On the occasion of his first visit he was told the result of the medical examination, and how he must have grinned in secret when he was informed that two doctors, experts in the art of identifying human remains, had given it as their opinion that the legs belonged to a woman. Their thinness, the size of the feet, and the fact that they were clothed in stockings, gave rise to this mistake, which caused the police to spend a long time looking for the body of a woman.
The one clue they had was the letter "B" marked between two crosses. That was all the detectives had to go upon, and for days the police inquired if anyone had missed a girl whose Christian or surname began with B. And Pierre Voirbo continued to laugh at them!
Macé worked day and night on the mystery. During the previous three months eighty-four women had been reported as missing, and after the most careful examination into each case the detective selected three as being most likely to help in the solution of the puzzle. Great was his amazement to discover all three alive and well!
Meanwhile other parts of the body of Bodasse were picked up, though, as Macé was searching for a woman, all these parts were not assumed to belong to the legs. Half a dozen mysteries seemed likely to be manufactured out of one, when Macé had the good fortune to think of submitting the legs to another expert. It was only by chance that he did this, but when Dr. Tardieu unhesitatingly affirmed the legs to be those of a man the detective realized that he had been working on the wrong lines altogether.
The fixing of the sex was a most important and valuable matter, although even now the mystery seemed quite unfathomable. Macé, however, was determined that the murderer should be brought to justice. He meant to devote all his time and ability to the task.
His first examination of the cloth in which the legs had been wrapped before being cast into the well had convinced him that the parcels had been made up by a tailor. They bore certain marks, and the string used as well as the cloth confirmed him in this opinion. He started at the house in the Rue Princesse, making diligent inquiries as to whether a tailor had ever resided there, but was informed that a tailor had never been one of the tenants. The detective was not satisfied, and he got the old woman who acted as concierge to chat to him about the tenants, past and present.
The woman, glad of an audience, entered into a minute account of the habits of the scores of men and women she had met in that house. Most men would have been bored to distraction, and would have ended the interview abruptly, but Macé listened patiently, only interrupting when the old woman casually mentioned a girl of the name of Dard, whose claim on fame was that, although she was now on the variety stage, she at one time lived in the house as a humble seamstress.
The detective looked up at the mention of the word "seamstress." Here, then, was somebody who had worked for a tailor. It was but a slight clue, yet it might be worth something.
The old woman gabbled on.
"She gave me a lot of trouble, monsieur," she said, in a croaking voice. "Some one was always bringing her work, and their dirty boots meant that I had to wash down the stairs after them. There was one man, too, who always carried water from the well upstairs for her. He used to spill it, making more work for me."