The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories

by Michael Sims

  After alighting from the carriage, we approached, making our way with difficulty through the crowd of idlers.

  We already had our hands on the door of No. 39, when a police officer rudely pushed us back.

  “Keep back! You can not pass!”

  My companion eyed him from head to foot, and straightening himself up, said:

  “Well, don’t you know me? I am Mechinet, and this young man,” pointing to me, “is with me.”

  “I beg your pardon! Excuse me!” stammered the officer, carrying his hand to his three-cocked hat. “I did not know; please enter.”

  We entered.

  In the hall, a powerful woman, evidently the concierge, more red than a peony, was holding forth and gesticulating in the midst of a group of house tenants.

  “Where is it?” demanded M. Mechinet gruffly.

  “Third floor, monsieur,” she replied; “third floor, door to the right. Oh! my God! What a misfortune. In a house like this. Such a good man.”

  I did not hear more. M. Mechinet was rushing up the stairs, and I followed him, four steps at a time, my heart thumping.

  On the third floor the door to the right was open. We entered, went through an anteroom, a dining-room, a parlor, and finally reached a bedroom.

  If I live a thousand years I shall not forget the scene which struck my eyes. Even at this moment as I am writing, after many years, I still see it down to the smallest details.

  At the fireplace opposite the door two men were leaning on their elbows: a police commissary, wearing his scarf of office, and an examining magistrate.

  At the right, seated at a table a young man, the judge’s clerk, was writing.

  In the centre of the room, on the floor, in a pool of coagulated and black blood, lay the body of an old man with white hair. He was lying on his back, his arms folded crosswise.

  Terrified, I stopped as if nailed to the threshold, so nearly fainting that I was compelled to lean against the door-frame.

  My profession had accustomed me to death; I had long ago overcome repugnance to the amphitheatre, but this was the first time that I found myself face to face with a crime.

  For it was evident that an abominable crime had been committed.

  Less sensitive than I, my neighbor entered with a firm step.

  “Oh, it is you, Mechinet,” said the police commissary; “I am very sorry to have troubled you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we shall not need your services. We know the guilty one; I have given orders; by this time he must have been arrested.”

  How strange!

  From M. Mechinet’s gesture one might have believed that this assurance vexed him. He pulled out his snuffbox, took two or three of his fantastic pinches, and said:

  “Ah! the guilty one is known?”

  It was the examining magistrate who answered:

  “Yes, and known in a certain and positive manner; yes, M. Mechinet, the crime once committed, the assassin escaped, believing that his victim had ceased living. He was mistaken. Providence was watching; this unfortunate old man was still breathing. Gathering all his energy, he dipped one of his fingers in the blood which was flowing in streams from his wound, and there, on the floor, he wrote in his blood his murderer’s name. Now look for yourself.”

  Then I perceived what at first I had not seen.

  On the inlaid floor, in large, badly shaped, but legible letters, was written in blood: MONIS.

  “Well?” asked M. Mechinet.

  “That,” answered the police commissary, “is the beginning of the name of a nephew of the poor man; of a nephew for whom he had an affection, and whose name is Monistrol.”

  “The devil!” exclaimed my neighbor.

  “I can not suppose,” continued the investigating magistrate, “that the wretch would attempt denying. The five letters are an overwhelming accusation. Moreover, who would profit by this cowardly crime? He alone, as sole heir of this old man, who, they say, leaves a large fortune. There is more. It was last evening that the murder was committed. Well, last evening none other but his nephew called on this poor old man. The concierge saw him enter the house at about nine o’cock and leave again a little before midnight.”

  “It is clear,” said M. Mechinet approvingly; “it is very clear, this Monistrol is nothing but an idiot.” And, shrugging his shoulders, asked:

  “But did he steal anything, break some piece of furniture, anything to give us an idea as to the motive for the crime?”

  “Up to now nothing seems to have been disturbed,” answered the commissary. “As you said, the wretch is not clever; as soon as he finds himself discovered, he will confess.”

  Whereupon the police commissary and M. Mechinet withdrew to the window, conversing in low tones, while the judge gave some instructions to his clerk.

  III.

  I had wanted to know exactly what my enigmatic neighbor was doing. Now I knew it. Now everything was explained. The looseness of his life, his absences, his late homecomings, his sudden disappearances, his young wife’s fears and complicity; the wound I had cured. But what did I care now about that discovery?

  I examined with curiosity everything around me.

  From where I was standing, leaning against the door-frame, my eye took in the entire apartment.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing, evidenced a scene of murder. On the contrary, everything betokened comfort, and at the same time habits parsimonious and methodical.

  Everything was in its place; there was not one wrong fold in the curtains; the wood of the furniture was brilliantly polished, showing daily care.

  It seemed evident that the conjectures of the examining magistrate and of the police commissary were correct, and that the poor old man had been murdered the evening before, when he was about to go to bed.

  In fact, the bed was open, and on the blanket lay a shirt and a neckcloth.

  On the table, at the head of the bed, I noticed a glass of sugared water, a box of safety matches, and an evening paper, the “Patrie.”

  On one corner of the mantelpiece a candlestick was shining brightly, a nice big, solid copper candlestick. But the candle which had illuminated the crime was burned out; the murderer had escaped without extinguishing it, and it had burned down to the end, blackening the alabaster save-all in which it was placed.

  I noticed all these details at a glance, without any effort, without my will having anything to do with it. My eye had become a photographic objective; the stage of the murder had portrayed itself in my mind, as on a prepared plate, with such precision that no circumstance was lacking, and with such depth that to-day, even, I can sketch the apartment of the “little old man of Batignolles” without omitting anything, not even a cork, partly covered with green wax, which lay on the floor under the chair of the judge’s clerk.

  It was an extraordinary faculty, which had been bestowed upon me—my chief faculty, which as yet I had not occasion to exercise and which all at once revealed itself to me.

  I was then too agitated to analyze my impressions. I had but one obstinate, burning, irresistible desire: to get close to the body, which was lying two yards from me.

  At first I struggled against the temptation. But fatality had something to do with it. I approached. Had my presence been remembered? I do not believe it.

  At any rate, nobody paid any attention to me. M. Mechinet and the police commissary were still talking near the window; the clerk was reading his report in an undertone to the investigating magistrate.

  Thus nothing prevented me from carrying out my intention. And, besides, I must confess I was possessed with some kind of a fever, which rendered me insensible to exterior circumstances and absolutely isolated me. So much so that I dared to kneel close to the body, in order to see better.

  Far from expecting any one to call out: “What are you doing there?” I acted slowly and deliberately, like a man who, having received a mission, executes it.

  The unfortunate old man seemed to me to have been betw
een seventy and seventy-five years old. He was small and very thin, but solid and built to pass the hundred-year mark. He still had considerable hair, yellowish white and curly, on the nape of the neck. His gray beard, strong and thick, looked as if he had not been shaven for five or six days; it must have grown after his death. This circumstance did not surprise me, as I had often noticed it without subjects in the amphitheatres.

  What did surprise me was the expression of the face. It was calm; I should even say, smiling. His lips were parted, as for a friendly greeting. Death must have occurred then with terrible suddenness to preserve such a kindly expression! That was the first idea which came to my mind.

  Yes, but how reconcile these two irreconcilable circumstances: a sudden death and those five letters—MONIS—which I saw in lines of blood on the floor? In order to write them, what effort must it have cost a dying man! Only the hope of revenge could have given him so much energy. And how great must his rage have been to feel himself expiring before being able to trace the entire name of his murderer! And yet the face of the dead seemed to smile at one.

  The poor old man had been struck in the throat, and the weapon had gone right through the neck. The instrument must have been a dagger, or perhaps one of those terrible Catalan knives, as broad as the hand, which cut on both sides and are as pointed as a needle.

  Never in my life before had I been agitated by such strange sensations. My temples throbbed with extraordinary violence, and my heart swelled as if it would break. What was I about to discover?

  Driven by a mysterious and irresistible force, which annihilated my will-power, I took between my hands, for the purpose of examining them, the stiff and icy hands of the body.

  The right hand was clean; it was one of the fingers of the left hand, the index, which was all blood-stained.

  What! it was with the left hand that the old man had written? Impossible!

  Seized with a kind of dizziness, with haggard eyes, my hair standing on end, paler than the dead lying at my feet, I rose with a terrible cry:

  “Great God!”

  At this cry all the others jumped up, surprised, frightened.

  “What is it?” they asked me all together. “What has happened?”

  I tried to answer, but the emotion was strangling me. All I could do was to show them the dead man’s hands, stammering:

  “There! There!”

  Quick as lightning, M. Mechinet fell on his knees beside the body. What I had seen he saw, and my impression was also his, for, quickly rising, he said:

  “It was not this poor old man who traced the letters there.”

  As the judge and the commissary looked at him with open mouths, he explained to them the circumstance of the left hand alone being blood-stained.

  “And to think that I had not paid any attention to that,” repeated the distressed commissary over and over again.

  M. Mechinet was taking snuff furiously.

  “So it is,” he said, “the things that are not seen are those that are near enough to put the eyes out. But no matter. Now the situation is devilishly changed. Since it is not the old man himself who wrote, it must be the person who killed him.”

  “Evidently,” approved the commissary.

  “Now,” continued my neighbor, “can any one imagine a murderer stupid enough to denounce himself by writing his own name beside the body of his victim? No; is it not so? Now, conclude—”

  The judge had become anxious.

  “It is clear,” he said, “appearances have deceived us. Monistrol is not the guilty one. Who is it? It is your business, M. Mechinet, to discover him.”

  He stopped; a police officer had entered, and, addressing the commissary, said:

  “Your orders have been carried out, sir. Monistrol has been arrested and locked up. He confessed everything.”

  IV.

  It is impossible to describe our astonishment. What! While we were there, exerting ourselves to find proofs of Monistrol’s innocence, he acknowledges himself guilty?

  M. Mechinet was the first to recover.

  Rapidly he raised his fingers from the snuffbox to his nose five or six times, and advancing toward the officer, said:

  “Either you are mistaken, or you are deceiving us; one or the other.”

  “I’ll take an oath, M. Mechinet.”

  “Hold your tongue. You either misunderstood what Monistrol said or got intoxicated by the hope of astonishing us with the announcement that the affair was settled.”

  The officer, up to then humble and respectful, now became refractory.

  “Excuse me,” he interrupted, “I am neither an idiot nor a liar, and I know what I am talking about.”

  The discussion came so near being a quarrel that the investigating judge thought best to interfere.

  “Calm yourself, Monsieur Mechinet,” he said, “and before expressing an opinion, wait to be informed.”

  Then turning toward the officer, he continued:

  “And you, my friend, tell us what you know, and give us reasons for your assurance.”

  Thus sustained, the officer crushed M. Mechinet with an ironical glance, and with a very marked trace of conceit he began:

  “Well, this is what happened: Monsieur the Judge and Monsieur the Commissary, both here present, instructed us—Inspector Goulard, my colleague Poltin, and myself—to arrest Monistrol, dealer in imitation jewelry, living at 75 Rue Vivienne, the said Monistrol being accused of the murder of his uncle.”

  “Exactly so,” approved the commissary in a low voice.

  “Thereupon,” continued the officer, “we took a cab and had him drive us to the address given. We arrived and found M. Monistrol in the back of his shop, about to sit down to dinner with his wife, a woman of twenty-five or thirty years, and very beautiful.

  “Seeing the three of us stand like a string of onions, our man got up. ‘What do you want?’ he asked us. Sergeant Goulard drew from his pocket the warrant and answered: ‘In the name of the law, I arrest you!’ ”

  Here M. Mechinet behaved as if he were on a gridiron.

  “Could you not hurry up?” he said to the officer.

  But the latter, as if he had not heard, continued in the same calm tone:

  “I have arrested many people during my life. Well! I never saw any of them go to pieces like this one.

  “ ‘You are joking,’ he said to us, ‘or you are making a mistake.’

  “ ‘No, we are not mistaken!’

  “ ‘But, after all, what do you arrest me for?’

  “Goulard shrugged his shoulders.

  “ ‘Don’t act like a child,’ he said, ‘what about your uncle? The body has been found, and we have overwhelming proofs against you.’

  “Oh! that rascal, what a disagreeable shock! He tottered and finally dropped on a chair, sobbing and stammering I can not tell what answer.

  “Goulard, seeing him thus, shook him by the coat collar and said:

  “ ‘Believe me, the shortest way is to confess everything.’

  “The man looked at us stupidly and murmured:

  “ ‘Well, yes, I confess everything.’

  “Well maneuvred, Goulard,” said the commissary approvingly.

  The officer looked triumphant.

  “It was now a matter of cutting short our stay in the shop,” he continued. “We had been instructed to avoid all commotion, and some idlers were already crowding around. Goulard seized the prisoner by the arm, shouting to him: ‘Come on, let us start; they are waiting for us at headquarters.’ Monistrol managed to get on his shaking legs, and in the voice of a man taking his courage in both hands, said: ‘Let us go.’

  “We were thinking that the worst was over; we did not count on the wife.

  “Up to that moment she had remained in an armchair, as in a faint, without breathing a word, without seeming even to understand what was going on.

  “But when she saw that we were taking away her husband, she sprang up like a lioness, and throwing herself in front of t
he door, shouted: ‘You shall not pass.’

  “On my word of honor she was superb; but Goulard, who had seen others before, said to her: ‘Come, come, little woman, don’t let us get angry; your husband will be brought back.’

  “However, far from giving way to us, she clung more firmly to the door-frame, swearing that her husband was innocent; declaring that if he was taken to prison she would follow him, at times threatening us and crushing us with invectives, and then again entreating in her sweetest voice.

  “When she understood that nothing would prevent us from doing our duty, she let go the door, and, throwing herself on her husband’s neck, groaned: ‘Oh, dearest beloved, is it possible that you are accused of a crime? You—you! Please tell them, these men, that you are innocent.’

  “In truth, we were all affected, except the man, who pushed his poor wife back so brutally that she fell in a heap in a corner of the back shop.

  “Fortunately that was the end.

  “The woman had fainted; we took advantage of it to stow the husband away in the cab that had brought us.

  “To stow away is the right word, because he had become like an inanimate thing; he could no longer stand up; he had to be carried. To omit nothing, I should add that his dog, a kind of black cur, wanted actually to jump into the carriage with us, and that we had the greatest trouble to get rid of it.

  “On the way, as by right, Goulard tried to entertain our prisoner and to make him blab. But it was impossible to draw one word from him. It was only when we arrived at police headquarters that he seemed to come to his senses. When he was duly installed in one of the ‘close confinement’ cells, he threw himself headlong on the bed, repeating: ‘What have I done to you, my God! What have I done to you!’

  “At this moment Goulard approached him, and for the second time asked: ‘Well, do you confess your guilt?’ Monistrol motioned with his head: ‘Yes, yes.’ Then in a hoarse voice said: ‘I beg you, leave me alone.’

  “That is what we did, taking care, however, to place a keeper on watch at the window of the cell, in case the fellow should attempt suicide.

  “Goulard and Poltin remained down there, and I, here I am.”

  “That is precise,” grumbled the commissary; “It could not be more precise.”