Chapter Chapter 1 · On Thursday, the 6th of March, 1862, two days after Shrove Tuesday, five

women belonging to the village of La Jonchere presented themselves at

the police station at Bougival.

They stated that for two days past no one had seen the Widow Lerouge,

one of their neighbours, who lived by herself in an isolated cottage.

They had several times knocked at the door, but all in vain. The

window-shutters as well as the door were closed; and it was impossible

to obtain even a glimpse of the interior.

This silence, this sudden disappearance alarmed them. Apprehensive of

a crime, or at least of an accident, they requested the interference of

the police to satisfy their doubts by forcing the door and entering the

house.

Bougival is a pleasant riverside village, peopled on Sundays by crowds

of boating parties. Trifling offences are frequently heard of in its

neighbourhood, but crimes are rare.

The commissary of police at first refused to listen to the women, but

their importunities so fatigued him that he at length acceded to their

request. He sent for the corporal of gendarmes, with two of his

men, called into requisition the services of a locksmith, and, thus

accompanied, followed the neighbours of the Widow Lerouge.

La Jonchere owes some celebrity to the inventor of the sliding railway,

who for some years past has, with more enterprise than profit, made

public trials of his system in the immediate neighbourhood. It is

a hamlet of no importance, resting upon the slope of the hill which

overlooks the Seine between La Malmaison and Bougival. It is about

twenty minutes’ walk from the main road, which, passing by Rueil and

Port-Marly, goes from Paris to St. Germain, and is reached by a steep

and rugged lane, quite unknown to the government engineers.

The party, led by the gendarmes, followed the main road which here

bordered the river until it reached this lane, into which it turned, and

stumbled over the rugged inequalities of the ground for about a hundred

yards, when it arrived in front of a cottage of extremely modest yet

respectable appearance. This cottage had probably been built by some

little Parisian shopkeeper in love with the beauties of nature; for

all the trees had been carefully cut down. It consisted merely of two

apartments on the ground floor with a loft above. Around it extended a

much-neglected garden, badly protected against midnight prowlers, by

a very dilapidated stone wall about three feet high, and broken and

crumbling in many places. A light wooden gate, clumsily held in its

place by pieces of wire, gave access to the garden.

“It is here,” said the women.

The commissary stopped. During his short walk, the number of his

followers had been rapidly increasing, and now included all the

inquisitive and idle persons of the neighbourhood. He found himself

surrounded by about forty individuals burning with curiosity.

“No one must enter the garden,” said he; and, to ensure obedience, he

placed the two gendarmes on sentry before the entrance, and advanced

towards the house, accompanied by the corporal and the locksmith.

He knocked several times loudly with his leaded cane, first at the door,

and then successively at all the window shutters. After each blow, he

placed his ear against the wood and listened. Hearing nothing, he turned

to the locksmith.

“Open!” said he.

The workman unstrapped his satchel, and produced his implements. He had

already introduced a skeleton key into the lock, when a loud exclamation

was heard from the crowd outside the gate.

“The key!” they cried. “Here is the key!”

A boy about twelve years old playing with one of his companions, had

seen an enormous key in a ditch by the roadside; he had picked it up and

carried it to the cottage in triumph.

“Give it to me youngster,” said the corporal. “We shall see.”

The key was tried, and it proved to be the key of the house.

The commissary and the locksmith exchanged glances full of sinister

misgivings. “This looks bad,” muttered the corporal. They entered the

house, while the crowd, restrained with difficulty by the gendarmes,

stamped with impatience, or leant over the garden wall, stretching their

necks eagerly, to see or hear something of what was passing within the

cottage.

Those who anticipated the discovery of a crime, were unhappily not

deceived. The commissary was convinced of this as soon as he crossed the

threshold. Everything in the first room pointed with a sad eloquence to

the recent presence of a malefactor. The furniture was knocked about,

and a chest of drawers and two large trunks had been forced and broken

open.

In the inner room, which served as a sleeping apartment, the disorder

was even greater. It seemed as though some furious hand had taken a

fiendish pleasure in upsetting everything. Near the fireplace, her face

buried in the ashes, lay the dead body of Widow Lerouge. All one side of

the face and the hair were burnt; it seemed a miracle that the fire had

not caught her clothing.

“Wretches!” exclaimed the corporal. “Could they not have robbed, without

assassinating the poor woman?”

“But where has she been wounded?” inquired the commissary, “I do not see

any blood.”

“Look! here between the shoulders,” replied the corporal; “two fierce

blows, by my faith. I’ll wager my stripes she had no time to cry out.”

He stooped over the corpse and touched it.

“She is quite cold,” he continued, “and it seems to me that she is no

longer very stiff. It is at least thirty-six hours since she received

her death-blow.”

The commissary began writing, on the corner of a table, a short official

report.

“We are not here to talk, but to discover the guilty,” said he to the

corporal. “Let information be at once conveyed to the justice of the

peace, and the mayor, and send this letter without delay to the Palais

de Justice. In a couple of hours, an investigating magistrate can be

here. In the meanwhile, I will proceed to make a preliminary inquiry.”

“Shall I carry the letter?” asked the corporal of gendarmes.

“No, send one of your men; you will be useful to me here in keeping

these people in order, and in finding any witnesses I may want. We

must leave everything here as it is. I will install myself in the other

room.”

A gendarme departed at a run towards the station at Rueil; and the

commissary commenced his investigations in regular form, as prescribed

by law.

“Who was Widow Lerouge? Where did she come from? What did she do? Upon

what means, and how did she live? What were her habits, her morals, and

what sort of company did she keep? Was she known to have enemies? Was

she a miser? Did she pass for being rich?”

The commissary knew the importance of ascertaining all this: but

although the witnesses were numerous enough, they possessed but

little information. The depositions of the neighbours, successively

interrogated, were empty, incoherent, and incomplete. No one knew

anything of the victim, who was a stranger in the country. Many

presented themselves as witnesses moreover, who came forward less to

afford information than to gratify their curiosity. A gardener’s wife,

who had been friendly with the deceased, and a milk-woman with whom

she dealt, were alone able to give a few insignificant though precise

details.

In a word, after three hours of laborious investigation, after having

undergone the infliction of all the gossip of the country, after

receiving evidence the most contradictory, and listened to commentaries

the most ridiculous, the following is what appeared the most reliable to

the commissary.

Twelve years before, at the beginning of 1850, the woman Lerouge had

made her appearance at Bougival with a large wagon piled with furniture,

linen, and her personal effects. She had alighted at an inn, declaring

her intention of settling in the neighbourhood, and had immediately gone

in quest of a house. Finding this one unoccupied, and thinking it would

suit her, she had taken it without trying to beat down the terms, at

a rental of three hundred and twenty francs payable half yearly and in

advance, but had refused to sign a lease.

The house taken, she occupied it the same day, and expended about a

hundred francs on repairs.

She was a woman about fifty-four or fifty-five years of age, well

preserved, active, and in the enjoyment of excellent health. No one

knew her reasons for taking up her abode in a country where she was an

absolute stranger. She was supposed to have come from Normandy, having

been frequently seen in the early morning to wear a white cotton cap.

This night-cap did not prevent her dressing very smartly during the day;

indeed, she ordinarily wore very handsome dresses, very showy ribbons

in her caps, and covered herself with jewels like a saint in a chapel.

Without doubt she had lived on the coast, for ships and the sea recurred

incessantly in her conversation.

She did not like speaking of her husband who had, she said, perished

in a shipwreck. But she had never given the slightest detail. On one

particular occasion she had remarked, in presence of the milk-woman and

three other persons, “No woman was ever more miserable than I during my

married life.” And at another she had said, “All new, all fine! A new

broom sweeps clean. My defunct husband only loved me for a year!”

Widow Lerouge passed for rich, or at the least for being very well off

and she was not a miser. She had lent a woman at La Malmaison sixty

francs with which to pay her rent, and would not let her return them.

At another time she had advanced two hundred francs to a fisherman of

Port-Marly. She was fond of good living, spent a good deal on her food,

and bought wine by the half cask. She took pleasure in treating her

acquaintances, and her dinners were excellent. If complimented on her

easy circumstances, she made no very strong denial. She had frequently

been heard to say, “I have nothing in the funds, but I have everything I

want. If I wished for more, I could have it.”

Beyond this, the slightest allusion to her past life, her country, or

her family had never escaped her. She was very talkative, but all she

would say would be to the detriment of her neighbours. She was supposed,

however, to have seen the world, and to know a great deal. She was very

distrustful and barricaded herself in her cottage as in a fortress. She

never went out in the evening, and it was well known that she got tipsy

regularly at her dinner and went to bed very soon afterwards. Rarely had

strangers been seen to visit her; four or five times a lady accompanied

by a young man had called, and upon one occasion two gentlemen, one

young, the other old and decorated, had come in a magnificent carriage.

In conclusion, the deceased was held in but little esteem by her

neighbours. Her remarks were often most offensive and odious in the

mouth of a woman of her age. She had been heard to give a young girl

the most detestable counsels. A pork butcher, belonging to Bougival,

embarrassed in his business, and tempted by her supposed wealth, had at

one time paid her his addresses. She, however, repelled his advances,

declaring that to be married once was enough for her. On several

occasions men had been seen in her house; first of all, a young one, who

had the appearance of a clerk of the railway company; then another,

a tall, elderly man, very sunburnt, who was dressed in a blouse, and

looked very villainous. These men were reported to be her lovers.

Whilst questioning the witnesses, the commissary wrote down their

depositions in a more condensed form, and he had got so far, when the

investigating magistrate arrived, attended by the chief of the detective

police, and one of his subordinates.