Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/248

Rh found wide open, and carried the key to his room. Early the next morning he went out into the country. He had to buy provisions for the supper that evening, and to go to the butchers at Vallée. He met on the way a bookseller of his acquaintance, with whom, as he himself said, he "gossiped." He was merry, even a little jovial.

Returning to the house, he met near the door three friends, whom he made come into the kitchen. He was in so frolicsome a humor that having removed his cloak he threw it playfully over the shoulders of one of the new-comers, and seizing a leg of mutton pretended to strike, saying, "I have the right to beat my own cloak as much as I please."

He then looked after the preparations for the supper, and sent one of the lackeys with some wood for his mistress's chamber. Eight o'clock struck, and Madame Mazel had not rung for her servant. Lebrun noted this and was troubled, for she usually arose at seven. He waited uneasily some minutes for her bell to ring. Then he went out hurriedly, and going to his house gave his wife seven louis and some half-crowns to keep, as he did not wish to carry them in his pocket. He said to her as he started to return, "Madame has not yet awaked; I do not know what to think of it."

On reaching Madame Mazel's house he found the servants seriously alarmed at the silence of their mistress. He resolved to go up to her room. He mounted the stairs and knocked at the different doors of the chamber, calling, "Madame Mazel!"

No response; his alarm increased.

"Can she have had an apoplectic stroke?" said one of the men.

"I fear it may be something worse," said Lebrun. "I feel very uneasy since I found the porte-cochère wide open last night."

M. René Savonnières was at once notified. He arrived, and knocked at the door of his mother's chamber without eliciting a reply. He then sent for a locksmith to open the door. "What can it be?" said he to Lebrun. "She may have had apoplexy."

"Some one should be sent for a physician," said one of the servants.

"It is not that," murmured Lebrun; "it is something worse. There has been some crime committed. I am very much disturbed on account of the gate which I found open last night."

The locksmith arrived, and the door was opened. Lebrun entered the room first and ran to the bed of Madame Mazel, tore aside the curtains, and cried, "Madame has been assassinated!" Then he entered the bathroom, unfastened the bar of the window, and threw open the blinds to admit the light, and disclosed the body of Madame Mazel lying upon her bed, dead, bathed in blood. Her face, her neck, and her hands were covered with wounds.

Lebrun's first thought was that his mistress had been murdered by a robber. He ran to the strong box and examined it. The lock was intact. "She has not been robbed," he said. "Why was it done?"

René de Savonnières sent at once for a magistrate and two physicians to come and view the body of his mother. These last found fifty wounds upon the victim, made probably by a knife. No one of these wounds was of itself mortal; death had resulted from the great loss of blood. She must have had the power to resist and to cry for aid.

The magistrate found in the bed a piece of a cravat, with embroidered ends, stained with blood, and a napkin rolled up in the shape of a cap which still preserved the form of the head on which it had been worn. This napkin, all covered with blood, had upon it the mark of Madame Mazel. It was inferred that during her struggle with the assassin she had torn his cravat and snatched off the cap which he wore.

Between the mutilated fingers of the dead woman were found some hairs which resembled in no respect those of Madame Mazel, and which had evidently been torn from the head of the murderer.

An examination of the room and the ad-