by Noel Vindry
The number was crucial, for another offence would result in him being sent to Guyane, a prison for habitual offenders; and should the sentence be for three months or more, it would be hard labour for him.
Such behaviour, as can be imagined, had driven the respectable old maids to despair. Gustave Allevaire was their first cousin. Just as hard to accept as his disdain for moral laws was the shame he’d brought on the family.
At the beginning, they’d put on a brave face and housed the miscreant during his periods of misery. Then, as they became fearful that people in the village would start to recognise his name and family ties and learn of his misadventures, their welcome became more reserved: the risk of shame outweighed the pleasure they felt when lecturing him and setting him an example.
They had in fact, before their Aunt Dorothée had come to stay, decided not to invite him any more. But their resolve withered in the face of the old woman’s stubbornness.
That stubbornness was comparable only to the forces of nature: powerful, blind and obstinate. Old Aunt Dorothée could only imagine her nephew as he had been when she was bringing him up. For her, he had never grown up, and therefore had never changed.
For the last fifteen years, her bad sight had prevented her from reading a newspaper, so her knowledge of the world was limited by what people told her. When it came to Gustave, she would shake her head whilst listening to his cousins, all the while insisting:
‘Those are all lies. How can you imagine that little boy, with his big blue eyes, could have done such things? He’s been unjustly blamed.’
In vain did Hortense and Gertrude try to explain to her that the “little boy” was now a vicious thug. Dorothée refused to change her mind. And she threatened to return permanently to her attic room if they refused to let her see her nephew.
There was scarcely a year that he failed to pay them a visit, usually just after he’d come out of prison. He claimed he was doing it to “pass a week with his family.”
To be fair, his presence was not in itself disagreeable. Allevaire showed himself to be gentle and even obliging, listening to lectures with a resigned air, and lavishing his aunt with charming attention.
But the neighbours always showed too much interest at the smiling, elegantly dressed man, who spoke little and whose name was unknown to them.
‘Is he one of your relatives?’ they would ask.
‘Very distant, very distant,’ the sisters would reply. ‘He’s in business….’
And each time Allevaire left, they would chastise their aunt.
‘We’ve had a narrow escape… Everyone is questioning us… They can’t understand our silence… He’s a scoundrel. One of these days something bad is going to happen here.’
‘Oh, the poor dear,’ Dorothée would moan.
It had been the same for the last ten years.
Since Epicevieille’s arrival on the scene, the sisters had tried to use his authority to overcome the old woman’s stubbornness. But his prestige paled in comparison to her memories. Hortense and Gertrude persisted nonetheless, and, for the last five years the ritual had been repeated almost every month:
‘Please explain to our aunt, maître, what to think of her nephew Gustave.’
And each time, after a deep sigh, the “notary” would reply:
‘It’s certain, madam, that he’s not someone to be recommended.’
He would add a few comments, in phrases which he recited automatically, always in the same form, while his mind was elsewhere.
That evening, however, there was a variation. After running through the list of offences once again, Epicevieille added, in the same solemn, slow voice:
‘As a matter of fact, I’m surprised not to see him here. He’s in the neighbourhood.’
‘In Limonest?’ exclaimed the old maids in unison.
‘Not exactly, but only a few kilometres away. I saw him from a distance this afternoon, in Champagne-au-Mont-d’Or, whilst I was taking my daily walk.’
‘And he didn’t come to see me!’ moaned Dorothée.
Her words provoked a violent reaction: Hortense and Gertrude, shedding their customary reserve, cried out at the same time:
‘Well, far be it from us to regret it… He must have come to realise that his visits weren’t welcome… Fortunately, we were so blunt last time that he must have realised we were showing him the door….’
‘The poor dear. Where’s he going to sleep?’ said the old woman.
‘I don’t know, madam,’ replied Epicevieille. ‘I didn’t speak to him, and I don’t think he even saw me.’
‘Maître, I beg you not to tell anyone we’re related,’ implored Hortense.
‘Miss Hortense, please,’ protested the “lawyer” with dignity. ‘I’m used to keeping professional secrets.’
Ten o’clock chimed; he stood up precisely on the last strike and majestically took his leave.
The two sisters went into the kitchen to wash the dishes.
‘I don’t like this neighbourhood,’ said Hortense. ‘Gustave knows our house only too well. It would be easy for him to play a dirty trick on us.’
‘Come now!’ declared Gertrude. ‘He’d never steal from here, where his aunt’s living. He may be a scoundrel, but he genuinely loves her.’
‘You’re too lenient, my poor Gertrude. That kind of individual has no feelings. Think of the Libots and their son….’
And they turned to other gossip.
Chapter II
STRANGE NEWS
At one o’clock in the morning, Hortense stealthily opened the door communicating with her sister’s bedroom. She tiptoed over to the bed and whispered:
‘Gertrude….’
The other opened her eyes and was about to ask questions in a loud voice, but Hortense added:
‘Shush … Listen….’
Despite their age, they both had good hearing. In the silence of the night they could hear footsteps on the floor below.
‘Maybe it’s Aunt Dorothée,’ murmured Gertrude.
‘Maybe… let’s look in her room.’
The aunt’s room also communicated with the others. Silently, the two old maids entered and approached the bed; their aunt was lying there.
They touched her shoulder and she sat up quickly:
‘What’s happening?’
‘Shush… Listen….’
The old woman kept quiet for a few moments, then, clutching the hands of her nieces, pronounced in an anxious voice:
‘The floor downstairs is creaking… but sometimes furniture, in the night….’
‘Put the thought out of your mind, aunt. Not with that kind of continuity. There’s someone in the house….’
‘We’re lost!’ moaned Gertrude.
‘Not at all,’ replied her sister, firmly. ‘All our doors to the corridor are locked.’
‘He managed to open the front door!’
‘Didn’t you lock it from the inside?’ asked Dorothée.
‘I think so.’
‘I think I locked it as well.’
‘What?’ retorted Dorothée in astonishment. ‘You can’t both have locked it.’
‘I can’t remember,’ admitted Gertrude. ‘Sometimes it’s my sister, sometimes it’s me.’
‘You each count on the other to do it, so it stays open! Good grief, what next? … Ah!’
The last utterance came after a new, more metallic, noise was heard.
‘They’re stealing my silverware,’ moaned Dorothée.
Hortense was the bravest of the three women. The others instinctively hung on to her, as if she could protect them. But all she did was to tell them not to raise their voices: the miscreant, if surprised, could kill them all!
The warning did not at all have the intended effect. A growing fear had been gripping Gertrude, the most nervous of the three, to the point that she was unable to utter a sound. But, at the thought of murder, she made a supreme effort, as if to rid herself of a gag, and released a loud cry!
; After which the other two started to shout for help at the tops of their voices.
They stopped immediately they heard the sound of the door below slamming shut.
‘He’s run off,’ announced Dorothée.
‘He’s run off,’ repeated the two sisters.
‘We’ve had a narrow escape!’ continued Hortense. ‘With all the windows and shutters closed, nobody would have heard us.’
‘Nobody,’ echoed Gertrude.
‘But has he really gone?’ asked Dorothée.
‘So it seems.’
They listened for a long time in silence. No, there wasn’t the slightest noise in the house. The man must really have fled.
‘Suppose we take a look…’ suggested Hortense after a while.
But as soon as she spoke, the two others tightened their grip on her.
‘No! No! Don’t go… you never know.’
Only at daybreak did they decide to go downstairs.
***
The disaster was immediately apparent. The sideboard drawer was open and Aunt Dorothée’s silverware had disappeared.
‘He took it! He took it!’ she moaned.
Her nieces barely had time to hold her up and place a chair under her. She collapsed and hid her face in her hands. All they could hear, obstinately repeated, were the words:
‘My silver place settings! My silver place settings!’
‘My God!’ exclaimed Gertrude. ‘He also broke into the desk… Our five thousand francs!’
Hortense had already gone over to the desk and searched one of the drawers.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s taken them as well… Luckily I took the precaution not to put everything there.’
The largest part of their savings was in fact in Hortense’s room, in the traditional hiding place of old maids: under the mattress.
‘And it’s a bit of luck,’ added Gertrude, ‘that there was at least some money here; the burglar must have thought it was all of our savings, so he didn’t look elsewhere; otherwise he would have come upstairs to our rooms.’
The thought was enough for the two sisters to make the sign of the cross.
As for Dorothée, she wasn’t listening, but just kept repeating, over and over again:
‘My silver settings! My silver settings!’
That misfortune seemed to be the only thing to upset her.
Suddenly Gertrude cried out:
‘My aunt! He didn’t take everything!’
It was a feeble consolation, and only Gertrude’s naïvety caused her to sound a triumphal note. Two spoons had, in fact, not been taken.
They were lying on the floor next to one of the chairs. It seemed that the burglar, having assembled his loot in order to place it in a sack, had been disturbed by the women’s cries and, in his haste, had swept the two items to the floor and left them behind.
Dorothée was already on her feet and, with the aid of her canes, was heading towards what was left of her treasure. But Hortense stopped her in her tracks:
‘Don’t touch them, Aunt.’
‘Why?’
‘The police have to examine them. There may be… what do you call them, Gertrude? You know, the newspapers sometimes talk about them….’
‘Fingerprints?’
‘Yes, that’s it. We mustn’t touch anything here. As soon as it’s daylight, I’ll go and alert the gendarmes.’
Dorothée went back to sit down and immediately started to cry again.
‘Perhaps you were right,’ whispered Gertrude in her sister’s ear.
She was only half convinced. No matter how bad her opinion of her cousin, she balked at believing he would steal the things most precious to his aunt, after she’d been so good to him.
But Hortense replied tersely:
‘There are no milestones on the road to evil, Gertrude.’
Her sister recognised a sentence from a sermon somewhere and respectfully refrained from replying.
***
The gendarme sergeant, alerted by Hortense, had arrived.
‘So a man supposedly got into the house clandestinely?’
His Corsican accent stressed the word, and Gertrude replied reflexively:
‘Clandestinely, yes.’
‘And how did he get in?’
‘Through the door.’
‘Obviously! He didn’t go through the walls! Don’t you lock the door at night?’
The two sisters looked at each other.
‘Usually,’ murmured Hortense, ‘it’s Gertrude.’
‘Usually,’ murmured Gertrude at the same time, ‘it’s Hortense.’
‘You should listen to yourselves!’ exclaimed the sergeant. ‘Who normally locks it?’
‘Both of us,’ said Gertrude, in a conciliatory manner.
‘Heaven help me! This investigation is not going to be a piece of cake.’
The sergeant was starting to get irritated.
‘Let’s start with you, miss.’ He addressed himself to Gertrude. ‘Did you or did you not lock the door last night?’
‘I think so….’
‘And you, miss?’
‘I think so as well….’
‘Now I think about it,’ added Gertrude, intimidated by the sergeant’s rising anger, ‘I might have been confusing last night with the night before… All our nights are the same….’
‘Let’s drop the subject,’ said the sergeant, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Did the man leave any traces of his visit?’
‘Two spoons,’ moaned Dorothée. ‘Two of my spoons. Look how beautiful they were!’
‘I told everyone not to touch,’ said Hortense. ‘Did I do the right thing?’
‘Absolutely, miss. There might be fingerprints on them.’
He picked them up carefully with his large hands and inspected them, one after the other, at an angle to the light.
‘Heavens above! It’s magnificent! There’s a print perfectly placed next to the initials. There’s not a moment to lose! I’ll go to Lyon myself to alert the prosecutor’s office, who will no doubt order me to deliver this spoon to the detective squad. They have anthropometric files on all the criminals in the region. It’ll be child’s play to identify him.’
***
‘Yes, child’s play,’ repeated the inspector of the police mobile, to whom the examining magistrate had delegated the matter. ‘The Sûreté alerted us immediately. The burglar is an old hand, we’ll catch him easily.’
He was in the Levalois sisters’ house when he spoke the words, and the three women listened respectfully.
‘What’s his name?’ asked Dorothée eventually, in a feeble voice.
‘Gustave Allevaire.’
The old woman fell down in a dead faint without even so much as a cry, as if someone had knocked her out.
Whilst the two nieces fussed over her, sprinkling water on her face and giving her vinegar to inhale, the inspector stood there with a frown on his face.
When Dorothée had been revived, he asked firmly:
‘So, do you know him?’
‘No…’ said Hortense.
But, at the same time, Gertrude gave an affirmative nod.
‘So now, speak! Who is he?’
Now they had to confess everything. Gertrude started to cry.
‘We don’t want anyone in Limonest to know we’re related, inspector,’ she moaned.
‘It won’t be me who tells them. So, is he a frequent guest?’
‘Oh, no. He hasn’t been here for three months.’
‘Explain yourself better,’ said Hortense. ‘You’ll make it sound as if he comes every three months. No, inspector, he didn’t even come once a year. And he wasn’t welcome when he did.’
‘Calm down, miss, I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to understand, that’s all. I wanted to know if he’d been able to get a key.’
‘Well, yes. We lent him one whenever he came to stay. All he had to do was copy it.’
‘And,’ continued the inspector, ‘is it also
possible that he noticed that you shared the responsibility for locking the door, and that it was often left open?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ exclaimed the two sisters simultaneously. ‘You lock it properly, don’t you Gertrude?’ ‘You lock it properly, don’t you Hortense?’
The two questions came out at the same time and the inspector was enlightened.
‘So it’s a very simple matter,’ declared the inspector.
That’s a word which should never be uttered, for it supposedly brings bad luck. It had scarcely crossed his lips when a gendarme appeared in the doorway.
‘I have some very sad news for you, Madam Dorothée. Your nephew was murdered in Marseille last night.’
Chapter III
THE SCREAM IN THE NIGHT
During that night of May 9th to 10th, the Levalois residence was not the only place where people were in fear.
Three hundred kilometres away, in the small town of Aubagne, near Marseille, lived Father Grégoire. Although he didn’t actually live in the town, his farm being located in open country just beyond the outskirts.
Old Father Grégoire would have lived there perfectly happily on his fertile land, if not for the problem of his pigsty. It wasn’t the actual work involved which caused him concern, onerous though that was. Raising sows is far more difficult than townsfolk imagine. If the litters of piglets are not to be lost, the mother herself must be isolated, to avoid her crushing them. So they are placed in a fenced-off area, from which they are removed every four hours in order to feed at the udder. That requires getting up at night.
Father Grégoire had been doing that for fifty years and it had become so much of a habit that he scarcely noticed it. He even accepted the inconvenience of having the pigsty a hundred metres from the farmhouse itself. All that would have been nothing, were it not for the proximity of the “Black House.”
It was a large building some two hundred metres from the farm, and it was shrouded in a superstitious dread. The fear was not simply due to the dark walls which had earned the house its name. The legend was very old; it was said that a horrible crime had been committed there: a man had murdered his parents. Since then it had become cursed and nobody lived there.
