“You have seen the shelves and the poker?”
“Yes. The shelves have been unnailed, and the poker is there yet.”
But the countess exclaimed:
“You had better say it was his mother. Henriette is the guilty party. She must have compelled her son—-”
“No,” declared the chevalier, “the mother had nothing to do with it.”
“Nonsense! they occupied the same room. The child could not have done it without the mother’s knowledge.”
“True, they lived in the same room, but all this happened in the adjoining room, during the night, while the mother was asleep.”
“And the necklace?” said the count. “It would have been found amongst the child’s things.”
“Pardon me! He had been out. That morning, on which you found him reading, he had just come from school, and perhaps the commissary of police, instead of wasting his time on the innocent mother, would have been better employed in searching the child’s desk amongst his school-books.”
“But how do you explain those two thousand francs that Henriette received each year? Are they not evidence of her complicity?”