Part 2

The poor _femme de ménage_, whose life had been hitherto without an event worth the attention of the police, did not escape the most rigid scrutiny. Her history was sifted out as carefully as that of the other three. She was married to a second husband, and the mother of a boy of eighteen, who was salesman in one of the large dry-goods shops. Her husband, besides the duties of concierge in the house where they lived--an occupation which paid for the rent of the rooms they occupied--managed to make a trifle at his trade of tailor, repairing and turning old garments, and on rare occasions making a new coat or a pair of trousers for an old customer. He was also employed as a supernumerary in the Grand Opera, a duty which obliged him to attend the theatre often, to the serious interruption of his home occupations. He could not well give up the place in the theatre, for his salary was just enough, with the rest he earned, to make both ends meet. The wife was obliged to be at home so much, to fill her husband’s place in the care of the great house, that she could only manage to do very little outside work. The families in the house were all working people, and consequently could not afford the luxury of assistance in the kitchen. She therefore found a place as _femme de ménage_ with some family in the vicinity. For some time she had been in the employ of the dead artist, and was particularly satisfied with the place, first because she could choose her own hours, and then because she had very little to do, and was paid as much as if she took care of a family--twenty francs a month. One circumstance excited the suspicion of the police. She had been gone nearly the whole afternoon of the day before the murder. When she returned at dark her husband noticed that she was heated and confused, and asked her where she had been. She refused to tell him, painfully trying to make the refusal palatable by jokes. And the police with little difficulty found out exactly what she had been doing for the three or four hours in question. She had been to the Cemetery of Montmartre. She had been seen by the keepers there busy near a grave on the third side avenue to the left, about a quarter way up the slope. They had observed her digging up the two small flowering shrubs she had planted there years before, and had constantly tended. These shrubs she had wrapped up in an old colored shirt, and had carried them away. Further, a neighbor of the dead artist in the little street on Montmartre deposed that late in the afternoon of the day before the tragedy she had seen the _femme de ménage_ enter the gate of the studio garden, bearing an irregular-shaped bundle of considerable size. The police, on visiting the garden, found the two shrubs described by the keepers of the cemetery freshly planted in the little central plot.

Then for the first time they questioned the _femme de ménage_ herself, and she confessed, with an abundance of tears, that her only daughter had died five years previous, and that she had been buried in the Cimetière Montmartre, and the grave had been purchased for the period of five years. The term was to expire within a few days, and the poor woman, unable to pay for a further lease of ground, was obliged to give up her claim to the grave. She could not bear to lose the shrubs, for they were souvenirs of her dead child, who cultivated them when very small plants in flower-pots on the balcony. The mother had dug them up in the cemetery, and transplanted them in the garden of the house where she worked, having no garden-plot of her own. She intended the next day to tell the artist what she had done, and to get his permission to let the shrubs flourish there. She had refused to explain her absence to her husband because the girl had been dead a year when she married him, and he had sometimes reproached her for spending her time in the cemetery. As it was not his child, he could not be expected to care for it; and the poor mother, not having the courage to ask for money to renew the lease of the grave, kept her own counsel about the matter.

The examination of the witnesses, and the investigation of their personal history, threw but little light upon the exact state of the relations which existed between the painter and La Rose Blanche. The neighbors had overheard at various times loud talking in the studio, and occasionally some violent language that sounded very much like a quarrel. One or two of the shrewd ones, especially an old woman who sold vegetables from a little hand-cart on the corner, volunteered their opinion that the model was in love with the artist. The withered and blear-eyed old huckster gave as reason for her opinion that the model had generally stayed long after painting hours, and was unusually prompt in the morning. But there was quite as much proof that Mandel did not care for the model as that she was enamoured of him. He never watched for her in the morning, never came to the door with her; treated her always, as far as was noticed by any one who had seen them together, as if on the most formal terms with her. In the Café du Rat Mort it was found that La Rose Blanche had often come in during the evening, sometimes in fine costume and elaborate toilet, and had placed herself at the table where Mandel and Benner sat. The latter always appeared glad to see her, and joked and chatted with her, while Mandel was evidently annoyed by her presence, and did not try very hard to conceal his feelings.

An almost inquisitorial examination of Benner elicited the fact that his friend had confided to him that the model tormented him with her attentions, and so thrust herself upon him that he was at a loss what to do about it. He had thought seriously of giving up the picture he was at work on, so that she might have no excuse for coming to his studio. The same examination drew out the confession that he was in love with La Rose Blanche himself, and had been for some time.

Now the most plausible theory of the three officers was apparently well enough supported by the fact to warrant a most careful investigation. This theory was based chiefly on the common French axiom that a woman is at the bottom of every piece of mischief. The strongest suspicion pointed towards La Rose Blanche, and no motive but that of jealousy could be assigned for the deed. It was necessary, then, to find some cause for jealousy before this theory could be accepted. Mandel was, as the study of his character had proved to the officers, of a quiet and peaceable disposition, and not in the habit of frequenting society. Although, like most young men, he spent part of his time in the café, he was more disposed to stay at home than to join in any time-killing amusement. After the most diligent search, the officers only succeeded in finding one girl besides La Rose Blanche who had been at all on friendly terms with the artist. She was a model who had posed for a picture he painted while he occupied a studio in Rue Monsieur le Prince, in the Latin Quarter. But it was also found out that La Rose Blanche had never seen Mandel until long after the picture was finished and the model dismissed. In this way the investigation went on with all possible ingenuity and most wearisome deliberation. No effort was more fruitful than the one just described. Every clue which promised to lead to the slightest knowledge of the life of the artist or the character of the model was followed out persistently, doggedly, and often even cruelly. Thus months passed.

Benner had been discharged from custody after his first long and trying examination. Unable to work, he wandered around the city in an aimless way. He could not help having a faint yet agonizing glimmer of hope that he might meet with a solution of the mystery of his friend’s death. This solution would, he was sure, prove La Rose Blanche innocent. His unfinished statue in the clay, moistened only at irregular intervals, cracked and shrunk, and gradually fell to pieces. Dust settled in his studio, and his modelling tools rusted where they lay. At first he had tried to work, and, summoning another model, he had uncovered the clay. But he only spoiled what he touched, and after a short time he threw down his tools and walked away.

La Rose Blanche languished in the house of detention. Benner gradually began to lose courage, and perhaps even his faith wavered a little. When he learned that in the course of the examination the sleepy concierge of the house where the model lived had testified that she was absent all night at the time of the tragedy, Benner felt convinced that circumstances had combined to convict the girl. Her explanation had been most unsatisfactory. She had quarrelled with the artist because he told her he was annoyed by her. She did not remember what she said or did; she only knew that she left the house in a great passion, and walked the streets all night in the rain. Her passion gave way to her affection for the artist, and as soon as it was light she went to the studio to ask him to forgive her. She found him dead.

It was the apathy of La Rose Blanche quite as much as her inability to prove herself innocent that caused the increasing uneasiness in Benner’s mind. Not that he believed her for a moment guilty, but he knew that she was convicting herself with fatal rapidity. He, knowing her character, could understand how she could walk the streets all night in the storm. He, in the warmth of his passion for her, had often fought with the weather for the relief the struggle afforded him. Love-madness is nothing new, and the model’s actions were only one phase of it. At the little Café du Rat Mort, Benner now spent all his evenings, and on some days part of the afternoon. He grew to be one of the fixtures of the establishment. The habitués of the place had ceased to talk about him, and no longer pointed him out to the new-comers as the friend of the dead artist. The self-consciousness, which in the beginning was painful to him, gradually wore away, and he almost forgot himself at times in connection with the tragedy, and only kept constantly a dull sense of waiting--waiting for he knew not what. Evening after evening he sat at the little corner table of the front room of the café, smoking cigarettes, playing with the curious long-handled spoons, and occasionally sipping coffee or a glass of beer. The two tables between his seat and the window on the street changed occupants many times during the evening, and the newspapers grew sticky, fumbled, and worn at the hands of the frequent readers. The opposite side of this room of the café was filled by a long counter, covered on top with shining zinc, and divided into several compartments, on the highest of which stood the water carafes and a filter. Behind this counter sat Madame Lépic, the wife of the proprietor, placidly knitting from morning until midnight. When the street door opened she raised her eyes and greeted the comer with a hospitable smile; then her face resumed its normal expression of contentment. By carefully watching her it could be discovered that she had a habit of quickly glancing out from under her eyebrows and taking in the whole interior of the café in a flash of her dark little eye. Just beyond the end of the counter a partition, wainscoted as high as a man’s shoulder and with glass above, divided the café into two rooms. From where she sat Madame Lépic could overlook the four tables in the inner room as well as the three in the front. Her habit of constant watchfulness was cultivated, of course, by the necessity of keeping run of the two tired-looking waiters, who, like the rest of their class, had the weakness of being tempted by the abundance of money which passed through their hands. The police had already approached Madame Lépic, and she had given her testimony in regard to the actions of the model with the two young men. The police would not have been Parisian if they had not engaged madame to keep an eye on Benner. If he had not been too much occupied with his own thoughts, he might have detected her watching him constantly and persistently, even after he had ceased to be interesting in the eyes of the old habitués of the café.

It was a long four months after that terrible morning when Benner sat, late one afternoon, in the café brooding as usual. Before him on the stained marble slab stood a glass of water, a tall goblet and long spoon with twisted handle, and a porcelain match-holder half full of matches. Bent over the table, Benner was absent-mindedly arranging bits of matches on the slab, something in the shape of a guillotine. There were few people in the café. The click of the dominoes in the back room, an occasional word from one of the players, and the snap, snap, of Madame Lépic’s needles alone broke the quiet of the interior. As Benner sat watching the outline of the guillotine he had formed of broken matches, he saw one of the corner pieces straighten out, and thus destroy the symmetry of the arrangement. This was a piece which had been bent at right angles and only half broken off. Without paying particular attention to the occurrence, he took up the bit, threw it on the floor, and put another one, similarly broken, in its place. In a few moments this straightened out also, and this time the movement attracted Benner’s curiosity. Throwing it aside, he replaced it by a fresh piece, and this repeated the movement of the first two. Now his curiosity was excited in earnest, and his face and figure expressed such unusual interest that the sharp glitter was visible under Madame Lépic’s eyebrows, and her knitting went on only spasmodically. A fourth, fifth, and sixth piece was put in place on the corner of the little guillotine, and as the last one was moving in the same way as the first one did, Benner perceived that the water spilled on the table trickled down to where the broken match was placed. He took another match, as if to break it, but before the brittle wood snapped, his face lit up with a sudden expression of surprise and joy, and he started to his feet so violently as to nearly throw the marble slab from the iron legs. The click of the dominoes ceased, faces were seen at the glass of the partition, and Madame Lépic fairly stared, forgetting for once her rôle of disinterested knitter.

Without stopping to pay, without seeming to see anybody or anything, Benner strode nervously and quickly out of the café. When he was gone, Madame Lépic touched her bell, one of the drowsy waiters came, received a whispered order, and went out of the front door hatless. A few moments later, even before Benner had disappeared along the boulevard in the direction of his studio, a neatly dressed man came out of the police station near the café and walked in the same direction, the sculptor had taken. After Benner had entered the _porte-cochère_ of the great building where his studio was, the police agent went into the concierge’s little office near the door, and sat there as if he were at home. In a few moments a nervous step was heard on the asphalt of the court-yard, and the agent had only time to withdraw into the gloom of the corner behind the stove when Benner passed out again, looking neither to the right nor the left. He was evidently much excited, and clutched rather than held a small parcel in his hand. The agent followed him a short distance behind, and, meeting a _sergent de ville_, paused to say a word to him. As Benner climbed on the top of an Odéon omnibus, the agent took a seat inside. Benner had not reached the interior boulevard before his studio was searched.

It was now nearly six o’clock, and the omnibus was crowded all the way across the city. As soon as the foot of the Rue des Beaux Arts was reached, Benner hurriedly descended, without waiting to stop the omnibus, and ran to the Academy. Here he sought the concierge, asked him a few questions, and then walked quickly away to the east side of the Luxembourg Gardens, where he rang the bell at the door of a house. He asked the servant who answered the bell if Professor Brunin was at home, and was evidently chagrined at being told he was absent and would not return for an hour or two. Entering the nearest café, he called for pen and paper, and wrote three pages rapidly, but legibly. By this time he had grown calmer in mind, not losing, however, the physical spring which his first excitement had induced. When his letter was finished he put it in an envelope, addressed it, and left it at the professor’s house. This done, he walked rapidly across the Luxembourg Gardens to the Odéon, took an omnibus, accompanied as before by the agent, and at the end of the route, in the Place Pigalle, he descended, hastened to his studio, and did not come out again that evening. The great window was lighted all night long, and the agent in the entry could hear sawing, hammering, and filing at intervals, as he listened at the door every hour or two.

The gray morning broke, and Benner was still at his work. As the daylight dimmed the light of the lamp, he seemed not to notice it, but continued bent over his table, where various blocks, pieces of sheet brass, and a few tools were scattered promiscuously about. A piece of brown paper lay on the floor with what appeared to be a glove. On the corner of the table was a rude imitation of a human hand made of wood, hinged so that the fingers would move. This was not of recent construction; but on a small drawing-board, over which Benner was leaning, was fixed a curious piece of mechanism which he was adjusting, having apparently just put it in working order. He had joined together five pieces of oak-wood, about three quarters of an inch wide and half an inch thick, arranged according to their length. The joints had been cut in the shape of quarter-circles, like the middle hinge of a carpenter’s rule. After these were fitted to each other, a sawcut was made in each one, and a piece of sheet brass inserted which joined the concave to the convex end. Two rivets on one end and one on the other, serving as a pivot, completed the hinge. The joints were so arranged that, when opened to the greatest extent, the five pieces composing the whole made a straight line. The longest piece of wood was fastened at the middle and outer end by screws, which held it firmly to the drawing-board. The shortest piece, on the opposite end of the line, had attached to it on the under side a pointed bit of brass like an index. As morning broke, Benner was engaged in fixing a bit of an ivory metre measure, which is marked to millimetres, underneath this index point. After this scale was securely fastened in its place the mechanism was evidently completed, for he straightened up, looked at his work from a distance, then bent over it again, and gently tried the joints, watching with some satisfaction the index as it moved along the scale. While preoccupied with this study, a sudden knock at the door caused him to start like a guilty man. He threw open the door almost tragically. It was only the concierge, who brought him a letter. He tore it open, and read it and re-read it with eagerness; then went to the table and carefully measured several times the whole length of the mechanism, from the inner screw of the longest piece to the end of the shortest. He then began to calculate and to cipher on the edge of the drawing-board. The letter read as follows:

“MONSIEUR,--En fait de renseignements sur la dilatation du bois je ne connais que ceux donnés par M. Reynaud dans son traité d’architecture, vol. i., pages 84 à 87 de la 2ᵉ êdition.

“Il en résulte que:

“1. Les bois verts se dilatent beaucoup plus que ceux purgés de sève.

“2. Que le chêne se dilate tantôt plus tantôt moins que le sapin, mais plus que le noyer.

“3. Que dans les conditions ordinaires, c’est à dire, avec les variations hygrométriques de l’air seulement, le coefficient de dilatation atteint au plus 0.018, d’où résulte qu’une planche de 0.20 deviendrait 0.2036.

“4. Qu’en plongeant dans l’eau pendant longtemps une planche primitivement très sèche, le coefficient de dilatation peut atteindre 0.0375, ce que donnerait pour la planche de 0.20, 0.2075.

“Peut-être vous trouverez d’autres renseignements dans le traité de charpente du Colonel Emy, ou dans celui de menuiserie de Roubo.

“Recevez, Monsieur, l’assurance de mes sentiments distingués.

P. BRUNIN.