This time Inspector Leblanc wasn’t content with the doctor’s statement about the obvious lack of traces of murderous intent. He gave Dubois a gloomy and distrustful look and declared that he would make a careful investigation and would interrogate everyone in the house.
“Goddamn!” the owner of the house exclaimed, “Are you saying that this was a murder!”
“I’m saying nothing, monsieur,” the policeman answered coldly, “I only know that it is the third sudden death on your estate in just a few days. You see, three shells which land in one place are suspicious.”
“But there is no connection between these deaths… and there is no sense in them. All of them are quite explainable. It’s abundantly clear that this is just an unhappy coincidence.”
“By the nature of my occupation, I don’t believe in coincidences,” Leblanc dryly noted.
This time, Leblanc’s investigation took several hours. The inspector was still unable to find evidence that the incident was anything other than an accident. At last he left the estate obviously dissatisfied, having said upon departing: “Be careful, monsieur Dubois”. This phrase could be understood doubly: “beware of the unknown killer” or “beware of the truth being found out.”
After Leblanc’s investigation was finished, it was too late to go to Paris. Besides a new coachman would have to be found. Dubois was compelled to abandon the trip, indignantly feeling that the good bargain was slipping away through his fingers. But his troubles weren’t limited to his business dealings. Several servants simultaneously declared an intention to quit their jobs. Dubois nevertheless managed to dissuade them; he promised to increase their salary, understanding that if the servants fled, it would increase the ill fame of the house and he would have to pay even more to the next ones. In addition, the coachman’s death caused a scene with Jeannette, who declared a categorical unwillingness to live “under one roof with death” (she probably found this expression in one of the trashy novels which she was recently reading in large numbers). Dubois at first tried to persuade her, then shouted at her, then finally settled the issue with an expensive necklace which he had been going to give her in a more suitable situation. He thought at this moment that, had the most virtuous spouse been in Jeannette’s place, the dispute still would have been solved in the same way, so contempt toward prostitutes is completely unjust: all women are equally venal.
Soon a letter informed Dubois that his worst presentiments had come true: his rival had used Dubois’s canceled trip to his own advantage and what should have made profits turned into losses. It seemed that everything pushed Dubois to leave the house and to return to the city; however he was stubborn and wasn’t accustomed to shrink back before obstacles—on the contrary, the more serious the impediments seemed, the stronger became his determination to overcome them; without this trait, he wouldn’t have risen from a newsdealer boy to a successful businessman.
In the evening of the same day when the distressing news came, the estate owner and his paramour sat in the dining room waiting for dinner. Dubois mechanically bent and folded a napkin: half-and-half, again half-and-half… He always did such things when he was irritated. Suddenly the footman whose duties included serving at the table ran into the room out of breath.
“Monsieur, monsieur! The cook…”
“Don’t say she’s dead!” Dubois exclaimed.
“Not yet, monsieur… but she is very bad.”
The old woman was in a really bad way: she was suffocating, her face had turned blue, and her body shuddered in spasms. On the floor lay a big spoon with morsels of food. Obviously, the cook had choked trying her own dish; Dubois, however, didn’t understood it at once—at first he thought of poison. One of servants tried to help the cook while another ran for the doctor. But when Clavier arrived, everything was already over. The list of deaths grew longer.
This time Leblanc, apparently, was full of determination to arrest someone. He reviewed the incident very carefully; it became clear that at the moment of the cook’s misfortune, only the footman and one of servants had no alibi. The inspector, however, didn’t detain them and asked Dubois and the doctor to discuss the situation.
All three passed to Dubois’s office, which previously had been the place of de Montreux’s death; the businessman wasn’t distressed at all by the aristocrat’s demise.
“I am sure that we are dealing with a crime,” Leblanc stated without preface. “More precisely, with a series of crimes.”
“Are you implying that I’m killing my own servants?” Dubois arose.
“No, it is quite obvious that it is not you. In the last case, you simply couldn’t have done it—if, of course, the whole house is not in collusion and doesn’t protect you specially. But an arrangement between a murderer and his victims is absurd.”
“As well as murders without a motive!”
“You see,” the doctor cleared his throat, “purely theoretically you could have a reason… I’m not a specialist in mental disorders; here, in rural areas, people seldom go mad. But just recently I’ve read one article… Sometimes a man who has done a certain act subconsciously regrets it and tries to correct his deeds. Thus, he acts as a somnambulist, without being aware of his actions and without remembering them. So, as you were indirectly involved in the death of count de Montreux…”
“Nonsense,” Dubois cut him off. “In your theory, I subconsciously try to execute his curse and lose my rest? But I don’t feel any guilt, either conscious or subconscious. I see no reasons to stand on ceremony with these dried-up branches of the old aristocracy.”
“Anyway, you have an alibi,” the inspector interjected, “and we may not consider the exotic hypothesis of the doctor.”
“Your hypothesis seems to me no less exotic,” noticed Dubois, “you speak about murders, but, after all, these events are just accidents.”
“It was not too difficult to arrange last three deaths,” the inspector objected. “In order to cause a night heart attack of an old man, it’s enough to frighten him badly. The same is applicable to the choked old woman. And it was possible to mix a drinkable potion which would agitate the horse into a frenzy.”
“Do you think one of the servants is behind all this?”
“No, not they. And not your… um… girlfriend. Yet Romans, investigating a crime, first of all asked a question: cui prodest—to whom is it favorable? You, obviously, have enemies, don’t you?”
“As well as any businessman. But none of them would settle scores in such a Gothic novel style. Besides, if someone wants to destroy me, why would he kill my servants?”
“That’s true, your business rivals are not suspects. These deaths seem more like revenge, and revenge with definite aims. It would seem that someone aspires to expel you from this house, simultaneously bringing down its price because of ill fame. For this purpose, he kills servants who previously served de Montreux’s family and then betrayed them by serving you…”
“In other words, a de Montreux wants to buy back the family home cheaply? But the late count was the last in his line, no relatives remained. I found that out.”
“In such affairs, there never can be full confidence. The relative could be distant and have another surname; it could be just a friend and, at lastly… even Armand count de Montreux himself.”
“The dead man? You saw his body.”
“Now I am not so sure that we saw the body of the count. You remember, the face was disfigured by the shot. Certainly, there is a question as to whose corpse was palmed off on us… but that’s another matter. But look, how all the facts fit. The count knows the house better than anybody else, and he has keys to all the doors; he can easily get into any place on the estate. And, certainly, his emergence alone is enough to literally frighten to death the gardener and the cook.”