"Ah!" he said, "this is good. I should like a house like this and twenty thousand francs a year!" As he entered the hall, surprised at the darkness, he exclaimed: "The devil! it's precious dark! 'tu sais, Gabrielle, que je ne suis pas un heros d'aventure.'" The woman pushed him into the drawing-room. He struck a match on his trousers. Fenayrou, who had been lurking in the darkness in his shirt sleeves, made a blow at him with the hammer, but it was ineffectual. A struggle ensued. The room was plunged in darkness. Gabrielle waited outside. After a little, her husband called for a light; she came in and lit a candle on the mantelpiece. Fenayrou was getting the worst of the encounter. She ran to his help, and dragged off his opponent. Fenayrou was free. He struck again with the hammer. Aubert fell, and for some ten minutes Fenayrou stood over the battered and bleeding man abusing and insulting him, exulting in his vengeance. Then he stabbed him twice with the sword-stick, and so ended the business.
The murderers had to wait till past eleven to get rid of the body, as the streets were full of holiday-makers. When all was quiet they put it into the goat chaise, wrapped round with the gas-piping, and wheeled it on to the Chatou bridge. To prevent noise they let the body down by a rope into the water. It was heavier than they thought, and fell with a loud splash into the river. "Hullo!" exclaimed a night-fisherman, who was mending his tackle not far from the bridge, "there go those butchers again, chucking their filth into the Seine!"
As soon as they had taken the chaise back to the villa, the three assassins hurried to the station to catch the last train. Arriving there a little before their time, they went into a neighbouring cafe. Fenayrou had three bocks, Lucien one, and Madame another glass of chartreuse. So home to Paris. Lucien reached his house about two in the morning. "Well," asked his wife, "did you have a good day?" "Splendid," was the reply.
Eleven days passed. Fenayrou paid a visit to the villa to clean it and put it in order. Otherwise he went about his business as usual, attending race meetings, indulging in a picnic and a visit to the Salon. On May 27 a man named Bailly, who, by a strange coincidence, was known by the nickname of "the Chemist," walking by the river, had his attention called by a bargeman to a corpse that was floating on the water. He fished it out. It was that of Aubert. In spite of a gag tired over his mouth the water had got into the body, and, notwithstanding the weight of the lead piping, it had risen to the surface.
As soon as the police had been informed of the disappearance of Aubert, their suspicions had fallen on the Fenayrous in consequence of the request which Marin Fenayrou had made to the commissary of police to aid him in the recovery from Aubert of his wife's letters. But there had been nothing further in their conduct to provoke suspicion. When, however, the body was discovered and at the same time an anonymous letter received denouncing the Fenayrous as the murderers of Aubert, the police decided on their arrest. On the morning of June 8 M. Mace, then head of the Detective Department, called at their house. He found Fenayrou in a dressing-gown. This righteous avenger of his wife's seduction denied his guilt, like any common criminal, but M. Mace handed him over to one of his men, to be taken immediately to Versailles. He himself took charge of Madame, and, in the first-class carriage full of people, in which they travelled together to Versailles, she whispered to the detective a full confession of the crime.
Mace has left us an account of this singular railway journey. It was two o'clock in the afternoon. In the carriage were five ladies and a young man who was reading La Vie Parisienne. Mme. Fenayrou was silent and thoughtful. "You're thinking of your present position?" asked the detective. "No, I'm thinking of my mother and my dear children." "They don't seem to care much about their father," remarked Mace. "Perhaps not." "Why?" asked M. Mace. "Because of his violent temper," was the reply. After some further conversation and the departure at Courbevoie of the young man with La Vie Parisienne, Mme. Fenayrou asked abruptly: "Do you think my husband guilty?" "I'm sure of it." "So does Aubert's sister." "Certainly," answered M. Mace; "she looks on the crime as one of revenge." "But my brother-in-law," urged the woman, "could have had no motive for vengeance against Aubert." Mace answered coldly that he would have to explain how he had employed his time on Ascension Day. "You see criminals everywhere," answered Madame.
After the train had left St. Cloud, where the other occupants of the carriage had alighted, the detective and his prisoner were alone, free of interruption till Versailles should be reached. Hitherto they had spoken in whispers; now Mace seized the opportunity to urge the woman to unbosom herself to him, to reveal her part in the crime. She burst into tears. There was an interval of silence; then she thanked Mace for the kindness and consideration he had shown her. "You wish me," she asked, "to betray my husband?" "Without any design or intention on your part," discreetly answered the detective; "but by the sole force of circumstances you are placed in such a position that you cannot help betraying him."
Whether convinced or not of this tyranny of circumstance, Mme. Fenayrou obeyed her mentor, and calmly, coldly, without regret or remorse, told him the story of the assassination. Towards the end of her narration she softened a little. "I know I am a criminal," she exclaimed. "Since this morning I have done nothing but lie. I am sick of it; it makes me suffer too much. Don't tell my husband until this evening that I have confessed; there's no need, for, after what I have told you, you can easily expose his falsehoods and so get at the truth."
That evening the three prisoners—Lucien had been arrested at the same time as the other two—were brought to Chatou. Identified by the gardener as the lessee of the villa, Fenayrou abandoned his protestations of innocence and admitted his guilt. The crime was then and there reconstituted in the presence of the examining magistrate. With the help of a gendarme, who impersonated Aubert, Fenayrou repeated the incidents of the murder. The goat-chaise was wheeled to the bridge, and there in the presence of an indignant crowd, the murderer showed how the body had been lowered into the river.
After a magisterial investigation lasting two months, which failed to shed any new light on the more mysterious elements in the case, Fenayrou, his wife and brother were indicted on August 19 before the Assize Court for the Seine-et-Oise Department, sitting at Versailles.