The Rabbit
At the usual time between five and a quarter past five in the morning, old Lecacheur appeared at the door of his house to watch his men start work.
Red in the face and half asleep—one eye open and the other nearly shut—he had some difficulty in buttoning his braces over his fat stomach while he cast a keen glance round every important corner of the farm. The sun shed its oblique rays through the beech-trees by the ditch and the squat apple trees in the courtyard, making the cocks on the dunghill crow, and the pigeons on the roof coo. In the fresh morning air the smell of the cow-house drifted through the open door, mingled with the pungent odour from the stable where the neighing horses turned their heads towards the light.
As soon as his trousers were safely fastened, old Lecacheur started off, going first to the henhouse to count the morning’s eggs, as he had had suspicions about some of his friends for some time past.
The servant-girl rushed towards him with her arms in the air, shouting:
“Master, master, a rabbit has been stolen in the night.”
“A rabbit?”
“Yes, master, the big grey one from the hutch on the right.”
The farmer opened his left eye wide and simply said:
“I must see to it.”
And off he went. The hutch had been broken, and the rabbit was gone. Then the man, greatly worried, closed his right eye and scratched his nose. After thinking the matter over he told the scared servant-girl, who was standing beside him like a fool:
“Go and fetch the police. Say I expect them to come at once.”
Old Lecacheur was mayor of his commune, Pavigny-le-Gras, over which he ruled with a high hand owing to his wealth and position.
As soon as the girl had disappeared in the direction of the village, which was about five hundred yards away, the peasant went home to have his morning coffee and discuss the matter with his wife, whom he found on her knees in front of the fire blowing it to make it burn up.
When he reached the door he said: “Now, someone has stolen a rabbit, the big, grey one.”
“The big, grey one?” she sighed. “What a shame! Whoever can have stolen that rabbit?”
She was a little, thin woman, full of energy, and very neat, who knew all about farming.
Lecacheur had his own ideas on the matter.
“It must be that fellow Polyte.”
The wife suddenly got up from the floor and said in a furious voice:
“He did it! He did it! No need to hunt about for anyone else. He did it! You are right Cacheux!”
All the avarice and fury of the careful peasant woman against the manservant of whom she had always been suspicious and against the servant-girl she had always suspected, showed in the contraction of her mouth and in the wrinkles in the cheeks and forehead of her thin, angry face.
“What have you done?” she asked.
“I have sent for the police.”
Polyte was a labourer who had been employed on the farm for a few days and dismissed by Lecacheur for insolence. He had been a soldier and was said to have kept the habits of pilfering and debauchery acquired in his African campaigns. He did anything to earn a livelihood, but whether mason, navvy, carter, reaper, stone-breaker, or tree-pruner, first and foremost he was a loafer. Not only could he never keep a place, but he was often obliged to go to different parts of the country to find a job.
From the very first day that he came to the farm, Lecacheur’s wife had detested him, and now she was sure that he had committed the theft.
In about half an hour the two policemen arrived. Inspector Sénateur was very tall and thin, Constable Lenient was short and fat.
Lecacheur made them sit down and told them all about it. Then they visited the scene of the theft to verify the destruction of the hutch and to collect evidence. When they got back to the kitchen, the mistress of the house brought out some wine, filled up the glasses and asked with a defiant glance:
“Are you going to catch him?”
The inspector seemed anxious. Of course he was sure to catch the thief if he were pointed out to him. If not, he could not promise to find the culprit. After long reflection he asked this simple question:
“Do you know the thief?”
An expression of Norman cunning crept round Lecacheur’s big mouth, and he replied:
“As for knowing him, no, I do not, as I did not see him steal. If I had seen him I would have made him eat the beast raw, skin and flesh too, without a drop of cider to help it down. For this reason I cannot say who it is, nevertheless I believe it to be that good-for-nothing Polyte.”
Then he related at length his troubles with Polyte, why the man had left his service, his scowling face, the tales that were told about him; piling up insignificant, petty details.
The inspector, who listened attentively although he was always emptying and refilling his glass, turned towards the constable and said casually:
“We must search the cottage of the shepherd Severin’s wife.”
The constable smiled and nodded his head three times in reply.
Then Madame Lecacheur came up and in her turn, and with all a peasant’s artfulness, very gently questioned the inspector. This shepherd Severin, a simpleton and quite rough in his ways, had grown up on the hillside surrounded by his roaming, bleating flock, knowing little about anything but sheep. Nevertheless he had the peasant’s instinct for saving. For years and years he must have hidden in hollow trees and in crevices of rocks all that he earned either as a keeper of flocks or as an animal doctor, healing sprains by his touch and his spells for the bonesetter’s secret had been handed down to him by an old shepherd whose place he had taken. Then one day he bought at public auction for three thousand francs a little bit of land consisting of a cottage and field.
A few months later his marriage was announced. He was going to marry the innkeeper’s servant, who was notorious for her immorality. The boys of the village said that the girl, knowing he was fairly well off, had been going to his hut every night, that she could do as she pleased with him and had gradually persuaded him to marry her.
After they were married she went home to the house which her man had bought, and here she lived while he went on watching his flocks, night and day, on the plains.
The inspector added:
“Polyte has been sleeping with her for three weeks, the scoundrel has no other shelter.”
The constable ventured to say:
“He is taking the shepherd’s blankets.”
Madame Lecacheur, seized by a fresh fit of rage that was intensified by a married woman’s anger against any impropriety, exclaimed:
“I am sure it is she. Go at once. Ah! the blackguards!”
But the inspector calmly said:
“One minute. Let us wait until twelve o’clock; as he goes there to dinner every day I will catch them with their noses over it.”
The constable smiled, pleased at his chief’s idea. Lecacheur smiled too, for the shepherd’s story seemed funny to him—betrayed husbands are always a joke.
Twelve o’clock had just struck when Inspector Sénateur, followed by his man, knocked gently three times at the door of a little lonely house, at the corner of a wood, five hundred yards from the village.
They were standing waiting close against the wall so as not to be seen from inside. After a minute or two, as nobody answered, the inspector knocked again. The house seemed empty, it was so quiet, but the constable, Lenient, whose hearing was very good, said that someone was moving about inside.
Then Sénateur got angry. He would not allow anyone to defy the authority of the law for one second, so knocking at the wall, he shouted:
“Open the door.”
As this order produced no effect, he roared: “If you do not do as I bid you, I shall smash the lock. I am the Chief Inspector, by G⸺! Here, Lenient.”
He had not finished before the door opened and Sénateur saw a fat woman with a red face, swollen cheeks, drooping breasts, protruding stomach and big hips—one of those coarse, animal females—the wife of Severin the shepherd.
He went in, saying:
“I have come to see you about a little investigation I must make.”
He looked round. On the table a plate, jug of cider, half-filled glass indicated the beginning of a meal. Two knives were lying side by side and the shrewd constable winked at his chief and said: “It smells good,” adding gaily: “I would swear it was stewed rabbit.”
“Will you have a liqueur brandy?” the peasant woman asked.
“No, thank you. I only want the skin of the rabbit you are eating.”
She pretended not to understand, but was trembling in every limb.
“What rabbit?”
The inspector had sat down and was calmly wiping his brow.
“Come, come, mother, you are not going to try to make us believe that you live on couch-grass. What were you eating, all by yourself, for your dinner?”
“Me, nothing, nothing, I swear. A tiny bit of butter on my bread.”
“The deuce, my good woman, a tiny bit of butter on your bread … you are making a mistake. What you mean is a tiny bit of butter on the rabbit. Damm it all! your butter smells good! It is special butter, extra good, wedding butter, special frying-butter, surely, not ordinary household butter, butter like that!”
The constable, doubled up with laughter, repeated:
“Surely, not ordinary household butter.”
As Inspector Sénateur was fond of a joke, the local police all indulged in witticisms.
He continued: “Where do you keep your butter?”
“My butter?”
“Yes, your butter.”
“Well, in the jar.”
“What jar?”
“The butter-jar, of course! Here it is.”
She brought out an old cup with a layer of salt, rancid butter in the bottom. The inspector sniffed at it and, shaking his head, said: “That’s not the same. I want the butter that smells of stewed rabbit. Come, Lenient, let us have a look round; you look on the sideboard, my boy, I am going to look under the bed.”
Having closed the door, he went up to the bed and tried to move it, but it was fixed to the wall and had apparently not been moved for over fifty years. Then, the inspector bending down, his uniform cracked, and a button gave way.
“Lenient,” he said.
“Inspector?”
“Come over here to the bed, my boy. I am too tall to see underneath. I will look after the sideboard.” He got up and waited while the man carried out his orders.
Lenient, short and fat, took off his helmet, threw himself on his stomach, and gluing his head to the ground, gazed for some time into the black hollow under the bed. Then he suddenly cried out: “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!”
The inspector bent over the constable: “What have you got, the rabbit?”
“No, the thief!”
“The thief! Fetch him out, fetch him out!”
The constable, whose arms were both under the bed, was pulling at something with all his strength. At last with his right hand he pulled out a foot wearing a heavy shoe. The inspector caught hold of it: “Courage, courage! pull hard!”
Lenient, who was now on his knees, pulled at the other leg. But it was hard work, for the prisoner was kicking steadily, rolling about and arching his back, wedged up against the crossbar of the bed by his hips.
“Courage, courage! Pull,” cried Sénateur.
They pulled so hard that the crossbar gave way and the man’s body was dragged out, but not his head, with which he was still holding on to his hiding-place.
At last they managed to get it out too, and they saw the angry, terrified face of Polyte, whose arms were still under the bed.
“One more pull!” cried the inspector. Then there was a strange sound, and as arms followed shoulders, and hands followed arms, first a casserole-handle was seen in the hands, and the end of the handle the casserole itself, which contained the stewed rabbit.
“Good Lord! good Lord!” bellowed the inspector, wild with joy, while Lenient made sure of the prisoner.
The rabbit-skin, undeniable proof of theft, the last and most damning piece of evidence, was discovered in the mattress.
Then the police returned to the village in triumph with the prisoner, the stewed rabbit, and the rabbit-skin.
A week later, the whole affair having made a considerable stir, Master Lecacheur, on arriving at the Hall to discuss matters with the schoolmaster, was told that the shepherd Severin had been waiting for an hour to see him.
He was sitting on a chair in the corner with his stick between his legs. When he caught sight of the mayor he got up, took off his cap and bowed, saying: “Good day, Master Cacheux,” but he did not sit down again, as he felt shy and awkward.
“What do you want?” said the farmer.
“Well, there, Master Cacheux, is it true that a rabbit was stolen from your place the other week?”
“Yes, that’s true, Severin.”
“Ah, well, then it’s really true?”
“Yes, my good fellow.”
“And who stole it, the rabbit?”
“Polyte Ancas, the labourer.”
“Ah, well. It is also really true that he was found under my bed?”
“What do you mean, the rabbit?”
“The rabbit and Polyte as well, one at one end and the other at the other.”
“Yes, poor old chap. That’s true.”
“Then it’s really true?”
“Yes. Whoever told you about it?”
“Pretty well everybody. I understand. And then, and then, well, you must know all about married life, seeing that you as a mayor marry people.”
“What do you mean, about married life?”
“I mean about one’s rights.”
“What do you mean by one’s rights?”
“All about the rights of husband and wife.”
“Yes, I know all that.”
“Well, then, tell me, Master Cacheux, has my wife the right to sleep with Polyte?”
“What do you mean, to sleep with Polyte?”
“Yes, has she the right, according to law and seeing that she is my wife, to sleep with Polyte?”
“No, no, of course not, she has not the right.”
“If I find her at it again, have I the right to beat her, have I? To beat her and him too?”
“Why … why … why, yes.”
“That’s all right and settled. Now I am going to tell you why I asked.
“One night last week, as I had my doubts, I went home and found them there, and not lying back to back, mind you. I chucked Polyte out of doors to sleep; but that was all, as I did not know what my rights were. This time I did not see them, I heard about it. Well, it’s over, we will say no more about it. But if I catch them at it again … by G⸺, if I catch them at it again, I’ll make them lose all taste for this kind of joke, Master Cacheux, as sure as my name is Severin. …”