This reason moved her; hate burned in her crazed eyes. “Then he’ll be caught?” she said.
“Yes, I promise you he will.”
She rose, determined to let them have their own way. But, hearing the captain murmur, “Curious that her clothes can’t be found,” a new and strange idea entered the peasant woman’s brain.
“Where are her clothes?” she asked. “They’re mine, I want ’em. Where’ve they been put?”
It was explained to her that they were still lost, whereupon she persisted with despairing obstinacy, weeping and moaning, demanding: “They’re mine, I want ’em. Where are they? I want ’em.”
The more they tried to calm her, the more obstinately she sobbed. She did not want the body any longer, only the clothes, her daughter’s clothes, perhaps less from maternal affection than from the blind cupidity of a wretch to whom a single coin represents a fortune.
And when the little body, rolled in a wrap fetched from Renardet’s house, disappeared into the carriage, the old woman stood under the trees, supported by the mayor and the captain, and cried: “I’ve got nothing, nothing, nothing at all, nothing, not even her li’l bonnet! I’ve got nothing, nothing, nothing, not even her li’l bonnet!”
The parish priest had now come on the scene; he was still quite young but already very plump. He undertook to get Mother Roque away, and they set off together towards the village. The mother’s grief abated under the honeyed consolation of God’s servant, who promised her a thousand assuagements. But she repeated incessantly: “If only I had her li’l bonnet,” clinging stupidly to this thought, which now completely obsessed her.
Renardet shouted after them: “You’ll lunch with us, Father? In an hour’s time.”
The priest turned his head and replied: “Willingly, Mr. Mayor. I’ll be there about twelve.”
All the guests made their way towards the house that lifted over the trees its grey front and the great tower built beside the Brindille.
The meal was a long one: they talked about the crime. Everyone there held the same theory: it had been the work of some tramp, who had happened to wander that way while the child was bathing.
Then the magistrates returned to Roüy, after announcing that they would return early next day; the doctor and the parish priest went home, while Renardet took a long walk through the meadows and came back to the copse, where he walked up and down until nightfall, with slow steps, his hands clasped behind his back.
He went to bed very early and the next morning he was still asleep when the examining magistrate entered his bedroom. He was rubbing his hands, and his face expressed great satisfaction.
“Ah,” he said, “you’re still in bed. Well, my dear fellow, we’ve news this morning.”
The mayor sat up in bed.
“What is it?”
“Oh, an odd enough thing. You’ll remember that yesterday the mother was making a terrible fuss about wanting something to remind her of her daughter, particularly her little bonnet. Well, when she opened her door this morning, she found on the doorstep the child’s two little wooden shoes. This proves that the crime was committed by someone in the district, by someone who now feels sorry for her. Besides, postman Médéric has brought me the dead girl’s thimble, knife, and needle-case. There’s no doubt that the man was carrying off her clothes to hide them when he dropped the things in the pocket. For my part, I attach especial importance to the incident of the wooden shoes, which points to a degree of moral sensibility and a quality of compassion in the murderer. If you are ready, we will therefore consider in turn the leading people of your district.”
The mayor got out of bed. He rang for hot water to shave himself. “Very well,” he said, “but it will be a long job, and we can begin at once.”
Monsieur Pictoin straddled across his chair, indulging his passion for equestrian exercises even indoors.
Renardet, staring at himself in the glass, was now covering his chin with a white foam; then he drew his razor over the skin and went on: “The name of the leading citizen of Carvelin is Joseph Renardet, mayor, well-to-do landowner, a hot-tempered man who beats keepers and drivers. …”
The examining magistrate laughed aloud: “That’s enough; go on to the next.”
“The next in importance is Monsieur Pelledent, deputy mayor, cattle farmer, quite as well-to-do a landowner, a shrewd peasant, uncommon tricky, uncommon sharp in money matters, but in my opinion incapable of such a monstrous crime.”
“Next,” said Monsieur Pictoin.
So Renardet shaved and washed, and went through his inspection of the morals of all the inhabitants of Carvelin. After debating for two hours, their suspicions narrowed down to three sufficiently dubious characters: a poacher called Cavalle, one Paquet who dealt in trout and crabs, and a cowherd called Clovis.
II
The investigations went on all summer: the criminal was not discovered. The men suspected and arrested were easily able to prove their innocence, and the police had to abandon their search for the guilty man.
But this murder seemed in some strange fashion to have stirred the whole countryside. An uneasy feeling lurked in people’s hearts, a vague fear, an inexplicable sense of terror, sprung not only from the impossibility of discovering any clue, but also and in a special degree from that strange discovery of the wooden shoes at Mother Roque’s doorstep on the next morning. The certainty that the murderer had been present at the discussions, that he must still be living in the village, haunted and obsessed all minds, seemed to hover over the countryside like a perpetual menace.
The copse, besides, had become a terrifying place, it was avoided, and they believed it haunted. Before the murder, the villagers used to walk there every Sunday afternoon. They sat on the moss below great tall trees, or wandered contentedly along the stream, peering at the
