Médéric went steadily forward, observing nothing, and thinking only: “My first letter is for the Poivrons, and then I have one for Monsieur Renardet; I shall have to go through the copse, then.”
His blue blouse, caught tightly round his waist in a black leather belt, moved with steady speed past the green line of willows; his stick, a stout branch of holly, moved at his side with the same action as his legs.
He crossed the Brindille by a bridge made of a single tree-trunk, thrown across from one bank to the other; its only rail was a rope supported by stakes sunk into the banks.
The copse belonged to Monsieur Renardet, the mayor of Carvelin, and the most important landowner in the district. It was almost a wood of huge old trees, as straight as pillars, and stretched the length of half a league along the brook that bounded this vast leafy vault. Along the waterside large shrubs had sprung up under the sun’s heat, but deep in the copse nothing was to be found but moss, thick, sweet, and soft, filling the still air with a faint odour of decay and rotten wood.
Médéric slowed down, took off his black cap with its scarlet trimming, and wiped his brow, for, though it was not yet eight o’clock in the morning, it was already hot in the meadows. He had just put on his hat, and was resuming his rapid stride, when he noticed, at the foot of a tree, a small knife, a child’s knife. As he picked it up, he found a thimble too, then, two steps farther on, a needle case.
He picked them up and thought: “Better give them to the mayor”; and continued his journey, but now with his eyes wide open, expecting all the time to find something more.
Suddenly he stopped dead, as though he had bumped into a wooden barrier, for ten paces in front of him there lay upon its back the body of a child, stark naked on the moss. It was the body of a little girl about twelve years old; her arms were flung wide apart, her feet were separated, and her face was covered with a handkerchief. A little blood stained her legs.
Médéric crept forward on tiptoe, as though he feared to make a sound, scenting danger. His eyes were wide open.
What was this? She must be asleep. Then he reflected that people do not sleep naked like that at half past seven in the morning, in a cold wood. She was dead, then, and he was in the presence of a crime. At this thought, old soldier as he was, a cold shiver ran up his back. Murder, and child-murder at that, was so rare a happening in the district that he could not believe his eyes. But there was no wound upon her, nothing but the blood congealed upon her leg. How long had she been killed?
He had stopped quite close to her, and was looking at her, leaning on his stick. He must know her, since he knew all the local inhabitants, but, not being able to see her face, he could not guess her name. He bent down to remove the handkerchief from her face, then stopped, with outstretched hand, restrained by a sudden thought.
Had he the right to interfere in any way with the disposition of the body before the judicial inquiry? He imagined the law as a kind of general whose notice nothing can escape, and who attaches as much importance to a lost button as to a stab in the stomach. Beneath that handkerchief damning evidence might be found; a real clue, which might well lose its value if touched by a clumsy hand.
So he rose, to run to the mayor’s house. A second thought held him back. Suppose that by any chance the little girl were still alive, he could not leave her like this. Quickly he knelt down at a discreet distance from her and, thrusting out his hand, touched her foot. It was cold, frozen into that ghastly chill that makes dead flesh so terrifying, and leaves no room for doubt. The touch of it put the heart across him, as he expressed it later, and the saliva dried in his mouth. He rose at once and began to run through the wood towards Monsieur Renardet’s house.
He ran with the gait of an athlete, his stick under his arm, his fists closed, his head thrust forward; his leather bag, full of letters and newspapers, pounded rhythmically against his back.
The mayor’s house was at the end of the wood whose trees served as its park. One corner of the surrounding wall was washed by the Brindille, which here ran into a small pond.
It was a large square house of grey stone. It was very old, and in former times had been beseiged; at the far end of it was a huge tower, sixty feet high and built in the water. Once, from the summit of this keep, watch had been kept over all the district. It was called the Tower of Renard, no one knew quite why. It was doubtless from this name that the name Renardet came, borne by all the owners of this property, which had been in the same family, it was said, for more than two hundred years. For the Renardets belonged to that almost noble yeoman class so often found in the country before the Revolution. The postman rushed into the
