‘And who is the person he waits for?’
‘I can’t say, for I’ve never actually seen him, but he must be someone important.’
‘And that night you didn’t actually see anyone come into the house?’
‘No, but he was there all right. The same man as always. You can count on that.’
The man could be lying, Gautier reflected. He might have invented the story because journalists were pestering him or simply to draw attention to himself. Mansard appeared honest enough, but Gautier knew from experience that in the atmosphere of nervous excitement which always surrounded violent death, ordinary, predictable people often did or said extraordinary, unpredictable things.
‘This fellow you saw in the street outside the house; couldn’t he have been a look-out for the intruders who Madame Hassler says tied her up?’
The manservant laughed. ‘Intruders my arse! Anyway she says they didn’t break in until around midnight, and when I saw this man it couldn’t have been much after ten.’
His manner irritated Gautier, perhaps because the man was voicing a suspicion which he shared, but one which he had been forced to keep to himself because Courtrand refused to entertain it. He said to Mansard harshly: ‘Who is saying that they broke in? There was no sign of a forcible entry. We believe they must have had an accomplice in the house.’
He left the manservant looking confused and shaken by the innuendo and went through the door which separated the kitchen from the rest of the house. His intention was to go upstairs to the bedrooms, but as he was passing the door to the drawing-room, he heard the voice of Josephine Hassler. Thinking that he should at least let her know that he was in the house, he went in and found Courtrand was also there. The two of them were sitting on a sofa, not too far apart, arguing so it seemed and heatedly.
When they saw it was Gautier coming in, Madame Hassler broke off what she was saying in mid-sentence. Courtrand merely looked at his watch and remarked: ‘Ah, there you are, Inspector! I wondered when you would get here.’
Tricky little swine! Gautier thought, but at the same time he could not help but admire the man’s sang-froid and the skill with which he had put his subordinate on the defensive.
‘I’ve been having a few words with the manservant, Sir,’ he said.
‘Good! And I’m glad you have arrived because I think we should ask Madame Hassler to check and make absolutely sure how much of her property was stolen. Once we have a list we can start trying to trace the stolen pieces and that may help lead us to the murderers.’ He turned and looked at Josephine Hassler. ‘Would you be so kind as to assist us, Madame?’
‘Willingly, Monsieur le Directeur.’
The three of them went upstairs. After taking Madame Hassler’s statement the previous day, Courtrand and Gautier had made a preliminary search of the three bedrooms on the first floor as well as the boudoir. They had found nothing that would help them identify the intruders. Each of the rooms had been in disarray, as though they had been hastily, but not too thoroughly searched. Cupboard doors had been left open, drawers pulled out. In the bedroom where the old lady had been found dead and also in the daughter’s bedroom, they had found quantities of cottonwool lying on and around the beds, presumably the same cottonwool that had been used to gag the women. Afterwards, to conform with police procedure, once the bodies of Félix Hassler and his mother-in-law had been taken away for autopsy, the rooms in which they had been found dead had been locked and police seals fixed across the doors. The Director of the Sûreté had the authority to break these seals, but only in the presence of an official witness.
As they climbed the stairs, Josephine Hassler walked slowly and unsteadily, holding on to the banister rail. Courtrand took her arm solicitously. When they reached the landing, she stopped and looked at Gautier.
‘Forgive me, Inspector, but this has been a very great strain for me. My doctor says I must have been very near death that night and that it is only my exceptional strength and courage that permit me to keep going.’
‘We will be as quick and as gentle as possible, Madame,’ Courtrand promised her.
After removing the seals on the door, they went first into Félix Hassler’s room. Apart from the body, nothing had been moved by the police. Hassler’s gold watch and chain and his wallet still lay on the bedside table, together with a bunch of keys, a handkerchief that was slightly soiled with paint stains and a card case containing his visiting cards. Beside them stood a cheap alarm clock which had stopped, presumably because it had not been wound for two days. Gautier noticed that the alarm had been set to ring at half-past-eleven.
‘Please be kind enough to watch me as I examine the contents of this wallet,’ Courtrand said to Josephine Hassler and then he added to Gautier: ‘Make a list, Inspector, if you please.’
The wallet held 8,000 francs in notes, a sizeable sum at a time when a lavish dinner for four people, including wine, would cost no more than 100 and when no family of any standing would think of paying cash for any purchase. Beside the notes, they found in the wallet a small sepia tinted photograph of a young girl and a bill from a firm supplying artists’ materials.
‘My husband cashed a cheque at the bank on Friday,’ Madame Hassler explained. ‘We were not sure how long we would be staying at Bellevue.’
‘And can you see anything missing from this room?’ Courtrand asked her.
‘No. But then perhaps when the thieves discovered they had killed my husband, they panicked and fled.’
As they were leaving the room, Gautier stooped and began examining the bedclothes of the still unmade bed. Pulling the blankets back he looked carefully at the bottom sheet. Courtrand asked him impatiently what he was doing. He explained that when he had seen Hassler’s body the previous day, he had noticed a blue stain on the left foot. Before leaving the Sûreté that morning he had spoken to the doctor at the mortuary who had confirmed that the stain was blue ink.
‘Well? What does that mean?’
‘I also noticed a blue stain on the drawing-room carpet, as though a bottle of ink had been knocked over there.’
‘You’re right,’ Madame Hassler told him. ‘The intruders must have knocked over the ink-well which I had left out on the table. I found the mess yesterday and made Remy clean it up.’
‘If that’s true then Monsieur Hassler must have been killed in the drawing-room and his body brought up here afterwards.’
‘Why not?’ Courtrand asked, shrugging his shoulders. ‘He may have heard a noise, gone downstairs and disturbed the robbers. That may be why he was killed.’
Gautier made no comment. There were other questions he would have liked to have asked. Why for example there was no trace of ink on either the stairs leading up from the ground floor nor anywhere in Hassler’s room. Aware of Courtrand’s mood of protectiveness towards the Hassler woman, however, he decided that the questions could wait.
The larger of the other two bedrooms was furnished in a style far more elegant than that of the master of the house and clearly at much greater cost. Its walls were covered in lime green silk and hung with several ornate mirrors as well as a large painting of an allegorical theme, with a goddess reclining in the nude surrounded by cherubs holding comucopiae brimming over with fruit. In style the painting was recognizable as the work of one of the great fashionable artists of the time, men like Messonier, Boldini and Puvis de Chavannes, who were commissioned by government departments and by wealthy art patrons, but were known derisively as ‘pompiers’ by the Impressionists and other young artists struggling for recognition. A ‘style imperiale’ settee stood at one end of the room, draped casually, but suggestively it seemed to Gautier, with a fur rug. The dressing-table, the bedside table, the mantelpiece, every square centimetre of available surface, were covered with bibelots and bric-à-brac in the fashion of the day: porcelain figures of nymphs and shepherds, a box carved in sandalwood, cut-glass bottles with jewelled stoppers, a primitive carving of a negro head in black wood, family ph
otographs in silver frames, a replica of the Eiffel Tower produced to commemorate its official opening in 1889, medals issued to mark the death of different presidents, tiny vases containing dried flowers, a fossilized seahorse, a china nest full of brightly-coloured glass eggs. The luxuriance of the furnishings and the fabrics and the room’s sensual decor would have been more suited, it seemed to Gautier, to the bedroom of a high-class cocotte, a Liane de Pougy or Emilienne d’Alengon, than that of a bourgeois painter’s wife.
Josephine Hassler went round the room, opening drawers, looking at the ornaments and then said finally: ‘I can see nothing missing.’
‘Didn’t your mother have any jewelry?’
‘Yes, but she left most of it at home. All she was wearing when I met her at St Lazare was a pearl brooch and a wedding ring.’
‘And they are both missing?’
‘Yes, they’re not here.’
The three of them passed into the next room which served as a boudoir and sewing-room and also contained a bureau, where Madame Hassler wrote letters and did the household accounts. Like the drawing-room and Madame Hassler’s bedroom, it was full of bric-à-brac and standing on a chest of drawers were two large framed photographs: one of a woman whom Gautier recognized as Madame Hassler’s mother and the other of a stout, elderly man, presumably her father.
‘Now this is the room in which you told the intruders they could find money and jewelry?’ Courtrand asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And what would they have found?’
‘Not very much. A few thousand francs which I had drawn from the bank to pay the tradesmen on Monday and a little jewelry.’ Josephine Hassler looked in the bureau and then pulled open the drawers of the chest. ‘The money has gone. And look! Here are the empty jewel cases.’
She took the empty jewellers’ boxes from the drawer and showed them to the two men. One was long and slim and had clearly held a necklace while the others were much smaller.
‘Can you describe the missing pieces?’ Gautier asked, his notebook ready.
‘A diamond-and-sapphire necklace, a diamond pendant on a gold chain and a gold brooch set with emeralds in the shape of a love-knot.’
‘And nothing else was taken.’
Josephine Hassler hesitated for an instant, looked first at Courtrand and then at Gautier, and finally said: ‘It was not jewels or money that they were really looking for.’
‘Then what?’
‘Papers. Come downstairs and I’ll show you.’
The two men followed her downstairs into the dining-room. Like the drawing-room and Madame Hassler’s bedroom it was furnished mainly with Louis XV and Louis XVI pieces and a fine Gobelin tapestry. Josephine Hassler pointed towards a heavy sideboard that stood against one wall.
‘Would you two gentlemen be so kind as to move that please?’
Courtrand and Gautier moved the sideboard and found in the wall behind it a recess about one metre square and rather less than one metre in depth. It had been used as a substitute for a safe and was full of silver plate, two or three pieces of good china, some legal documents tied up with red ribbon and a brown-paper parcel.
Josephine Hassler pointed at the parcel. ‘That was what the thieves were seeking. It contains papers that would fetch a large sum of money; all the letters which I received from the late president and copies of many of his private and confidential papers. He and I were working together on his memoirs, you know.’ She paused and then added dramatically: ‘I have reason to believe that certain foreign powers would pay a lot to lay their hands on those papers.’
‘Yet even so the thieves left without them,’ Gautier remarked.
‘Yes. And do you know why? I made up a dummy parcel, just like that one, but filled only with old newspapers, business letters and bills. The parcel was in my bureau upstairs and that the thieves did take.’
‘How would anyone have known that you had these private papers here? You might easily have had them kept in a bank.’
‘That I cannot say.’
Courtrand said: ‘If the thieves have failed in their objective, you must not ignore the possibility that they might return. You would be well advised, Madame, not to stay in this house alone.’
‘My husband’s cousin, Monsieur Charon, moved in with his wife last night. They will stay to chaperone me as long as I need them.’ She smiled sadly. ‘But to tell the truth, Monsieur Courtrand, the robbers have already taken all that I prize in life.’
‘We have imposed on you too long, Madame,’ Courtrand said.
‘May I put one last question to you, Madame?’ Gautier asked. ‘I understand that on the night of the murders before retiring you, your husband and your mother all drank a glass of grog.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What happened to the glasses, the bottle and the jug? They are not in any of these bedrooms.’
‘I suppose Remy took them down to the kitchen.’
‘He says he did not.’
Josephine looked at him defiantly. ‘Then Remy must be wrong. He’s very scatterbrained and forgetful, as you may have noticed. I can tell you one thing. I certainly didn’t take them down.’
‘Come now, Gautier, no more questions,’ Courtrand said. ‘Madame, we will leave you to go and rest. Take care of your health, please.’
IV
EARLY THE FOLLOWING afternoon Surat placed his report on Gautier’s desk. Anticipating his chief’s surprise at the speed with which he had completed the assignment, he remarked: ‘It wasn’t difficult. Madame Hassler must be a talkative lady, with indiscreet servants and curious neighbours.’ Gautier told him to wait until he had read the report.
Confidential Report
For the attention of Insp. Gautier
Madame Josephine Hassler (nee Pinock) was born in or around 1860 (her claims as to her age vary considerably and this date is no more than an estimate) in the village of Beaucourt which is to be found not far from Montbeliard and close to the Swiss and German borders. Her father was an industrialist who had been a partner in the family firm of Pinock Freres, but his interest was bought out by his brothers while he was still a young man. Thereafter he led a life of leisure. Her mother Eva (nee Stalan) was the daughter of a local tavern keeper and her father was considered to have married beneath himself. Indeed his marriage and his intemperate drinking habits may have been the reason why his brothers wanted to get him out of the family business. At the age of eighteen Josephine was engaged for a very short time to a young army officer, Lieutenant Mathurin. Her father decided, however, that the lieutenant was too poor and the engagement was ended, which local people say provoked a storm of rage on the part of the daughter.
Besides being beautiful, Josephine was very self-willed and it is believed that she decided to revenge herself on her parents and to escape from Beaucourt by marrying Félix Hassler. Hassler was twenty years older than her and by profession a painter of stained-glass windows, whom she met while he was working in Bayonne Cathedral. He was neither good-looking nor wealthy and his main attraction to Josephine was that he owned a house in Paris.
After their marriage, they came to live in the house in Impasse Louvain and Josephine, having quickly got rid of her husband’s sister who was living with him, set about turning her husband from an artisan into an artist. He became a portrait painter and before very long a number of prosperous businessmen were commissioning his services. Since his talent was more than limited, the general view is that the businessmen were more interested in Madame Hassler than in her husband’s painting and that the commissions were an ingenious way of paying for the favours which they received from her.
Madame Hassler’s ambitions did not stop there and she then began building for herself a reputation as a hostess. Although her salon was attended in the main by only mediocre literary and artistic figures and the wealthy bourgeoisie, she appears from time to time to have attracted to her house more eminent men, some of them in important positions. Those whose names have been men
tioned in this connection include: The former Attorney General, the President of the Senate, the British Ambassador, Marshal Gallifet and Judge Bertin.
The general impression among neighbours and tradesmen is that the Hasslers live well above their income and in a more or less permanent state of debt. The shortage of money and Madame Hassler’s extravagances are thought to be the cause of many bitter arguments between the couple. They have one daughter, Marguerite, aged seventeen, who recently became engaged to a son of the Delaisse family who are in business making automobiles.
‘Excellent!’ Gautier told Surat when he had finished reading the report. ‘This is exactly what I wanted.’
‘And will it help?’
‘It gives us a starting point. Someone went to the Hasslers’ house that evening and whoever it was didn’t break in. From what the manservant Mansard says, I believe it may have been one of Josephine’s gentlemen friends.’
‘But would he have gone there knowing that her husband and her mother were in the house?’
‘Very possibly. I rather think that Hassler turned a blind eye to his wife’s infidelities. Anyway, keep working on these lines. Make enquiries among the neighbours and servants of all the men listed in your report. Someone may know something, a coachman perhaps who drove to Impasse Louvain that evening. And see that the local police ask around among the fiacre drivers. But be discreet. Some of the men are important people and we don’t want them to start complaining to the Minister of Justice.’
‘I take it that you don’t believe Madame Hassler’s story?’
‘Men in long beards carrying lanterns? The woman must be simple if she hopes anyone believes that tale!’
He scarcely finished speaking when Courtrand came into the office, followed by Nordel. The director looked uncommonly pleased and Nordel wore the quiet, complacent smile of a schoolboy who has at last managed to ingratiate himself with a difficult headmaster.
The Murders at Impasse Louvain Page 3
