A Capillary Crime, and Other Stories

by Francis Davis Millet

The information concerning the latter was a great deal more accurate and precise. A great deal of it, however, was irrelevant. He was born in Strasburg, in 1849, and began the study of his profession there. He came to Paris when he was twenty years old, and entered the Académie des Beaux Arts. After he had finished the course he set up his studio in Montmartre, and had already exhibited successful works in three salons. He had a great many friends in the city, and was well spoken of by all who knew him. The only thing that could possibly be urged against him was the fact that he seemed very little disturbed at the idea of being a Prussian subject. But he was consistently cosmopolitan, as his intimate friendship with the Austrian and his equally close relations with fellow-students in the Beaux Arts abundantly proved.

The inquiries about the girl were, judging from the frequent gaps in the history as written in the lieutenant’s note-book, conducted with difficulty, and with only partial success. She was a Corsican, and was generally called Rose Blanche, the translation of her Corsican name, Rosina Bianchi. By the artists she was facetiously called La Rose Blanche, partly because of her hair and complexion, which were of the darkest Southern hue, and partly for the sake of the grammatical harmony of the name thus altered. Nothing in particular was found out about her early life. She herself declared she was born in a small village in the mountains of Corsica, and that her father, mother, and several brothers and sisters were still living there. She had come to Paris as a model just before the siege, having first begun to pose in Marseilles, whither she had gone from Corsica to live with an aunt. This aunt had married a crockery merchant, and was a respectable member of the community. From her was gleaned some notion of the family. It was of genuine Corsican stock, and they all had the violent passions which are the common characteristic of that people. Rosina, while in Marseilles, had been quiet and proper enough except when she had been, as her aunt described, un peu toquee. At long intervals it seems that she became highly sensitive and excitable. She would on these occasions fly into a mad rage at a trifle, and when she grew calmer would sob and weep for a while, and end by remaining sullen and morose for hours, sometimes for days. Her aunt had opposed her going to Paris, prophesying all sorts of evil. She had never seen her since her departure, and had only heard from her twice or three times since she had left Marseilles.

There was scarcely a better-known model in Paris than La Rose Blanche. She was not one of those choice favorites who are engaged for months and sometimes for a year in advance at double prices, but she was in great demand, especially among sculptors. Her head was Italian enough to serve as a model for the costume pictures of the Campagna peasants, but she was much more picturesque as a Spanish girl, and her employment among the painters was chiefly with those who painted Spanish or Eastern subjects. The sculptors found in her form a certain girlishness which had not disappeared with age, and although she was twenty-five years old, she had the lithe, slender figure of a girl of seventeen. There was something of the faun in the accents of her limbs, and she was active, wiry, and muscular. The artists connected the peculiarities of her figure with the characteristics of her disposition, and often said to her, “What a hand and arm for a stiletto!” “Yes,” she would answer, with a glittering eye; “and it isn’t afraid to hold one either!” Every one had noticed her violent temper, and some of those who were best acquainted with her confessed to the feeling that it was like playing with gunpowder to have much to do with her. When she was in good spirits, she was soft-mannered and amiable; but when roused in the least, she became like a fury. She had frequently posed in the ateliers, and then she had been treated with great respect by the students. For the past year she had served often as a model for Benner in the execution of his statue “Diana surprised at her Bath,” and when she was not at work with him was generally in Mandel’s studio, where she posed for a figure in a picture from the history of Hungary, an event in one of the Turkish invasions. With the exception of the report of her eccentricities of temper, nothing had counted against her. Even this was partly counterbalanced by the testimony of many to whom she had been both kind and useful. As far as her moral character went, some had said, with an expressive shrug of the shoulders, “She’s a model, and like all the rest of them.” Others had declared that she was undoubtedly honest and virtuous. No one knew anything—at least no one confessed to any positive knowledge—of her suspected transgressions.

The poor femme de ménage, whose life had been hitherto without an event worth the attention of the police, did not escape the most rigid scrutiny. Her history was sifted out as carefully as that of the other three. She was married to a second husband, and the mother of a boy of eighteen, who was salesman in one of the large dry-goods shops. Her husband, besides the duties of concierge in the house where they lived—an occupation which paid for the rent of the rooms they occupied—managed to make a trifle at his trade of tailor, repairing and turning old garments, and on rare occasions making a new coat or a pair of trousers for an old customer. He was also employed as a supernumerary in the Grand Opera, a duty which obliged him to attend the theatre often, to the serious interruption of his home occupations. He could not well give up the place in the theatre, for his salary was just enough, with the rest he earned, to make both ends meet. The wife was obliged to be at home so much, to fill her husband’s place in the care of the great house, that she could only manage to do very little outside work. The families in the house were all working people, and consequently could not afford the luxury of assistance in the kitchen. She therefore found a place as femme de ménage with some family in the vicinity. For some time she had been in the employ of the dead artist, and was particularly satisfied with the place, first because she could choose her own hours, and then because she had very little to do, and was paid as much as if she took care of a family—twenty francs a month. One circumstance excited the suspicion of the police. She had been gone nearly the whole afternoon of the day before the murder. When she returned at dark her husband noticed that she was heated and confused, and asked her where she had been. She refused to tell him, painfully trying to make the refusal palatable by jokes. And the police with little difficulty found out exactly what she had been doing for the three or four hours in question. She had been to the Cemetery of Montmartre. She had been seen by the keepers there busy near a grave on the third side avenue to the left, about a quarter way up the slope. They had observed her digging up the two small flowering shrubs she had planted there years before, and had constantly tended. These shrubs she had wrapped up in an old colored shirt, and had carried them away. Further, a neighbor of the dead artist in the little street on Montmartre deposed that late in the afternoon of the day before the tragedy she had seen the femme de ménage enter the gate of the studio garden, bearing an irregular-shaped bundle of considerable size. The police, on visiting the garden, found the two shrubs described by the keepers of the cemetery freshly planted in the little central plot.

Then for the first time they questioned the femme de ménage herself, and she confessed, with an abundance of tears, that her only daughter had died five years previous, and that she had been buried in the Cimetière Montmartre, and the grave had been purchased for the period of five years. The term was to expire within a few days, and the poor woman, unable to pay for a further lease of ground, was obliged to give up her claim to the grave. She could not bear to lose the shrubs, for they were souvenirs of her dead child, who cultivated them when very small plants in flower-pots on the balcony. The mother had dug them up in the cemetery, and transplanted them in the garden of the house where she worked, having no garden-plot of her own. She intended the next day to tell the artist what she had done, and to get his permission to let the shrubs flourish there. She had refused to explain her absence to her husband because the girl had been dead a year when she married him, and he had sometimes reproached her for spending her time in the cemetery. As it was not his child, he could not be expected to care for it; and the poor mother, not having the courage to ask for money to renew the lease of the grave, kept her own counsel about the matter.

The examination of the witnesses, and the investigation of their personal history, threw but little light upon the exact state of the relations which existed between the painter and La Rose Blanche. The neighbors had overheard at various times loud talking in the studio, and occasionally some violent language that sounded very much like a quarrel. One or two of the shrewd ones, especially an old woman who sold vegetables from a little hand-cart on the corner, volunteered their opinion that the model was in love with the artist. The withered and blear-eyed old huckster gave as reason for her opinion that the model had generally stayed long after painting hours, and was unusually prompt in the morning. But there was quite as much proof that Mandel did not care for the model as that she was enamoured of him. He never watched for her in the morning, never came to the door with her; treated her always, as far as was noticed by any one who had seen them together, as if on the most formal terms with her. In the Café du Rat Mort it was found that La Rose Blanche had often come in during the evening, sometimes in fine costume and elaborate toilet, and had placed herself at the table where Mandel and Benner sat. The latter always appeared glad to see her, and joked and chatted with her, while Mandel was evidently annoyed by her presence, and did not try very hard to conceal his feelings.

An almost inquisitorial examination of Benner elicited the fact that his friend had confided to him that the model tormented him with her attentions, and so thrust herself upon him that he was at a loss what to do about it. He had thought seriously of giving up the picture he was at work on, so that she might have no excuse for coming to his studio. The same examination drew out the confession that he was in love with La Rose Blanche himself, and had been for some time.

Now the most plausible theory of the three officers was apparently well enough supported by the fact to warrant a most careful investigation. This theory was based chiefly on the common French axiom that a woman is at the bottom of every piece of mischief. The strongest suspicion pointed towards La Rose Blanche, and no motive but that of jealousy could be assigned for the deed. It was necessary, then, to find some cause for jealousy before this theory could be accepted. Mandel was, as the study of his character had proved to the officers, of a quiet and peaceable disposition, and not in the habit of frequenting society. Although, like most young men, he spent part of his time in the café, he was more disposed to stay at home than to join in any time-killing amusement. After the most diligent search, the officers only succeeded in finding one girl besides La Rose Blanche who had been at all on friendly terms with the artist. She was a model who had posed for a picture he painted while he occupied a studio in Rue Monsieur le Prince, in the Latin Quarter. But it was also found out that La Rose Blanche had never seen Mandel until long after the picture was finished and the model dismissed. In this way the investigation went on with all possible ingenuity and most wearisome deliberation. No effort was more fruitful than the one just described. Every clue which promised to lead to the slightest knowledge of the life of the artist or the character of the model was followed out persistently, doggedly, and often even cruelly. Thus months passed.

Benner had been discharged from custody after his first long and trying examination. Unable to work, he wandered around the city in an aimless way. He could not help having a faint yet agonizing glimmer of hope that he might meet with a solution of the mystery of his friend’s death. This solution would, he was sure, prove La Rose Blanche innocent. His unfinished statue in the clay, moistened only at irregular intervals, cracked and shrunk, and gradually fell to pieces. Dust settled in his studio, and his modelling tools rusted where they lay. At first he had tried to work, and, summoning another model, he had uncovered the clay. But he only spoiled what he touched, and after a short time he threw down his tools and walked away.

La Rose Blanche languished in the house of detention. Benner gradually began to lose courage, and perhaps even his faith wavered a little. When he learned that in the course of the examination the sleepy concierge of the house where the model lived had testified that she was absent all night at the time of the tragedy, Benner felt convinced that circumstances had combined to convict the girl. Her explanation had been most unsatisfactory. She had quarrelled with the artist because he told her he was annoyed by her. She did not remember what she said or did; she only knew that she left the house in a great passion, and walked the streets all night in the rain. Her passion gave way to her affection for the artist, and as soon as it was light she went to the studio to ask him to forgive her. She found him dead.