Then he related at length his troubles with Polyte, why the man had left his service, his scowling face, the tales that were told about him; piling up insignificant, petty details.
The inspector, who listened attentively although he was always emptying and refilling his glass, turned towards the constable and said casually:
“We must search the cottage of the shepherd Severin’s wife.”
The constable smiled and nodded his head three times in reply.
Then Madame Lecacheur came up and in her turn, and with all a peasant’s artfulness, very gently questioned the inspector. This shepherd Severin, a simpleton and quite rough in his ways, had grown up on the hillside surrounded by his roaming, bleating flock, knowing little about anything but sheep. Nevertheless he had the peasant’s instinct for saving. For years and years he must have hidden in hollow trees and in crevices of rocks all that he earned either as a keeper of flocks or as an animal doctor, healing sprains by his touch and his spells for the bonesetter’s secret had been handed down to him by an old shepherd whose place he had taken. Then one day he bought at public auction for three thousand francs a little bit of land consisting of a cottage and field.
A few months later his marriage was announced. He was going to marry the innkeeper’s servant, who was notorious for her immorality. The boys of the village said that the girl, knowing he was fairly well off, had been going to his hut every night, that she could do as she pleased with him and had gradually persuaded him to marry her.
After they were married she went home to the house which her man had bought, and here she lived while he went on watching his flocks, night and day, on the plains.
The inspector added:
“Polyte has been sleeping with her for three weeks, the scoundrel has no other shelter.”
The constable ventured to say:
“He is taking the shepherd’s blankets.”
Madame Lecacheur, seized by a fresh fit of rage that was intensified by a married woman’s anger against any impropriety, exclaimed:
“I am sure it is she. Go at once. Ah! the blackguards!”
But the inspector calmly said:
“One minute. Let us wait until twelve o’clock; as he goes there to dinner every day I will catch them with their noses over it.”
The constable smiled, pleased at his chief’s idea. Lecacheur smiled too, for the shepherd’s story seemed funny to him—betrayed husbands are always a joke.
Twelve o’clock had just struck when Inspector Sénateur, followed by his man, knocked gently three times at the door of a little lonely house, at the corner of a wood, five hundred yards from the village.
They were standing waiting close against the wall so as not to be seen from inside. After a minute or two, as nobody answered, the inspector knocked again. The house seemed empty, it was so quiet, but the constable, Lenient, whose hearing was very good, said that someone was moving about inside.
Then Sénateur got angry. He would not allow anyone to defy the authority of the law for one second, so knocking at the wall, he shouted:
“Open the door.”
As this order produced no effect, he roared: “If you do not do as I bid you, I shall smash the lock. I am the Chief Inspector, by G⸺! Here, Lenient.”
He had not finished before the door opened and Sénateur saw a fat woman with a red face, swollen cheeks, drooping breasts, protruding stomach and big hips—one of those coarse, animal females—the wife of Severin the shepherd.
He went in, saying:
“I have come to see you about a little investigation I must make.”
He looked round. On the table a plate, jug of cider, half-filled glass indicated the beginning of a meal. Two knives were lying side by side and the shrewd constable winked at his chief and said: “It smells good,” adding gaily: “I would swear it was stewed rabbit.”
“Will you have a liqueur brandy?” the peasant woman asked.
“No, thank you. I only want the skin of the rabbit you are eating.”
She pretended not to understand, but was trembling in every limb.
“What rabbit?”
The inspector had sat down and was calmly wiping his brow.
“Come, come, mother, you are not going to try to make us believe that you live on couch-grass. What were you eating, all by yourself, for your dinner?”
“Me, nothing, nothing, I swear. A tiny bit of butter on my bread.”
“The deuce, my good woman, a tiny bit of butter on your bread … you are making a mistake. What you mean is a tiny bit of butter on the rabbit. Damm it all! your butter smells good! It is special butter, extra good, wedding butter, special frying-butter, surely, not ordinary household butter, butter like that!”
The constable, doubled up with laughter, repeated:
“Surely, not ordinary household butter.”
As Inspector Sénateur was fond of a joke, the local police all indulged in witticisms.
He continued: “Where do you keep your butter?”
“My butter?”
“Yes, your butter.”
“Well, in the jar.”
“What jar?”
“The butter-jar, of course! Here it is.”
She brought out an old cup with a layer of salt, rancid butter in the bottom. The inspector sniffed at it and, shaking his head, said: “That’s not the same. I want the butter that smells of stewed rabbit. Come, Lenient, let us have a look round; you look on the sideboard, my boy, I am going to look under the bed.”
Having closed the door, he went up to the bed and tried to move it, but it was fixed to the wall and had apparently not been moved for over fifty years. Then, the inspector bending down, his uniform cracked, and a button gave way.
“Lenient,” he said.
“Inspector?”
“Come over here to the bed, my boy. I am too tall
