The Widow Lerouge | Page 2

with impatience, or leant over the garden wall, stretching their
necks eagerly, to see or hear something of what was passing within the
cottage.
Those who anticipated the discovery of a crime, were unhappily not
deceived. The commissary was convinced of this as soon as he crossed
the threshold. Everything in the first room pointed with a sad eloquence
to the recent presence of a malefactor. The furniture was knocked about,
and a chest of drawers and two large trunks had been forced and broken
open.
In the inner room, which served as a sleeping apartment, the disorder
was even greater. 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?"
"But where has she been wounded?" inquired the commissary, "I do not
see any blood."
"Look! here between the shoulders," replied the corporal; "two fierce
blows, by my faith. I'll wager my stripes she had no time to cry out."
He stooped over the corpse and touched it.
"She is quite cold," he continued, "and it seems to me that she is no
longer very stiff. It is at least thirty-six hours since she received her
death-blow."

The commissary began writing, on the corner of a table, a short official
report.
"We are not here to talk, but to discover the guilty," said he to the
corporal. "Let information be at once conveyed to the justice of the
peace, and the mayor, and send this letter without delay to the Palais de
Justice. In a couple of hours, an investigating magistrate can be here. In
the meanwhile, I will proceed to make a preliminary inquiry."
"Shall I carry the letter?" asked the corporal of gendarmes.
"No, send one of your men; you will be useful to me here in keeping
these people in order, and in finding any witnesses I may want. We
must leave everything here as it is. I will install myself in the other
room."
A gendarme departed at a run towards the station at Rueil; and the
commissary commenced his investigations in regular form, as
prescribed by law.
"Who was Widow Lerouge? Where did she come from? What did she
do? Upon what means, and how did she live? What were her habits, her
morals, and what sort of company did she keep? Was she known to
have enemies? Was she a miser? Did she pass for being rich?"
The commissary knew the importance of ascertaining all this: but
although the witnesses were numerous enough, they possessed but little
information. The depositions of the neighbours, successively
interrogated, were empty, incoherent, and incomplete. No one knew
anything of the victim, who was a stranger in the country. Many
presented themselves as witnesses moreover, who came forward less to
afford information than to gratify their curiosity. A gardener's wife,
who had been friendly with the deceased, and a milk-woman with
whom she dealt, were alone able to give a few insignificant though
precise details.
In a word, after three hours of laborious investigation, after having
undergone the infliction of all the gossip of the country, after receiving

evidence the most contradictory, and listened to commentaries the most
ridiculous, the following is what appeared the most reliable to the
commissary.
Twelve years before, at the beginning of 1850, the woman Lerouge had
made her appearance at Bougival with a large wagon piled with
furniture, linen, and her personal effects. She had alighted at an inn,
declaring her intention of settling in the neighbourhood, and had
immediately gone in quest of a house. Finding this one unoccupied, and
thinking it would suit her, she had taken it without trying to beat down
the terms, at a rental of three hundred and twenty francs payable half
yearly and in advance, but had refused to sign a lease.
The house taken, she occupied it the same day, and expended about a
hundred francs on repairs.
She was a woman about fifty-four or fifty-five years of age, well
preserved, active, and in the enjoyment of excellent health. No one
knew her reasons for taking up her abode in a country where she was
an absolute stranger. She was supposed to have come from Normandy,
having been frequently seen in the early morning to wear a white cotton
cap. This night-cap did not prevent her dressing very smartly during the
day; indeed, she ordinarily wore very handsome dresses, very showy
ribbons in her caps, and covered herself with jewels like a saint in a
chapel. Without doubt