Balaoo/1/2

CHAPTER II: FOOTPRINTS ON THE CEILING

They are early risers in the village. That morning, the inhabitants of Saint-Martindes-Bois put their noses out of their windows even earlier than usual. They were eager to know the exact reason of the disturbance during the night. They soon heard about the outrage at the Cerdogne Bridge and were already asking one another for details from door to door, when they saw big Roubion running like mad towards the Cours National. They tried in vain to stop and question him. Then they followed him to monsieur le maire's door, where he rang with all his might. M. Jules, still more than half asleep, came to the window. He saw Roubion standing utterly distraught and went down to let him in. Three minutes later, they both came out again and M. Jules looked as terribly flustered as big Roubion himself. They walked with great strides towards the Black Sun, without answering anybody who spoke to them. Ten or twelve persons came after them, recruiting others as they went along. But all had to wait outside the door of the inn, while the mayor and Roubion entered by the great archway.

Almost at the same time, good old Dr. Honorat appeared upon the scene, having been fetched by an ostler from the Black Sun. Dr. Honorat went into the inn, but the ostler remained with the crowd and told them what had happened. That was how Saint-Martin-des-Bois learnt that Blondel, the commercial traveller, had been found hanged, like Lombard and Camus. And soon the whole village was standing in front of the inn, filling the Rue Neuve from one side to the other.

To avoid this crowd, which was kept outside the barroom door by the crier — nicknamed Daddy Drum — the visitors who were in a hurry to leave the inn and the village went out at the back, by the side of the Parish School; and this also was the means of exit adopted by the mayor and Roubion, who, three-quarters of an hour later, left by a roundabout road for the station, where they were to meet M. Herment de Meyrentin, the examining magistrate of Belle-Étable.

M. de Meyrentin, who had been informed during the night of the fresh outrage on the line between Saint-Martin and Moulins, was expected by the half-past six train. No trains would run beyond Saint-Martin until after the line had been repaired. While waiting for the magistrate's arrival, the mayor and Roubion walked up and down the platform, with their heads sunk on their chests, their hands behind their backs, exchanging their thoughts in a low voice as though they feared that they might be spied upon and overheard. They were speaking of the Vautrins.

M. Jules admitted that the Three Brothers were not a credit to the district and that they might be held responsible for a good many minor misdeeds, but he maintained that they were incapable of murder. Big Roubion had a curious way of replying, in a hollow voice, "Mind what you're saying!. . . Mind what you're saying!" which gave the impression that he knew more than he could tell. This time, he abandoned his customary prudence. Had Mme. Roubion been there, she would have pinched his arm for him.

The mayor, nodding his head, contented himself with saying that those horrible crimes were becoming more difficult to explain. Lombard and Camus had never injured anybody. They had no enemies. They were on neither good terms nor bad with the Three Brothers. Lombard used to shave them for nothing, once a year; and Camus, with whom they had a small account, had never sent in his bill.

"May be!" said Roubion, after casting a glance round him. "But the Three Brothers were on very bad terms with poor Blondel!"

"Oh, politics!" growled the mayor.

"Well, believe me, monsieur le maire, you will see that you made a great mistake in bringing them into' your politics. . . ."

"They brought themselves in without me," replied M. Jules, greatly incensed. Meanwhile, Dr. Honorat arrived and joined them; telling them that he had sent Patrice, whose condition no longer gave cause for anxiety, to his uncle, old Coriolis Saint-Aubin. Patrice had remained as though stupefied and had merely shaken his head in reply to the questions put to him.

Blondel's body had been laid on the billiard-table; they were careful not to touch it more than could be helped. The doctor had refused to take any observations before the arrival of the magistrate. He had ordered rest for Patrice. Besides, it was the magistrate's business to question him; and nobody else's.

"'You did quite right," M. Jules agreed. "And then, from what I could gather out of his monosyllables and gestures, he did not see the murderer."

"Whether he recognized the murderers or not," said good old Dr. Bonarat, "I hope that, after what took place last night between Blondel and Hubert, they will not be spared. . . ."

"The magistrate will please himself," retorted M. Jules, who was becoming more and more tetchy.

"The magistrate is in the hands of the deputy. You will see, they'll want to 'give them another chance' again!" moaned Honorat.

"Oh, but look here, my dear doctor, if you know anything, say so! Don't behave like the peasants! . . ."

"I have every reason to be at least as careful as they are. I am often on the roads at midnight, all by myself, in my gig, and am more exposed than anybody to the wicked attempts of wicked fellows."

Nevertheless, he could not refrain from saying that he had more than once come upon the Vautrins in suspicious circumstances, hiding themselves in order to drag to the Black Woods a cart covered with branches and containing "what they had chosen to put there!"

The mayor snarled:

You ought to have looked; it might have been your chest of drawers."

Honorat grabbed the mayor's hand:

"Come, come, M. Jules! . . . You know as well as I do that they are the only people capable of such acts!. . ."

The mayor stopped both Honarat and Roubion and, taking each by a button of his overcoat:

"I tell you once more that I know nothing about it; and I do know nothing about it. . . . You're beginning to annoy me! . . . One thing which you may as well know is that we have discovered marks that cannot have been made by the Three Brothers! . . ."

"Which are those?"

"The marks on the neck, to begin with. . . ."

"Oh, tut!" growled Honorat. "You're trying to humbug me now. I've seen those marks on the neck myself. . . ."

"You've seen nothing! . . ."

"What's that?"

"Oh, the magistrate is sure to speak to you about it to-day and Roubion can be trusted not to talk! I'm sick and tired of having 'The Vautrins! The Vautrins!' hurled at my head. . . . No, doctor, you have seen nothing!. . ."

"But I was the first to examine the necks of Lombard and Camus."

The mayor interrupted him:

"If I may say so without offending you, if you had taken as long to examine them as the medical expert who was appointed afterwards, you would have perceived that the terrible marks of strangulation were made upside down!"

"What? Upside down?"

"It is so incredible," continued M. Jules, "that I am not surprised that you did not observe it. You saw the prints of the fingers and that was enough for you: 'Murder,' said you, 'strangulation.' How could you be expected to observe that the print of the thumb was at the bottom and that of the other fingers at the top? To do that, you would have to imagine that the crime was committed by a murderer working with his head downwards!"

The doctor and Roubion looked at the mayor as though he had suddenly gone mad. Honorat ended by shrugging his shoulders:

"If I did not make those observations, it must have been because I considered them superfluous. Strangulation with the fingers was a certainty. But it's true that I should never have imagined the crime to be committed by a murderer with his head downwards: it was easier and simpler to picture the murderer coming up from behind and dragging his victim's head down backwards."

"The enquiry has shown that position to be impossible," said M. Jules, roughly.

"Then what?" asked Roubion, timidly.

"Then don't come bothering me with the Three Brothers! Did you ever see them walk head downwards?"

Roubion and the doctor once more exchanged glances.

"Ah, but look here!" exclaimed good old Dr. Honorat, folding his arms. "What's your examining-magistrate after? And what does he think?"

"You had better ask him!" replied the mayor, as the train entered the station.

The first person to alight was M. Herment de Meyrentin. He jumped out on his short legs and seemed to come rolling towards the authorities waiting for him. He was as round as a top. He had a good-natured, genial face, brightened by a little turn-up nose and also by the sense of his high responsibility in all this criminal business at Saint-Martindes-Bois. Behind him came his clerk, a tall, gawky, elderly man, dressed in a huge frockcoat, in which he limped along with difficulty.

The mayor, Roubion and the doctor made a rush for the magistrate, who spun round two or three times on his own axis before stopping. He did not give them time to say a word. He seized hold of the mayor:

"I say, M. Jules, you never told me that! It seems that, some years ago, all the dogs in your district were found hanged! . . ."

"Yes, monsieur le juge, but allow me. . . ."

"Is it true? Yes or no?"

"We have serious news. . . ."

"There is nothing more serious than that! . . . Is it true or not?"

"It is quite true. . . ."

"And nobody ever knew how?"

"No, monsieur le juge."

"For, after all, those dogs did not hang themselves of their own accord!"

"No, monsieur le juge . . . Monsieur le juge, there has been a fresh murder! . . ."

"Eh? . . ."

"Yes, Blondel, the commercial traveller from Clermont-Ferrand, was found hanged last night, at Roubion's. . . ."

The magistrate looked at them:

"The devil!" he said; and he began to spin round again. "Come!"

They followed him. All of them climbed into the omnibus of the Black Sun, which contained no other passengers. Here, before anything else, M. Herment de Meyrentin handed M. Jules a sheet of letter-paper and said:

"Read that aloud."

M. Jules read it. It was a last word from the divisional surgeon, who said:

"The wounds on the throats of Lombard and Camus look as if they had been made by some one walking upside down."

And the note ended:

"Imagine the murderer coming towards his victim, not walking on the floor, but walking on the ceiling; and you will have those wounds."

"There! What did I tell you the other day? I didn't invent it, you see!" said M. Herment de Meyrentin, taking back his note with a little movement of pride.

M. Jules gave a sigh. The doctor and Roubion lowered their eyes, dumbfoundered, flabbergasted. The magistrate's clerk scratched the tip of his long, aggressive nose.

Five minutes later, all four entered the bar-room of the inn. The window-shutters were still closed; and the sound of an impatient crowd penetrated from the outside.

The two billiard-lamps had been lit. The first thing that M. de Meyrentin saw, on entering, was, lying on the billiard-table, the lifeless body of Gustave Blondel, the linendraper's traveller from Clermont-Ferrand and one of the political agents of M. le Comte de Montancel, whom he knew well. He leant over the corpse.

M. de Meyrentin at once observed on the poor fellow's throat the terrible prints, the marks of "upside-down strangulation," of which Lombard and Camus had died. He drew himself up, settled his double eye-glass on his little turn-up nose and looked up in the air.

What was he looking at? Every eye had followed the direction taken by his. But there was nothing to be distinguished above the shaded lamps.

"Open the windows," ordered M. Herment de Meyrentin.

Roubion and the servants hastened to obey the instruction. The shutters were flung back. The daylight streamed in and a hundred heads pushed against the windows and the door to see. At first, there was nothing but cries of pity for the fate of Blondel, whose body the people saw covered with a sheet.

And then they noticed that the magistrate was looking up in the air. They did likewise. And everyone saw what M. de Meyrentin saw, as, with outstretched arms and open mouth, he continued to stare at the ceiling.

There was but one cry:

"Footprints on the ceiling!"