The Beast Within - Emile Zola [80]
‘Surely,’ continued Monsieur Lachesnaye even more acrimoniously, ‘you don’t expect me to stand by and see La Croix-de-Maufras go to this Roubaud couple! A gift like that to the daughter of one of his servants! Why, for goodness’ sake? What right does she have to it! Besides, if it’s proved that they had a hand in the crime ...’
Monsieur Denizet quickly returned to the subject of his investigation.
‘Do you think they were involved?’ he asked.
‘Good heavens!’ Lachesnaye exclaimed, ‘if they knew what was in the will, they had an obvious interest in our poor father’s death ... What’s more, they were the last people to speak to him ... It all seems very suspicious.’
The magistrate was becoming irritated; he had allowed himself to be side-tracked from his new line of inquiry. He turned towards Berthe.
‘Tell me, madame,’ he said, ‘do you consider that your former school friend would be capable of such a crime?’
Madame Lachesnaye glanced at her husband before answering. They had been married for only a few months, and the marriage had done nothing to improve the unpleasant, acerbic nature of either of them. They each grew nastier by the day. Lachesnaye had so turned his wife against Séverine that, in order to get the house back, she would have been quite prepared to see her arrested there and then.
‘All I will say, monsieur,’ she eventually replied, ‘is that the person you refer to had some rather disagreeable tendencies as a child.’
‘Am I to understand that she misbehaved when she was at Doinville?’
‘That she misbehaved! Certainly not, monsieur! Misbehaviour was something my father would never have allowed!’
This was the voice of prudish, middle-class respectability, incensed at the mere thought of anything untoward. Madame Lachesnaye prided herself on being a paragon of virtue, respected throughout Rouen and welcomed at every door.
‘Even so,’ she continued, ‘some people have a certain ingrained wantonness and ease of manners ... Suffice it to say, monsieur, that a number of things which I would never have thought possible now seem to me to be beyond doubt.’
Monsieur Denizet was again beginning to grow irritated. This was not the line of inquiry he had intended to pursue. The fact that Monsieur and Madame Lachesnaye continued to insist on raising these issues seemed to be a challenge to his authority, a questioning of his intelligence.
‘Come, come!’ he exclaimed. ‘Let us be reasonable. People like the Roubauds do not kill someone like your father simply to get their hands on an inheritance. If this had been the case there would have been other signs, some indication that they were anxious to have the property made over to them. No, the motive is insufficient. There would have to have been some other reason; but there isn’t one, and what you are saying doesn’t provide one either. Besides, you have only to consider the facts of the case to see that from a practical point of view it is impossible. No one saw the Roubauds get into the coupé, and one witness assures us that they returned to their own compartment. They were certainly in their own compartment when the train arrived at Barentin. So we would need to assume that they managed to get from their carriage to the President’s, three carriages further down the train, and back again, in a matter of minutes, while the train was travelling at full speed.9 Is this likely? I have interviewed a number of engine drivers and guards, who all tell me that one would need to be well practised to have the strength and the nerve to perform such an operation. Madame Roubaud would certainly not have been up to it, which means that the husband would have had to risk it on his own. In order to do what? To kill a benefactor who had just got them out of a serious mess? No, it simply does not make sense. We need to look elsewhere - for a man who boarded the train at Rouen, who got out at the next stop and who had recently threatened to kill the victim ...’
This was the new line of inquiry that had aroused his interest, and he was about to expand when the usher’s head appeared