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He did so briefly, after the manner of a succinct report limited to essentials: "Three months before the crime, M. Fauville wrote a series of letters to one of his friends, M. Langernault, who, as Sergeant Mazeroux will have told you, Monsieur le Préfet, had been dead for several years, a fact of which M. Fauville cannot have been ignorant.
"This barn stood in a property called the Old Castle, belonging to M. Langernault, Jean Vernocq's protector, who was ill at the time. After his recovery, as he was cleaning his gun, he received a full charge of shot in the abdomen. The gun had been loaded without the old fellow's knowledge. By whom? By Jean Vernocq, who had also emptied his patron's cash box the night before ...
The method was the same as later on: it was not direct murder, but anonymous murder, murder by suggestion. Like Mornington the American, like Fauville the engineer, like Marie, like Gaston Sauverand, old Langernault had been craftily done away with and the Dedessuslamare couple driven to commit suicide in the barn.
Besides, Damigni had its own post-office, though the presumption was that M. Langernault had his letters addressed poste restante at Alençon. Don Luis and Mazeroux went on to the village of Damigni. Here again the postmaster knew no one of the name of Langernault; and this in spite of the fact that Damigni contained only about a thousand inhabitants.
Fauville relating to old Langernault; and, secondly, that he has been prowling around and inside old Langernault's property to-day for reasons that also remain to be seen. And I presume that he came by train and that he will go back by train." Perenna's supposition was confirmed without delay.
"But in the case of Hippolyte Fauville, whose good will he had secured through his acquaintance with old Langernault, and over whose mind he soon obtained an extraordinary influence, he had a greater difficulty to contend with.
He had found among the papers of Hippolyte Fauville's old friend Langernault particulars relating to the Roussel family and to the discord that reigned in the Fauville household. Five persons, all told, were in his way: first, of course, Cosmo Mornington; next, in the order of their claims, Hippolyte Fauville, his son Edmond, his wife Marie, and his cousin Gaston Sauverand.
"Let's go and call on the mayor," said Perenna. At the mayor's Mazeroux stated who he was and mentioned the object of his visit. The mayor nodded his head. "Old Langernault? I should think so. A decent fellow: used to run a business in the town." "And accustomed, I suppose, to fetch his letters at Alençon post-office?" "That's it, every day, for the sake of the walk." "And his house?"
Perenna himself was driving his open car and driving it in such a way that Mazeroux, almost stifling, kept blurting out, at intervals: "Lord, what a pace! Dash it all, how you're letting her go, Chief! Aren't you afraid of a smash? Remember the other day " They reached Alençon in time for lunch. When they had done, they went to the chief post-office. Nobody knew the name of Langernault there.
On learning what you must also know, that Langernault was dead, we resolved to visit his place, and we had succeeded in effecting an entrance when Florence saw you in the grounds. Wishing at all costs to avoid a meeting between you and myself, she dragged me across the lawn and behind the bushes.
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