Having practised for a long time in the sleepy restaurant of a county town in a rural canton, he had learnt a close professional game. He raked his balls into a little corner of the billiard-table and brought off a series of cannons. M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin played in the broad, splendid, reckless style of the artist-cafés of Montmartre and Clichy. And laying the failure of his rash strokes to the charge of the table, he complained of the hardness of the cushions.
“At la Tuilière,” said M. de Terremondre, “in my cousin Jacques’ house, there is a billiard-table with pockets, which dates from Louis XV.’s time, in a very low vaulted hall, of soft, whitewashed stone, where this inscription is still to be read: ‘Gentlemen are requested not to rub their cues on the walls.’ It is a request to which no one has paid any attention, for the vaulting is pitted with a number of little round holes, whose origin is accurately explained by this inscription.”
M. le président Peloux was asked in several directions at once for details as to the affair in Queen Marguerite’s house. The murder of Madame Houssieu, which had excited all the district, was still arousing interest. Every one knew that a crushing weight of evidence hung over a butcher’s boy of nineteen, named Lecœur, whom folks used to see twice a week entering the old lady’s house with his basket on his head. It was also known that the prosecution was detaining two upholsterers’ apprentices of fourteen and sixteen years of age as accomplices, and it was said that the crime had been committed in circumstances which made the story of it a particularly delicate one.
Being questioned on this point, M. le président Peloux lifted his round, ruddy head from the billiard-table and winked.
“The case is being tried in camera. The scene of the murder has been reconstructed in its entirety. I don’t believe that there is a doubt left as to the acts of debauchery which preceded the crime and facilitated the perpetration of it.”
He took up his liqueur glass, swallowed a mouthful of armagnac, smacked his lips, and said:
“Heavens! what velvet!”
And, when a circle of inquirers crowded round him asking for details, the magistrate, in a low voice, disclosed certain circumstances which provoked murmurs of surprise and grunts of disgust.
“Is it possible?” was the comment. “A woman of eighty!”
“The case,” answered M. le président Peloux, “is not unique. You may take my word for it after my experience as a magistrate. And the young scamps of the faubourgs know much more on this subject than we do. The crime in Queen Marguerite’s house is of a well-known, classified sort; I might call it a classic type. I immediately scented it out as senile debauchery, and I saw quite clearly that Roquincourt, the prosecuting counsel, was following a wrong track. He had naturally ordered the arrest of all the vagabonds and tramps found wandering within a wide circumference. Every one of them aroused suspicions; and what put the crowning touch to his mistake was that one of them, Sieurin, nicknamed Pied-d’Alouette, a regular old gaol-bird, made a confession.”