When it grew dusk the people wandered homeward, in pairs and groups, now chatting, now silent, now whispering with an air of mystery. Like dogs that have become suspicious and keep circling about the same spot, they strained with hungry eagerness for a new excitement. They looked searchingly in front of them, heard with sharpened ears every word that was uttered. Some cast suspicious side-glances at each other; those who had money closed their doors and counted their money over. At night in the taverns the guests told of the great riches that the miserly Fualdes had accumulated; he had, it was said, sold La Morne only because he shrank from compelling the lessee, Grammont, who was his nephew, by legal means to pay two years' arrears of rent.
The spoken word hung halting on the lips, carrying a half-framed thought in its train. It was an accepted fact among the citizens that Fualdes, the liberal Protestant, a former official of the Empire, had been annoyed by threats against his life. The dark fancies spun busily at the web of fear. Those who still believed it was an accident refrained from expressing their reasons; they had to guard against suspicion falling upon themselves. Already a band of confederates was designated, drawn from the Legitimist party, now become inimical, threatening, arrogant. Dark hatred pointed to the Jesuits and their missions as instigators of the mysterious deed. How often had justice halted when the power of the mighty shielded the criminal!
The spring sun of the ensuing day shone upon tense, agitated, eager faces gradually inflamed to fierceness. The Royalists began to fear for their belongings; in order to protect themselves, infected as they, too, were by the general horror which emanated from the unknown, they admitted that a crime had been perpetrated. But how? and where? and through whom?
A cobbler has a better memory, as a rule, and a more active brain, than other people. The shoemaker, Escarboeuf, used to gather his neighbors and trusty comrades about him now and then at the hour of vespers. He remembered exactly what the doctor had said on the discovery of the corpse; he was standing close by and had heard every syllable. "It almost looks as if the man had been murdered;" those were the astonished words of the doctor when he was examining the wound in the throat. "Murdered? what are you saying, man?" interposed one of the company. "Yes, murdered!" cried the cobbler triumphantly.—"But it is said that there was sand sticking to the wound," remarked a young man shyly.—"O pshaw! sand, sand!" retorted the shoemaker, "What does sand prove anyway?"—"No, sand proves nothing," all of them admitted. And by midday the report in all the houses of the quarter ran: Fualdes had been murdered, he had been butchered. The word gave the inflamed minds a picture, the whispering tongues a hint.
Now, by a strange chance it happened that on that fateful evening the night watchman had deposited in the guardroom a cane with an ivory knob and a gilt ring, which he had found in front of the Bancal dwelling, separated from lawyer Fualdes' house by the Rue de l'Ambrague, a dark cross street. Fualdes' housekeeper, an old deaf woman, asserted positively that the cane was the property of her master; her assertion seemed incontestable. A long time after, it came to light that the cane belonged to a traveling tradesman who had spent the night carousing in the company of some wenches; but at the time, attention was at once turned to the Bancal house, a dilapidated, gloomy building with musty, dirty corners. It had formerly been owned by a butcher, and pigs were still kept in the yard. It was a house of assignation and was visited nightly by soldiers, smugglers, and questionable-looking girls; now and then, too, heavily veiled ladies and aristocratic-looking men slipped in and out. On the ground floor there lived, beside the Bancal couple, a former soldier, Colard, and his sweetheart, the wench Bedos, and the humpbacked Missonier; above them, there dwelt an old Spaniard, by the name of Saavedra, and his wife; he was a political refugee who had sought protection in France.
On the afternoon of the twenty-first of March, the soldier, Colard, was standing at the corner of the Rue de l'Ambrague, playing a monotonous air on his flute, one that he had learned from the shepherds of the Pyrenees. The shopkeeper, Galtier, came up the road, stood still, made a pretense of listening, but finally interrupted the musician, addressing him severely: "Why do you gad about and pretend to be ignorant, Colard? Don't you know, then, that the murder is said to have been committed in your house?"
Colard, brushing his scrubby moustache from his lips, replied that he and Missonier had been in Rose Feral's tavern, alongside the Bancal house, that night. "Had I heard a noise, sir," he said boastfully, "I should have gone to the rescue, for I have two guns."
"Who else was at Rose Feral's?" pursued the shopkeeper. Colard meditated and mentioned Bach and Bousquier, two notorious smugglers. "The rascals, they had better be on their guard," said the shopkeeper, "and you, Colard, come along with me; poor Fualdes is going to be buried, and it is not fitting to be playing the flute."
Scarcely had they reached the main street, where a great number of people had collected, when they were suddenly joined by Bousquier, who exhibited a strange demeanor, now laughing, now shaking his head, now gazing vacantly before him. Colard cast a shy, sidelong glance at him, and the shopkeeper, who thought of nothing but the murder and saw in all this the manifestations of a bad conscience, observed the man keenly. Those around them, too, became watchful, and it at once struck everybody that if any one had a knowledge of the crime committed in the Bancal house, it was Bousquier. The excited Galtier questioned him bluntly. Bousquier was the worse for liquor, the unusual hubbub intoxicated him still more; he seemed confused, but felt himself, at the same time, a person of importance. At first he assumed an air of unwillingness to speak out, then he related with solemn circumstantiality that he was summoned on the night of the murder by a tobacco-dealer clad in a blue coat; three times had the stranger sent for him, finally he went, was told to carry a heavy bundle, and was paid with a gold piece.
Even while he was speaking, an expression of horror ran across the face of the loquacious fellow; he grew gradually conscious of the significance of his words. The listeners had formed a compact circle around him, and a shrill voice rang out from the crowd: "It was surely the corpse that was wrapped up in that bundle!"