My foot trod upon something hard on the carpet; I stooped down, and saw the diamond ring.
I drew M. de Peyrehorade and his wife into their room; then I had the bride taken there.
“You have still a daughter,” I said to them, “you owe her your care.” Then I left them alone.
There seemed to me no doubt that M. Alphonse had been the victim of a murder, the perpetrators of which had found means to let themselves in to the bride’s room at night. Yet those bruises on his chest and their circular direction puzzled me considerably, for a stick or an iron bar could not have produced them. All at once I remembered to have heard that the bravos of Valencia make use of long bags of leather, stuffed with fine sand, to knock down the persons whom they have been paid to kill. I immediately remembered the Aragonese muleteer and his threat; at the same time I scarcely dared to think that he had taken such a terrible revenge for a harmless joke.
I went about the house, searching everywhere for traces of breaking in, without finding them anywhere. I went down to the garden, to see whether the murderers could have got in from that side; but I found no certain traces there. Besides last night’s rain had so soaked the earth that it could not have retained any very sharp impression. All the same, I observed some footprints deeply imprinted in the ground; they were in two contrary directions, but in the same line, starting from the corner of the hedge beside the tennis-court and ending at the house-door. They might have been made by M. Alphonse when he went to look for his ring on the statue’s finger. On the other hand, the hedge at that place was not so close as elsewhere; that must have been the spot where the murderers crossed it. Passing and repassing before the statue, I halted for a moment to look at it. This time, I confess, I could not contemplate its expression of ironical wickedness without fear; and, my head full of the horrible scenes which I had just witnessed, I seemed to behold an infernal deity applauding the misfortune which had overtaken that house.
I got back to my room and remained there until midday. Then I went to inquire for my hosts. They were a little more composed. Mademoiselle de Puygarrig—I ought to say M. Alphonse’s widow—had recovered consciousness. She had even spoken with the public prosecutor from Perpignan, who was then on circuit at Ille, and that official had taken her deposition. He asked for mine. I told him what I knew, and did not conceal my suspicions about the Aragonese muleteer. He ordered him to be arrested at once.
“Have you learned anything from Madame Alphonse?” I asked the public prosecutor, when my deposition had been written and signed.
“That unhappy young lady has gone out of her mind,” he said to me with a sad smile. “Out of her mind! Quite out! Here’s her story.
“She had been in bed, she says, for some minutes, with the curtains drawn, when the door of her room opened, and some one came in. Madame Alphonse was then on the far side of the bed, with her face to the wall. She did not move, being sure that it was her husband. An instant later the bed groaned as if it was loaded with an enormous weight. She was very much afraid, but did not dare to turn her head. Five minutes, ten minutes perhaps—she could form no notion of the time—passed thus. Then she made an involuntary movement, or rather the person who was in the bed made one, and she felt the contact of something as cold as ice, these are the expressions she used. She buried herself in the far side of the bed, trembling in every limb. Shortly afterwards the door opened a second time, and some one entered, who said, ‛Good evening, my little wife.’ Very soon after, the curtains were drawn aside. She heard a smothered cry. The person who was in the bed beside her sat up, and seemed to stretch forward his arms. She turned her head then ... and saw, she declares, her husband on his knees at the bed-side, his head level with the pillow, in the arms of a sort of greenish giant who was hugging him with violence. She says, and she has repeated it to me a score of times, poor woman! ... she says that she recognized ... can you guess? The bronze Venus, M. de Peyrehorade’s statue.... Since it came into the neighbourhood, every one dreams about it. But to resume the unhappy madwoman’s story. At that sight she lost consciousness, and probably she had already lost her reason some time before. She is quite unable to say how long she continued in her faint. When she came to herself, she still saw the phantom, or the statue, as she always calls it, motionless, its legs and the lower part of its body in the bed, its bust and arms stretched over, and in its arms her husband, without movement. A cock crew. The statue then got out of the bed, let fall the corpse, and went out. Madame Alphonse tore at the bell-pull, and you know the rest.”
They brought up the Spaniard; he was calm, and defended himself with much coolness and presence of mind. To be sure, he did not deny the saying which I had heard; but he explained that all he meant by it was that, next day, when he was rested, he would have won a tennis-match from his conqueror. I recollect that he added: