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Updated: June 11, 2025
"I don't know what you mean," Juve said deprecatingly. "If you refer to the Beltham and Langrune cases, you must admit that your congratulations are not deserved. I have achieved no definite result in either of those affairs." M. Fuselier also dropped into a comfortable chair. He lighted a cigarette. "You have found out nothing fresh about that mysterious murder of Lord Beltham?" "Nothing.
You have just told me yourself that there was no one in the château but Mme. de Langrune, the two young people Thérèse and Charles, and the two maids: it certainly is not any one of those who can be the guilty person, for the way in which the crime was committed, and the force of the blows dealt, show that the criminal was a man a professional murderer in fact.
"Oh, if I could only prove it: prove that the piece missing from this map, this map belonging to Gurn, is really and truly the piece I found near Verrières Station just after the murder of the Marquise de Langrune what a triumph that would be! What a damning proof! What astounding consequences this discovery of mine might have!"
Will you be able to infer from that one fact that Gurn and the man who murdered the Marquise de Langrune are one and the same person? Is not that going rather far? Especially as, if I remember rightly, it was proved that the murderer in that case was the son of a M. Rambert, and this young Rambert committed suicide after the crime?" Juve evaded the issue. "Well, we shall see," was all he said.
But when the Baronne de Vibray put herself out to grass, as she racily phrased it, and spent a few weeks at Querelles, her estate close to the château of Beaulieu, nothing pleased her better than to take her place again in the delightful company of the Marquise de Langrune and her friends.
"Ah!" he exclaimed: "this is interesting!" and with a finger he pointed to the inner bolt on the door, the screws of which were wrenched half out, showing that an attempt had been made to force the door. "Did Mme. de Langrune bolt her door every night?" he asked. "Yes, always," Dollon answered.
"So, on the night of the crime the only persons sleeping in the château were Mme. de Langrune, her granddaughter Mlle. Thérèse, M. Charles Rambert and the two maids. Is that so?" "Yes, sir." "Then it does not seem likely that the crime was committed by anyone living in the château?"
As if M. Havard had had an idea that the Langrune affair would prove to be puzzling and complicated, he had singled out the very best of his detectives, the most expert inspector of them all Juve.
"Nevertheless," M. de Presles remarked, "inasmuch as someone has committed a murder, it must necessarily be the fact, either that that someone was hidden inside the château when Mme. de Langrune herself locked the front door, or else that he got in during the night. Do you not see yourself, M. Dollon, that one or other of these two hypotheses must be correct?" The steward hesitated.
So will you please tell me whether your son confessed to having murdered Mme. de Langrune, either during that night when you persuaded him to run away, or afterwards? Yes or no, please." "I can't answer, sir. My son was mad! I will not believe my son was a criminal! There was absolutely no motive to prompt him to the deed, and his mother is in an asylum! That is the whole explanation of the crime!
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