101 Mystery Stories

9 The Little House at Croix-Rousse Georges Simenon

I had never see Joseph Leborgne at work before. I received something of a shock when I entered his room that day.

His blond hair, usually plastered down, was in complete disorder. The individual hairs, stiffened by brilliantine, stuck out all over his head. His face was pale and worn. Nervous twitches distorted his features.

He threw a grudging glare at me which almost drove me from the room. But since I would see that he was hunched over a diagram, my curiosity was stronger than my sensitivity. I advanced into the room and took off my hat and coat.

“A fine time you’ve picked!” he grumbled.

This was hardly encouraging. I stammered, “A tricky case?”

“That’s putting it mildly. Look at that paper.”

“It’s the plan of a house? A small house?”

“The subtlety of your mind! A child of four could guess that. You know the Croix-Rousse district in Lyons?”

“I’ve passed through there.”

“Good! This little house lies in one of the most deserted sections of the district — not a district, I might add, which is distinguished by its liveliness.”

“What do these black crosses mean, in the garden and on the street?”

“Policemen.”

“Good Lord! And the crosses mark where they’ve been killed?”

“Who said anything about dead policemen? The crosses indicate policemen who were on duty at these several spots on the night of the eighth-to-ninth. The cross that’s heavier than the others is Corporal Manchard.”

I dared not utter a word or move a muscle. I felt it wisest not to interrupt Leborgne, who was favoring the plan with the same furious glares which he had bestowed upon me.

“Well? Aren’t you going to ask me why policemen were stationed there — six of them, no less — on the night of the eighth-to-ninth? Or maybe you’re going to pretend, that you’ve figured it out?”

I said nothing.

“They were there because the Lyons police had received, the day before, the following letter:

“And the doctor had been warned?” I asked at last.

“No! Since Ceccioni was an Italian exile and it seemed more than likely that the affair had political aspects, the police preferred to take their precautions without warning the party involved.”

“And he was murdered anyway?”

“Patience! Dr. Ceccioni, fifty years of age, lived alone in this wretched little hovel. He kept house for himself and ate his evening meal every day in an Italian restaurant nearby. On the eighth he left home at seven o’clock, as usual, for the restaurant. And Corporal Manchard, one of the best police officers in France and a pupil, to boot, of the great Lyons criminologist Dr. Eugene Locard, searched the house from basement to attic. He proved to himself that no one was hidden there and that it was impossible to get in by any other means than the ordinary doors and windows visible from the outside. No subterranean passages nor any such hocus-pocus. Nothing out of a mystery novel... You understand?”

I was careful to say nothing, but Leborgne’s vindictive tone seemed to accuse me of willfully interpolating hocus-pocus.

“No one in the house! Nothing to watch but two doors and three windows! A lesser man than Corporal Manchard would have been content to set up the watch with only himself and one policeman. But Manchard requisitioned five, one for each entrance, with himself to watch the watchers. At nine P.M. the shadow of the doctor appeared in the street. He re-entered his house, absolutely alone. His room was upstairs; a light went on in there promptly. And then the police vigil began. Not one of them dozed! Not one of them deserted his post! Not one of them lost sight of the precise point which he had been delegated to watch!

“Every fifteen minutes Manchard made the round of the group. Around three A.M. the petroleum lamp upstairs went out slowly, as though it had run out of fuel. The corporal hesitated. At last he decided to use his lock-picking gadget and go in. Upstairs, in the bedroom, seated — or rather half lying — on the edge of the bed was Dr. Luigi Ceccioni. His hands were clutched to his chest and he was dead. He was completely dressed, even to the cape which still hung over his shoulders. His hat had fallen to the floor. His underclothing and suit were saturated with blood and his hands were soaked in it. One bullet from a six-millimeter Browning had penetrated less than a centimeter above his heart.”

I gazed at Joseph Leborgne with awe. I saw his lip tremble.

“No one had entered the house! No one had left!” he groaned. “I’ll swear to that as though I’d stood guard myself: I know my Corporal Manchard. And don’t go thinking that they found the revolver in the house. There wasn’t any revolver! Not in sight and not hidden. Not in the fireplace, or even in the roof gutter. Not in the garden — not anywhere at all! In other words, a bullet was fired in a place where there was no one save the victim himself and where there was no firearm!

“As for the windows, they were closed and undamaged; a bullet fired from outside would have shattered the panes. Besides, a revolver doesn’t carry far enough to have been fired from outside the range covered by the cordon of policemen. Look at the plan! Eat it up with your eyes! And you may restore some hope of life to poor Corporal Manchard, who has given up sleeping and looks upon himself virtually as a murderer.”

I timidly ventured, “What do you know about Ceccioni?”

“That he used to be rich. That he’s hardly practiced medicine at all, but rather devoted himself to politics — which made it healthier for him to leave Italy.”

“Married? Bachelor?”

“Widower. One child, a son, at present studying in Argentina.”

“What did he live on in Lyons?”

“A little of everything and nothing. Indefinite subsidies from his political colleagues. Occasional consultations, but those chiefly gratis among the poor of the Italian colony.”

“Was there anything stolen from the house?”

“Not a trace of any larcenous entry or of anything stolen.”

I don’t know why, but at this moment I wanted to laugh. It suddenly seemed to me that some master of mystification had amused himself by presenting Joseph Leborgne with a totally impossible problem, simply to give him a needed lesson in modesty.

He noticed the broadening of my lips. Seizing the plan, he crossed the room to plunge himself angrily into his armchair.

“Let me know when you’ve solved it!” he snapped.

“I can certainly solve nothing before you,” I said tactfully.

“Thanks,” he observed.

I began to fill my pipe. I lit it, disregarding my companion’s rage which was reaching the point of paroxysm.

“All I ask of you is that you sit quietly,” he pronounced. “And don’t breathe so loudly,” he added.

Ten minutes passed as unpleasantly as possible. Despite myself, I called up the image of the plan, with the six black crosses marking the policemen.

And the impossibility of this story, which had at first so amused me, began to seem curiously disquieting.

After all, this was not a matter of psychology or of detective flair, but of pure geometry.

“This Manchard,” I asked suddenly. “Has he ever served as a subject for hypnotism?”

Joseph Leborgne did not even deign to answer that one.

“Did Ceccioni have many political enemies in Lyons?”

Leborgne shrugged.

“And it’s been proved that the son is in Argentina?”

This time he merely took the pipe out of my mouth and tossed it on the mantelpiece.

“You have the names of all the policemen?”

He handed me a sheet of paper:

I reread these lines three times. The names were in the order in which the men had been stationed around the building, starting from the left.

I was ready to accept the craziest notions. Desperately I exclaimed at last “It is impossible!”

And I looked at Joseph Leborgne. A moment before his face had been pale, his eyes encircled, his lips bitter. Now, to my astonishment, I saw him smilingly head for a pot of jam.

As he passed a mirror he noticed himself and seemed scandalized by the incongruous contortions of his hair. He combed it meticulously. He adjusted the knot of his cravat.

Once again Joseph Leborgne was his habitual self. As he looked for a spoon with which to consume his horrible jam of leaves-of-God-knows-what, he favored me with a sarcastic smile.

“How simple it would always be to reach the truth if preconceived ideas did not falsify our judgment!” he sighed. “You have just said, ‘It is impossible!’ So therefore...”

I waited for him to contradict me. I’m used to that.

“So therefore,” he went on, “it is impossible. Just so. And all that we needed to do from the beginning was simply to admit that fact. There was no revolver in the house, no murderer hidden there. Very well: then there was no shot fired there.”

“But then...?”

“Then, very simply, Luigi Ceccioni arrived with the bullet already in his chest. I’ve every reason to believe that he fired the bullet himself. He was a doctor; he knew just where to aim — ‘less than a centimeter above the heart,’ you’ll recall — so that the wound would not be instantly fatal, but would allow him to move about for a short time.”

Joseph Leborgne closed his eyes.

“Imagine this poor hopeless man. He has only one son. The boy is studying abroad, but the father no longer has any money to send him. Ceccini insures his life with the boy as beneficiary. His next step is to die — but somehow to die with no suspicion of suicide, or the insurance company will refuse to pay.

“By means of an anonymous letter he summons the police themselves as witnesses. They see him enter his house where there is no weapon and they find him dead several hours later.

“It was enough, once he was seated on his bed, to massage his chest, forcing the bullet to penetrate more deeply, at last to touch the heart...”

I let out an involuntary cry of pain. But Leborgne did not stir. He was no longer concerned with me.

It was not until a week later that he showed me a telegram from Corporal Manchard:

“You answered?”

He looked at me reproachfully. “It requires both great courage and great imagination to massage oneself to death. Why should the poor man have done that it vain? The insurance company has a capital of four hundred million...”