Madame Roque had risen and turned round, and was now sitting weeping, with her hands in front of her face.
The crowd was discussing the affair, and the boys’ greedy eyes devoured the nude young body. Renardet noticed it and, hastily tearing off his linen coat, he threw it over the girl’s form, which was completely hidden by that huge garment.
The inquisitive spectators drew quietly nearer; the wood was getting fuller and fuller; a continuous murmur of voices rose to the thick foliage of the tall trees.
The mayor stood there in his shirtsleeves, stick in hand, in a pugnacious attitude. He seemed exasperated by the curiosity of the crowd, and repeated: “If one of you comes a step nearer, I’ll break his head like a dog’s.”
The peasants had a wholesome dread of him, and kept clear. Doctor Labarbe, who was smoking, sat down beside Madame Roque and talked to her, trying to distract her attention. The old woman promptly took her hands from her face and answered him in a rush of tearful words, venting her grief in the sheer flood of her speech. She told him her whole life-history, her marriage, the death of her husband, a cowherd, gored to death, her daughter’s childhood, her wretched existence as a widow with a child and no resources. She was all she had, was little Louise, and now she’d been killed, killed here in this wood. Suddenly she felt a wish to see her child again and, dragging herself to the body upon her knees, she lifted a corner of the garment that covered it; then let it fall again and broke into fresh sobs. The crowd was silent, gazing eagerly at the mother’s every movement.
There was a sudden disturbance; and a cry of “The police, the police!”
Two policemen appeared in the distance, advancing at a rapid trot, escorting their captain and a short, ginger-whiskered gentleman, who bobbed up and down like a monkey on his big white mare.
The constable had found Monsieur Pictoin, the examining magistrate, at the very moment when he was mounting his horse to take his daily ride; it was his ambition to be taken for a smart young fellow, which vastly amused the officers.
He dismounted, with the captain, and shook hands with the mayor and the doctor, casting a sneaking glance at the linen coat on the ground, filled out as it was by the body lying beneath it.
When he had been thoroughly acquainted with the facts of the case, his first act was to disperse the crowd, which the police cleared out of the wood, but which soon reappeared in the meadow and formed a hedge, a long hedge of excited, moving heads, all along the Brindille, on the far side of the brook.
In his turn the doctor made his statement, and Renardet wrote it down with a pencil in his notebook. All the verifications were made, registered, and commented upon, without any discovery being made. Maxim had returned also, without finding a trace of the missing clothes.
Everyone was amazed at their disappearance; no one could explain it except by the theory of robbery, and, since the rags were not worth a shilling, even this theory was inadmissible.
The examining magistrate, the mayor, the captain, and the doctor searched in couples, looking between even the smallest twigs along the waterside.
“How is it,” said Renardet to the magistrate, “that the wretch hid or stole the clothes, yet left the body right in the open, in full view?”
The other was crafty and sagacious. “Aha,” he answered, “possibly a trick. This crime was committed either by a brute or by a very sly dog. Anyhow, we’ll soon find him all right.”
The sound of carriage wheels made them turn their heads. The deputy, the doctor, and the clerk of the police station were arriving. The search continued, amid animated conversation.
Renardet said suddenly: “You know you’re all lunching with me?”
Everyone accepted with smiles; the examining magistrate, thinking that they had had enough, for that day, of Madame Roque’s little girl, turned to the mayor.
“I can have the body taken to your house, can’t I? You have a room there where it can be kept till tonight.”
The mayor was distressed, and stammered: “Yes … no, no. To tell you the truth, I’d sooner not have it … on account of the servants, you know. They’re already talking of … of ghosts and things … in my tower, the tower of Renard. You know what it is. … I couldn’t get one to stay on. … No … I’d sooner not have it in the house.”
The magistrate smiled: “Very well. … I’ll get it taken straight to Roüy for the inquest.” And turning to the deputy, he said: “I may have the use of your carriage, may I not?”
“Certainly.”
They all came back to the body. Madame Roque was seated beside her daughter now, holding her hand and staring in front of her with wild, blurred eyes. The two doctors tried to lead her away, so that she should not see the child taken from her. But she understood at once what they were about to do and, throwing herself upon the body, seized it with both arms. Lying beside it, she shrieked: “You shan’t have it, it’s mine, mine, now. They’ve killed my child; I’ll keep her, you shan’t have her.”
The men, disturbed and irresolute, stood round her. Renardet went down on his knees to speak to her. “Listen, we must have her, so as to know
