The works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 5

Renardet rose up, with his face the color of brick.

"Do you say – a little girl?"

"Yes, m'sieur, a little girl, quite naked, on her back, with blood on her, dead – quite dead!"

The Mayor gave vent to an oath:

"My God, I'd make a bet 'tis little Louise Roqué! I have just learned that she did not go home to her mother last night. Where did you find her?"

The postman pointed out where the place was, gave full details, and offered to conduct the Mayor to the spot.

But Renardet became brusque:

"No, I don't need you. Send the steward, the Mayor's secretary, and the doctor immediately to me, and resume your rounds. Quick, quick, go and tell them to meet me in the woods."

The letter-carrier, a man used to discipline, obeyed and withdrew, angry and grieved at not being able to be present at the investigation.

The Mayor, in his turn, prepared to go out, took his hat, a big soft hat, and paused for a few seconds on the threshold of his abode. In front of him stretched a wide sward, in which three large patches were conspicuous – three large beds of flowers in full bloom, one facing the house and the others at either side of it. Further on, rose skyward the principal trees in the wood, while at the left, above the Brindelle widened into a pool, could be seen long meadows, an entirely green flat sweep of the country, cut by dikes and willow edges like monsters, twisted dwarf-trees, always cut short, and having on their thick squat trunks a quivering tuft of thick branches.

At the right, behind the stables, the outhouses, all the buildings connected with the property, might be seen the village, which was wealthy, being mainly inhabited by rearers of oxen.

Renardet slowly descended the steps in front of his house, and turning to the left, gained the water's edge, which he followed at a slow pace, his hand behind his back. He went on with bent head, and from time to time he glanced round in search of the persons for whom he had sent.

When he stood beneath the trees, he stopped, took off his hat, and wiped his forehead as Mederic had done; for the burning sun was falling in fiery rain upon the ground. Then the Mayor resumed his journey, stopped once more, and retraced his steps. Suddenly, stooping down, he steeped his handkerchief in the stream that glided at his feet, and stretched it round his head, under his hat. Drops of water flowed along his temples over his ears always purple over his strong red neck, and made their way, one after the other, under his white shirt-collar.

As nobody yet appeared he began tapping with his foot, then he called out —

"Hallo! Hallo!"

A voice at his right, answered:

"Hallo! Hallo!"

And the doctor appeared under the trees. He was a thin little man, an ex-military surgeon, who passed in the neighborhood for a very skillful practitioner. He limped, having been wounded while in the service, and had to use a stick to assist him in walking.

Next came the steward and the Mayor's secretary, who, having been sent for at the same time, arrived together. They looked scared, and hurried forward out of breath, walking and trotting in turn in order to hasten their progress, and moving their arms up and down so vigorously that they seemed to do more work with them than with their legs.

Renardet said to the doctor:

"You know what the trouble is about?"

"Yes, a child found dead in the wood by Mederic."

"That's quite correct. Come on."

They walked on side by side, followed by the two men.

Their steps made no noise on the moss, their eyes were gazing downward right in front of them.

The doctor hastened his steps, interested by the discovery. As soon as they were near the corpse, he bent down to examine it without touching it. He had put on a pair of glasses, as when one is looking at some curious object, and turned round very quietly.

He said without rising up:

"Violated and assassinated, as we are going to prove presently. This little girl moreover, is almost a woman – look at her throat."

Her two breasts, already nearly full-developed, fell over her chest, relaxed by death.

The doctor lightly drew away the handkerchief which covered her face. It looked black, frightful, the tongue protruding, the eyes bloodshot. He went on:

"Faith, she was strangled the moment the deed was done."

He felt her neck:

"Strangled with the hands without leaving any special trace, neither the mark of the nails nor the imprint of the fingers. Quite right. It is little Louise Roqué, sure enough!"

He delicately replaced the handkerchief:

"There's nothing for me to do – She's been dead for the last hour at least. We must give notice of the matter to the authorities."

Renardet, standing up, with his hands behind his back, kept staring with a stony look at the little body exposed to view on the grass. He murmured:

"What a wretch! We must find the clothes."

The doctor felt the hands, the arms, the legs. He said:

"She must have been bathing, no doubt. They ought to be at the water's edge."

The Mayor thereupon gave directions:

"Do you, Princépe" (this was his secretary), "go and look for those clothes for me along the river. Do you, Maxime" (this was the steward), "hurry on towards Roug-le-Tors, and bring on here to me the examining magistrate with the gendarmes. They must be here within an hour. You understand."

The two men quickly departed, and Renardet said to the doctor:

"What miscreant has been able to do such a deed in this part of the country."

The doctor murmured:

"Who knows? Everyone is capable of that? Everyone in particular and nobody in general. No matter, it must be some prowler, some workman out of employment. As we live under a Republic, we must expect to meet only this kind of person along the roads."

Both of them were Bonapartists.

The Mayor went on:

"Yes, it can only be a stranger, a passer-by, a vagabond without heart or home."

The doctor added with the shadow of a smile on his face:

"And without a wife. Having neither a good supper nor a good bed, he procured the rest for himself. You can't tell how many men there may be in the world capable of a crime at a given moment. Did you know that this little girl had disappeared?"

And with the end of his stick he touched one after the other the stiffened fingers of the corpse, resting on them as on the keys of a piano.

"Yes, the mother came last night to look for me about nine o'clock, the child not having come home from supper up to seven. We went to try and find her along the roads up to midnight, but we did not think of the wood. However, we needed daylight to carry out a search with a practical result."

"Will you have a cigar?" said the doctor.

"Thanks, I don't care to smoke. It gives me a turn to look at this."

They both remained standing in front of this corpse of a young girl, so pale, on the dark moss. A big fly with a blue belly that was walking along one of the thighs, stopped at the bloodstains, went on again, always rising higher, ran along the side with his lively, jerky movements, climbed up one of the breasts, then came back again to explore the other, looking out for something to drink on this dead girl. The two men kept watching this wandering black speck.

The doctor said:

"How pretty it is, a fly on the skin! The ladies of the last century had good reason to paste them on their faces. Why has this fashion gone out?"

The Mayor seemed not to hear, plunged as he was in deep thought.

But, all of a sudden, he turned round, for he was surprised by a shrill noise. A woman in a cap and a blue apron rushed up under the trees. It was the mother, La Roqué. As soon as she saw Renardet she began to shriek:

"My little girl, where's my little girl?" in such a distracted manner that she did not glance down at the ground. Suddenly, she saw the corpse, stopped short, clasped her hands, and raised both her arms while she uttered a sharp, heartrending cry – the cry of a mutilated animal. Then she rushed towards the body, fell on her knees, and took off, as if she would have snatched it away, the handkerchief that covered the face. When she saw that frightful countenance, black and convulsed, she rose up with a shudder, then pressed her face against the ground, giving vent to terrible and continuous screams with her mouth close to the thick moss.

Her tall, thin frame, to which her clothes were clinging tightly, was palpitating, shaken with convulsions. They could see her bony ankles and her dried up calves covered with thick blue stockings, shivering horribly; and she went digging the soil with her crooked fingers as if in order to make a hole there to hide herself in it.

The doctor moved, said in a low tone:

"Poor old woman!"

Renardet felt a strange rumbling in his stomach; then he gave vent to a sort of loud sneeze that issued at the same time through his nose and through his mouth; and, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket, he began to weep internally, coughing, sobbing, and wiping his face noisily.

He stammered —

"Damn – damn – damned pig to do this! I would like to see him guillotined."

But Princépe reappeared, with his hands empty. He murmured —

"I have found nothing, M'sieu le Maire, nothing at all anywhere."

The doctor, scared, replied in a thick voice, drowned in tears:

"What is that you could not find?"

"The little girl's clothes."

"Well – well – look again, and find them – or you'll have to answer to me."

The man, knowing that the Mayor would not brook opposition, set forth again with hesitating steps, casting on the corpse indirect and timid glances.

Distant voices arose under the trees, a confused sound, the noise of an approaching crowd; for Mederic had, in the course of his rounds carried the news from door to door. The people of the neighborhood, stupefied at first, had gone chatting from their own firesides into the street, from one threshold to another. Then they gathered together. They talked over, discussed, and commented on the event for some minutes, and they had now come to see it for themselves.

They arrived in groups a little faltering and uneasy through fear of the first impression of such a scene on their minds. When they saw the body they stopped, not daring to advance, and speaking low. They grew bold, went on a few steps, stopped again, advanced once more, and soon they formed around the dead girl, her mother, the doctor, and Renardet, a thick circle, agitated and noisy, which crushed forward under the sudden pushes of the last comers. And now they touched the corpse. Some of them even bent down to feel it with their fingers. The doctor kept them back. But the mayor, waking abruptly out of his torpor, broke into a rage, and, seizing Dr. Labarbe's stick, flung himself on his townspeople, stammering:

"Clear out – clear out – you pack of brutes – clear out!"

And in a second, the crowd of sightseers had fallen back two hundred meters.

La Roqué was lifted up, turned round, and placed in a sitting posture, and she now remained weeping with her hands clasped over her face.

The occurrence was discussed among the crowd; and young lads' eager eyes curiously scrutinized this naked body of a girl. Renardet perceived this, and abruptly taking off his vest, he flung it over the little girl, who was entirely lost to view under the wide garment.

The spectators drew near quietly. The wood was filled with people, and a continuous hum of voices rose up under the tangled foliage of the tall trees.

The Mayor, in his shirt sleeves, remained standing, with his stick in his hands, in a fighting attitude. He seemed exasperated by this curiosity on the part of the people, and kept repeating:

"If one of you come nearer, I'll break his head just as I would a dog's."

The peasants were greatly afraid of him. They held back. Dr. Labarbe, who was smoking, sat down beside La Roqué, and spoke to her in order to distract her attention. The old woman soon removed her hands from her face, and she replied with a flood of tearful words, emptying her grief in copious talk. She told the whole story of her life, her marriage, the death of her man, a bullsticker, who had been gored to death, the infancy of her daughter, her wretched existence as a widow without resources and with a child to support. She had only this one, her little Louise, and the child had been killed – killed in this wood. All of a sudden, she felt anxious to see it again, and dragging herself on her knees towards the corpse, she raised up one corner of the garment that covered her; then she let it fall again, and began wailing once more. The crowd remained silent, eagerly watching all the mother's gestures.

But all of a sudden, a great swaying movement took place, and there was a cry of "the gendarmes! the gendarmes!"

The gendarmes appeared in the distance, coming on at a rapid trot, escorting their captain and a little gentleman with red whiskers, who was bobbing up and down like a monkey on a big white mare.

The steward had just found M. Putoin, the examining magistrate, at the moment when he was mounting his horse to take his daily ride, for he posed as a good horseman to the great amusement of the officers.

He alighted along with the captain, and passed the hands of the Mayor and the Doctor, casting a ferret-like glance on the linen vest which swelled above the body lying underneath.

When he was thoroughly acquainted with the facts, he first gave orders to get rid of the public, whom the gendarmes drove out of the wood, but who soon reappeared in the meadow, and formed a hedge, a big hedge of excited and moving heads all along the Brindelle, on the other side of the stream.

The doctor in his turn, gave explanations, of which Renardet took a note in his memorandum book. All the evidence was given, taken down, and commented on without leading to any discovery. Maxime, too, came back without having found any trace of the clothes.

This disappearance surprised everybody; no one could explain it on the theory of theft, and as these rags were not worth twenty sous, even this theory was inadmissible.

The examining magistrate, the mayor, the captain, and the doctor, set to work by searching in pairs, putting aside the smallest branches along the water.

Renardet said to the judge:

"How does it happen that this wretch has concealed or carried away the clothes, and has thus left the body exposed in the open air and visible to everyone?"

The other, sly and knowing, answered:

"Ha! Ha! Perhaps a dodge? This crime has been committed either by a brute or by a crafty blackguard. In any case we'll easily succeed in finding him."

The rolling of a vehicle made them turn their heads round. It was the deputy magistrate, the doctor and the registrar of the court who had arrived in their turn. They resumed their searches, all chatting in an animated fashion.

Renardet said suddenly:

"Do you know that I am keeping you to lunch with me?"

Everyone smilingly accepted the invitation, and the examining magistrate, finding that the case of little Louise Roqué was quite enough to bother about for one day, turned towards the Mayor:

"I can have the body brought to your house, can I not? You have a room in which you can keep it for me till this evening."

The other got confused, and stammered:

"Yes – no – no. To tell the truth, I prefer that it should not come into my house on account of – on account of my servants who are already talking about ghosts in – in my tower, in the Fox's tower. You know – I could no longer keep a single one. No – I prefer not to have it in my house."

The magistrate began to smile:

"Good! I am going to get it carried off at once to Roug, for the legal examination."

Turning towards the door:

"I can make use of your trap can I not?"

"Yes, certainly."

Everybody came back to the place where the corpse lay. La Roqué now, seated beside her daughter, had caught hold of her head, and was staring right before her, with a wandering listless eye.

The two doctors endeavored to lead her away, so that she might not witness the dead girl's removal; but she understood at once what they wanted to do, and, flinging herself on the body, she seized it in both arms. Lying on top of the corpse, she exclaimed:

"You shall not have it – 'tis mine – 'tis mine now. They have killed her on me, and I want to keep her – you shall not have her – !"

All the men, affected and not knowing how to act, remained standing around her. Renardet fell on his knees, and said to her:

"Listen, La Roqué, it is necessary in order to find out who killed her. Without this, it could not be found out. We must make a search for him in order to punish him. When we have found him, we'll give her up to you. I promise you this."

This explanation shook the woman's mind, and a feeling of hatred manifested itself in her distracted glance.

"So then they'll take him?"

"Yes, I promise you that."

She rose up, deciding to let them do as they liked; but, when the captain remarked:

"'Tis surprising that her clothes were not found."

A new idea, which she had not previously thought of, abruptly found an entrance into her brain, and she asked:

"Where are her clothes. They're mine. I want them. Where have they been put?"

They explained to her that they had not been found. Then she called out for them with desperate obstinacy and with repeated moans.

"They're mine – I want them. Where are they? I want them!"

The more they tried to calm her the more she sobbed, and persisted in her demands. She no longer wanted the body, she insisted on having the clothes, as much perhaps through the unconscious cupidity of a wretched being to whom a piece of silver represents a fortune, as through maternal tenderness.

And when the little body rolled up in blankets which had been brought out from Renardet's house, had disappeared in the vehicle, the old woman standing under the trees, held up by the Mayor and the Captain, exclaimed:

"I have nothing, nothing, nothing in the world, not even her little cap – her little cap."

The curé had just arrived, a young priest already growing stout. He took it on himself to carry off La Roqué, and they went away together towards the village. The mother's grief was modified under the sugary words of the clergyman, who promised her a thousand compensations. But she incessantly kept repeating:

"If I had only her little cap."

Sticking to this idea which now dominated every other.

Renardet exclaimed some distance away:

"You lunch with us, Monsieur l'Abbé – in an hour's time."

The priest turned his head round, and replied:

"With pleasure, Monsieur le Maire. I'll be with you at twelve."

And they all directed their steps towards the house whose gray front and large tower built on the edge of the Brindelle, could be seen through the branches.

The meal lasted a long time. They talked about the crime. Everybody was of the same opinion. It had been committed by some tramp passing there by mere chance while the little girl was bathing.

Then the magistrates returned to Roug, announcing that they would return next day at an early hour. The doctor and the curé went to their respective homes, while Renardet, after a long walk through the meadows, returned to the wood where he remained walking till nightfall with slow steps, his hands behind his back.

He went to bed early, and was still asleep next morning when the examining magistrate entered his room. He rubbed his hands together with a self-satisfied air. He said:

"Ha! ha! You're still sleeping. Well, my dear fellow, we have news this morning."

The Mayor sat up on his bed.

"What, pray?"

"Oh! Something strange. You remember well how the mother yesterday clamored for some memento of her daughter, especially her little cap? Well, on opening her door this morning, she found on the threshold, her child's two little wooden shoes. This proves that the crime was perpetrated by some one from the district, some one who felt pity for her. Besides, the postman, Mederic comes and brings the thimble, the knife and the needle case of the dead girl. So then the man in carrying off the clothes in order to hide them, must have let fall the articles which were in the pocket. As for me, I attach special importance about the wooden shoes, as they indicate a certain moral culture and a faculty for tenderness on the part of the assassin. We will therefore, if I have no objection, pass in review together the principal inhabitants of your district."

The Mayor got up. He rang for hot water to shave with, and said:

"With pleasure, but it will take rather a long time, and we may begin at once."

M. Putoin had sat astride on a chair, thus pursuing even in a room, his mania for horsemanship.

Renardet now covered his chin with a white lather while he looked at himself in the glass; then he sharpened his razor on the strop and went on:

"The principal inhabitant of Carvelin bears the name of Joseph Renardet, Mayor, a rich landowner, a rough man who beats guards and coachmen – "

The examining magistrate burst out laughing:

"That's enough; let us pass on to the next."

"The second in importance is ill. Pelledent, his deputy, a rearer of oxen, an equally rich landowner, a crafty peasant, very sly, very close-fisted on every question of money, but incapable in my opinion, of having perpetrated such a crime."

M. Putoin said:

"Let us pass on."

Then, while continuing to shave and wash himself, Renardet went on with the moral inspection of all the inhabitants of Carvelin. After two hours' discussion, their suspicions were fixed on three individuals who had hitherto borne a shady reputation – a poacher named Cavalle, a fisher for trails and crayfish named Paquet, and a bullsticker named Clovis.

PART II

The search for the perpetrator of the crime lasted all the summer, but he was not discovered. Those who were suspected and those who were arrested easily proved their innocence, and the authorities were compelled to abandon the attempt to capture the criminal.

But this murder seemed to have moved the entire country in a singular fashion. There redisquietude, a vague fear, a sensation of mysterious terror, springing not merely from the impossibility of discovering any trace of the assassin, but also and above all from that strange finding of the wooden shoes in front of La Roqué's door on the day after the crime. The certainty that the murderer had assisted at the investigation, that he was still living in the village without doubt, left a gloomy impression on people's minds, and appeared to brood over the neighborhood like an incessant menace.

The wood besides, had become a dreaded spot, a place to be avoided, and supposed to be haunted.

Formerly, the inhabitants used to come and sit down on the moss at the feet of the huge tall trees, or walk along the water's edge watching the trouts gliding under the green undergrowth. The boys used to play bowls, hide-and-seek and other games in certain places where they had upturned, smoothed out, and leveled the soil, and the girls, in rows of four or five, used to trip along holding one another by the arms, and screaming out with their shrill voices ballads which grated on the ear, and whose false notes disturbed the tranquil air and set the teeth on edge like drops of vinegar. Now nobody went any longer under the wide lofty vault, as if people were afraid of always finding there some corpse lying on the ground.

Autumn arrived, the leaves began to fall. They fell down day and night, descended from the tall trees, round and round whirling to the ground; and the sky could be seen through the bare branches. Sometimes when a gust of wind swept over the tree-tops, the slow, continuous rain suddenly grew heavier, and became a storm with a hoarse roar, which covered the moss with a thick carpet of yellow water that made rather a squashing sound under the feet. And the almost imperceptible murmur, the floating, ceaseless murmur gentle and sad, of this rainfall seemed like a low wail, and those leaves continually falling, seemed like tears, big tears shed by the tall mournful trees which were weeping, as it were, day and night over the close of the year, over the ending of warm dawns and soft twilights, over the ending of hot breezes and bright suns, and also perhaps over the crime which they had seen committed under the shade of their branches, over the girl violated and killed at their feet. They wept in the silence of the desolate empty wood, the abandoned, dreaded wood, where the soul, the childish soul of the dead little girl must be wandering all alone.