Old Boniface’s Crime
As Boniface the postman left the post office he discovered that his round that day would not take as long as usual, and felt a sharp pleasure in the knowledge. His task was the rural delivery outside the town of Vireville, and when he returned at night, with long weary strides, his legs had often more than forty kilometres behind them.
So his delivery would be quickly done! He could even loiter a little on the way and get home by about three in the afternoon. What luck!
He left the town by the Sennemare road and began his duties. It was June, the green and flowery month, the month when the meadows were looking their best.
Dressed in a blue blouse, and wearing a black cap with red braid, the postman took the narrow paths across fields of colza, oats, or wheat. The crops were shoulder-high, and his head, passing along above the ears, appeared to float on a calm green sea rippled gently by a little wind.
He entered the farms through wooden gates set in the hedgerows shaded by double rows of beeches, and greeting the peasant by name: “Good morning, Monsieur Chicot,” he would offer him his paper, the Petit Normand. The farmer would wipe his hand on the seat of his breeches, take the sheet of paper, and slip it into his pocket to read at his leisure after the midday meal. The dog, kennelled in a barrel, at the foot of a leaning apple tree, would bark furiously and tug at his chain, and the postman, without turning round, would set off again with his military gait, his long legs taking great strides, his left hand in his sack, his right swinging with a quick ceaseless gesture the stick that kept him company on his round.
He delivered his letters and circulars at the hamlet of Sennemare, and then went on across the fields to deliver his mail to the tax-collector, who lived in a little house half a mile from the village.
He was a new collector, Monsieur Chapatis, who had arrived the previous week and was but recently married.
He took in a Paris paper, and sometimes postman Boniface, when he had the time to spare, would glance at it before handing it over to its destined owner.
Accordingly he opened his sack, took out the newspaper, slipped off the band, unfolded it, and began to read it as he walked. The first page was of no interest to him; politics left him cold; he never looked at the financial news, but the news items enthralled him.
Today they were particularly rich in excitement. He was so strongly affected by the story of a crime committed in a gamekeeper’s cottage that he stopped in the middle of a patch of clover to read it slowly through again. The details were appalling. A woodcutter, passing the keeper’s cottage one morning, noticed a little blood on the doorstep, as though someone’s nose had been bleeding. “He killed a rabbit last night,” thought the woodcutter, but, drawing nearer, he observed that the door was ajar and that the lock had been smashed.
Then, seized with terror, he ran to the village to inform the mayor; the latter brought with him the constable and the schoolmaster as reinforcements, and the four men went back together. They found the keeper lying in front of the fireplace with his throat cut, his wife under the bed, strangled, and their little six-year-old daughter suffocated between two mattresses.
Boniface the postman was so deeply affected at the thought of this murder, the horrible details of which came home to him one by one, that he felt a weakness in his legs, and said out loud:
“Good Lord, there are some villains in this world!”
Then he slipped the journal back into its paper belt and set off again, his mind reeling with visions of the crime. Shortly, he reached Monsieur Chapatis’ dwelling; he opened the gate of the little garden and approached the house. It was a low building, consisting merely of a ground-floor surmounted by a mansard roof. It was at least five hundred yards from the nearest neighbouring house.
The postman mounted the two steps up to the entrance, set his hand to the knob, attempted to open the door, and found it locked. Then he saw that the shutters had not been opened, and that no one had left the house that day.
He was seized with a feeling of uneasiness, for ever since his arrival Monsieur Chapatis had been in the habit of rising early. Boniface pulled out his watch. It was only ten past seven, so that he was nearly an hour ahead of his usual time. Still, the tax-collector should have been up and about.
So he went round the building, walking with circumspection, as though he were in danger. He observed nothing suspicious, except a man’s footprints in a strawberry-bed.
But suddenly he paused, motionless, transfixed with horror, as he passed in front of a window. Groans were coming from inside the house.
He went towards it and, straddling across a border of thyme, set his ear to the penthouse-shed to hear the better; the sound of groans was unmistakable. He could hear plainly long sighs of pain, something like a death-rattle, the sound of a struggle. Then the groans became louder and more frequent, grew even more frenzied, and became screams.
Boniface, no longer in any doubt that a crime was being committed at that very moment in the tax-collector’s house, rushed off as fast as his legs could carry him. He fled back through the little garden and dashed across the meadows and cornfields. He ran breathlessly, shaking his sack so that it banged against his back, and arrived, exhausted, panting, and desperate, at the door of the police station.
Inspector Malautour was mending a broken chair with tin-tacks and a hammer. Constable Rantieux was gripping the broken piece of furniture between his legs and holding a nail at the edge of the break; the inspector, chewing his moustache, his eyes round and moist with concentration, hit his subordinate’s fingers at every stroke.
As soon as he saw them the postman cried out:
“Come quick, somebody’s murdering the tax-collector! Come quick, quick!”
The two men ceased their work and looked up, with the dumbfounded air of men suddenly and amazingly interrupted.
Boniface, seeing that their surprise was greater than their haste, said again:
“Quick! Quick! Thieves are in the house, I heard screams, there’s barely time!”
The inspector set down his hammer and asked:
“Who was it who informed you of this deed?”
The postman replied:
“I was going to deliver the paper and two letters when I noticed that the door was shut and that the tax-collector had not yet got up. I walked round the house to try and find out the reason, and heard someone groaning as though he were being strangled or had had his throat cut, so I came away to fetch you as fast as I could go. There’s barely time.”
The inspector drew himself up to his full height and said:
“You did not render assistance in person?”
“I was afraid that I was not present in sufficient strength,” replied the frightened postman.
At that the police official was convinced, and said:
“A moment, while I put my coat on, and I’ll follow you.”
He went into the police station, followed by his subordinate carrying back the chair.
They reappeared almost immediately and all three set off with vigorous strides for the scene of the crime.
Arriving near the house, they carefully slowed their pace, and the inspector drew his revolver. Very softly they penetrated into the garden and approached the wall of the house. There were no new signs indicating that the malefactors had departed. The door was still shut, the windows still closed.
“We’ve got them,” murmured the inspector.
Old Boniface, quivering with excitement, made him go round to the other side and, pointing to a lean-to shed, said:
“It’s in there.”
The inspector went forward alone, and set his ear to the boards. The two others waited, ready for anything, their eyes fixed upon him.
For a long time he remained motionless, listening. In order to apply his ear closer to the wooden shutter, he had taken off his cocked hat and was holding it in his right hand.
What was he hearing? His impassive face revealed nothing, but suddenly the tips of his moustache turned up, his cheeks were creased as though in silent laughter, and once more straddling across the box-tree border, he came back towards the two men, who stared at him amazed.
Then he signed to them to follow him on tiptoe and, having reached the entrance, bade Boniface slip the paper and letters under the door.
The postman, dumbfounded, obeyed meekly.
“And now off we go,” said the inspector.
But as soon as they had passed through the gate, he turned to Boniface, showed the whites of his eyes, gleaming with merriment, and spoke in a bantering tone, with a knowing flicker of his eyelids:
“You’re a sly dog, you are.”
“What do you mean?” replied the old man. “I heard it, I swear I heard it.”
But the policeman, unable to restrain himself any longer, burst into a roar of laughter. He laughed as if he would choke, bent double, his hands across his belly, his eyes filled with tears, the flesh on each side of his nose distorted into a frightful grimace. The two others stared at him in bewilderment.
But as he could neither speak nor stop laughing nor make them understand what was affecting him, he made a gesture, a quite vulgar and scandalous gesture.
As he still failed to make himself understood, he repeated the movement several times, nodding towards the house, still shuttered.
Suddenly his man understood, in his turn, and burst into formidable transports of merriment.
The old man stood stupidly between the other two, who rolled in agonies of mirth.
At last the inspector grew calm; he gave the old man a vigorous chaffing poke in the stomach, and exclaimed:
“Ah, you sly dog, you and your jokes! I shan’t forget old Boniface’s crime in a hurry.”
The postman, his large eyes wide open, said once more:
“I swear I heard it.”
The inspector began to laugh again. His constable had sat down on the grass at the roadside to have his laugh out in comfort.
“Ah, you heard it, did you? And is that how you murder your wife, eh, you dirty dog?”
“My wife?” He reflected at some length, then replied:
“My wife. … Yes, she hollers when I knock her about … but if she does, what’s a bit of noise, anyway? Was Monsieur Chapatis beating his?”
At that the inspector, in a delirium of mirth, turned him round like a puppet with his hands on his shoulders, and whispered into his ear something at which the postman was struck dumb with amazement.
At last the old man murmured thoughtfully:
“No. … Not like that. … Not like that. … Not a bit like that. … Mine doesn’t say anything. … I’d never have believed it … is it possible? … Anyone would have sworn that a murder was taking place.”
And filled with shame, confusion, and bewilderment, he went on his way across the fields, while the constable and the inspector, still laughing and shouting pungent barrack jests after him, watched his black cap recede into the distance above the quiet waves of the corn.