Читать книгу The Crime of the Boulevard - Jules Claretie - Страница 6

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M. Desbrière now began the investigation. He questioned the porter and portress, while he studied the salon in detail. Bernardet roamed about, examining at very close range each and every object in the room, as a dog sniffs and scents about for a trail.

"What kind of a man was your lodger?" was the first question.

Moniche replied in a tone which showed that he felt that his tenant had been accused of something.

"Oh! Monsieur le Commissaire, a very worthy man, I swear it!"

"The best man in the world," added his wife, wiping her eyes.

"I am not inquiring about his moral qualities," M. Desbrière said. "What I want to know is, how did he live and whom did he receive?"

"Few people. Very few," the porter answered. "The poor man liked solitude. He lived here eight years. He received a few friends, but, I repeat, a very small number."

M. Rovère had rented the apartment in 1888, he installed himself in his rooms, with his pictures and books. The porter was much astonished at the number of pictures and volumes which the new lodger brought. It took a long time to settle, as M. Rovère was very fastidious and personally superintended the hanging of his canvases and the placing of his books. He thought that he must have been an artist, although he said that he was a retired merchant. He had heard him say one day that he had been Consul to some foreign country—Spain or South America.

He lived quite simply, although they thought that he must be rich. Was he a miser? Not at all. Very generous, on the contrary. But, plainly, he shunned the world. He had chosen their apartment because it was in a retired spot, far from the Parisian boulevards. Four or five years before a woman, clothed in black, had come there. A woman who seemed still young—he had not seen her face, which was covered with a heavy black veil—she had visited M. Rovère quite often. He always accompanied her respectfully to the door when she went away. Once or twice he had gone out with her in a carriage. No, he did not know her name. M. Rovère's life was regulated with military precision. He usually held himself upright—of late sickness had bowed him somewhat; he went out whenever he was able, going as far as the Bois and back. Then, after breakfasting, he shut himself up in his library and read and wrote. He passed nearly all of his evenings at home.

"He never made us wait up for him, as he never went to the theatre," said Moniche.

The malady from which he suffered, and which puzzled the physicians, had seized him on his return from a Summer sojourn at Aix-les-Bains for his health. The neighbors had at once noticed the effect produced by the cure. When he went away he had been somewhat troubled with rheumatism, but when he returned he was a confirmed sufferer. Since the beginning of September he had not been out, receiving no visits, except from his doctor, and spending whole days in his easy chair or upon his lounge, while Mme. Moniche read the daily papers to him.

"When I say that he saw no one," said the porter, "I make a mistake. There was that gentleman"——

And he looked at his wife.

"What gentleman?"

Mme. Moniche shook her head, as if he ought not to answer.

"Of whom do you speak?" repeated the Commissary, looking at both of them.

At this moment, Bernardet, standing on the threshold of the library adjoining the salon, looked searchingly about the room in which M. Rovère ordinarily spent his time, and which he had probably left to meet his fate. His ear was as quick to hear as his eye to see, and as he heard the question he softly approached and listened for the answer.

"What gentleman? and what did he do?" asked the Commissary, a little brusquely, for he noticed a hesitation to reply in both Moniche and his wife.

"Well, and what does this mean?"

"Oh, well, Monsieur le Commissaire, it is this—perhaps it means nothing," and the concierge went on to tell how, one evening, a very fine gentleman, and very polished, moreover, had come to the house and asked to see M. Rovère; he had gone to his apartment, and had remained a long time. It was, he thought, about the middle of October, and Mme. Moniche, who had gone upstairs to light the gas, met the man as he was coming out of M. Rovère's rooms, and had noticed at the first glance the troubled air of the individual. (Moniche already called the gentleman the 'individual,') who was very pale and whose eyes were red.

Then, at some time or other, the individual had made another visit to M. Rovère. More than once the portress had tried to learn his name. Up to this moment she had not succeeded. One day she asked M. Rovère who it was, and he very shortly asked her what business it was of hers. She did not insist, but she watched the individual with a vague doubt.

"Instinct. Monsieur; my instinct told me"——

"Enough," interrupted M. Desbrière; "if we had only instinct to guide us we should make some famous blunders."

"Oh, it was not only by instinct, Monsieur."

"Ah! ah! let us hear it"——

Bernardet, with his eyes fastened upon Mme. Moniche, did not lose a syllable of her story, which her husband occasionally interrupted to correct her or to complete a statement, or to add some detail. The corpse, with mouth open and fiery, ferocious eyes, seemed also to listen.

Mme. Moniche, as we already know, entered M. Rovère's apartment whenever she wished. She was his landlady, his reader, his friend. Rovère was brusque, but he was good. So it was nothing strange when the woman, urged by curiosity, suddenly appeared in his rooms, for him to say: "Ah, you here? Is that you? I did not call you." An electric bell connected the rooms with the concierge lodge. Usually she would reply: "I thought I heard the bell." And she would profit by the occasion to fix up the fire, which M. Rovère, busy with his reading or writing, had forgotten to attend to. She was much attached to him. She did not wish to have him suffer from the cold, and recently had entered as often as possible, under one pretext or another, knowing that he was ill, and desiring to be at hand in case of need. When, one evening, about eight days before, she had entered the room while the visitor, whom Moniche called the individual, was there, the portress had been astonished to see the two men standing before Rovère's iron safe, the door wide open and both looking at some papers spread out on the desk.

Rovère, with his sallow, thin face, was holding some papers in his hand, and the other was bent over, looking with eager eyes at—Mme. Moniche had seen them well—some rent rolls, bills and deeds. Perceiving Mme. Moniche, who stood hesitating on the threshold, M. Rovère frowned, mechanically made a move as if to gather up the scattered papers. But the portress said, "Pardon!" and quickly withdrew. Only—ah! only—she had time to see, to see plainly the iron safe, the heavy doors standing open, the keys hanging from the lock, and M. Rovère in his dressing gown; the official papers, yellow and blue, others bearing seals and a ribbon, lying there before him. He seemed in a bad humor, but said nothing. Not a word.

"And the other one?"

The other man was as pale as M. Rovère. He resembled him, moreover. It was, perhaps, a relative. Mme. Moniche had noticed the expression with which he contemplated those papers and the fierce glance which he cast at her when she pushed open the door without knowing what sight awaited her. She had gone downstairs, but she did not at once tell her husband about what she had seen. It was some time afterward. The individual had come again. He remained closeted with M. Rovère for some hours. The sick man was lying on the lounge. The portress had heard them through the door talking in low tones. She did not know what they said. She could hear only a murmur. And she had very good ears, too. But she heard only confused sounds, not one plain word. When, however, the visitor was going away she heard Rovère say to him: "I ought to have told all earlier."

Did the dead man possess a secret which weighed heavily upon him, and which he shared with that other? And the other? Who was he? Perhaps an accomplice. Everything she had said belonged to the Commissary of Police and to the press. She had told her story with omissions, with timorous looks, with sighs of doubts and useless gestures. Bernardet listened, noting each word, the purposes of this portress, the melodramatic gossip in certain information in which he verified the precision—all this was engraven on his brain, as earlier in the day the expression of the dead man's eyes had been reflected in the kodak.

He tried to distinguish, as best he could, the undeniable facts in this first deposition, when a woman of the people, garrulous, indiscreet, gossiping and zealous, has the joy of playing a rôle. He mentally examined her story, with the interruptions which her husband made when she accused the individual. He stopped her with a look, placing his hand on her arm and said: "One must wait! One does not know. He had the appearance of a worthy man." The woman, pointing out with a grand gesture, the body lying upon the floor, said: "Oh, well! And did not M. Rovère have the appearance of a worthy man also? And did it hinder him from coming to that?"

Over Bernardet's face a mocking little smile passed.

"He always had the appearance of a worthy man," he said, looking at the dead man, "and he even seemed like a worthy man who looked at rascals with courage. I am certain," slowly added the officer, "that if one could know the last thought in that brain which thinks no more, could see in those unseeing eyes the last image upon which they looked, one would learn all that need be known about that individual of whom you speak and the manner of his death."

"Possibly he killed himself," said the Commissary.

But the hypothesis of suicide was not possible, as Bernardet remarked to him, much to the great contempt of the reporters who were covering their notebooks with a running handwriting and with hieroglyphics. The wound was too deep to have been made by the man's own hand. And, besides, they would find the weapon with which that horrible gash had been made, near at hand. There was no weapon of any kind near the body. The murderer had either carried it away with him in his flight or he had thrown it away in some other part of the apartment. They would soon know.

They need not even wait for an autopsy to determine that it was an assassination. "That is evident," interrupted the Commissary; "the autopsy will be made, however."

And, with an insistence which surprised the Commissary a little, Bernardet, in courteous tones, evidently haunted by one particular idea, begged and almost supplicated M. Desbrière to send for the Attorney for the Republic, so that the corpse could be taken as soon as possible to the Morgue.

"Poor man!" exclaimed Mme. Moniche. "To the Morgue! To the Morgue!" Bernardet calmed her with a word.

"It is necessary. It is the law. Oh, Monsieur le Commissaire, let us do it quickly, quickly. I will tell you why. Time will be gained—I mean to say, saved—and the criminal found."

Then, while M. Desbrière sent an officer to the telephone office to ask for the Attorney for the Republic to come as quickly as possible to the Boulevard de Clichy, Mme. Moniche freed her mind to the reporters in regard to some philosophical considerations upon human destiny, which condemned in so unforeseen, so odiously brutal a manner, a good lodger, as respectable as M. Rovère, to be laid upon a slab at the Morgue, like a thief or a vagabond—he who went out but seldom, and who "loved his home so much."

"The everlasting antithesis of life!" replied Paul Rodier, who made a note of his reflection.