respectful.
About this time, Madame Beroldy became more outspoken in her confidences. To several friends, she declared herself greatly worried on her husband's behalf. She explained that he had been drawn into several schemes of a political nature, and also referred, to some important papers that had been entrusted to him for safekeeping and which concerned a 'secret' of far-reaching European importance.
They had been entrusted to his custody to throw pursuers off the track, but Madame Beroldy was nervous, having recognized several important members of the Revolutionary Circle in Paris.
On the 28thday of November the blow fell. The woman who came daily to clean and cook for the Beroldys was surprised to find the door of the apartment standing wide open.
Hearing faint moans issuing from the bedroom, she went in.
A terrible sight met her eyes. Madame Beroldy lay on the floor bound hand and foot, uttering feeble moans, having managed to free her mouth from a gag. On the bed was Monsieur Beroldy, lying in a pool of blood, with a knife driven through his heart.
Madame Beroldy's story was clear enough. Suddenly awakened from sleep, she had discerned two masked men bending over her. Stifling her cries, they had bound and gagged her. They had then demanded of Monsieur Beroldy the famous 'secret'.
But the intrepid wine merchant refused point-blank to accede to their request. Angered by his refusal, one of the men impulsively stabbed him through the heart. With the dead man's keys, they had opened the safe in the corner, and had carried away with them a mass of papers. Both men were heavily bearded, and had worn masks, but Madame Beroldy declared positively that they were Russians.
The affair created an immense sensation. Time went on, and the mysterious bearded men were never traced. And then, just as public interest was beginning to die down, a startling development occurred: Madame Beroldy was arrested and charged with the murder of her husband.
The trial, when it came on, aroused widespread interest.
The youth and beauty of the accused, and her mysterious story, were sufficient to make of it a cause célèbre.
It was proved beyond doubt that Jeanne Beroldy's parents were a highly respectable and prosaic couple, fruit merchants who lived on the outskirts of Lyons. The Russian Grand Duke, the court intrigues, and the political schemes-all the stories were traced back to the lady herself! Remorselessly, the whole story of her life was laid bare. The motive for the murder was found in Mr. Hiram P. Trapp. Mr. Trapp did his best, but, endlessly and agilely cross-questioned, he was forced to admit that he loved the lady, and that, had she been free, he would have asked her to be his wife. The fact that the relations between them were admittedly platonic strengthened the case against the accused. Debarred from becoming his mistress by the simple honourable nature of the man, Jeanne Beroldy had conceived the monstrous project of ridding herself of her elderly, undistinguished husband and becoming the wife of the rich Mr. Trapp.
Throughout, Madame Beroldy confronted her accusers with complete sang-froid and self-possession. Her story never varied. She continued to declare strenuously that she was of royal birth and that she had been substituted for the daughter of the fruit-seller at an early age. Absurd and completely unsubstantiated as these statements were, a great number of people believed implicitly in their truth.
But the prosecution was implacable. It denounced the masked 'Russians' as a myth, and asserted that the crime had been committed by Madame Beroldy and her lover, Georges Conneau. A warrant was issued for the arrest of the latter, but he had wisely disappeared. Evidence showed that the bonds which secured Madame Beroldy were so loose that she could easily have freed herself.
And then, towards the close of the trial, a letter, posted in Paris, was sent to the Public Prosecutor. It was from Georges Conneau and, without revealing his whereabouts, it contained a full confession of the crime. He declared that he had indeed struck the fatal blow at Madame Beroldy's instigation. The crime had been planned between them. Believing that her husband ill-treated her, and maddened by his own passion for her, a passion which he believed her to return, he had planned the crime and struck the fatal blow that should free the woman he loved from a hateful bondage.
Now, for the first time, he learnt of Mr. Hiram P. Trapp, and realized that the woman he loved had betrayed him! Not for his sake did she wish to be free, but in order to marry the wealthy American. She had used him as a cat's paw, and now, in his jealous rage, he turned and denounced her, declaring that throughout he had acted at her instigation.
And then Madame Beroldy proved herself the remarkable woman she undoubtedly was. Without hesitation, she dropped her previous defence, and admitted that the 'Russians' were a pure invention on her part. The real murderer was Georges Couneau. Maddened by passion, he had committed the crime, vowing that if she did not keep silence he would exact a terrible vengeance from her. Terrified by his threats, she had consented-also fearing it likely that if she told the truth she might be accused of conniving at the crime, but she had steadfastly refused to have anything more to do with her husband's murderer, and it was in revenge for this attitude on her part that he had written this letter accusing her.
She swore solemnly that she had had nothing to do with the planning of the crimes that she had awoken on that memorable night to find Georges Conneau standing over her the with the bloodstained knife in his hand.
It was a touch-and-go affair. Madame Beroldy's story was hardly credible. But her address to the jury was a masterpiece.
The tears streaming down her face, she spoke of her child of her woman's honour-of her desire to keep her reputation untarnished for the child's sake. She admitted that, Georges Conneau having been her lover, she might perhaps be held morally responsible for the crime but, before God, nothing more! She knew that she had committed a grave fault in not denouncing Conneau to the law but she declared in a broken voice that that was a thing no woman could have done. She had loved him! Could she let her hand be the one to send him to the guillotine? She had been guilty of much but she was innocent of the terrible crime imputed to her.
However that may have been, her eloquence and personality won the day. Madame Beroldy, amidst a scene of unparalleled excitement, was acquitted.
Despite the utmost endeavours of the police, Georges Conneau was never traced. As for Madame Beroldy, nothing more was heard of her. Taking the child with her, she left Paris to begin a new life.
Chapter 17. We Make Further Investigations
I have set down the Beroldy case in full. Of course all the details did not present themselves to my memory as I have recounted them here. Nevertheless, I recalled the case fairly accurately. It had attracted a great deal of interest at the time, and had been fully reported by the English papers, so that it did not need much effort of memory on my part to recollect the salient details.
Just for the moment, in my excitement, it seemed to clear up the whole matter. I admit that I am impulsive, and Poirot deplores my custom of jumping to conclusions, but I think I had some excuse in this instance. The remarkable way in which this discovery justified Poirot's point of view struck me at once.
'Poirot,' I said 'I congratulate you. I see everything now.'
Poirot lit one of his little cigarettes with his usual precision. Then he looked up.
'And since you see everything now, mon ami, what exactly is it that you see?'
'Why, that it was Madame Daubreuil-Beroldy-who murdered Mr. Renauld. The similarity of the two cases proves that beyond a doubt.'
'Then you consider that Madame Beroldy was wrongly acquitted? That in actual fact she was guilty of connivance in her husband's murder?'
I opened my eyes wide.
'Of course! Don't you?'
Poirot walked to the end of the room, absentmindedly straightened a chair, and then said thoughtfully: 'Yes that is my opinion. But there is no 'of course' about it, my friend. Technically speaking, Madame Beroldy is innocent.'
'Of that crime, perhaps. But not of this.'
