The Crime of the Boulevard

by Jules Claretie

Mme. Bernardet was unhappy as she saw that their holiday was spoiled. But she very well knew that when her husband was devoured with curiosity, carried away by a desire to elucidate a puzzle, there was nothing to be said. He listened to no remonstrances, and the daughters knew that when they asked if their father was not coming to renew his games with them they were obliged to content themselves with the excuse which they knew so well from having heard it so often: "Papa is studying out a crime!"

Bernardet was anxious to read over his notes, the verification of his hopes, of those so-called certainties of to-day. That is why he wished to be alone. As soon as he had closed the door he at once, from among the enormous piles of dust-laden books and files of old newspapers, with the unerring instinct of the habitual searcher who rummages through book stalls, drew forth a gray-covered pamphlet in which he had read, with feverish astonishment, the experiments and report of Dr. Vernois upon the application of photography in criminal researches. He quickly seated himself, and with trembling fingers eagerly turned over the leaves of the book so often read and studied, and came to the report of the member of the Academy of Medicine; he compared it with the proof submitted by Dr. Bourion, of the Medical Society, in which it was stated that the most learned savants had seen nothing.

"Seen nothing, or wished to see nothing, perhaps!" he murmured.

The light fell upon the photograph which had been sent, a long time before, to the Society, and Bernardet set himself to study out the old crime with the most careful attention; with the passion of a paleographer deciphering a palimpsest. This poor devil of a police officer, in his ardent desire to solve the vexing problem, brought to it the same ardor and the same faith as a bibliophile. He went over and over with the method of an Examining Magistrate all that old forgotten affair, and in the solitude and silence of his little room the last reflections of the setting sun falling on his papers and making pale the light of his lamp, he set himself the task of solving, like a mathematical problem, that question which he had studied, but which he wished to know from the very beginning, without any doubts, before seeing M. Ginory again at the Morgue, beside the body of M. Rovère. He took his pamphlet and read: "The photograph sent to the Society of Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Bourion taken upon the retina of the eye of a woman who had been murdered the 14th of June, 1868, represents the moment when the assassin, after having struck the mother, kills the infant, and the dog belonging to the house leaps toward the unfortunate little victim to save it."

Then studying, turn by turn, the photograph yellowed by time, and the article which described it, Bernardet satisfied himself, and learned the history by heart.

M. Gallard, General Secretary of the Society, after having carefully hidden the back part of the photograph, had circulated it about among the members with this note: "Enigma of Medical Jurisprudence." And no one had solved the tragic enigma. Even when he had explained, no one could see in the photograph what Dr. Bourion saw there. Some were able on examining that strange picture to see in the black and white haze some figures as singular and dissimilar as those which the amiable Polonius perceived in the clouds under the suggestion of Hamlet.

Dr. Vernois, appointed to write a report on Dr. Bourion's communication, asked him then how the operation had been conducted, and Dr. Bourion had given him these details, which Bernardet was now reading and studying: The assassination had taken place on Sunday between noon and 4 o'clock; the extraction of the eyes from their orbits had not been made until the following day at 6 o'clock in the evening.

The experiment on the eyes, those terribly accusing eyes of this dead man, could be made twenty-four hours earlier than that other experiment. The image—if there was any image—ought to be, in consequence, more clearly defined than in Dr. Bourion's experiment.

"About 6 o'clock in the evening," thought Bernardet, "and the photographic light was sufficient."

Dr. Bourion had taken pictures of both of the child's eyes as well as both of the mother's eyes. The child's eyes showed nothing but hazy clouds. But the mother's eyes were different. Upon the left eye, next to a circular section back of the iris, a delicately marked image of a dog's head appeared. On the same section of the right eye, another picture; one could see the assassin raising his arm to strike and the dog leaping to protect his little charge.