Thirty Hours with a Corpse

by Maurice Level

  “ ‘How well he defended himself; it is a wonder he did not get off . . . Upon my word, if I had not heard your address to the Court I should be inclined to think he was innocent.’

  “And so the magic of words, the force of my will to succeed were what had quieted the hesitations of this man as they had probably triumphed over those of the jury. I alone had been the cause of his death, and if he were innocent I alone was responsible for the monstrous crime of his execution.

  “A man does not accuse himself in this way without trying to put up some sort of a defense, without doing something to absolve his conscience, and in order to deliver myself from these paralyzing doubts I went over the case again. While I reread my notes and examined my documents, my conviction became the same as before; but they were my notes, my documents, the work of my probably prejudiced mind, of my will enslaved by my desire, my need to find him guilty. I studied the other point of view, the questions put to the accused and his answers, the evidence of the witnesses. To be quite sure about some points that had never been very clear, I examined carefully the place where the crime had been committed, the plan of the streets near the house. I took in my hands the weapon the murderer had used, I found new witnesses who had been left out or neglected, and by the time I had gone over all these details twenty times I had come to the definite conclusion, now not to be shaken, that the man was innocent . . . And as if to crown my remorse, a brilliant rise in position was offered me! It was the price of my infamy.

  “I was very cowardly, Monsieur, for I believed I did enough in tendering my resignation without assigning any reason for it. I traveled. Alas! forgetfulness does not lie at the end of long roads . . . To do something to expiate the irreparable wrong I had caused became my only desire in life. But the man was a vagabond, without family, without friends . . . There was one thing I could have done, the only worthy thing: I could have confessed my mistake. I had not the courage to do it. I was afraid of the anger, the scorn of my colleagues. Finally I decided that I would try to atone by using my fortune to relieve those who were in great trouble, above all, to help those who were guilty. Who had a better right than I to try to prevent men being condemned?— I turned my back on all the joys of life, renounced all comfort and ease, took no rest. Forgotten by everyone, I have lived in solitude, and aged prematurely. I have reduced the needs of life to a minimum . . . For months I have lodged in this attic, and it is here I contracted the illness of which I am dying. I shall die here, I wish to die here . . . And now, Monsieur, I have come to what I want to ask you . . .”

  His voice became so low I had to watch his trembling lips to help myself to understand his words.

  “I do not wish this story to die with me. I want you to make it known as a lesson for those whose duty it is to punish with justice and not because they are there to punish in any case. I want it to help to bring the Specter of the Irreparable before the Public Prosecutor when it is his duty to ask for a condemnation.”

  “I will do as you ask,” I assured him.

  His face was livid, and his hand shook as he gasped:

  “But that is not all . . . I still have some money . . . that I have not yet had time to distribute among those who have been unfortunate . . . It is there . . . in that chest of drawers . . . I want you to give it to them when I am gone . . . not in my name, but in that of the man who was executed because of my mistake thirty years ago . . . give it to them in the name of Ranaille.”

  I started.

  “Ranaille? But it was I who defended him . . . I was . . .”

  He bowed his head.

  “I know . . . that is why I asked you to come . . . it was to you I owed this confession. I am Deroux, the Public Prosecutor.” He tried to lift his arms toward the ceiling, murmuring:

  “Ranaille . . . Ranaille . . .”

  Did I betray a professional secret? Was I guilty of a breach of rules that ought to be binding? . . . the pitiful spectacle of this dying man drew the truth from me in spite of myself, and I cried:

  “Monsieur Deroux! Monsieur Deroux! Ranaille was guilty . . . He confessed it as he went to the scaffold . . . He told me when he bid me goodbye there . . .”

  But he had already fallen back on the pillow . . . I have always tried to believe that he heard me.

  The Test

  NOT A muscle quivered as the man stood with his gaze fixed on the dead woman.

  Through half-closed eyes he looked at the white form on the marble slab; milky-white it was, with a red gash between the breasts where the cruel knife had entered. In spite of its rigidity, the body had kept its rounded beauty and seemed alive. Only the hands, with their too transparent skin and violet fingernails, and the face with its glazed, wide-open eyes and blackened mouth, a mouth that was set in a horrible grin, told of the eternal sleep.

  An oppressive silence weighed on the dreary, stone-paved hall. Lying on the ground beside the dead woman was the sheet that had covered her: there were bloodstains on it. The magistrates were closely watching the accused man as he stood unmoved between the two warders, his head well up, a supercilious expression on his face, his hands crossed behind his back.

  The examining magistrate opened the proceedings:

  “Well, Gautet, do you recognize your victim?”

  The man moved his head, looking first at the magistrate, then with reflective attention at the dead woman as if he were searching in the depths of his memory.

  “I do not know this woman,” he said at length in a low voice. “I have never seen her before.”

  “Yet there are witnesses who will state on oath that you were her lover . . .”

  “The witnesses are mistaken. I never knew this woman.”

  “Think well before you answer,” said the magistrate after a moment’s silence. “What is the use of trying to mislead us? This confrontation is the merest formality, not at all necessary in your case. You are intelligent, and if you wish for any clemency from the jury, I advise you in your own interest to confess.”

  “Being innocent, I have nothing to confess.”

  “Once again, remember that these denials have no weight at all. I myself am prepared to believe that you gave way to a fit of passion, one of these sudden madnesses when a man sees red . . . Look again at your victim . . . Can you see her lying there like that and feel no emotion, no repentance? . . .”

  “Repentance, you say? How can I repent of what I have not done? . . . As for emotion, if mine was not entirely deadened, it was at least considerably lessened by the simple fact that I knew what I was going to see when I came here. I feel no more emotion than you do yourself. Why should I? I might just as well accuse you of the crime because you stand there unmoved.”

  He spoke in an even voice, without gestures, as a man would who had complete control of himself. The overwhelming charge left him apparently undisturbed, and he confined his defense to calm, obstinate denials.

  One of the minor officials said in an undertone:

  “They will get nothing out of him . . . He will deny it even on the scaffold.”

  Without a trace of anger, Gautet replied:

  “That is so, even on the scaffold.”

  The sultry atmosphere of an impending thunderstorm added to the feeling of exasperation caused by this struggle between accusers and accused, this obstinate “no” to every question in the face of all evidence.

  Through the dirty window-pane the setting sun threw a vivid golden glare on the corpse.

  “So be it,” said the magistrate: “You do not know the victim. But what about this?”

  He held out an ivory-handled knife, a large knife with clotted blood on its strong blade.

  The man took the weapon into his hands, looked at it for a few seconds, then handed it to one of the warders and wiped his fingers.

  “That? . . . I have never seen it before either.”

  “Systematic denial . . . that is your plan, is it?” sneered the magistrate. “This knife is yours. It used to hang in your study. Twenty
people have seen it there.”

  The prisoner bowed.

  “That proves nothing but that twenty people have made a mistake.”

  “Enough of this,” said the magistrate. “Though there is not a shadow of doubt about your guilt, we will make one last decisive test. There are marks of strangulation on the neck of the victim. You can clearly see the traces of five fingers, particularly long fingers, the medical expert tells us. Show these gentlemen your hands. You see?”

  The magistrate raised the chin of the dead woman.

  There were violet marks on the white skin of the neck: at the end of every bruise the flesh was deeply pitted, as if nails had been dug in. It looked like the skeleton of a giant leaf.

  “There is your handiwork. Whilst with your left hand you were trying to strangle this poor woman, with your free right hand you drove this knife into her heart. Come here and repeat the action of the night of the murder. Place your fingers on the bruises of the neck . . . Come along . . .”

  Gautet hesitated for a second, then shrugged his shoulders and said in a sullen voice:

  “You wish to see if my fingers correspond? . . . and suppose they do? . . . What will that prove? . . .”

  He moved toward the slab: he was noticeably paler, his teeth were clenched, his eyes dilated. For a moment he stood very still, his gaze fixed on the rigid body, then with an automatonlike gesture, he stretched out his hand and laid it on the flesh.

  The involuntary shudder that ran through him at the cold, clammy contact caused a sudden, sharp movement of his fingers which contracted as if to strangle.

  Under this pressure the set muscles of the dead woman seemed to come to life. You could see them stretch obliquely from the collarbone to the angle of the jaw: the mouth lost its horrible grin and opened as if in an atrocious yawn, the dry lips drew back to disclose teeth encrusted with thick, brown slime.

  Everyone started with horror.

  There was something enigmatic and terrifying about this gaping mouth in this impassive face, this mouth open as if for a death-rattle from beyond the portals of the grave, the sound only held back by the swollen tongue that was doubled back in the throat.

  Then, all at once, there came from that black hole a low, undefined noise, a sort of humming that suggested a hive, and an enormous blue-bottle with shining wings, one of these charnelhouse flies that live on death, an unspeakable filthy beast, flew out, hissing as it circled round the cavern as if to guard the approach. Suddenly it paused . . . then made a straight course for the blue lips of Gautet.

  With a motion of horror, he tried to drive it away; but the monstrous thing came back, clinging to his lips with all the strength of its poisonous claws.

  With one bound the man leaped backwards, his eyes wild, his hair on end, his hands stretched out, his whole body quivering as he shrieked like a madman:

  “I confess! . . . I did it! . . . Take me away! . . . Take me away! . . .”

  Poussette

  EVERY MORNING as the clocks of the town struck six, the old maid left her house, shutting the door carefully behind her, and grasping tightly in her hand an old prayer book with broken corners and greasy pages, she crossed the road quickly and hurried to the neighboring church to hear the first mass.

  There, in the almost empty nave, kneeling on her prie-dieu, her hands clasped, her head trembling, the murmur of her prayers mingled with the voice of the priest. When the service finished she went quickly home.

  Her face was thin, and her narrow, obstinate forehead was covered with lines, but her deeply set eyes flamed with a strange fever.

  As she walked she mumbled prayers and counted the beads of her rosary. Her heels made no sound on the pavement, and round her there floated a vague smell of incense and damp stones as if the long years of churchgoing had impregnated her yellow fingers and pointed knees with the odor of the old vestry and the vaults.

  She lived alone in a suburb in a little house full of oldfashioned furniture, ancient portraits, and religious emblems; her only companion was a gray cat she called Poussette, a thin old cat that lay half asleep all day, glancing with an indifferent eye at the movements of the flies, sometimes rising lazily to look through the windowpanes at a leaf carried on the wind.

  The old maid and the old cat understood each other. Both of them loved their hermitlike existence, the silence of the long summer afternoons with the shutters closed, the curtains drawn. They were afraid of the streets which seemed to them full of dangers.

  Hidden behind the persiennes, the old maid watched the passers-by, listening to their footsteps dying away in the distance, and the cat stretched out its neck, drew itself up on three legs and turned away from the other cats that crouched by the doors, licking themselves with their heads bent back, or disappearing like dark flashes as they ran away.

  In bygone days when the warm, fragrant silence of night seemed to bathe the motionless trees in love, the cat would sometimes stretch out its neck toward the gardens, replying to the calls of the males whose shadows moved on the roofs; and excited by their entreaties, she would rub her flanks against the legs of the chairs.

  Then the old maid used to snatch her up, shut her in the bedroom, open the window and cry in a voice of hate:

  “Go away! . . . Get away! . . .”

  The miaulings would cease for a moment, and when they broke out afresh and the shadows began to leap again, she would shut the shutters, draw the curtains closely, and shrinking in her bed, draw the cat under the clothes so that it should not hear the noise, stroking it between the ears to soothe it to sleep.

  A fury took possession of her at the mere thought of the caresses of love. Proud of her virginity, she hated all that was not chaste, and the function of the flesh seemed to her a diabolical thing by which the Tempter soiled, made vile both beast and man. She reddened with anger when she saw lovers arm-in-arm in the moonlight, birds flying after each other at night, doves joining their beaks at the edge of their nest.

  At one time the cat had been beautiful, with shining fur and firm, round limbs, and neighbors had more than once asked its mistress:

  “Will you lend her to us? She and our cat would make such beautiful kittens.”

  “No! I wish to keep her. for myself . . .” she had answered, frowning as she drew the creature against her flat chest.

  By degrees the animal had become ugly. Its sterile flanks had fallen in. In the cloisterlike atmosphere Poussette seemed to have forgotten her instinct. Her ardent flesh had slowly but surely lost its virility, and she no longer seemed to hear the insistent calls of the males.

  One summer night, however, she became restless, left the armchair where she slept, and began to prowl about in the shadow. Outside on the roof-gutters the cats were miauling. She stretched out her paws, dug her claws into the carpet, beat her sides with her tail, and responding suddenly to a surge of nature, slipped out through the half-open door into the garden.

  When she found herself with the others, the long-repressed instinct woke into vibrating life. Her jaws distended, her claws clinging to the slates, she flung herself among the males, her cries mingling with their calls, yelling joyfully as they bit her.

  The noise awakened the old maid and she sat up in bed to listen. Never had the cries of the Flesh sounded so loudly, rung so triumphantly in her ears. She got up quickly to protect her animal from them, and not finding her on the armchair, called:

  “Poussette! . . . Little Poussette! . . . Come here! . . . Come! . . .”

  Usually one word brought the cat to her side. This time there was no response. Looking about, she found that the door was half open, and she was seized with fear, not that someone might have broken in, but the fear that Poussette had escaped. She struck a match, and while the little blue flame flickered without giving any light, she murmured:

  “It’s not possible! . . . My God! . . . Poussette! . . .”

  But when the candle was lit, she gave a cry of rage.

  Poussette was not there.

/>   Out into the garden, full of flower-scent and moonlight, she rushed, calling, calling . . .

  Upon the roof, the cat, now appeased, was gently rubbing itself against the side of its companion; it looked fixedly, disdainfully, at her for a moment, then fell back to its caressings, its head bent forwards, its body stretched out.

  At six o’clock, when the old maid set out for church, Poussette was still missing.

  The service finished, she hastened back, forgetting to tell her beads. She had paid but scant attention to the mass, kneeling and rising mechanically, her mind tortured by memories of the night.

  She found the cat lying on a chair, sleeping so soundly that it scarcely moved an ear when it was called.

  Livid with rage, she seized it by the neck and flung it on the floor. The surprised animal stood still for a second, yawned, arched its back, sat down, blinked its eyelids, then, its whole body slack, rolled itself up and went to sleep again.

  From that moment the old maid kept it at a distance, shrinking from it as from something impure. If it approached, she pushed it away with her foot:

  “Get away! Get away!”

  Sometimes, livid with rage, she lifted it up between her thin fingers, glared into its eyes and flung it on the ground; or if the cat got in her way, she seized and beat it on the head, on the shoulders, the flanks, above all on the flanks, finding in this chastisement a ferocious and holy joy. The beast submitted to all this without a sign of revolt.

  This went on for six weeks. The old maid avoided her neighbors as might a mother who dreads hearing the name of an unworthy child.

  One morning when she had beaten the cat harder than usual and was belaboring its belly, the beast leaped up, its paws raised, its fur bristling.

  “Ah!” cried the old maid. “You are going to begin scratching me now, are you? We’ll see about that . . .”

  But hardly had she raised her hand when the cat made a bound toward her face, digging its claws in her cheeks.