in the forest of Saint-Germain?" inquired the police-officer. "I was engaged in that case. A very strange story."
"And the woman was really murdered?" asked Heathcote, pale with agitation.
He was confounded by the ease with which the man fixed upon a notorious crime, upon a given date. It would have surprised him less to find that the child's vision of murder was a mere fever-dream—the repetition of some morbid hallucination—than to hear of the reality off-hand, in the broad light of day.
"Really murdered! yes, and her lover too, as dead as the Pharaohs. There never was a more genuine crime, a more determined murder. The actress and her lover had gone to Saint-Germain for a holiday jaunt. They went by rail, dined at the Henri Quatre, hired a carriage in the cool of the evening, drove on the terrace, and then into the forest. They left the carriage at a point where there were cross-roads, and pursued their ramble on foot."
"There was a child with them?" interrogated Heathcote breathlessly.
"Yes, a little girl, the actress's niece. She was the only witness of the crime. It was from her lips that the Juge d'Instruction took down the history of the scene. They were walking quietly in the twilight, it was nearly dark, the child said, and she was beginning to feel frightened. The lovers were walking arm in arm, the child by her aunt's side. Suddenly a man sprang out upon them from the darkness of the wood, and confronted them with a pistol in his hand. He wore no hat, and he looked wild and furious. He aimed first at the man, who fell without a groan. The girl had just time to call out to him not to shoot her aunt, when he fired a second time, and then a third and a fourth, and again, quicker than the child could count. It was evidently a six-chambered revolver. Marie Prévol was found with her breast riddled with bullets. The driver heard the shots from his post at the cross-roads."
"And was the murderer never found?"
"Never. In spite of his wild appearance and his bare head, he got clean off, and all the police of Paris failed in tracing him."
"But was there no one suspected of the crime?"
"Yes. There was a former lover of Marie's, her first lover; and, as it was said, the only man she had ever really cared for. They had been a devoted couple—were supposed by some to be married—and until a short time before the murder Marie's character had been considered almost stainless. Then a younger admirer appeared on the scene. There were violent quarrels. The actress seemed to have lost her head, to be infatuated by this aristocratic lover, one of the handsomest men in Paris.
