Without rising he said: “Rape and murder. We’ll verify it directly. The girl’s almost a woman too: look at her throat.”
The two breasts, already well formed, sagged on the bosom that death had robbed of its firmness.
Carefully the doctor lifted the handkerchief that covered the head. The face was black and ghastly, with tongue and eyes protruding. “Strangled,” he said, “as soon as the job was done.”
He felt the neck: “Strangled with the bare hands; there’s no special trace besides, no nail-mark or fingerprint. That’s that, and it is Madame Roque’s little girl.”
Gingerly he replaced the handkerchief. “I can do nothing; she’s been dead for at least twelve hours. The police must be told.”
Renardet was standing up with his hands behind his back, gazing at the little body laid upon the ground. “Poor little thing!” he muttered. “We must find her clothes.”
The doctor felt her hands, her arms, her legs. “She’d just had a bathe,” he said. “They must be on the riverbank.”
The mayor gave his orders. “You, Principe”—this to the town clerk—“you hunt along the stream for her clothes. And you, Maxim”—this to the constable—“you run to Roüy-le-Tors and fetch me the examining magistrate and the police. They must be here within an hour. You understand?”
The two men departed quickly, and Renardet said to the doctor: “What blackguard in the district could do such a thing?”
“Who can say?” the doctor murmured. “Everyone is capable of it. Everyone in particular, and no one in general. It must have been a tramp, some fellow out of work. Now we’re a Republic, they are the only people you meet on the roads.”
Both were supporters of the Bonapartist cause.
“Yes,” answered the mayor, “it must have been a passing stranger, a vagabond without hearth or home.”
“Or wife,” added the doctor with a faint smile. “Having neither supper nor bed, he got himself the rest. There are I don’t know how many men on this earth who are capable, at any moment, of committing a crime. Did you know that the little girl was missing?”
With the end of his stick he touched, one after another, the dead child’s stiffened fingers, pressing on them as on the keys of a piano.
“Yes. The mother came to see me last night, about nine o’clock, as the child had not come in at seven for her supper. We shouted for her on the roads till midnight, but we never thought of the wood. Besides, we needed daylight to make a really effective search.”
“Have a cigar,” said the doctor.
“No, thanks. I don’t want to smoke. This business has given me rather a turn.”
The two remained standing, in front of the frail young body, so pale upon the dark moss. A great bluebottle walked up one thigh, stopped at the bloodstains, and went on up the body, running over the hip with its hurried, jerky little steps. It climbed up one breast, then came down again and explored the other, seeking for something to drink. The two men watched the roving black speck.
“How pretty it is,” said the doctor, “a fly on human skin! The ladies of the last century were quite right to wear them on their faces. I wonder why the custom has gone out.”
The mayor, lost in thought, appeared to hear nothing. Abruptly, he swung round, startled by a noise. A woman in a blue bonnet and apron came running through the trees. It was the mother, Madame Roque. As soon as she caught sight of Renardet she began to scream: “My little darling, where’s my little darling?” so wild with grief that she never looked down. Suddenly she saw her darling, and stopped dead. She clasped her hands and flung up her arms: piercing and heartrending screams came between her lips, the screams of a wounded animal.
She flung herself upon her knees beside the body, and snatched at the handkerchief with a violent gesture. When she saw that dreadful face, black and distorted, she drew back shuddering, then buried her face in the moss, her body shaken with ceaseless heartbreaking sobs.
The clothes clung round her tall bony frame that heaved and shook. They could see the ghastly quivering of her thin ugly ankles and her withered calves, in their coarse blue stockings. Her crooked fingers burrowed in the earth as though she would make a hole and hide in it.
The doctor, deeply moved, murmured: “Poor old thing!”
Renardet felt a curious disturbance in his stomach; then he uttered a sort of violent sneeze, vented simultaneously from nose and mouth. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and cried noisily into it, choking, sobbing, and blowing his nose. “M—m—m—my God,” he blubbered, “I’d I—I—like to see them g—guillotine the swine that did it!”
But Principe returned empty-handed and disconsolate. “I’ve found nothing, sir,” he muttered to the mayor, “nothing anywhere.”
“What can’t you find?” the other demanded thickly.
“The little girl’s clothes.”
“W—well, go on looking … and … and f—find them, or you’ll get into trouble with me.”
Knowing that there was no opposing the mayor, the fellow went off again with a discouraged air, casting a timid sideways glance at the body.
Distant voices were heard among the trees, a confused din, the uproar of an approaching crowd; for on his round Médéric had spread the news from door to door. The country folk, at first dumbfounded, had talked it over in the street on one another’s doorsteps. Then they gathered together, and, after twenty minutes’ chattering, discussion, and comment, were coming to see it for themselves.
They arrived in groups, a little hesitant and uneasy, fearing their own feelings at first sight of the body. When they saw it they stopped, not daring to come closer, and talking in low tones. Then they grew bold, advanced a few steps, stopped again, advanced a few more, and soon grouped themselves
