The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (65 page)

Pleading with them not to harm her or the other members of her family, Madame Steinheil
had told them. Until the valet came next morning, she lay on the bed with her wrists tethered above her head in such a way that at every attempt to move her hands the rope drew tighter about her throat. Her ankles were bound to the foot of the bed. Cotton wool had been forced into her mouth to silence her. Though she had heard Madame Japy's cries as the intruders gagged the old woman, she did not know until the morning that her mother and her husband were dead.

Madame Steinheil was not believed by the officers who investigated the crime. Her prosecutors insisted that she had first murdered her husband, then her mother, and had finally ransacked the house and tied herself up to support the story of a burglary. The motive was a wish to be rid of a weak-willed, improvident husband and to marry one of her numerous admirers.

Holmes glanced down the
résumé
of the evidence as we stood in the office of Gustave Hamard, Director of Criminal Investigations, opposite the monumental façade of the Palais de Justice, where Madame Steinheil appeared before her judges.

“The prosecution theory in that form may be disposed of at once,” Holmes said quietly to the French detective. “I grant that Madame Steinheil might have strangled her husband, though the difference in their build and physical strength makes it unlikely. Why, though, would she first gag her mother, if her intention was to strangle the old lady?”

“Only the prisoner can tell us,” Hamard said sceptically.

Holmes shook his head. “Consider this. The valet who released Madame Steinheil next morning did not undo the ropes. He cut them. The knots are still to be seen. She had been tied once or twice with a galley-knot. True, she might have tied herself to the bed but a galley-knot would be impossible in such places. It is, in any case, rarely used except among sailors or horse-dealers.”

“It would require a single accomplice,” Hamard said, “who, in return for a reward, tied up the young woman and disposed of the other two. What better than to tie up Madame Japy and gag her, so that she might later be a witness to seeing a stranger in the house? Her suffocation appears to have been an accident.”

Again Holmes shook his head. “It will not do, monsieur. If Madame Japy's death was not intended, why was the cord tightened round her throat? The poor old woman could not be permitted to live. It argues that at least one intruder was someone whom she might recognise and identify.”

For a week or two, the Steinheil murder case had threatened to cause almost as much disorder in Paris as the Dreyfus affair. One half of the city swore that Marguerite Steinheil was the victim of robbery, conspiracy, and worse. She had endured a night of terror, at the end of which the bodies of her husband and her mother were found lying in the other rooms. It was certainly true that four ecclesiastical costumes, identical to those in which she described her attackers, had been stolen from the property-room of the Théâtre Eden a few hours before the crime at the Impasse Ronsin. That in itself proved nothing.

The other half of Parisians thought her a notorious harlot who had paid villains as evil as herself to stage a make-believe robbery. The object was to murder her husband—of whom she was weary—so that she might make a better marriage. As for the pearls and other jewels, which Madame Steinheil claimed to have lost, they had never existed.

Holmes cared nothing for the jewels, whether they existed or not. There was another item which the valet and other servants testified to having seen in the house before the fatal night and never again after it. It was a package wrapped in brown paper and sealed. On its top was written the name of Marguerite Steinheil and the instruction, “Private Papers. To be burnt unopened after my death.” Here and there the brown paper was torn and it was possible to see the corners of envelopes which the wrapping contained. This bundle of envelopes was, to all appearances, the secret history of the Third Republic
and lay in a concealed wall-cupboard of Adolphe Steinheil's studio.

Madame Steinheil now swore that these were not the papers that might cause such embarrassment to the enemies of Félix Faure but a “dummy” package to deceive burglars. The papers from the Élysée Palace were hidden in a secret drawer of her writing-desk.

There was never so inconclusive an investigation for the police. Dr. Balthazard, forensic detective of the Sûreté, found nothing that would prove or disprove Madame Steinheil's story. Of the famous history of the Third Republic no more was said. As the judicial examination of Madame Steinheil began, it was widely doubted whether such a history existed—or had ever existed.

Professor Alphonse Bertillon used every means of scientific investigation at his disposal to identify those who had been at the Impasse Ronsin on the night of the crime. Despite his reservations over the technique, his assistants “fingerprinted” every room and every article of furniture in the house. It was all to no effect. To be sure, there were fingerprints by the dozen in every room, and they were photographed and catalogued. Unfortunately, the system had been so neglected by the Sûreté, that it was impossible to check the identity of such prints without great difficulty.

Holmes was on better terms with Gustave Hamard, whose authority allowed my friend to tread where the great Bertillon had gone before, to examine the interior of the house in the Impasse Ronsin on behalf of his client. He had no wish to consult Madame Steinheil in prison. If ever there was a case to be decided on cold and precise points of evidence—away from the hysteria of the mob and the suspect—it was this. Hamard had shrugged his broad shoulders at the futility of further examination but granted the request.

By the time that Holmes finished his examination, the trial of Marguerite Steinheil on charges of murder had begun at the Palais de Justice. The final leaves of autumn fell from the birch trees of the Ile de la Cité, which we had last seen breaking into a green haze of spring across the Boulevard du Palais.

A few days later, Sherlock Holmes and Alphonse Bertillon faced each other across the desk of Gustave Hamard. The duel that Holmes had promised was about to begin, with Hamard and I as seconds. My companion took from his pocket a photographic card upon which the ridges and whorls of an index finger were plainly seen. He handed it to Bertillon, who shrugged and pulled a face.

“There were hundreds, Mr. Holmes,” said the great anthropologist, taking off his glasses, brushing his eyes with the back of his hand, and replacing the spectacles. He took a page of fingerprints which was lying on the desk and ran his eye down it, looking aside from time to time at the image Holmes had given him.

“Try number eighty-four,” Holmes suggested whimsically.

Bertillon picked up another card and glanced down it.

“Indeed, monsieur,” he said affably, “you are quite correct. The print of this finger was found a number of times, among many many others, in the studio of Adolphe Steinheil. It was not found, I see, in the rooms of the upper floor where the crimes were committed. The studio was entered by so many visitors that it can count for little, I fear.”

“Forgive me, monsieur,” said Holmes quietly, “but the fingerprint upon the card I have handed you did not come from the studio of Adolphe Steinheil, nor from anywhere else in the Impasse Ronsin.”

“Then where?” asked Bertillon sharply.

The voice of Sherlock Holmes was almost a purr of satisfaction.

“From the presidential apartments of the Élysée Palace on the sixteenth of February 1899, at a time when the late Félix Faure had just received the last rites. You will recall that you and I were at that time exchanging views on the use, or otherwise, of such prints. Having received as a present from Monsieur Faure's family a small
pill-box of Sèvres ware—a charming thing—I was boorish enough to subject it to dusting with silver nitrate and exposure to a fixed-range Kodak, a contraption of my own.”

Bertillon went pale. Hamard spoke first. “Who do you say this print comes from?”

“The Comte de Balincourt,” said Holmes smoothly, “alias Viscount Montmorency, alias the Margrave of Hesse, sometime assistant chamberlain at the Élysée Palace—under what name I know not, as yet. Dismissed after the passing of President Faure for some trivial dishonesty. A dozen witnesses will tell you that, not a few weeks before his murder, Adolphe Steinheil began a commission to paint in his studio a portrait of the Comte de Balincourt in hunting costume.”

Hamard's eyes narrowed. “Do you say, Mr. Holmes, that Steinheil knew such a man as Balincourt?”

“Not only knew him, Monsieur, but was heard in the studio discussing with him Félix Faure and the secret history of the Third Republic. There is a fingerprint, matching exactly the one I have shown you, on the door of a casually concealed wall-cupboard in the studio, where Balincourt was told that the papers of that secret history were kept. A package of papers remained there until the night of the two murders, inscribed with the name ‘Marguerite Steinheil' and with instructions that it was to be burned unopened upon her death. On the morning following the crimes, that cupboard was empty. The scratches on the mirror of its lock indicate that it was opened by a little force and a good deal of fraud.”

“Then the trial must be adjourned!” Hamard said. “My God! What if all this were to come to light and she had already been condemned?”

“And where,” interrupted Bertillon, “is the Comte de Balincourt?”

Holmes shrugged. “At the bottom of the Seine, I imagine, or the bed of the River Spree, depending on whether his political masters are in Paris or Berlin. I do not think he will bother us again.”

“The papers!” Hamard said furiously. “The manuscript! Where is that? Think of what it might do to the politics of France—to the peace of Europe!”

“The history of the Third Republic is quite safe,” Holmes said coolly.

Hamard looked at him with narrowed eyes. “The cupboard was opened and the manuscript stolen, was it not?”

Holmes shook his head. “Madame Steinheil trusted no one, least of all the discretion of her weak-willed and garrulous husband. She let it be known in the household that the wall-cupboard contained the manuscript and the secret drawer of her writing-desk held a dummy package. Adolphe Steinheil did not know this when he boasted to the President's former chamberlain. In truth, it was the dummy package to which he unwittingly directed the man. After the blackest of crimes, the Comte de Balincourt handed his masters a bundle of old newspapers and blank pages. You may imagine how they will have rewarded him.”

If an Anarchist bomb had gone off in the tree-lined Boulevard du Palais and blown the windows out, Hamard and Bertillon could scarcely have looked more aghast.

“You say Balincourt is a murderer?” Bertillon demanded. “Yet the same fingerprint was found nowhere upstairs.”

“Not for one moment did I suppose he had committed murder. I think it likely that he entered the upper rooms and that he was accidentally seen by Madame Japy. The poor old woman would have recognised him from his portrait sittings, for which reason she was put to death. Balincourt or his masters had hired men who would not scruple to take that precaution for their own safety as well as his.”

“A little convenient is it not?” said Hamard sceptically.

Holmes took from his pocket three more photographic prints.

“You will not know these fingerprints, for I believe they are unique to my own little collection. However, I shall be surprised if you do not
find photographs of the three men in your Office of Judicial Identification. Baptistin is a young and violent criminal. Marius Longon, ‘The Gypsy,' is a skilled and ruthless thief. Monstet de Fontpeyrine is a Cuban, a stage magician and a specialist in hotel robberies. He was seen last autumn, loitering in the Rue de Vaugirard, near the Impasse Ronsin. From there he was followed to the Métro station of Les Couronnes, where he met the other two men, a young woman with red hair, and a third man who is now identified as the Comte de Balincourt.”

“You know where these other men are?”

“In the same deep water as Balincourt, I should imagine,” said Holmes dismissively. “I scarcely think you will hear from them either.”

“And the papers of the Third Republic?” Hamard persisted.

“Ah,” said Holmes with an air of false regret. “They are where they will do no harm. I regret, however, that it is not in my power to produce them.”

“You will be ordered to produce them!” Hamard shouted.

Holmes was moved invariably by poverty, misfortune, desperation in others, never by browbeating.

“Those papers, monsieur, are essential to my client's defence. You have my word that, as yet, they have been seen by no other eyes than my own. After she is acquitted, which on the evidence I have produced to you is what justice must demand, I can promise you that these documents will trouble the world no more. If, after all that has been said in this room, she is condemned to execution—worse, if she
goes
to the guillotine—I will stop at nothing to see every word of them published in the leading newspapers of every capital.”

Gustave Hamard strode from the room and we heard his voice raised as he gave instructions to his subordinates. The trial of Madame Steinheil was adjourned early that day on the far side of the Boulevard du Palais. Two days later, its result was to be published across the world. After midnight, in the small hours of 14 November 1909, the jury that had retired to condemn Marguerite Steinheil was summoned into court again. De Valles, the president of the tribunal, imparted certain instructions to the jurors in the lamplit courtroom, his voice fraught with an anxiety that he had failed to show in the earlier stages of the proceedings. They retired and returned again to acquit Madame Steinheil of all the charges against her.

So much is history, as is the change in Professor Alphonse Bertillon's view on the usefulness of fingerprints. During the day or two left to us in Paris, he became almost a friend to Sherlock Holmes. The two men were now disposed to regard their past differences as something of a joke, each assuring the other that he had never really said the things that were reported—or that, if he had said them, he had never really meant them.