The Beast Within - Emile Zola [89]
‘That’s stupid,’ retorted Cabuche. ‘I can’t prove it. I live on my own, in a house in the forest ... That’s where I was, I tell you, and that’s all I can say.’
Monsieur Denizet decided that the moment had come to call Cabuche’s bluff by presenting him with a statement of the facts as they were known. Assuming a totally impassive manner he described the sequence of events.
‘I will tell you what you did on the evening of the fourteenth of February,’ he said. ‘At three in the afternoon you were at Barentin station, where you caught a train for Rouen. What the purpose of your journey was we have yet to ascertain. You had decided to travel back on the train from Paris, which arrives at Rouen at three minutes past nine. You were standing on the platform in the crowd, when you spotted Monsieur Grandmorin in his reserved compartment. I am quite prepared to admit that there was no premeditation, and that the idea of committing a crime occurred to you on the spot ... You took advantage of the congestion on the platform to get into his compartment. You waited until the train was in the tunnel at Malaunay, but you had miscalculated how fast it was travelling, and it was already leaving the tunnel when you committed the murder ... You threw the body out of the carriage door and you got off the train at Barentin, having also disposed of the travelling rug ... That is what you did.’
Monsieur Denizet had been scrutinizing the prisoner’s face for the least flicker of assent, and was utterly dismayed when Cabuche, having at first listened to him very carefully, suddenly let out a great guffaw.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he yelled. ‘If I’d done it I’d tell you!’ Then, speaking more calmly, he said, ‘I didn’t do it, but I should’ve done. I wish to God I had!’
And that was all Monsieur Denizet could get out of him. He repeated his questions, tried time and again to put the same point in different ways, but all to no avail. Cabuche kept saying it wasn’t him, shrugging his shoulders and claiming that the whole thing was ridiculous. When he had been arrested, they had searched his hovel. They had found no trace of the murder weapon, the ten banknotes or the watch, but they had found a pair of trousers with a few small bloodstains on them, a damning piece of evidence. Cabuche dismissed it scornfully as yet another piece of nonsense; he’d taken a rabbit from a snare and it had bled on his trousers! Things weren’t going the way Monsieur Denizet wanted; he had started with a very clear idea of how the crime had been committed but in his determination to tie up every loose end he was complicating things and losing sight of the plain, simple truth. Cabuche was unintelligent and quite incapable of producing clever answers, but his repeated insistence that he had not committed the crime was something the magistrate had not bargained for, and he found it disconcerting. Monsieur Denizet had persuaded himself that Cabuche was guilty, and each repeated denial annoyed him more and more, as if it were a deliberate indulgence in lawlessness and deceit. Somehow he would have to make him give in.
‘So you deny it?’ he said.
‘Of course I deny it, because it wasn’t me ... If it had been me I’d be proud to own up to it.’
Monsieur Denizet suddenly rose to his feet and went over to the door of the adjoining room. He opened it and asked Jacques to come forward.
‘Do you recognize this man?’ he asked him.
‘Of course,’ answered Jacques, somewhat surprised at the question. ‘I know him. I’ve seen him at the Misards.’
‘No, no,’ said Monsieur Denizet, ‘do you recognize him as the man you saw in the train, the murderer?’
Immediately Jacques became more reticent. He didn’t recognize him. The man in the train seemed shorter; his hair was darker. He was on the point of saying so but decided he should err on the side of caution. He couldn’t be sure.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I can’t say ... I assure you, monsieur, I really can’t say.’
Without further ado, Monsieur Denizet called in Roubaud and his wife and asked them the same question: ‘Do you recognize