It is the French custom to have the accused present at any important discovery bearing upon their case, and Robert and Bastien were, accordingly, handcuffed and taken to the garden at the back of the house in the Rue Vaugirard. Half a dozen detectives were provided with spades, and, whilst the prisoners looked on, they dug as if for their lives. But they met with no reward, and Robert, who had remained motionless throughout, was regarding them with a sneering smile when one of the detectives suddenly turned on him.
"Get out of the way, man!" he cried contemptuously. "One would think that the widow Houet had gripped you by the feet."
On hearing this Robert started as though he had been shot, and it did not surprise the officials in the least when the skeleton of the murdered woman was found exactly under the spot where he had been standing. It was plain that he had hoped to keep the officers away from it and that his ruse would cause them to leave the garden without the corpse. Had they done so, he and Bastien would have had to be released.
The skeleton was in an almost perfect state of preservation and there was not the slightest difficulty in identifying it, for the rope was still around the neck and on one of the fingers of the left hand was a gold ring.
The ex-wine merchant and his confederate were tried before the Paris Criminal Court and found guilty of murder. For some extraordinary reason, however, the jury added "extenuating circumstances" to their verdict and this took away from the judge the power to inflict death. They were, however, consigned to a living death in one of the French convict settlements, and there they existed for a few miserable years before dying of inanition, overwork, and monotony.
Practically the whole of Madame Houet's fortune was inherited by her son, who died in an asylum, and eventually the money which had been the motive for a terrible crime passed into the coffers of the state, the widow's son leaving no heirs.
[CHAPTER X]
THE BOOTMAKER'S ROYAL WOOING
When the Essen doctor advised Maria Hussmann, Frederick Krupp's "lady housekeeper," to try a course of thermal baths at Aix-la-Chapelle she was only too glad to do so. Maria was a typical German woman, heavy, solid, and, as she was in the late thirties, fond of boasting of her respectability. She styled herself "a noble lady," and she was in the habit of explaining to her acquaintances that she only "condescended" to manage Herr Krupp's domestic staff for him, having been tempted by an enormous salary, the latter being a tribute to her excellence and her social position. She always carried herself with great dignity, and Krupp, who had a comic admiration for what in Germany passes for good breeding, was rather proud of his employée's pride.