Part 3

“Yes, your worship, from Fontines. We were on our way back to work, about two o’clock it must have been. It was like this: we were chatting with Mère Denise close by at the edge of the copse, when we heard screams. ‘Somebody’s crying for help,’ I says. ‘It’s from the cottage.’ Old Vaucherel, that we knew as well as anything, your worship. So we ran like mad. We climbed over this here wall—a nasty bit of work, with all them broken bottles on top—and we were across the garden in no time, as you might say.”

“Where exactly were you when the front door flew open?”

“Right here,” said the eldest Gaudu, leading the way to a flower-bed.

“That means about twenty yards from the porch,” said the magistrate, pointing to the two steps leading up to the hall. “And from where you stood you saw——” He paused expectantly.

“Monsieur Leboc himself ... I saw him as clear as I see you, your worship ... he was rushing out, as if the devil was at his heels—or the police, for that matter, which they soon may be—and when he saw us he bolted straight back again.”

“You’re quite sure it was he?”

“I swear to God it was!”

The other two men took a similar oath.

“You can’t have been mistaken?”

“Why, he’s been living near our place for five years now, down the end of the village,” the eldest Gaudu stated. “I’ve even delivered milk at his house!”

The magistrate gave an order. The door of the hall opened and a man came out. He was about sixty, and wore a brown drill suit and a straw hat. His face was pink and smiling.

The three Gaudus spoke simultaneously.

“Monsieur Leboc!”

Their choral affirmation made Leboc’s entrance grotesquely like something in musical comedy.

The deputy whispered, “It’s obvious there can’t be any mistake at such close range and the Gaudu cousins can’t have gone wrong on the identity of the fugitive—which means, of the murderer.”

“Quite so,” said the magistrate. “But are they speaking the truth? Was it Monsieur Leboc they saw? Now we’ll go on.”

The party went into the house and entered a big room whose walls were literally lined with books. There were just a few sticks of furniture; a large table—the one whose drawer had been broken into; and an unframed full-length portrait of old Vaucherel—a life-size daub by some unskilled artist who had yet managed to invest his subject with a certain verisimilitude.

A dummy lay stretched on the floor to represent the victim of the tragedy.

The magistrate resumed his examination.

“When you came on the scene, Gaudu, you did not see Monsieur Leboc again?”

“No, your worship. We heard groans from this room and rushed in at once.”

“That means that Monsieur Vaucherel was still alive?”

“Hardly that, as you might say. He was lying face down with a knife stuck right in the middle of his back ... we knelt down by him ... the poor gentleman was trying to speak.”

“Could you catch what he said?”

“No, your worship. We could only make out the name of Leboc—he said it over several times—‘Monsieur Leboc, Monsieur Leboc ...’ like that. Then a kind of shudder passed over him and he was gone. After that we searched everywhere, but Monsieur Leboc had vanished. He must have jumped out of the kitchen window, which was open, and made off down the little gravel path. It goes straight to his house and the trees hide it all the way.... Then we all went together to the gendarmes ... and we told them all about it....”

The magistrate asked a few more questions, made the three cousins formulate even more definitely their charge against Monsieur Leboc, and then turned his attention to the latter.

Monsieur Leboc had listened without attempting to interrupt. His perfect calm was unruffled by any display of indignation. He gave the impression of finding the Gaudus’ story so utterly absurd that he did not for a moment doubt that the magistrate would take a precisely similar view of it. Why bother to refute such a tale?

“Have you anything to add, Monsieur Leboc?”

“Nothing further.”

“Then you still maintain——”

“I maintain what you, monsieur, know as well as I to be the truth. All the villagers you have examined have testified that I never go out during the daytime. At midday I have my lunch sent in from the inn. From one to four I sit at my window reading and smoking my pipe. The day in question was fine. My window was open, and five people—no less than five—saw me, as on any other day, from the garden gate.”

“I have summoned them to appear later on.”

“I’m glad to hear it. They will repeat their evidence. Since I am not ubiquitous and cannot at one and the same moment be here and in my own house you must admit that I could not have been seen leaving the cottage, that my poor friend Vaucherel could not have spoken my name in his agony, and therefore that these three Gaudus are unmitigated scoundrels.”

“And you turn the murder charge against them, don’t you?”

“Oh! Merely a matter of surmise....”

“On the other hand, an old woman, Mère Denise, who was out gathering firewood, states that she was talking with the men when they first heard the screams.”

“She was talking with two of them. Where was the third?”

“A little way behind.”

“Did she see him?”

“She thinks so ... she isn’t positive....”

“In that case, what proof have you that the third Gaudu wasn’t right here, committing the murder? What proof have you that the other two, posted near, didn’t climb the wall, not to rush to the victim’s help but to smother his cries and finish him off?”

“If that were so, why should they accuse you personally?”

“I have a small shoot and the Gaudus are incorrigible poachers. It was thanks to me that they were twice caught in the act and sentenced. Now, as they’ve got to accuse some one to shift suspicion from themselves, they’re getting their own back.”

“Merely surmise, as you said yourself. Why should they want to kill Vaucherel?”

“How should I know?” Leboc shrugged his shoulders.

“You have no idea what it was that may have been stolen from the drawer in the table?”

“None, your lordship. My friend Vaucherel was not rich, whatever people may have said. I happen to know that he had entrusted his savings to a broker and kept no money in the house.”

“Nor anything valuable?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“What about his books?”

“They aren’t worth anything, as you can see for yourself. He always wanted to collect first editions and old bindings, but he could never afford it.”

“Did he ever mention the Gaudu cousins to you?”

“Never. Much as I long to avenge my poor friend’s death, I have no wish to speak anything but the strict truth.”

The examination went on. The magistrate questioned the cousins closely, but at the finish the confrontation showed no results. Having cleared up a few minor points, the magistrates adjourned to Fontines.

Monsieur Leboc’s property, at the end of the village, was no bigger than the cottage. The garden was enclosed by a very high, neatly clipped hedge. The white-painted brick house faced on to a tiny, perfectly circular lawn. As at the cottage the distance from gate to porch was between fifteen and twenty yards.

The magistrate asked Monsieur Leboc to take up his position as on the fatal afternoon. Monsieur Leboc thereupon seated himself at the window, a book on his knees, and his pipe in his mouth.

Here again no mistake was possible. Anyone passing the gate and glancing towards the house could not fail to see Monsieur Leboc distinctly. The five witnesses who had been summoned—laborers and shopkeepers of Fontines—repeated their evidence in such a way that it was quite impossible to doubt Monsieur Leboc’s whereabouts between midday and four o’clock on the day of the crime.

The magistrates did not attempt to hide their bewilderment from the inspector, and Formerie, to whom Béchoux had introduced Barnett as a detective of exceptional ability, could not help saying:

“A complicated case, monsieur. What do you make of it?”

“Yes, what do you make of it?” echoed Béchoux, signing pointedly to remind Barnett of the need for tact.

Jim Barnett had followed the whole investigation at the cottage in silence. Béchoux had kept asking him questions, to which he had only replied with nods and muttered monosyllables. Now he answered pleasantly:

“A most complicated case, monsieur.”

“Ah, you think so too. All things considered, the allegations of the two parties balance each other. On the one hand, we have Monsieur Leboc’s alibi. It is incontestable that he could not have left his house that afternoon. On the other hand, the story of the three cousins impresses me favorably.”

“That’s so. One side or the other is acting an abject farce. But which side? Can the three Gaudus, bad characters of brutal aspect, be innocent? Or may the smiling Monsieur Leboc, all candor and calm, be guilty? Or are we to take it that the appearance of the actors in this drama is an indication of their respective rôles, Monsieur Leboc being innocent and the Gaudus guilty?”

“After all,” Monsieur Formerie concluded with some satisfaction, “you’re no nearer seeing daylight than we are.”

“Oh, yes, I am!” Jim Barnett declared, a twinkle in his eye.

Monsieur Formerie bit his lip.

“That being so,” he observed icily, “perhaps you will be so good as to tell us what more you have been able to discover.”

“I will certainly do so at the proper moment. To-day, monsieur, all I can do is to beg you to call a new witness.”

“A new witness? But—what’s his name?”

“I really don’t know.”

“What’s that? You don’t know?”

Monsieur Formerie was wondering whether this super-detective was ragging him. Béchoux showed signs of anxiety. Was Barnett going to pull a hornet’s nest about his ears at the start?

At last Jim Barnett leaned over to Monsieur Formerie and pointing to Monsieur Leboc, who was still puffing conscientiously at his pipe by the window, he whispered:

“In the inner compartment of Monsieur Leboc’s pocketbook there is a visiting card pierced with four small holes in lozenge formation. That card will give us the name and address of our new witness.”

This ridiculous oracular pronouncement was hardly calculated to restore Formerie’s equilibrium, but Inspector Béchoux did not hesitate to act. Without giving any reason, he ordered Monsieur Leboc to hand over his pocketbook. He opened it and took out a visiting card pierced with four holes arranged in a lozenge and bearing the name: Miss Elizabeth Lovendale, with an address in blue pencil: Grand Hotel Vendôme, Paris.

The two magistrates looked at one another in amazement. Béchoux fairly beamed, while Monsieur Leboc, utterly unembarrassed, exclaimed:

“Good gracious! What a search I had for that card! And so did poor Vaucherel!”

“Why should he have been looking for it?”

“Really, your lordship, you can’t expect me to know that. I expect he wanted the address.”

“Then what are the four holes doing?”

“Oh, I made those to mark the four points I scored in a game of écarté. We often played écarté together, and I must have picked this visiting card up without thinking and put it in my pocketbook.”

Leboc gave this plausible explanation in a perfectly natural manner and it seemed to satisfy Formerie. What remained unexplained was how on earth Jim Barnett could have guessed that such a card was hidden in the pocketbook of a man he had never seen before in his life.

And Barnett himself furnished no elucidation. He merely smiled and insisted that they should call Elizabeth Lovendale as a witness. This they agreed to do.

Miss Lovendale was out of town and did not put in an appearance for a week. The inquiry was at a standstill for that time, although Formerie zealously pursued his investigations, the memory of Jim Barnett egging him on.

“You’ve riled him,” Béchoux told Barnett on the afternoon when they were all assembled again at the cottage. “So much so that he’s determined to decline your assistance.”

“Ought I to clear out?” Barnett asked. “I don’t want to cloud any one’s sky—not even Formerie’s!”

“No, you can stay,” Béchoux told him. “Anyway, I fancy he’s come to a definite decision.”

“All the better. It’s sure to be the wrong one. There’s a good time coming!”

“Don’t be so disrespectful, Barnett!”

“Oh, all right, I’ll be respectful and, of course, absolutely disinterested. Nothing in hand or pocket. But, I must say, a little more Formerie will about finish me!”

Monsieur Leboc had been waiting half an hour when a car drew up and Miss Lovendale got out. Monsieur Formerie came up briskly.

“How do you do, Mr. Barnett,” he said. “Any more bright ideas?”

“Perhaps, monsieur,” was Barnett’s cautious reply.

“Well, wait till you’ve heard mine. But first we must get through with your witness. Absolutely irrelevant and a sheer waste of time, you’ll be glad to hear. Still, it can’t be helped.”

Elizabeth Lovendale was a dowdily dressed, middle-aged Englishwoman, her slight eccentricity of manner heightened by her dishevelled hair. She spoke French fluently, but so volubly that she was hard to understand.

At once, before any question could be put to her, she launched forth:

“That poor Monsieur Vaucherel! Murdered! Such a nice man, if he was a bit queer. And you want to know whether I knew him? Oh, not well. I only came here once—on business. I wanted to buy something from him. We disagreed about the price. I was going to have another appointment with him after seeing my brothers. My brothers are well known in London—Lovendale and Lovendale, Limited, the big provision merchants.”

Monsieur Formerie strove to stem this flow of eloquence.

“What was it you wanted to buy, mademoiselle?”

“A little scrap of paper—nothing but a scrap of paper. Sentimental value only, as people say. But it was worth a lot to me and I made the mistake of telling him so. It all goes back to my great-grandmother, Dorothy Lovendale. She was a beauty and much admired by King George the Fourth. She kept eighteen love-letters that he wrote her and hid them, one in each volume of an eighteen-volume calf-bound edition of Richardson’s works. When she died, the family found every volume except the fourteenth, which was missing, together with the letter inside of it—the fourteenth letter and the most interesting, for it was known to prove that the lovely Dorothy had stepped aside from virtue’s path,”—Miss Lovendale lowered her eyes discreetly so as not to meet Barnett’s look of amusement—“just nine months before the birth of her eldest son. You can understand what it would mean to us to get that letter back! Why, it would prove our royal descent!”

Formerie was growing more and more impatient.

Elizabeth Lovendale took a deep breath, and went on with her story.

“After searching and advertising for nearly thirty years, I learned one day that among a number of books sold at auction was the fourteenth volume of the set of Richardson. I flew to the purchaser, a second-hand bookseller on the Quai Voltaire, who referred me to Monsieur Vaucherel who had just bought the book. Monsieur Vaucherel produced the precious volume, and, like a fool, I told him that the letter I was after must be in the back of the binding. He examined it closely and changed color. Then, of course, I realized my stupidity. If I had kept quiet about the letter he would have sold me the book for fifty francs. I offered him a thousand. Monsieur Vaucherel, shaking with excitement, asked ten thousand. I agreed. We both lost our heads. It was like a nightmare auction. Twenty thousand—thirty—finally he demanded fifty thousand francs, yelling like a madman, with his eyes blazing. ‘Fifty thousand,’ he cried, ‘not a sou less—that will buy me all the books I want—the rarest and finest—fifty thousand francs!’ He wanted a deposit then and there—a check. I said I would come back. He let me go and I saw him lock the book into the drawer of this table.”

Elizabeth Lovendale went on embellishing her statement with much unnecessary detail. Nobody paid any attention to her. All eyes were for the contorted countenance of the magistrate. He was obviously the prey of somewhat violent emotion and was quite overwhelmed with excessive jubilation. At last he managed to get out:

“In short, mademoiselle, you are asking for the return of the fourteenth volume of Richardson’s collected works?”

“I am.” She looked at him with sudden hope.

“Then here it is,” he cried, and with a theatrical gesture he produced a small calf-bound book from his pocket.

“Not really!” cried Miss Lovendale.

“Here it is,” he repeated. “But King George’s love-letter isn’t there. I should have noticed it. But I’ll wager I can find it if I was able to discover the missing volume that people have been after for the past century. The man who stole the one indubitably stole the other.”

Monsieur Formerie paced the room, his hands behind his back, enjoying his triumph. Suddenly he drummed on the table and spoke again.

“Now we know the motive for the murder. Someone overheard the conversation between Vaucherel and Miss Lovendale and saw where Vaucherel had put the book. A few days later that person murdered Vaucherel to rob him of the book so that he could later on dispose of the fourteenth letter. Who was it? Why, Gaudu, the farm-hand, whose guilt I never doubted. I searched his house yesterday and noticed a large crack between the bricks of the fireplace. Hidden in a hole behind this crack I found a book, which obviously belonged to Monsieur Vaucherel’s library. Miss Lovendale’s story, coming as it does, proves the accuracy of my deductions. The Gaudu cousins will be placed under arrest, the scum, as the murderers of poor old Vaucherel and the criminal accusers of Monsieur Leboc.”

Monsieur Formerie solemnly shook hands with Monsieur Leboc as a mark of his esteem and was effusively thanked by the latter. Then he gallantly escorted Elizabeth Lovendale to her car and returned, rubbing his hands together.

After this, everybody made for the Gaudus’ house, whither the three cousins were being brought under escort. It was a brilliant day. Monsieur Formerie, walking between Barnett and Béchoux, with Leboc bringing up the rear, was full of satisfaction. The coveted Paris appointment loomed ever nearer on his horizon.

“Well, well, Barnett,” he remarked, “very neatly done, eh? Not quite what you expected, though. After all, you were inclined to be hostile to Monsieur Leboc, weren’t you?”

“I admit, monsieur,” Barnett confessed, “that I allowed my line of reasoning to be influenced by that confounded visiting card. Would you believe it? That card was lying on the cottage floor during the confrontation, and I actually saw Leboc drawing stealthily nearer and nearer till he got his right foot on it. When we left the place, he had it stuck to the sole of his boot. Afterwards he detached it and slipped it into his pocketbook. Well, the imprint of his right sole on the damp ground showed me that the said sole had four spikes arranged in a lozenge. That meant that our friend Leboc, knowing that he had forgotten the card lying on the floor, and anxious to keep Elizabeth Lovendale’s name and address out of things, hit upon this neat little dodge. And really, it’s thanks to the visiting card that——”

Monsieur Formerie burst out laughing.

“My dear Barnett, don’t be childish! Why all these pointless complications? You shouldn’t waste your energy ferreting out mares’ nests. It’s a thing I never do. For goodness sake let’s stick to the facts as we find them and refrain from distorting them to fit impossible theories.”

The party was by now near Monsieur Leboc’s house which was on their way to the Gaudus’. Monsieur Formerie took Barnett’s arm and went affably on with his curtain lecture.

“Where you went wrong, Barnett, was in refusing to admit the incontrovertible truth that, after all, one man cannot be in two places at the same moment. Everything turns on that—Monsieur Leboc, smoking at his window, couldn’t be at the same time committing a murder at the cottage. Here we have Monsieur Leboc just behind us. There is the gate of his house, three yards away. I say it’s impossible to conceive a miracle by which Monsieur Leboc could be at once behind us and at his window.”

Suddenly Formerie stood still in his tracks, choking, helpless and amazed.

“What is it?” Béchoux asked.

Formerie pointed towards the house.

“There!... Look!...”

Through the bars of the gate, twenty yards away, beyond the lawn, they could see Monsieur Leboc smoking his pipe, framed in the open window—Monsieur Leboc who nevertheless was standing with the group in the road.

A nightmare vision—a hallucination! It was incredible. Who could be impersonating the real Leboc, whom Formerie had by the arm?

Béchoux had opened the gate and was running to the house. Formerie followed him, shouting threats at Leboc’s extraordinary double. But the figure in the window never heeded nor stirred. How should it heed or stir, since, as they could see on drawing closer, it was merely a picture, a painted canvas fitting the window-frame exactly and presenting a tolerably life-like profile of Monsieur Leboc smoking his pipe. It was daubed in the same style as the portrait of Vaucherel hanging in the cottage. Obviously the same artist had painted both.

Formerie wheeled round. The mask of smiling placidity had dropped from Monsieur Leboc’s face; the man had collapsed utterly under this unforeseen blow. He began a maudlin confession.

“I lost my head—I never meant to stab him—I only wanted to share in with him, fifty-fifty.... He refused—I didn’t know what I was doing. I never meant to stab him.”

His whining trailed off and Jim Barnett’s voice, now harsh and scathing, was raised in mocking inquiry.

“What do you say to that, Monsieur Formerie? Nice lad, Leboc, all ready with a perfect alibi! How were the unobservant passers-by to doubt the reality of the Monsieur Leboc they only saw at a distance? Personally, I suspected something like this when I saw the portrait of old Vaucherel. I wondered if the same artist could have painted Leboc. I didn’t have to look hard—Leboc was too sure he’d fooled us all. The canvas was rolled up and hidden in the corner of a shed under a heap of rusty tools. I only had to nail it in place at the window a little while ago, after Leboc had gone to answer your summons. That’s how a man can simultaneously murder abroad and smoke his pipe at home!”

Jim Barnett was ruthless. His grating voice flayed the hapless Formerie.

“Just look what a clean sheet Leboc had. What a ready answer about the visiting card—the four holes marking his score at écarté. And the book he hid the other day in the Gaudus’ fireplace. I was shadowing him! And the anonymous letter he sent you—for that was what got you going. Leboc, you scoundrel, I’ve had some real amusement out of you. D’you hear, my bright lad?”

Formerie was pale but restrained. After a prolonged scrutiny of Leboc, he murmured:

“I’m not surprised ... shifty eyes ... a slippery way with him.... What a rogue!” His wrath overflowed. “You blackguard, I’ll see you get yours! Now then, where’s that letter?”

Leboc, stricken helpless, stammered: