Old Boniface’s Crime
As Boniface the postman left the post office he discovered that his round that day would not take as long as usual, and felt a sharp pleasure in the knowledge. His task was the rural delivery outside the town of Vireville, and when he returned at night, with long weary strides, his legs had often more than forty kilometres behind them.
So his delivery would be quickly done! He could even loiter a little on the way and get home by about three in the afternoon. What luck!
He left the town by the Sennemare road and began his duties. It was June, the green and flowery month, the month when the meadows were looking their best.
Dressed in a blue blouse, and wearing a black cap with red braid, the postman took the narrow paths across fields of colza, oats, or wheat. The crops were shoulder-high, and his head, passing along above the ears, appeared to float on a calm green sea rippled gently by a little wind.
He entered the farms through wooden gates set in the hedgerows shaded by double rows of beeches, and greeting the peasant by name: “Good morning, Monsieur Chicot,” he would offer him his paper, the Petit Normand. The farmer would wipe his hand on the seat of his breeches, take the sheet of paper, and slip it into his pocket to read at his leisure after the midday meal. The dog, kennelled in a barrel, at the foot of a leaning apple tree, would bark furiously and tug at his chain, and the postman, without turning round, would set off again with his military gait, his long legs taking great strides, his left hand in his sack, his right swinging with a quick ceaseless gesture the stick that kept him company on his round.
He delivered his letters and circulars at the hamlet of Sennemare, and then went on across the fields to deliver his mail to the tax-collector, who lived in a little house half a mile from the village.
He was a new collector, Monsieur Chapatis, who had arrived the previous week and was but recently married.
He took in a Paris paper, and sometimes postman Boniface, when he had the time to spare, would glance at it before handing it over to its destined owner.
Accordingly he opened his sack, took out the newspaper, slipped off the band, unfolded it, and began to read it as he walked. The first page was of no interest to him; politics left him cold; he never looked at the financial news, but the news items enthralled him.
Today they were particularly rich in excitement. He was so strongly affected by the story of a crime committed in a gamekeeper’s cottage that he stopped in the middle of a patch of clover to read it slowly through again. The details were appalling. A woodcutter, passing the keeper’s cottage one morning, noticed a little blood on the doorstep, as though someone’s nose had been bleeding. “He killed a rabbit last night,” thought the woodcutter, but, drawing nearer, he observed that the door was ajar and that the lock had been smashed.
Then, seized with terror, he ran to the village to inform the mayor; the latter brought with him the constable and the schoolmaster as reinforcements, and the four men went back together. They found the keeper lying in front of the fireplace with his throat cut, his wife under the bed, strangled, and their little six-year-old daughter suffocated between two mattresses.
Boniface the postman was so deeply affected at the thought of this murder, the horrible details of which came home to him one by one, that he felt a weakness in his legs, and said out loud:
“Good Lord, there are some villains in this world!”
Then he slipped the journal back into its paper belt and set off again, his mind reeling with visions of the crime. Shortly, he reached Monsieur Chapatis’ dwelling; he opened the gate of the little garden and approached the house. It was a low building, consisting merely of a ground-floor surmounted by a mansard roof. It was at least five hundred yards from the nearest neighbouring house.
The postman mounted the two steps up to the entrance, set his hand to the knob, attempted to open the door, and found it locked. Then he saw that the shutters had not been opened, and that no one had left the house that day.
He was seized with a feeling of uneasiness, for ever since his arrival Monsieur Chapatis had been in the habit of rising early. Boniface pulled out his watch. It was only ten past seven, so that he was nearly an hour ahead of his usual time. Still, the tax-collector should have been up and about.
So he went round the building, walking with circumspection, as though he were in danger. He observed nothing suspicious, except a man’s footprints in a strawberry-bed.
But suddenly he paused, motionless, transfixed with horror, as he passed in front of a window. Groans were coming from inside the house.
He went towards it and, straddling across a border of thyme, set his ear to the penthouse-shed to hear the better; the sound of groans was unmistakable. He could hear plainly long sighs of pain, something like a death-rattle, the sound of a struggle. Then the groans became louder and more frequent, grew even more frenzied, and became screams.
Boniface, no longer in any doubt that a crime was being committed at that very moment in the tax-collector’s house, rushed off as fast as his legs could carry him. He fled back through the little garden and dashed across the meadows and cornfields. He ran breathlessly, shaking his sack so that it banged against his back, and arrived, exhausted, panting, and desperate, at the door of the police station.
Inspector Malautour was mending a broken chair with tin-tacks and a hammer. Constable Rantieux was gripping the
