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You entered no place, not even a cafe or a theatre, or a tobacconist's to light one of your favourite trabucos?" "No, sir." "Well, it is a great misfortune for you, yes, a very great misfortune; for I must inform you, that it was precisely during this Tuesday evening, between eight o'clock and midnight, that Widow Lerouge was assassinated. Justice can point out the exact hour.
"Really this affair of La Jonchere is driving me out of my senses! I can think of nothing but this Widow Lerouge. I shall be seeing her in everything now." In the mean while, an uncontrollable curiosity made him peruse the entire newspaper. He found nothing with the exception of these lines, to justify or explain even the slightest emotion.
"She, this woman?" stammered old Tabaret. This time he was thunderstruck. Widow Lerouge Noel's nurse? He was most unfortunate. Providence had evidently chosen him for its instrument, and was leading him by the hand. He was about to obtain all the information, which half an hour ago he had almost despaired of procuring. He remained seated before Noel amazed and speechless.
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.
What would he have done after the terrible revelation? He scarcely dared ask himself. He understood the motive which prompted the murder of Widow Lerouge; he could explain it to himself; he could almost excuse it. It was one of those crimes which society might, if not forget, at least forgive up to a certain point, because the motive was not a shameful one.
M. Daburon began to despair of gaining the least enlightenment, when some one brought the wife of a grocer of Bougival, at whose shop the victim used to deal, and a child thirteen years old, who knew, it was said, something positive. The grocer's wife first made her appearance. She had heard Widow Lerouge speak of having a son still living.
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?"
Are you possessed of other proofs? I expected, of course, a great many other objections. 'Germain, said I, 'can speak. He told me that Germain had been dead for several years. Then I spoke of the nurse, Widow Lerouge I explained how easily she could be found and questioned, adding that she lived at La Jonchere." "And what said he, Noel, to this?" asked old Tabaret anxiously.
For that, his mother's consent was necessary; and I was taking to Claudine a document which the notary had drawn up, and which she signed. This is it." M. Daburon took the paper, and appeared to read it attentively. After a moment he asked: "Have you thought who could have assassinated your wife?" Lerouge made no reply. "Do you suspect any one?" persisted the magistrate.
The procession of witnesses under the charge of the corporal of gendarmes were again interrogated by the investigating magistrate. But nothing new was elicited. It was evident that Widow Lerouge had been a singularly discreet woman; for, although very talkative, nothing in any way connected with her antecedents remained in the memory of the gossips of La Jonchere.
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