“We can, however, summon him at any time,” said M. Magloire.
They might do so, it is true; but what a difference it would make! If Cocoleu appeared for M. Galpin, he was a witness for the prosecution, and the defence could exclaim with indignation,—
“What! You suspect the prisoner upon the evidence of such a creature?”
But, if he had to be summoned by the defence, he became prisoner’s evidence, that is to say, one of those witnesses whom the jury always suspect; and then the prosecution would exclaim,—
“What do you hope for from a poor idiot, whose mental condition is such, that we refused his evidence when it might have been most useful to us?”
“If we have to go into court,” murmured M. Folgat, “here is certainly a considerable chance of which we are deprived. The whole character of the case is changed. But, then, how can M. Galpin prove the guilt?”
Oh! in the simplest possible manner. He started from the fact that Count Claudieuse was able to give the precise hour at which the crime was committed. Thence he passed on immediately to the deposition of young Ribot, who had met M. de Boiscoran on his way to Valpinson, crossing the marshes, before the crime, and to that of Gaudry, who had seen him come back from Valpinson through the woods, after the crime. Three other witnesses who had turned up during the investigation confirmed this evidence; and by these means alone, and by comparing the hours, M. Galpin succeeded in proving, almost beyond doubt, that the accused had gone to Valpinson, and nowhere else, and that he had been there at the time the crime was committed.
What was he doing there?
To this question the prosecution replied by the evidence taken on the first day of the inquiry, by the water in which Jacques had washed his hands, the cartridge-case found near the house, and the identity of the shot extracted from the count’s wounds with those seized with the gun at Boiscoran.
Every thing was plain, precise, and formidable, admitting of no discussion, no doubt, no suggestion. It looked like a mathematical deduction.