The Hollow Needle | Page 6

picked up a chauffeur's cap, in very soft
buff leather; besides that, nothing.
The gendarmerie of Ouville-la-Riviere were informed at six o'clock in
the morning and at once proceeded to the spot, after sending an express
to the authorities at Dieppe with a note describing the circumstances of
the crime, the imminent capture of the chief criminal and "the
discovery of his headgear and of the dagger with which the crime had
been committed."
At ten o'clock, two hired conveyances came down the gentle slope that
led to the house. One of them, an old-fashioned calash, contained the
deputy public prosecutor and the examining magistrate, accompanied
by his clerk. In the other, a humble fly, were seated two reporters,
representing the Journal de Rouen and a great Paris paper.
The old chateau came into view--once the abbey residence of the priors
of Ambrumesy, mutilated under the Revolution, both restored by the
Comte de Gesvres, who had now owned it for some twenty years. It
consists of a main building, surmounted by a pinnacled clock- tower,
and two wings, each of which is surrounded by a flight of steps with a
stone balustrade. Looking across the walls of the park and beyond the
upland supported by the high Norman cliffs, you catch a glimpse of the
blue line of the Channel between the villages of Sainte-Marguerite and
Varengeville.
Here the Comte de Gesvres lived with his daughter Suzanne, a delicate,
fair-haired, pretty creature, and his niece Raymonde de Saint-Veran,

whom he had taken to live with him two years before, when the
simultaneous death of her father and mother left Raymonde an orphan.
Life at the chateau was peaceful and regular. A few neighbors paid an
occasional visit. In the summer, the count took the two girls almost
every day to Dieppe. He was a tall man, with a handsome, serious face
and hair that was turning gray. He was very rich, managed his fortune
himself and looked after his extensive estates with the assistance of his
secretary, Jean Daval.
Immediately upon his arrival, the examining magistrate took down the
first observations of Sergeant Quevillon of the gendarmes. The capture
of the criminal, imminent though it might be, had not yet been effected,
but every outlet of the park was held. Escape was impossible.
The little company next crossed the chapter-hall and the refectory, both
of which are on the ground floor, and went up to the first story. They at
once remarked the perfect order that prevailed in the drawing room.
Not a piece of furniture, not an ornament but appeared to occupy its
usual place; nor was there any gap among the ornaments or furniture.
On the right and left walls hung magnificent Flemish tapestries with
figures. On the panels of the wall facing the windows were four fine
canvases, in contemporary frames, representing mythological scenes.
These were the famous pictures by Rubens which had been left to the
Comte de Gesvres, together with the Flemish tapestries, by his maternal
uncle, the Marques de Bobadilla, a Spanish grandee.
M. Filleul remarked:
"If the motive of the crime was theft, this drawing room, at any rate,
was not the object of it."
"You can't tell!" said the deputy, who spoke little, but who, when he
did, invariably opposed the magistrate's views.
"Why, my dear sir, the first thought of a burglar would be to carry off
those pictures and tapestries, which are universally renowned."
"Perhaps there was no time."

"We shall see."
At that moment, the Comte de Gesvres entered, accompanied by the
doctor. The count, who did not seem to feel the effects of the attack to
which he had been subjected, welcomed the two officials. Then he
opened the door of the boudoir.
This room, which no one had been allowed to enter since the discovery
of the crime, differed from the drawing room inasmuch as it presented a
scene of the greatest disorder. Two chairs were overturned, one of the
tables smashed to pieces and several objects- -a traveling-clock, a
portfolio, a box of stationery--lay on the floor. And there was blood on
some of the scattered pieces of note- paper.
The doctor turned back the sheet that covered the corpse. Jean Daval,
dressed in his usual velvet suit, with a pair of nailed boots on his feet,
lay stretched on his back, with one arm folded beneath him. His collar
and tie had been removed and his shirt opened, revealing a large wound
in the chest.
"Death must have been instantaneous," declared the doctor. "One blow
of the knife was enough."
"It was, no doubt, the knife which I saw on the drawing-room
mantelpiece, next to a leather cap?" said the examining magistrate.
"Yes," said the Comte de Gesvres, "the knife was picked up here. It
comes from