wretches! They don’t often leave traces like this everywhere —or at least they wipe them out.”
On gaining the first landing, and the door of the boudoir which led into the chamber, he stopped, eagerly scanning, before he entered, the position of the rooms.
Then he entered the boudoir, saying:
“Come; I don’t see my way clear yet.”
“But it seems to me,” remarked the judge, “that we have already important materials to aid your task. It is clear that Guespin, if he is not an accomplice, at least knew something about the crime.”
M. Lecoq had recourse to the portrait in the lozenge-box. It was more than a glance, it was a confidence. He evidently said something to the dear defunct, which he dared not say aloud.
“I see that Guespin is seriously compromised,” resumed he. “Why didn’t he want to tell where he passed the night? But, then, public opinion is against him, and I naturally distrust that.”
The detective stood alone in the middle of the room, the rest, at his request, remained at the threshold, and looking keenly about him, searched for some explanation of the frightful disorder of the apartment.
“Fools!” cried he, in an irritated tone, “double brutes! Because they murder people so as to rob them, is no reason why they should break everything in the house. Sharp folks don’t smash up furniture; they carry pretty picklocks, which work well and make no noise. Idiots! one would say—”
He stopped with his mouth wide open.
“Eh! Not so bungling, after all, perhaps.”
The witnesses of this scene remained motionless at the door, following, with an interest mingled with surprise, the detective’s movements.
Kneeling down, he passed his flat palm over the thick carpet, among the broken porcelain.
“It’s damp; very damp. The tea was not all drunk, it seems, when the cups were broken.”
“Some tea might have remained in the teapot,” suggested Plantat.
“I know it,” answered M. Lecoq, “just what I was going to say. So that this dampness cannot tell us the exact moment when the crime was committed.”
“But the clock does, and very exactly,” interrupted the mayor.
“The mayor,” said M. Domini, “in his notes, well explains that the movements of the clock stopped when it fell.”
“But see here,” said M. Plantat, “it was the odd hour marked by that clock that struck me. The hands point to twenty minutes past three; yet we know that the countess was fully dressed, when she was struck. Was she up taking tea at three in the morning? It’s hardly probable.”
“I, too, was struck with that circumstance,” returned M. Lecoq, “and that’s why I said, ‘not so stupid!’ Well, let’s see.”
He lifted the clock with great care, and replaced it on the mantel, being cautious to set it exactly upright. The hands continued to point to twenty minutes past three.
“Twenty past three!” muttered he, while slipping a little wedge under the stand. “People don’t take tea at that hour. Still less common is it that people are murdered at daylight.”
He opened the clock-case with some difficulty, and pushed the longer hand to the figure of half-past three.
The clock struck eleven!
“Good,” cried M. Lecoq, triumphantly. “That is the truth!” and drawing the lozenge-box from his pocket, he excitedly crushed a lozenge between his teeth.
The simplicity of this discovery surprised the spectators; the idea of trying the clock in this way had occurred to no one. M. Courtois, especially, was bewildered.
“There’s a fellow,” whispered he to the doctor, “who knows what he’s about.”
“Ergo,” resumed M. Lecoq (who knew Latin), “we have here, not brutes, as I thought at first, but rascals who looked beyond the end of their knife. They intended to put us off the scent, by deceiving us as to the hour.”
“I don’t see their object very clearly,” said M. Courtois, timidly.
“Yet it is easy to see it,” answered M. Domini. “Was it not for their interest to make it appear that the crime was committed after the last train for Paris had left? Guespin, leaving his companions at the Lyons station at nine, might have reached here at ten, murdered the count and countess, seized the money which he knew to be in the count’s possession, and returned to Paris by the last train.”
“These conjectures are very shrewd,” interposed M. Plantat; “but how is it that Guespin did not rejoin his comrades in the Batignolles? For in that way, to a certain degree, he might have provided a kind of alibi.”
Dr. Gendron had been sitting on the only unbroken chair in the chamber, reflecting on Plantat’s sudden embarrassment, when he had spoken of Robelot the bone-setter. The remarks of the judge drew him from his revery; he got up, and said:
“There is another point; putting forward the time was perhaps useful to Guespin, but it would greatly damage Bertaud, his accomplice.”
“But,” answered M. Domini, “it might be that Bertaud was not consulted. As to Guespin, he had no doubt good reasons for not returning to the wedding. His restlessness, after such a deed, would possibly have betrayed him.”
M. Lecoq had not thought fit to speak as yet. Like a doctor at a sick bedside, he wanted to be sure of his diagnosis. He had returned to the mantel, and again pushed forward the hands of the clock. It sounded, successively, half-past eleven, then twelve, then half-past twelve, then one.
As he moved the hands, he kept muttering:
“Apprentices—chance brigands! You are malicious, parbleu, but you don’t think of everything. You give a push to the hands, but don’t remember to put the striking in harmony with them. Then comes along a detective, an old rat who knows things, and the dodge is discovered.”
M. Domini and Plantat held their tongues. M. Lecoq walked up to them.
“Monsieur the Judge,” said he, “is perhaps now convinced that the deed was done at half-past ten.”
“Unless,” interrupted M. Plantat, “the machinery of the clock has been out of order.”
“That often happens,” added M. Courtois. “The clock in my drawing-room is in such a state that I never know the time of day.”
M. Lecoq reflected.
“It is possible,” said he, “that Monsieur Plantat is right. The probability is in favor of my theory; but probability, in such an affair, is not sufficient; we must have certainty. There happily remains a mode of testing the matter—the bed; I’ll wager it is rumpled up.” Then addressing the mayor, “I shall need a servant to lend me a hand.”
“I’ll help you,” said Plantat, “that will be a quicker way.”
They
