The Beast Within (59 page)

‘Oh, we’ll be all right,’ said Jacques. ‘They’ll need to keep the railways running ... but it’s going to make life difficult. There’ll be soldiers and provisions to be transported ... Anyway, if it happens, we’ll just have to do our duty.’

Whereupon he stood up, realizing that she had slipped one of her legs under his. Pecqueux noticed it too; he went red in the face and clenched his fist.

‘Come on,’ said Jacques, ‘it’s time for bed.’

‘Yes,’ Pecqueux muttered, ‘it certainly is.’

He had grabbed Philomène by the arm and was squeezing it so hard that she felt it would break. Stifling a cry of pain, she whispered into Jacques’s ear, as Pecqueux knocked back his brandy, ‘Be careful. When he’s had a drink he can get really rough.’

Just then they heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs.

‘It’s my brother,’ said Philomène in a panic. ‘Quick, you’ll have to go!’

They hadn’t walked twenty paces from the house when they heard the sound of blows, followed by screams. Philomène was being given a beating, like a little girl who’d been caught stealing jam from the cupboard. Jacques stopped and wanted to go back to help her, but Pecqueux restrained him.

‘It’s none of your business,’ he said. ‘The bitch! She deserves all she gets!’

Jacques and Pecqueux reached the Rue François-Mazeline and went to bed without exchanging a word. The room was so tiny that their two beds almost touched; they remained awake for a long time, their eyes open, listening to the sound of each other’s breathing.

The hearings in the Roubaud case were due to begin on the Monday, in Rouen. For Denizet, the examining magistrate, the investigation had been a signal triumph; people in legal circles could not speak highly enough of the way he had brought such a complicated and involved case to so successful a conclusion. It was a masterpiece of astute analysis, they said, a superb, logical reconstruction of the truth; in short, a triumph of creative imagination.

The first thing that Denizet did when he arrived on the scene of the crime at La Croix-de-Maufras, a few hours after Séverine’s murder, was to have Cabuche arrested. Everything clearly pointed to him being the murderer — the fact that he was covered in blood, and the damning evidence of Roubaud and Misard, who described how they had found him in the room with the body, alone and distraught. When questioned and asked to explain why and how he came to be there, Cabuche had mumbled some tale that Denizet simply dismissed with a shrug of his shoulders, so naive and predictable did it seem. It was just the sort of story he had been expecting; he had heard it so many times before — the fictitious murderer, the invented criminal, whom the real criminal claimed to have heard running off into the night. If this mysterious person was still running, he would be well away by now, wouldn’t he! When asked what he was doing outside the house at such a late hour, Cabuche became flustered and couldn’t give a straight answer, eventually claiming that he was just out for a walk. It was childish. How could Denizet take this unknown intruder seriously — committing a murder and then running away, leaving all the doors of the house open, without touching a thing or helping himself to even a handkerchief? Where had he come from? Why had he killed her? From the very beginning of his inquiry, however, the judge had known about Jacques’s affair with the victim and was concerned to establish his whereabouts on the day of the murder. But, in addition to Cabuche’s own testimony that he had accompanied Jacques to Barentin, to catch the 4.14 train, the hotel proprietor in Rouen was quite adamant that her guest had gone to bed straight after his evening meal and had not left his room until the next morning, at about seven o’clock. Surely a lover does not murder the woman he loves for no reason at all, when there has never been the slightest disagreement between them. It would be absurd! It was unthinkable! There was only one possible murderer, the obvious murderer — the man they had arrested, the man found in the room with his hands covered in blood and the knife lying on the floor at his feet, the inhuman beast who was trying to spin him a ridiculous fairy story.

Having come to this conclusion, however, although convinced he was right, and even though his instinct, which, he said, he always relied on more than actual proof, told him that Cabuche was indeed the murderer, Monsieur Denizet encountered a minor difficulty. An initial search of Cabuche’s hovel in the Bécourt woods had revealed nothing. It had proved impossible to establish theft as a motive, and he needed to find some other reason for the murder. Then, quite by chance, during the course of one of his interviews, Misard had put him on the track. Misard said that one night he had seen Cabuche climbing over a wall to watch Madame Roubaud through the window as she was going to bed. When Jacques was questioned about Cabuche, he simply stated what he knew: Cabuche secretly adored her, he followed her everywhere, he always wanted to be near her and he would do anything for her. To Denizet, it seemed obvious; Cabuche had been driven by pure animal instinct. Everything fell into place perfectly. He had let himself in through the front door — he may even have had a key — he had left the door open in his unseemly haste, and there had been a struggle, after which he had murdered her and finally raped her, interrupted only by the arrival of her husband. One final question remained in his mind; it was odd that Cabuche, knowing Roubaud might arrive at any minute, should choose precisely the moment when he could be caught. But when he thought about it, this simply made the crime appear worse and convinced him that Cabuche was guilty; it suggested that he had acted out of sheer carnal desire and was afraid that, if he didn’t seize the opportunity when Séverine was still alone in an empty house, he would never have another chance, as she was due to leave the next day. Monsieur Denizet’s mind was made up; there could be no other explanation.

Cabuche was questioned again and again, gradually becoming ensnared in the skilful web of Denizet’s investigation, completely unaware of the traps that were being set for him to fall into. He stuck to his original story. He was walking along the road, enjoying the cool night air, when someone brushed past him, running off into the dark so fast that he couldn’t even say which way he went. He had been worried and when he went to look at the house he noticed that the front door had been left wide open. He had eventually decided to go upstairs and had found the woman, dead but still warm, looking at him with her eyes wide open. He had put her on the bed, thinking she was still alive, and had covered himself in blood. That was all he knew. He repeated it over and over again, never changing a single detail, as if he were simply rehearsing a predetermined story. When they tried to get him to say anything different, he became frightened and fell silent, like a man of low intelligence who didn’t understand what he was being asked. The first time Monsieur Denizet asked him whether he had been in love with the victim, he blushed violently, like a young boy being told off the first time he had kissed a girl. Cabuche denied it; he had never allowed himself to think of sleeping with her, as if it were something dreadful and unspeakable, yet at the same time something delicate and mysterious, something hidden away at the bottom of his heart, which he could reveal to no one. No, he hadn’t been in love with her, and he hadn’t wanted to sleep with her. He refused to say anything; to talk of such things now she was dead seemed to him to be a sacrilege. But his persistent denial of something that several witnesses had testified to also went against him. Naturally, according to the prosecution, he had a vested interest in concealing the insane attraction he felt towards the unfortunate woman he was to kill in order to satisfy his desire. When the examining magistrate, putting all the evidence together, attempted to force an admission from him by directly accusing him of murder and rape, Cabuche flew into a blind rage, protesting his innocence. How could he have killed her to have sex with her? He worshipped her like a saint! The police had to be called in to restrain him; he was saying he’d kill the whole damned lot of them. Cabuche, concluded Monsieur Denizet, was the most dangerous sort of villain — a devious character, but one who was betrayed by his own violent temper, which in the end plainly attested to the crimes he was attempting to deny.

It was at this point in the investigation, with Cabuche losing his temper every time he was accused of murder and shouting that it was the other man, the unknown person who had run away, that Monsieur Denizet made an important discovery, which transformed the whole affair and put an entirely new complexion on things. Monsieur Denizet had always claimed to have a nose for the truth. Some instinct prompted him to conduct another search of Cabuche’s hovel. Behind one of the beams he found a little hiding place containing a woman’s handkerchiefs and gloves, and underneath them a gold watch, which to his great delight he recognized immediately. It was President Grandmorin’s watch, the one he had spent so much time trying to track down before, a large watch engraved with two initials intertwined and, on the inside of the case, the maker’s number, 2516. This discovery came as a sudden revelation; everything became clear. The two crimes were connected. He was amazed at the way it all fitted together so logically. But the consequences were going to be very far-reaching. First, before mentioning the watch, he questioned Cabuche about the gloves and the handkerchiefs. For a moment Cabuche was on the point of confessing everything — yes he adored her, yes he desired her, he even kissed the dresses she had worn, picked up and stole things she dropped — laces from her stays, grips, hairpins. Then he was suddenly overcome with shame and embarrassment and would say no more. Monsieur Denizet, deciding that this was the moment, produced the watch and showed it to him. Cabuche looked at it aghast. He remembered it clearly; he had discovered it tied inside a handkerchief, which he had stolen from beneath Séverine’s pillow and taken home with him as one of his trophies. He had left it in his house while he racked his brains to think of a way of returning it. But what was the point of saying that? He would then have to admit to all the other things he had taken — bits of clothing and underwear with the scent of her perfume on them. He felt so ashamed of himself. They didn’t believe anything of what he said already. He could no longer understand it himself; everything was confused in his mind. It was all too complicated for him; it was becoming a nightmare. He no longer flew into a rage whenever they accused him of murder but stood there looking bewildered, answering that he did not know to every question he was asked. He did not know about the gloves and the handkerchiefs. He did not know about the watch. The whole thing was beginning to irritate him. Why didn’t they stop pestering him and take him off to be guillotined?

The following day, Monsieur Denizet had Roubaud arrested. Feeling that he now had the upper hand, he had issued the warrant in a moment of inspiration, thoroughly confident in his own perspicacity and before having any definite proof against him. Although there was still much that remained unexplained, he sensed that Roubaud was the vital link and even the instigator in this double murder. His suspicions met with immediate success when he discovered the deed of gift leaving their estate to the survivor, signed by Roubaud and Séverine in the presence of Maitre Colin, a solicitor in Le Havre, a week after they had taken possession of La Croix-de-Maufras. From that moment, Denizet was able to reconstruct the whole story, with such powerful arguments and telling evidence that his case against him was unassailable; the truth itself would have appeared less convincing, more far-fetched and even fantastical by comparison. Roubaud was a coward who on two occasions, frightened to commit murder himself, had enlisted the service of his bestial accomplice, Cabuche. The first time, eager to get his hands on President Grandmorin’s legacy, knowing what was in his will and also knowing that Cabuche bore a grudge against him, Roubaud had slipped the knife into his hand and pushed him into the coupé while the train was standing in the station at Rouen. Having shared the ten thousand francs between them, the two would probably never have seen each other again, had not one murder led to another. It was here that Monsieur Denizet displayed the profound understanding of criminal mentality for which he was so much admired; he had continued to keep his eye on Cabuche, he now revealed, because he was convinced that, statistically, the first murder would be followed by a second. In effect it needed only eighteen months: the Roubauds’ marriage had broken up, Roubaud had squandered his five thousand francs in gambling, and his wife had been driven to take a lover to amuse herself. No doubt she had refused to sell La Croix-de-Maufras lest her husband dissipate that money too; they were continually arguing, and she might have been threatening to hand him over to the police. At all events, a number of witnesses had testified to the complete breakdown of their marriage, and it was this that had eventually led to the second murder. The bestial Cabuche had made his second appearance. Roubaud, lurking somewhere in the shadows, had once again thrust the knife into his hand, to ensure that ownership of the accursed house which had already cost one life should finally be his. Such was the truth, the blinding truth, to which all the evidence pointed: the watch found in the quarry man’s hut, and especially the two bodies killed in exactly the same way, stabbed in the throat by the same person with the same weapon — the knife that had been recovered from the bedroom. On this last point the prosecution expressed some uncertainty; the President’s wound appeared to have been made by a smaller and sharper implement.

At first Roubaud simply answered yes or no in the sleepy, lethargic drawl which had by now become his customary manner of speech. He didn’t appear surprised that he had been arrested; as his personality slowly disintegrated, he had become indifferent to everything. In order to get him to talk, a warder was assigned permanently to his cell. Roubaud played cards with him all day long and was perfectly happy. He remained convinced that Cabuche was guilty; only he could have committed the murder. When asked about Jacques, he shrugged his shoulders and laughed, as much as to say that he knew all about the relationship between his wife and the engine driver. When, however, after his initial questions, Monsieur Denizet began to expound his theory of the murder and started to press him and accuse him directly of being an accomplice, in an attempt to extract a confession from him at the shock of having been found out, Roubaud had become more cautious. What tale was this, he thought? They were saying that it wasn’t him but Cabuche who had killed Grandmorin, just as he had killed Séverine, yet on both occasions he was the truly guilty party because Cabuche had been acting in his interest and on his behalf. He was amazed at this involved rigmarole and became very wary; they must be setting him a trap, lying to him in order to get him to admit that one of these murders — the first murder — had been committed by him. The minute he was arrested, Roubaud had assumed it was because the earlier case had been reopened. When confronted with Cabuche, he swore that he did not know him. But, when he then insisted he had discovered him covered in blood and about to rape his victim, Cabuche flew into a rage, and there followed a violent and confused scene which complicated matters even further. Three days went by, during which the magistrate questioned them both repeatedly, convinced that the two accomplices had agreed to put on this display of hostility towards each other in order to confuse him. Roubaud, utterly exhausted, had decided he would answer no more questions, when suddenly, in a moment of exasperation, and wanting to have the whole thing settled — a vague compulsion that had been troubling him for months — he blurted out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.