An Historical Mystery (The Gondreville Mystery)

The director of the Troyes jury was formerly secretary of one of the committees of the Convention, a friend of Malin, to whom he owed his present place. This magistrate, named Lechesneau, had helped Malin, as Grevin had done, in his work on the Code during the Convention. Malin in return recommended him to Cambaceres, who appointed him attorney-general for Italy. Unfortunately for him, Lechesneau had a liaison with a great lady in Turin, and Napoleon removed him to avoid a criminal trial threatened by the husband. Lechesneau, bound in gratitude to Malin, felt the importance of this attack upon his patron, and brought with him a captain of gendarmerie and twelve men.

Before starting he laid his plans with the prefect, who was unable at that late hour, it being after dark, to use the telegraph. They therefore sent a mounted messenger to Paris to notify the minister of police, the chief justice and the Emperor of this extraordinary crime. In the salon of Gondreville, Lechesneau found Mesdames Marion and Grevin, Violette, the senator’s valet, and the justice of peace with his clerk. The chateau had already been examined; the justice, assisted by Grevin, had carefully collected the first testimony. The first thing that struck him was the obvious intention shown in the choice of the day and hour for the attack. The hour prevented an immediate search for proofs and traces. At this season it was nearly dark by half-past five, the hour at which Violette gave the alarm, and darkness often means impunity to evil-doers. The choice of a holiday, when most persons had gone to the masquerade at Arcis, and the senator was comparatively alone in the house, showed an obvious intention to get rid of witnesses.

“Let us do justice to the intelligence of the prefecture of police,” said Lechesneau; “they have never ceased to warn us to be on our guard against the nobles at Cinq-Cygne; they have always declared that sooner or later those people would play us some dangerous trick.”

Sure of the active co-operation of the prefect of the Aube, who sent messengers to all the surrounding prefectures asking them to search for the five abductors and the senator, Lechesneau began his work by verifying the first facts. This was soon done by the help of two such legal heads as those of Grevin and the justice of peace. The latter, named Pigoult, formerly head-clerk in the office where Malin and Grevin had first studied law in Paris, was soon after appointed judge of the municipal court at Arcis. In relation to Michu, Lechesneau knew of the threats the man had made about the sale of Gondreville to Marion, and the danger Malin had escaped in his own park from Michu’s gun. These two facts, one being the consequence of the other, were no doubt the precursors of the present successful attack, and they pointed so obviously to the late bailiff as the instigator of the outrage that Grevin, his wife, Violette, and Madame Marion declared that they had recognized among the five masked men one who exactly resembled Michu. The color of the hair and whiskers and the thick-set figure of the man made the mask he wore useless. Besides, who but Michu could have opened the iron gates of the park with a key? The present bailiff and his wife, now returned from the masquerade, deposed to have locked both gates before leaving the pavilion. The gates when examined showed no sign of being forced.

“When we turned him off he must have taken some duplicate keys with him,” remarked Grevin. “No doubt he has been meditating a desperate step, for he has lately sold his whole property, and he received the money for it in my office day before yesterday.”

“The others have followed his lead!” exclaimed Lechesneau, struck with the circumstances. “He has been their evil genius.”

Moreover, who could know as well as the Messieurs de Simeuse the ins and outs of the chateau. None of the assailants seemed to have blundered in their search; they had gone through the house in a confident way which showed that they knew what they wanted to find and where to find it. The locks of none of the opened closets had been forced; therefore the delinquents had keys. Strange to say, however, nothing had been taken; the motive, therefore, was not robbery. More than all, when Violette had followed the tracks of the horses as far as the rond-point, he had found the countess, evidently on guard, at the pavilion. From such a combination of facts and depositions arose a presumption as to the guilt of the Messieurs de Simeuse, d’Hauteserre, and Michu, which would have been strong to unprejudiced minds, and to the director of the jury had the force of certainty. What were they likely to do to the future Comte de Gondreville? Did they mean to force him to make over the estate for which Michu declared in 1799 he had the money to pay?

But there was another aspect of the cast to the knowing criminal lawyer. He asked himself what could be the object of the careful search made of the chateau. If revenge were at the bottom of the matter, the assailants would have killed the senator. Perhaps he had been killed and buried. The abduction, however, seemed to point to imprisonment. But why keep their victim imprisoned after searching the castle? It was folly to suppose that the abduction of a dignitary of the Empire could long remain secret. The publicity of the matter would prevent any benefit from it.

To these suggestions Pigoult replied that justice was never able to make out all the motives of scoundrels. In every criminal case there were obscurities, he said, between the judge and the guilty person; conscience had depths into which no human mind could enter unless by the confession of the criminal.

Grevin and Lechesneau nodded their assent, without, however, relaxing their determination to see to the bottom of the present mystery.

“The Emperor pardoned those young men,” said Pigoult to Grevin. “He removed their names from the list of emigres, though they certainly took part in that last conspiracy against him.”

Lechesneau make no delay in sending his whole force of gendarmerie to the forest and to the valley of Cinq-Cygne; telling Giguet to take with him the justice of peace, who, according to the terms of the Code, would then become an auxiliary police-officer. He ordered them to make all preliminary inquiries in the township of Cinq-Cygne, and to take testimony if necessary; and to save time, he dictated and signed a warrant for the arrest of Michu, against whom the charge was evident on the positive testimony of Violette. After the departure of the gendarmes Lechesneau returned to the important question of issuing warrants for the arrest of the Simeuse and d’Hauteserre brothers. According to the Code these warrants would have to contain the charges against the delinquents.

Giguet and the justice of peace rode so rapidly to Cinq-Cygne that they met Laurence’s servants returning from the festivities at Troyes. Stopped, and taken before the mayor where they were interrogated, they all stated, being ignorant of the importance of the answer, that their mistress had given them permission to spend the whole day at Troyes. To a question put by the justice of the peace, each replied that Mademoiselle had offered them the amusement which they had not thought of asking for. This testimony seemed so important to the justice of the peace that he sent back a messenger to Gondreville to advise Lechesneau to proceed himself to Cinq-Cygne and arrest the four gentlemen, while he went to Michu’s farm, so that the five arrests might be made simultaneously.

This new element was so convincing that Lechesneau started at once for Cinq-Cygne. He knew well what pleasure would be felt in Troyes at such proceedings against the old nobles, the enemies of the people, now become the enemies of the Emperor. In such circumstances a magistrate is very apt to take mere presumptive evidence for actual proof. Nevertheless, on his way from Gondreville to Cinq-Cygne, in the senator’s own carriage, it did occur to Lechesneau (who would certainly have made a fine magistrate had it not been for his love-affair, and the Emperor’s sudden morality to which he owed his disgrace) to think the audacity of the young men and Michu a piece of folly which was not in keeping with what he knew of the judgment and character of Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne. He imagined in his own mind some other motives for the deed than the restitution of Gondreville. In all things, even in the magistracy, there is what may be called the conscience of a calling. Lechesneau’s perplexities came from this conscience, which all men put into the proper performance of the duties they like – scientific men into science, artists into art, judges into the rendering of justice. Perhaps for this reason judges are really greater safeguards for persons accused of wrong-doing than are juries. A magistrate relies only on reason and its laws; juries are floated to and fro by the waves of sentiment. The director of the jury accordingly set several questions before his mind, resolving to find in their solution satisfactory reasons for making the arrests.

Though the news of the abduction was already agitating the town of Troyes, it was still unknown at Arcis, where the inhabitants were supping when the messenger arrived to summon the gendarmes. No one, of course, knew it in the village of Cinq-Cygne, the valley and the chateau of which were now, for the second time, encircled by gendarmes.

Laurence had only to tell Marthe, Catherine, and the Durieus not to leave the chateau, to be strictly obeyed. After each trip to fetch the gold, the horses were fastened in the covered way opposite to the breach in the moat, and from there Robert and Michu, the strongest of the party, carried the sacks through the breach to a cellar under the staircase in the tower called Mademoiselle’s. Reaching the chateau with the last load about half-past five o’clock, the four gentlemen and Michu proceeded to bury the treasure in the floor of the cellar and then to wall up the entrance. Michu took charge of the matter with Gothard to help him; the lad was sent to the farm for some sacks of plaster left over when the new buildings were put up, and Marthe went with him to show him where they were. Michu, very hungry, made such haste that by half-past seven o’clock the work was done; and he started for home at a quick pace to stop Gothard, who had been sent for another sack of plaster which he thought he might want. The farm was already watched by the forester of Cinq-Cygne, the justice of peace, his clerk and four gendarmes who, however, kept out of sight and allowed him to enter the house without seeing them.

Michu saw Gothard with the sack on his shoulder and called to him from a distance: “It is all finished, my lad; take that back and stay and dine with us.”

Michu, his face perspiring, his clothes soiled with plaster and covered with fragments of muddy stone from the breach, reached home joyfully and entered the kitchen where Marthe and her mother were serving the soup in expectation of his coming.

Just as Michu was turning the faucet of the water-pipe intending to wash his hands, the justice of peace entered the house accompanied by his clerk and the forester.

“What have you come for, Monsieur Pigoult?” asked Michu.

“In the name of the Emperor and the laws, I arrest you,” replied the justice.

The three gendarmes entered the kitchen leading Gothard. Seeing the silver lace on their hats Marthe and her mother looked at each other in terror.

“Pooh! why?” asked Michu, who sat down at the table and called to his wife, “Give me something to eat; I’m famished.”

“You know why as well as we do,” said the justice, making a sign to his clerk to begin the proces-verbal and exhibiting the warrant of arrest.

“Well, well, Gothard, you needn’t stare so,” said Michu. “Do you want some dinner, yes or no? Let them write down their nonsense.”

“You admit, of course, the condition of your clothes?” said the justice of peace; “and you can’t deny the words you said just now to Gothard?”

Michu, supplied with food by his wife, who was amazed at his coolness, was eating with the avidity of a hungry man. He made no answer to the justice, for his mouth was full and his heart innocent. Gothard’s appetite was destroyed by fear.

“Look here,” said the forester, going up to Michu and whispering in his ear: “What have you done with the senator? You had better make a clean breast of it, for if we are to believe these people it is a matter of life or death to you.”

“Good God!” cried Marthe, who overheard the last words and fell into a chair as if annihilated.

“Violette must have played us some infamous trick,” cried Michu, recollecting what Laurence had said in the forest.

“Ha! so you do know that Violette saw you?” said the justice of peace.

Michu bit his lips and resolved to say no more. Gothard imitated him. Seeing the uselessness of all attempts to make them talk, and knowing what the neighborhood chose to call Michu’s perversity, the justice ordered the gendarmes to bind his hands and those of Gothard, and take them both to the chateau, whither he now went himself to rejoin the director of the jury.

CHAPTER XIV. THE ARRESTS

The four young men and Laurence were so hungry and the dinner so acceptable that they would not delay it by changing their dress. They entered the salon, she in her riding-habit, they in their white leather breeches, high-top boots and green-cloth jackets, where they found Monsieur d’Hauteserre and his wife, not a little uneasy at their long absence. The goodman had noticed their goings and comings, and, above all, their evident distrust of him, for Laurence had been unable to get rid of him as she had of her servants. Once when his own sons evidently avoided making any reply to his questions, he went to his wife and said, “I am afraid that Laurence may still get us into trouble!”

“What sort of game did you hunt to-day?” said Madame d’Hauteserre to Laurence.

“Ah!” replied the young girl, laughing, “you’ll hear some day what a strange hunt your sons have joined in to-day.”

Though said in jest the words made the old lady tremble. Catherine entered to announce dinner. Laurence took Monsieur d’Hauteserre’s arm, smiling for a moment at the necessity she thus forced upon her cousins to offer an arm to Madame d’Hauteserre, who, according to agreement, was now to be the arbiter of their fate.

The Marquis de Simeuse took in Madame d’Hauteserre. The situation was so momentous that after the Benedicite was said Laurence and the young men trembled from the violent palpitation of their hearts. Madame d’Hauteserre, who carved, was struck by the anxiety on the faces of the Simeuse brothers and the great alteration that was noticeable in Laurence’s lamb-like features.

“Something extraordinary is going on, I am sure of it!” she exclaimed, looking at all of them.

“To whom are you speaking?” asked Laurence.

“To all of you,” said the old lady.

“As for me, mother,” said Robert, “I am frightfully hungry, and that is not extraordinary.”

Madame d’Hauteserre, still troubled, offered the Marquis de Simeuse a plate intended for his brother.

“I am like your mother,” she said. “I don’t know you apart even by your cravats. I thought I was helping your brother.”

“You have helped me better than you thought for,” said the youngest, turning pale; “you have made him Comte de Cinq-Cygne.”

“What! do you mean to tell me the countess has made her choice?” cried Madame d’Hauteserre.

“No,” said Laurence; “we left the decision to fate and you are its instrument.”

She told of the agreement made that morning. The elder Simeuse, watching the increasing pallor of his brother’s face, was momentarily on the point of crying out, “Marry her; I will go away and die!” Just then, as the dessert was being served, all present heard raps upon the window of the dining-room on the garden side. The eldest d’Hauteserre opened it and gave entrance to the abbe, whose breeches were torn in climbing over the walls of the park.

“Fly! they are coming to arrest you,” he cried.

“Why?”

“I don’t know yet; but there’s a warrant against you.”

The words were greeted with general laughter.

“We are innocent,” said the young men.

“Innocent or guilty,” said the abbe, “mount your horses and make for the frontier. There you can prove your innocence. You could overcome a sentence by default; you will never overcome a sentence rendered by popular passion and instigated by prejudice. Remember the words of President de Harlay, ‘If I were accused of carrying off the towers of Notre-Dame the first thing I should do would be to run away.’”

“To run away would be to admit we were guilty,” said the Marquis de Simeuse.

“Don’t do it!” cried Laurence.

“Always the same sublime folly!” exclaimed the abbe, in despair. “If I had the power of God I would carry you away. But if I am found here in this state they will turn my visit against you, and against me too; therefore I leave you by the way I came. Consider my advice; you have still time. The gendarmes have not yet thought of the wall which adjoins the parsonage; but you are hemmed in on the other sides.”

The sound of many feet and the jangle of the sabres of the gendarmerie echoed through the courtyard and reached the dining-room a few moments after the departure of the poor abbe, whose advice had met the same fate as that of the Marquis de Chargeboeuf.

“Our twin existence,” said the younger Simeuse, speaking to Laurence, “is an anomaly – our love for you is anomalous; it is that very quality which was won your heart. Possibly, the reason why all twins known to us in history have been unfortunate is that the laws of nature are subverted in them. In our case, see how persistently an evil fate follows us! your decision is now postponed.”

Laurence was stupefied; the fatal words of the director of the jury hummed in her ears: – “In the name of the Emperor and the laws, I arrest the Sieurs Paul-Marie and Marie-Paul Simeuse, Adrien and Robert d’Hauteserre – These gentlemen,” he added, addressing the men who accompanied him and pointing to the mud on the clothing of the prisoners, “cannot deny that they have spent the greater part of this day on horseback.”

“Of what are they accused?” asked Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, haughtily.

“Don’t you mean to arrest Mademoiselle?” said Giguet.

“I shall leave her at liberty under bail, until I can carefully examine the charges against her,” replied the director.

The mayor offered bail, asking the countess to merely give her word of honor that she would not escape. Laurence blasted him with a look which made him a mortal enemy; a tear started from her eyes, one of those tears of rage which reveal a hell of suffering. The four gentlemen exchanged a terrible look, but remained motionless. Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre, dreading lest the young people had practised some deceit, were in a state of indescribable stupefaction. Clinging to their chairs these unfortunate parents, finding their sons torn from them after so many fears and their late hopes of safety, sat gazing before them without seeing, listening without hearing.

“Must I ask you to bail me, Monsieur d’Hauteserre?” cried Laurence to her former guardian, who was roused by the cry, clear and agonizing to his ear as the sound of the last trumpet.

He tried to wipe the tears which sprang to his eyes; he now understood what was passing, and said to his young relation in a quivering voice, “Forgive me, countess; you know that I am yours, body and soul.”

Lechesneau, who at first was much struck by the evident tranquillity in which the whole party were dining, now returned to his former opinion of their guilt as he noticed the stupefaction of the old people and the evident anxiety of Laurence, who was seeking to discover the nature of the trap which was set for them.

“Gentlemen,” he said, politely, “you are too well-bred to make a useless resistance; follow me to the stables, where I must, in your presence, have the shoes of your horses taken off; they afford important proof of either guilt or innocence. Come, too, mademoiselle.”

The blacksmith of Cinq-Cygne and his assistant had been summoned by Lechesneau as experts. While the operation at the stable was going on the justice of peace brought in Gothard and Michu. The work of detaching the shoes of each horse, putting them together and ticketing them, so as to compare them with the hoof-prints in the park, took time. Lechesneau, notified of the arrival of Pigoult, left the prisoners with the gendarmes and returned to the dining-room to dictate the indictment. The justice of peace called his attention to the condition of Michu’s clothes and related the circumstances of his arrest.

“They must have killed the senator and plastered the body up in some wall,” said Pigoult.

“I begin to fear it,” answered Lechesneau. “Where did you carry that plaster?” he said to Gothard.

The boy began to cry.

“The law frightens him,” said Michu, whose eyes were darting flames like those of a lion in the toils.

The servants, who had been detained at the village by order of the mayor, now arrived and filled the antechamber where Catherine and Gothard were weeping. To all the questions of the director of the jury and the justice of peace Gothard replied by sobs; and by dint of weeping he brought on a species of convulsion which alarmed them so much that they let him alone. The little scamp, perceiving that he was no longer watched, looked at Michu with a grin, and Michu signified his approval by a glance. Lechesneau left the justice of peace and returned to the stables.

“Monsieur,” said Madame d’Hauteserre, at last, addressing Pigoult; “can you explain these arrests?”

“The gentlemen are accused of abducting the senator by armed force and keeping him a prisoner; for we do not think they have murdered him – in spite of appearances,” replied Pigoult.

“What penalties are attached to the crime?” asked Monsieur d’Hauteserre.

“Well, as the old law continues in force, and they are not amenable under the Code, the penalty is death,” replied the justice.

“Death!” cried Madame d’Hauteserre, fainting away.

The abbe now came in with his sister, who stopped to speak to Catherine and Madame Durieu.

“We haven’t even seen your cursed senator!” said Michu.

“Madame Marion, Madame Grevin, Monsieur Grevin, the senator’s valet, and Violette all tell another tale,” replied Pigoult, with the sour smile of magisterial conviction.

“I don’t understand a thing about it,” said Michu, dumbfounded by his reply, and beginning now to believe that his masters and himself were entangled in some plot which had been laid against them.

Just then the party from the stables returned. Laurence went up to Madame d’Hauteserre, who recovered her senses enough to say: “The penalty is death!”

“Death!” repeated Laurence, looking at the four gentlemen.

The word excited a general terror, of which Giguet, formerly instructed by Corentin, took immediate advantage.

“Everything can be arranged,” he said, drawing the Marquis de Simeuse into a corner of the dining-room. “Perhaps after all it is nothing but a joke; you’ve been a soldier and soldiers understand each other. Tell me, what have you really done with the senator? If you have killed him – why, that’s the end of it! But if you have only locked him up, release him, for you see for yourself your game is balked. Do this and I am certain the director of the jury and the senator himself will drop the matter.”

“We know absolutely nothing about it,” said the marquis.

“If you take that tone the matter is likely to go far,” replied the lieutenant.

“Dear cousin,” said the Marquis de Simeuse, “we are forced to go to prison; but do not be uneasy; we shall return in a few hours, for there is some misunderstanding in all this which can be explained.”

“I hope so, for your sakes, gentlemen,” said the magistrate, signing to the gendarmes to remove the four gentlemen, Michu, and Gothard. “Don’t take them to Troyes; keep them in your guardhouse at Arcis,” he said to the lieutenant; “they must be present to-morrow, at daybreak, when we compare the shoes of their horses with the hoof-prints in the park.”

Lechesneau and Pigoult did not follow until they had closely questioned Catherine, Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre, and Laurence. The Durieus, Catherine, and Marthe declared they had only seen their masters at breakfast-time; Monsieur d’Hauteserre said he had seen them at three o’clock.