by Emile Zola
The following day, Monsieur Denizet had Roubaud arrested. Feeling that he now had the upper hand, he had issued the warrant in a moment of inspiration, thoroughly confident in his own perspicacity and before having any definite proof against him. Although there was still much that remained unexplained, he sensed that Roubaud was the vital link and even the instigator in this double murder. His suspicions met with immediate success when he discovered the deed of gift leaving their estate to the survivor, signed by Roubaud and Séverine in the presence of Maitre Colin, a solicitor in Le Havre, a week after they had taken possession of La Croix-de-Maufras. From that moment, Denizet was able to reconstruct the whole story, with such powerful arguments and telling evidence that his case against him was unassailable; the truth itself would have appeared less convincing, more far-fetched and even fantastical by comparison. Roubaud was a coward who on two occasions, frightened to commit murder himself, had enlisted the service of his bestial accomplice, Cabuche. The first time, eager to get his hands on President Grandmorin’s legacy, knowing what was in his will and also knowing that Cabuche bore a grudge against him, Roubaud had slipped the knife into his hand and pushed him into the coupé while the train was standing in the station at Rouen. Having shared the ten thousand francs between them, the two would probably never have seen each other again, had not one murder led to another. It was here that Monsieur Denizet displayed the profound understanding of criminal mentality for which he was so much admired; he had continued to keep his eye on Cabuche, he now revealed, because he was convinced that, statistically, the first murder would be followed by a second. In effect it needed only eighteen months: the Roubauds’ marriage had broken up, Roubaud had squandered his five thousand francs in gambling, and his wife had been driven to take a lover to amuse herself. No doubt she had refused to sell La Croix-de-Maufras lest her husband dissipate that money too; they were continually arguing, and she might have been threatening to hand him over to the police. At all events, a number of witnesses had testified to the complete breakdown of their marriage, and it was this that had eventually led to the second murder. The bestial Cabuche had made his second appearance. Roubaud, lurking somewhere in the shadows, had once again thrust the knife into his hand, to ensure that ownership of the accursed house which had already cost one life should finally be his. Such was the truth, the blinding truth, to which all the evidence pointed: the watch found in the quarry man’s hut, and especially the two bodies killed in exactly the same way, stabbed in the throat by the same person with the same weapon — the knife that had been recovered from the bedroom. On this last point the prosecution expressed some uncertainty; the President’s wound appeared to have been made by a smaller and sharper implement.
At first Roubaud simply answered yes or no in the sleepy, lethargic drawl which had by now become his customary manner of speech. He didn’t appear surprised that he had been arrested; as his personality slowly disintegrated, he had become indifferent to everything. In order to get him to talk, a warder was assigned permanently to his cell. Roubaud played cards with him all day long and was perfectly happy. He remained convinced that Cabuche was guilty; only he could have committed the murder. When asked about Jacques, he shrugged his shoulders and laughed, as much as to say that he knew all about the relationship between his wife and the engine driver. When, however, after his initial questions, Monsieur Denizet began to expound his theory of the murder and started to press him and accuse him directly of being an accomplice, in an attempt to extract a confession from him at the shock of having been found out, Roubaud had become more cautious. What tale was this, he thought? They were saying that it wasn’t him but Cabuche who had killed Grandmorin, just as he had killed Séverine, yet on both occasions he was the truly guilty party because Cabuche had been acting in his interest and on his behalf. He was amazed at this involved rigmarole and became very wary; they must be setting him a trap, lying to him in order to get him to admit that one of these murders — the first murder — had been committed by him. The minute he was arrested, Roubaud had assumed it was because the earlier case had been reopened. When confronted with Cabuche, he swore that he did not know him. But, when he then insisted he had discovered him covered in blood and about to rape his victim, Cabuche flew into a rage, and there followed a violent and confused scene which complicated matters even further. Three days went by, during which the magistrate questioned them both repeatedly, convinced that the two accomplices had agreed to put on this display of hostility towards each other in order to confuse him. Roubaud, utterly exhausted, had decided he would answer no more questions, when suddenly, in a moment of exasperation, and wanting to have the whole thing settled — a vague compulsion that had been troubling him for months — he blurted out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
That day Monsieur Denizet had conducted his inquiries with consummate skill, sitting at his desk, lowering his heavy eyelids and pursing his expressive lips in a display of great sagacity. For a whole hour he had tried every learned ploy he knew against Roubaud. Roubaud was overweight and looked flabby, sallow and unhealthy, but Denizet suspected that, beneath his unprepossessing exterior, he was really quite clever. He thought he had managed to track him down step by step, to hem him in and finally ensnare him, when Roubaud, like a man at the end of his tether, threw his hands in the air and exclaimed that he had had enough and that he would rather confess than go on being tormented like this. If they were determined to prove him guilty, he would rather be proved guilty of things that he had actually done. But as he told his story — his wife abused by Grandmorin when she was a young girl, his jealous rage when the sordid affair became known to him, how he had killed Grandmorin and why he had taken the ten thousand francs — the magistrate raised his eyelids sceptically, protruding his lips in a scornful expression of complete and utter disbelief. By the time Roubaud had finished speaking, there was a broad smile on Monsieur Denizet’s face. This fellow was cleverer than he thought. To claim that he had committed the first murder and to represent it simply as a crime of passion, thus clearing himself of any premeditated theft and more importantly of any involvement in the murder of Séverine, was undoubtedly a bold move, which displayed intelligence and a sense of purpose beyond the ordinary. But his story didn’t hold water.
‘Come, come, Roubaud,’ he said, ‘please don’t treat us like children ... Are you really asking us to believe that you were jealous and that you murdered in a fit of jealousy?’
‘Most certainly,’ Roubaud answered.
‘If we are to accept your story, you married your wife without knowing anything about her relationship with the President ... Is this likely? In your case everything would seem to suggest that, on the contrary, the arrangement had all been planned, discussed and agreed upon. You walk into marriage with a young girl who has been brought up like a lady. She receives a dowry. Her protector becomes yours as well. You are fully aware that she has been left a house in the country in his will. And you try to tell us that you knew nothing, absolutely nothing! Really! I put it to you that you knew everything. There is no other way that your marriage can be explained. What is more, your story is belied by one very obvious fact. You are not a jealous husband, and it is no use trying to claim that you are.’
‘I am telling you the truth. I killed in a fit of jealous rage.’
‘Please explain to me then how, having murdered the President because of some unspecified relationship in the past, for which, incidentally, you have no proof, you managed to turn a blind eye to the fact that your wife took a lover, this Jacques Lantier, an affair about which there can be no doubt whatever. A number of witnesses have mentioned it and you yourself have told me that you knew of it. And yet you left them free to see each other as they chose. Why?’
Roubaud sat slumped in his chair, gazing into the distance with a confused look in his eyes. He could find no explanation.
‘I don’t know,’ he finally mumbled. ‘I killed Grandmorin, but I didn’t kill my wife.’
‘Then stop trying to tell me that you were a jealous husband seeking revenge. I advise you not to repeat such fictions to the gentlemen of the jury; they would simply laugh at you. Believe me, you will have to change your tune. Only the truth can save you.’
But from then on, the more Roubaud insisted that he was indeed telling the truth, the more he was accused of lying. Everything seemed to turn against him; even the earlier statements he had made at the first inquiry, which should have corroborated his present account,3 since he had then informed against Cabuche, were used on the contrary as evidence of a cunning plan that the two had hatched between them. Monsieur Denizet probed the psychology that lay behind the whole affair with true professional zeal. Never before, he said, had he delved deeper into human nature. It had been more a matter of divining the truth than of simply ascertaining the facts; he prided himself on being one of those judges who can read a criminal’s mind, lead him where he wants and then demolish him with a single glance. Besides, there was now no shortage of evidence; the case was overwhelming. The inquiry had established a solid basis for prosecution; the truth shone forth with dazzling certainty, like light from the sun.
What further enhanced the merit of Monsieur Denizet’s achievement was that, without anyone knowing a thing about it, he had carefully pieced things together and had brought the two cases together as one. Following the resounding success of the plebiscite, the country had been in a constant state of hysteria, displaying all those symptoms of frenzy that portend some great disaster. As the Empire drew to a close, society, politics and especially the press were infused with a sense of unease and nervous excitement, in which even occasions for celebration assumed an unhealthy, excessive character. So when, following the murder of a woman in an isolated house at La Croix-de-Maufras, it was learned that the examining magistrate at Rouen had by a stroke of genius reopened the inquiry into the Grandmorin affair and connected the two cases together, there was a veritable explosion of triumph in the official newspapers. There had still been occasional satirical references in the opposition press to the mysterious, mythical killer who had been invented by the police and given so much publicity in order to cover up the misdemeanours of certain highly placed individuals who had been compromised by the affair. These taunts could now be dealt with once and for all. The murderer and his accomplice were under arrest; President Grandmorin would emerge from the episode with his reputation untarnished. Once again there was fierce controversy; excitement grew day by day in both Rouen and Paris. The public, apart from being fascinated by a gruesome story of murder, was drawn to the case as if the future of the state itself depended on finally establishing the truth of the affair. For a whole week the press talked of nothing else.
Monsieur Denizet was summoned to Paris and presented himself at the private dwelling of the Secretary-General, Monsieur Camy-Lamotte, in the Rue du Rocher. He found him standing in his sparsely furnished study. He looked more drawn and tired than when he had last seen him; his star was on the wane and his scepticism was now coloured with regret, as if at this moment of great personal triumph he sensed the imminent collapse of the regime he had served. For the last two days he had been struggling to resolve a dilemma, still uncertain what use he should make of Séverine’s letter, which he had kept and which would have completely undermined the case for the prosecution, confirming as it did Roubaud’s account with a piece of incontrovertible evidence. No one knew it existed. He could destroy it. The day before, however, the Emperor had told him that on this occasion he demanded the law should take its course, without interference, even if the outcome should prove damaging to his government. It was a gesture of good faith, an intuition perhaps that, after the country had acclaimed him, a single miscarriage of justice could change the course of destiny. Although the Secretary-General had no moral scruples of his own, having learned to resolve political issues in a purely mechanical way, these instructions troubled him, and he wondered whether his allegiance to the Emperor might entail disobeying him.
‘Well,’ exclaimed Monsieur Denizet, feeling very pleased with himself, ‘my hunch was right! It was Cabuche who stabbed the President. There was some truth in the other line of inquiry, I agree, and personally I always felt there was something suspicious about Roubaud’s evidence. Anyway, we’ve got both of them.’
Monsieur Camy-Lamotte looked at him steadily with his pale-coloured eyes.
‘So all the facts in the dossier I received have been verified, and you are absolutely convinced?’
‘Absolutely,’ Monsieur Denizet assured him. ‘There can be no doubt whatever ... It all fits together. I cannot remember a case in which, for all its apparent complications, the crime followed a more logical sequence and was easier to predict.’
‘But Roubaud objects. He claims it was he who committed the first murder and tells some story about his wife being violated and him being driven by jealousy and killing in a fit of blind rage. The opposition newspapers are full of it.’
‘The opposition newspapers will report any old gossip. But they don’t really believe it. How can Roubaud be a jealous husband when he encouraged his wife to take a lover? Let him try telling that to the court! He just wants to stir up scandal, but he won’t succeed. If he had some evidence ... but he hasn’t. He talks of a letter, which he claims he made his wife write and which should have been found amongst the victim’s papers. You went through those papers, monsieur, and you would have found it, wouldn’t you?’
Monsieur Camy-Lamotte made no answer. It was true, the magistrate’s findings would enable him to bury this scandal once and for all; no one would believe Roubaud, and the President’s name would be cleared of all suspicion. The much-publicized rehabilitation of one of its most distinguished adherents could only be to the government’s advantage. Besides, since Roubaud admitted he was guilty, it did not affect the principle of justice whether he was condemned on one charge or another. That left Cabuche. If he had had nothing to do with the first murder, he certainly appeared to be guilty of the second. Justice, after all, was nothing but a grand illusion! When the path to truth was so tangled and overgrown, the belief in justice was a snare. It was better to be safe than sorry, and do what he could to prop up this ailing remnant of Empire as it teetered on the brink of collapse.
‘You didn’t find this letter, did you, monsieur?’ the magistrate repeated.
Once again Monsieur Camy-Lamotte raised his eyes and looked at him. The situation lay entirely in his hands, and, although he shared the Emperor’s misgivings, he replied quite calmly, ‘I found absolutely nothing.’
Then, smiling affably, he offered Monsieur Denizet his heartfelt congratulations. Only a slight quiver of his lips indicated the supreme irony of his words. Never had an investigation been conducted with such acumen. It had been decided officially that after the autumn recess he would be called to the bar in Paris. As he spoke he conducted him out into the hall.
‘You alone were able to untangle this affair,’ he continued. ‘What you have achieved is truly remarkable ... Once the truth is allowed to speak for itself, nothing can stand in its way, neither personal ambition nor reasons of state ... Feel free to continue. Proceed with the case in the normal way, whatever the consequences.’
‘I consider it no more than my duty,’ replied Monsieur Denizet, bidding him farewell and leaving the house in a glow of satisfaction.
Left alone, the first thing Monsieur Camy-Lamotte did was to light a candle. He then opened the drawer in which he had filed Séverine’s letter. The flame lengthened. He opened the letter, wanting to read again the two lines of handwriting. Immediately the thought of Séverine came back to him — the timid little criminal with periwinkle-blue eyes who had aroused such tender feelings in him all that time ago. Now she was dead, a tragic victim. Who could tell what secret she had taken with her? Truth, justice ... it was all an illusion! For Monsieur Camy-Lamotte, all that remained of this charming young woman, whom he had never come to know, was the fleeting desire
she had aroused in him on the day they met, a desire which would remain for ever unsatisfied. As he held the letter to the flame and it began to burn, a feeling of great sadness came over him, a sense of impending calamity. Why destroy this evidence and suffer a guilty conscience, if the Empire was destined to be swept away like the charred fragment of paper that fell from his fingers?
