"

"With all his heart!"

The detective looked up, and repeated slowly,--

"The house in Vine Street, the paradise of this world. An immense
garden, a soil of marvellous beauty. And what an exposure! There are
walls there on which I could raise finer peaches than they have at
Montreuil, and richer Chasselas than those of Fontainebleau!"

"Did you find any thing there?" asked M. Folgat.

Goudar, thus recalled to business, looked angry again.

"Nothing at all," he replied. "Nor did I learn any thing from the
tradesmen. I am no further advanced than I was the first day."

"Let us hope you will have more luck here."

"I hope so; but I need your assistance to commence operations. I must
see Dr. Seignebos, and Mechinet the clerk. Ask them to meet me at the
place I shall assign in a note which I will send them."

"I will tell them."

"Now, if you want my _incognito_ to be respected, you must get me a
permit from the mayor, for Goudar, street-musician. I keep my name,
because here nobody knows me. But I must have the permit this evening.
Wherever I might present myself, asking for a bed, they would call for
my papers."

"Wait here for a quarter of an hour, there is a bench," said M. Folgat,
"and I'll go at once to the mayor."

A quarter of an hour later, Goudar had his permit in his pocket,
and went to take lodgings at the Red Lamb, the worst tavern in all
Sauveterre.