broken piece of furniture between his legs and holding a nail at the edge of the break; the inspector, chewing his moustache, his eyes round and moist with concentration, hit his subordinate’s fingers at every stroke.
As soon as he saw them the postman cried out:
“Come quick, somebody’s murdering the tax-collector! Come quick, quick!”
The two men ceased their work and looked up, with the dumbfounded air of men suddenly and amazingly interrupted.
Boniface, seeing that their surprise was greater than their haste, said again:
“Quick! Quick! Thieves are in the house, I heard screams, there’s barely time!”
The inspector set down his hammer and asked:
“Who was it who informed you of this deed?”
The postman replied:
“I was going to deliver the paper and two letters when I noticed that the door was shut and that the tax-collector had not yet got up. I walked round the house to try and find out the reason, and heard someone groaning as though he were being strangled or had had his throat cut, so I came away to fetch you as fast as I could go. There’s barely time.”
The inspector drew himself up to his full height and said:
“You did not render assistance in person?”
“I was afraid that I was not present in sufficient strength,” replied the frightened postman.
At that the police official was convinced, and said:
“A moment, while I put my coat on, and I’ll follow you.”
He went into the police station, followed by his subordinate carrying back the chair.
They reappeared almost immediately and all three set off with vigorous strides for the scene of the crime.
Arriving near the house, they carefully slowed their pace, and the inspector drew his revolver. Very softly they penetrated into the garden and approached the wall of the house. There were no new signs indicating that the malefactors had departed. The door was still shut, the windows still closed.
“We’ve got them,” murmured the inspector.
Old Boniface, quivering with excitement, made him go round to the other side and, pointing to a lean-to shed, said:
“It’s in there.”
The inspector went forward alone, and set his ear to the boards. The two others waited, ready for anything, their eyes fixed upon him.
For a long time he remained motionless, listening. In order to apply his ear closer to the wooden shutter, he had taken off his cocked hat and was holding it in his right hand.
What was he hearing? His impassive face revealed nothing, but suddenly the tips of his moustache turned up, his cheeks were creased as though in silent laughter, and once more straddling across the box-tree border, he came back towards the two men, who stared at him amazed.
Then he signed to them to follow him on tiptoe and, having reached the entrance, bade Boniface slip the paper and letters under the door.
The postman, dumbfounded, obeyed meekly.
“And now off we go,” said the inspector.
But as soon as they had passed through the gate, he turned to Boniface, showed the whites of his eyes, gleaming with merriment, and spoke in a bantering tone, with a knowing flicker of his eyelids:
“You’re a sly dog, you are.”
“What do you mean?” replied the old man. “I heard it, I swear I heard it.”
But the policeman, unable to restrain himself any longer, burst into a roar of laughter. He laughed as if he would choke, bent double, his hands across his belly, his eyes filled with tears, the flesh on each side of his nose distorted into a frightful grimace. The two others stared at him in bewilderment.
But as he could neither speak nor stop laughing nor make them understand what was affecting him, he made a gesture, a quite vulgar and scandalous gesture.
As he still failed to make himself understood, he repeated the movement several times, nodding towards the house, still shuttered.
Suddenly his man understood, in his turn, and burst into formidable transports of merriment.
The old man stood stupidly between the other two, who rolled in agonies of mirth.
At last the inspector grew calm; he gave the old man a vigorous chaffing poke in the stomach, and exclaimed:
“Ah, you sly dog, you and your jokes! I shan’t forget old Boniface’s crime in a hurry.”
The postman, his large eyes wide open, said once more:
“I swear I heard it.”
The inspector began to laugh again. His constable had sat down on the grass at the roadside to have his laugh out in comfort.
“Ah, you heard it, did you? And is that how you murder your wife, eh, you dirty dog?”
“My wife?” He reflected at some length, then replied:
“My wife. … Yes, she hollers when I knock her about … but if she does, what’s a bit of noise, anyway? Was Monsieur Chapatis beating his?”
At that the inspector, in a delirium of mirth, turned him round like a puppet with his hands on his shoulders, and whispered into his ear something at which the postman was struck dumb with amazement.
At last the old man murmured thoughtfully:
“No. … Not like that. … Not like that. … Not a bit like that. … Mine doesn’t say anything. … I’d never have believed it … is it possible? … Anyone would have sworn that a murder was taking place.”
And filled with shame, confusion, and bewilderment, he went on his way across the fields, while the constable and the inspector, still laughing and shouting pungent barrack jests after him, watched his black cap recede into the distance above the quiet waves of the corn.
The Greenhouse
M. and Mme. Lerebour were the same age. But Monsieur seemed the younger, although he was the more infirm. They lived near Mantes in a pretty country place they had built, after making a fortune selling printed calicoes.
The house was surrounded by a fine garden containing a poultry-run, Chinese kiosks, and a little greenhouse at the far end of the grounds. M. Lerebour was short, fat, and jovial, with the manners of a convivial shopkeeper. His wife, thin, wilful, and always discontented, had not succeeded in conquering her husband’s good humour. She dyed her hair, and sometimes read novels which put dreams into her head, although she
