CHAPTER XIV
AFTER THE MURDER
I NEED hardly say that on Sunday, May 31st, I was in a terrible state of mind, and even on the verge of utter collapse.
At 6 A.M., it appears, Rémy Couillard came down, saw what had happened, went to the window and cried for help, and M. Lecoq, a neighbour, then joined him. Then the police came, also Dr. Acheray, and many others....
I was in bed, after that night of horror and what I had gone through. I could hardly move or breathe. Everything seemed to whirl around me, and yet I had two thoughts. One was: "What had happened to my mother and my husband, and how are they?" (I did not know, of course, that they had both been strangled.) Couillard—so I heard afterwards—after untying the ropes which held me to the bed, had gone with M. Lecoq to the other rooms, and seen the bodies of my husband and my mother, but they had said nothing to me about it.
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I hereafter quote the evidence given by this M. Lecoq, so that the reader may be present, as it were, at the discovery of the crime.
This day, June 23rd, 1908, before us, Leydet, examining magistrate... has appeared, Lecoq, Maurice—twenty six years old—an engineer residing in the Impasse Ronsin, No. 6—who has stated:
On Sunday, May 31st, a little before 6 A.M., I heard shouts of "Thief! Thief!... My mistress is ill...." I hastily left my room which overlooks the yard of M. Bonnot's house. Rapidly I passed through a gate, which is never closed (separating the Bonnot and the Steinheil grounds) and entered the garden of the Steinheil villa. I cut across the lawn, and went and stood under the window from which Couillard was crying for help. He shouted, "Come, be quick!" I tried in vain to open the doors of the verandah and the drawing-room, which opened on to the garden. Finding I could not enter, I returned to the place under the window, and Couillard said to me: "Open the street door and pass through the kitchen." I went to the door in the Impasse Ronsin, and opened it by lifting up the lower latch. Then I walked to the pantry door, which I opened by merely turning the knob. I went through the hall, where I noticed nothing unusual, then walked up to the first floor. At the end of the staircase I saw the door of Mme. Steinheil's room, whom I had never seen, although she is a neighbour of mine. She was on her bed. At the same time Couillard left the window and went near the bed.
Mme. Steinheil then exclaimed: "We are saved, my poor Rémy!" and the latter said: "Look at my poor mistress...." Mme. Steinheil was in a state of extreme agitation, and kept swinging her arms one way and another. Her wrists and her head were free.... There were cords round her neck, not tight, and over her nightshirt. Her feet were still strongly fastened to the rails of the bed, but the cords did not press very tightly on the articulations. Rémy and I undid the cords (Couillard had before undone the other cords), and then Mme. Steinheil, panting, with haggard eyes, said in broken words—and she had several times the vision of the scenes which she was describing—that she had been assailed and ill-treated by three men and a horrible woman who took her for her daughter, and who had asked for her money. She also said that the woman wanted her to be killed. She said she suffered from her head, and wailed: "My head, my head, they have struck me." I touched her hair, but found no wound. Mme. Steinheil also said: "My husband... why does he not come?" I replied to calm her, "He is in the next room." Later, she asked for her daughter. She was a prey to constant terror, and all the time she lived through the scene of the night. Several times she cried: "I am afraid, I am afraid...." And when I told her: "Don't fear anything, I am here; I will go for assistance," she kept saying, "I don't fear you, but oh! that fierce woman, and those men, and those two lanterns." I left her for a short while, to go and find out what had happened in the house. The door of M. Steinheil's room was open, and I saw the body of a man, wearing only a shirt, in the space between two rooms (M. Steinheil's room and the bath-room). I returned to Mme. Steinheil's room, and taking the valet aside, I said to him: "There is a dead man, who is he?" Overwhelmed, Couillard replied: "It is perhaps my master." Since then, Couillard has told me that when he went through the rooms he had passed over the body of his master without noticing it was a corpse. I then returned to that body, and Couillard followed me at a distance. I bent forward, and placing my hand on his thigh, I found it was icy cold. I at once undid the cord round the neck, however, whilst realising that M. Steinheil had ceased to live. I then returned to Mme. Steinheil who had remained alone during those brief moments. A little later I took Couillard aside. He was all the time walking up and down the room, as if he were mad, and did nothing, although his mistress was asking, with great insistence, for Dr. Acheray.
I asked Rémy: "How many are you in the house?" He replied: "Three, without counting me." I then said: "Where is the third person?" He pointed to the door opposite that of M. Steinheil's room, and said: "There!" I found that the door was locked and that I could not open it. When I had asked for the way into the room, Couillard pointed, with a vague gesture to the end of the corridor; he was quite distracted, and a sudden suspicion flashed through my mind. I took him by the arms, and looking him straight in the eyes, said: "You must come with me." Couillard, who did not realise my suspicions, showed that he was quite ready to follow me, and my suspicions vanished entirely. At that moment there arrived, at the top of the staircase, the first policeman, and M. Geoffroy (son-in-law of Mariette Wolff, my cook—and a neighbour). I rapidly told the policeman all I knew, and together we walked to the end of the corridor. The policeman opened the door indicated by Couillard, and from the threshold we saw the body of Mme. Japy lying across her bed in the position where you (M. Leydet) found it.