Thin grey mist hung in the air. The dank stench of the nearby brook struck Bourgeois’
nostrils, as it did every morning when he closed his gate and turned right along his
garden wall into the Rue de Carême-Prenant. His morning routine was unchanging,
regular as clockwork. It was a chill autumn morning. Winter’s coming early this year,
thought Bourgeois as he came to his neighbour’s gate.
He noticed dully that the gate was ajar. His usually fastidious neighbour must have forgotten
to secure it the previous night.
This was uncharacteristic but it would take more than an open gate to come between Louis
Bourgeois and his breakfast and he walked steadily on to the small baker’s shop where he had
taken his bread and coffee for more than twenty years.
Refreshed and awoken by his modest meal, he began his journey home to make ready for
work. True to his habit, he took a rather longer route to aid digestion. People were beginning
to stir, going about their business. Bourgeois exchanged greetings with acquaintances,
including that shifty rogue Jacques Paysant who looked after his neighbour’s garden. He
could never understand why M Leclair employed someone like Paysant as his gardener
when he had a proper gardener, himself, living right next door.
“You’d best make haste,” he said. “M Leclair’s left his gate open last night. Better
see that all’s well.”
Bourgeois was the heating water for his morning shave a few minutes later when
he was interrupted by an insistent knocking on his door.
“In the name of God, who’s that at this time in the morning?” he grumbled.
He opened the door to find a distraught Paysant.
“M Bourgeois, M Bourgeois, I fear there’s something terribly wrong. M Leclair’s
house door is open and his hat and wig are on the ground in the garden …
“I can see his legs … ”
Bourgeois took a sharp intake of breath. “Best take a look,” he said with a
confidence he did not feel. “Better call some neighbours.”
Cautiously, the anxious little party entered the garden. The hat and wig were plain to see.
They pushed the door fully open. M Leclair lay on his back, his head, turned sideways,
against the door to the cellar, his legs across the staircase. Three large patches of blood
stained his shirt and waistcoat. His open sightless eyes stared across the floor. He was
plainly dead.
*****
Inspector Receveur was a great believer in gossip. His ability to pass unnoticed in a crowd
was a considerable. Hubert Receveur, short and slight, an anonymous-looking man but,
nevertheless, an inspector of police, surveyed the top of the large table in his cramped
office. It was, as usual, strewn with innumerable papers arranged in overlapping piles. In
front of him was his day sheet: Tuesday, 23rd October 1764. As if he had not already
sufficient to do, he had been given this new case.
However, the case presented some interesting aspects. Not every day was a distinguished
violinist murdered in his own home. And why was the distinguished violinist living alone
in so shabby a quarter of Paris?
He and his assistant, Trenet, had been to the scene of the crime. They had spoken to the
neighbours. The surgeon’s report was on his desk. Jean-Marie Leclair, aged sixty-seven,
had been stabbed three times in the chest and stomach with a sharp, pointed implement.
His face and lower back were bruised suggesting the elderly man had put up a fight.
A macabre curiosity was the collection of things distributed around the scene. Several
leaves of blank manuscript paper had been arranged near the body and M Leclair’s hat
had been neatly placed on a book, an anthology of amusing sayings, just outside the garden
door. It was obviously deliberate, but why?
“So what was the motive?” murmured Receveur.
“Robbery?” hazarded Trenet. “His watch is missing. I wouldn’t trust that fellow
Paysant.”
“Paysant is clearly not to be trusted. His information conflicted with that of
Bourgeois and he contradicted himself several times. We will look into his past but I fancy
we’ll find no more than a small-time crook, not a murderer.
“True, the watch is missing, but nothing else is. Hardly a very efficient thief to
leave a silver snuff box in Leclair’s coat pocket and all that money upstairs. No. Let us
think who would gain from M Leclair’s death. Let us find out who disliked him, and why.”
* * * * *
Two days later, returned from the Church of St Laurent where the victim’s body had been
interred, Hubert Receveur sat down to review progress in the case. What did they actually
know? How much further forward were they?
He looked at his notes. They had been able to track M Leclair’s last movements pretty
closely until he returned to his house shortly after ten o’clock. There being no music on
Mondays at his employer’s salon, he had played billiards at Lamotte’s, a local establishment,
as was his habit. Lamotte affirmed that, a little after half past nine, M Leclair had checked
his watch and suggested a meal together at an inn. Lamotte was already engaged so M
Leclair had left alone. He had then purchased a roll on his way home – the roll had been
found in the dead man’s coat pocket – and had afterwards purchased a ball of string.
Various strangers had been spotted. A horse-drawn cart full of pottery had appeared
without its driver. A couple of soldiers had sauntered along, observed by the duty sentry.
One had suddenly hurried off leaving his friend to wait. It had started to drizzle. At about
ten a woman leaving Bourgeois’ house had noticed a large man in grey or black leaning
against the garden wall. The soldier had run back to rejoin his companion and they had
walked away. The carter had arrived seeking his cart, his horses having wandered off while
he was having a drink.
Receveur and Trenet had been through M Leclair’s papers. There had been little to interest
them but they had come across four letters to the musician from his nephew, François-
Guillaume Vial, begging his uncle’s pardon for his various unspecified offences. Just what
were these offences, Receveur wondered.
There was also the question of the murder weapon. Rather surprisingly, two knives had
been found in M Leclair’s garden. One was a rusty old table knife too blunt to pierce a
tomato. Presumably it had been accidentally left in the garden many weeks earlier. The
other was a hunting knife which perfectly fitted the sheath attached to M Leclair’s belt
but there had been no trace of blood and the surgeon, M Charles, said the blade was far
too wide to fit the wounds. So the sharp, pointed implement was still to be found.
Then there was the gossipasset. People revealed far more than they knew as they chatted
unguardedly, unaware of his listening presence. Attending M Leclair’s funeral had been
particularly interesting.
There had been further hints of Paysant’s unreliability and possible criminal activities.
The gardener himself was a conspicuous absentee from the group of people assembled to
pay their last respects to their departed acquaintance. However, his mistress was there and
Receveur, moving silently among the people, heard her tell a friend that her Jacques had
got home at half past ten on Monday night. Paysant had told the police that he had been
indoors from half past seven. So how had he spent the evening? And Receveur overheard
another neighbour tell a friend: “M Paysant said he’d stick in a knife in my husband.”
A tall, strongly built man had complained bitterly to anyone prepared to listen that his
uncle had never wanted to do anything for the family. He was a miserable recluse; he had
deliberately stood in the way of his nephew’s career.
Sometimes silence speaks even more loudly. From the estranged Mme Leclair he had
overheard nothing. She had been completely impassive, had betrayed no emotion whatever,
other, perhaps, than a degree of distaste at being at the funeral at all. So precisely how did
relations stand between this husband and wife who had lived apart for six years yet seemed
to see each other regularly?
The riddle was becoming more confusing. That was good. Riddles became more confusing
as more clues appeared. Now it was a matter of picking out the right clues, like plucking
the ripest strawberries.
* * * * *
They had arrested Paysant. Receveur did not seriously believe for one moment that he was
guilty of the murder, his record had shown up some minor misdemeanours and a brief
period in prison but nothing to suggest he was a murderer. But there were advantages to
having him under arrest.
First, he was becoming a nuisance. His anxiety to clear himself was causing him to make
the wildest allegations against others, all of which had to be investigated, thereby wasting
police time and effort. He had even implicated Leclair’s employer, the Duc de Gramont,
hinting at drinking bouts at Leclair’s house at which he had himself had been included.
It was better all this was stopped. Secondly, it was just possible that, with someone under
arrest, the true murderer might give him – or her – self away.
They had visited the widow. This had at least explained the large sum of money found in
M Leclair’s commode. Mme Leclair was also her husband’s publisher; she personally
engraved the plates for his compositions. She had told them her late husband had left her
and settled in the dreary north-eastern suburb in order to concentrate more exclusively
on his composing. Over the years, she said, he had become more and more driven,
obsessed by his music.
The nephew, Vial, had been visiting Mme Leclair at the time, as, apparently, he often did.
As usual, Receveur preferred Trenet to do most of the questioning, leaving him free to
listen and watch.
“Where were you on Monday, M Vial?” enquired Trenet.
“I was in Conflans. I had business with the archbishop.”
“Ah. Remind me, please,” Receveur put in mildly, “who is the Archbishop of
Conflans?”
Vial flushed and was silent.
They had interviewed the Duc de Gramont.
“I am greatly saddened,” he had said. “He was the finest fiddler I ever heard play.
My evenings will never be the same. I wanted to him take rooms here. He could have been
in comfort, and had all the peace and quiet he could have wished for composing. I could
never understand why he lived in such a shoddy little house in such an insalubrious area.”
“You had visited M Leclair?”
The duke shrugged and hesitated. “I’ve had business in that quarter once or
twice.”
* * * * *
The end of the day, the end of the case. Hubert Receveur and Philippe Trenet sat outside
the little café near their office where they often enjoyed a glass of wine together and
discussed the day’s work.
“So that, my dear Trenet, is that,” said Receveur. “Our superiors have spoken:
the case is to be abandoned.”
“But why? Were we not close to solving the mystery?” said Trenet.
“I think so. But you saw the letter from monsieur le duc. He did not appreciate
the suggestion, which he had learned courtesy of M Vial, that he regularly drank with a
fiddler and a gardener and lost no time in writing to complain to our revered Lieutenant
of Police, M de Sartine. They know each other, they move in the same circles. Monsieur
le duc was peeved; M de Sartine was embarrassed. End of case.”
“Who do you think was responsible?”
“Not Paysant, that’s for sure. He’s so nervous he’d never have been able to keep
quiet. Besides, his motive would have been robbery and all that money was untouched in
the commode. He may have snaffled the missing watch – who knows? – but he missed the
snuff box.
“You remember I told you we should find out who disliked M Leclair and why?
Our friend Vial was no lover of his uncle. He scrapes a fiddle himself; his uncle was a true
master. Vial was jealous, and jealousy is a powerful motive. And M Leclair, knowing his
nephew was so inferior, was not prepared to recommend him to monsieur le duc or anyone
else come to that. So add revenge to jealousy.
“The evidence we have is not conclusive but we know these things,” Receveur
counted on his fingers. “One: Vial was certainly not at Conflans on the day of the murder.
He gave himself away in a lie when we spoke to him and the archbishop’s household
confirmed that they had never heard of him. Two: vague though the description is, Vial
perfectly fits the build of the man Bourgeois’ lady friend saw leaning against the garden
wall.”
“What about the way those things were arranged round the body?”
“Just ghoulish bravado, but pointing to Vial. The blank manuscript paper tells
us the murderer knew he was bringing his victim’s composing career to an end. The
humorous book says the murderer was having the last laugh.”
“The hat?”
“In the end, M Leclair had to take his hat off to his murderer.”
“So that’s it?”
“Not quite. You remember I also said we should see who would gain from the
death? M Leclair was not an obviously wealthy man; it seems he leaves more debts than
assets. But one person may well hope to gain in the long term from the death.”
“Who’s that?”
“Think, my dear Trenet! Mme Leclair is the estranged wife, not the bereaved
wife. And she is also the publisher of his compositions. Do you not think there will be
renewed interest in M Leclair’s music following his death in such strange circumstances?
Perhaps even more so as the case has been closed and no one will be charged. Her
husband’s death may be just the fillip Mme Leclair’s not very successful business needs.”
“You think Vial and Mme Leclair plotted together?”
“I suspect so. You see, there is one final thing. The missing murder weapon. We
know M Leclair was not killed with his own knife; M Charles told us the blade is far too
wide. We are looking for a sharp, pointed implement. A printer’s engraving tool, perhaps?”
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