Chapter XXIX

[Henry Gastonard makes an urgent appeal to Jules Farman, of the Rue du Quatre Septembre, Paris.]

4, The Walk, Hampstead,
October 11th, 1905.

Dear M. Farman,--Your response to my urgent telegram that you should leave Paris and come to me immediately, brings the reply that you cannot leave until to-morrow. I am therefore writing you this letter with what composure I can in the face of this dreadful event, that you may be in possession of all the facts before you leave Paris, and able to deal with them there, if they are of service to you.

It was at nine o’clock last Sunday night that I first discovered the crime which had been committed in my house. I had been absent, perhaps the best part of an hour, making a call upon a friend who desired to consult me upon a French picture he purchased recently. We returned from Brighton upon the previous afternoon, my wife apparently having overcome those hallucinations which have troubled her for some weeks past, and being quite reconciled to the prospect of a continued residence at Hampstead. She was in no way unhappy at the thought of being alone, nor did I have any scruples about leaving her. My suspicions were first awakened when I discovered that my friend had not written to me at all, and that the letter which I received from him was a clever but undoubted forgery.

You may imagine with what haste I went back to Hampstead. I had left my wife at the piano in the sitting-room, where, the weather being chilly, a bright fire burned; but I perceived immediately I approached the house that it was in darkness, although a glimmer upon the blind still spoke of the firelight. This alarmed me greatly. I tried to open the front door with my latchkey, but found that the bolt had been slipped. A loud knock and ring obtained no answer. I was now seriously alarmed, as you may suppose, and being determined to obtain instant admittance to the house, I smashed the large pane of glass in the sitting-room, and entered without further delay.

I have told you that I left my wife in this room, seated at the piano in the further corner near the French window by which you pass out to the garden. That she had been called away without warning was proved by the fact that one of the candles still guttered in its socket, though too faintly to give any light, and that the sheet of music lay upon the floor, indicating that she had been turning the very page when the summons came to her. Save for the fact that the fire burned low and that the electric light was switched off, there was nothing else in this place to excite suspicion. I called my wife loudly by name, going to the window and hoping to find her in the garden. She did not answer me. I returned to the hall, and immediately discovered the body of the man.

Some of the newspapers, I remember, say that he was a Spaniard. I should pronounce him nothing of the kind, but one of your own countrymen who had lived long in the South. When I found him he was quite dead, and had fallen forward upon a wicker seat at the foot of the stairs. To this, perhaps, he had staggered after the blow was struck. I could not at the first detect any mark upon his body, nor did I wish to believe that he was dead; but, running out into the street to give the alarm, I sent one of my neighbours for the police, another for a doctor. The latter told us the worst immediately. The man had been struck down by a heavy implement; his skull had been fractured, and he was dead.

It is not my intention, in such a letter as this, to dwell upon my own state of mind at such a moment, or to relate to you the trivial incidents of such a momentous hour. My wife’s disappearance, the evidence of a conflict in the hall, the wild tales told by the neighbours, were but the first fruits of a tragedy which paralysed my faculties. To all their questions I could give only the vaguest answers. I told them that I knew nothing of the wretched man who had been struck down in my house; I could give them no clue as to the purpose of his visit. I had never seen him before, did not know him, could not imagine any business which should bring him to my house.

To the police I confessed Madame Mimi’s story of men who watched her and of vague fears which had haunted her. They pressed me for particulars more minute, and I could not answer them. Nor did I perceive their drift then as I perceive it now. They believe, incredible as the supposition is, that the murdered man had been one of my wife’s lovers in Paris, that he visited her secretly, and that for some reason at present undisclosed she has murdered him.

I must tell you the plain truth: I can keep nothing from you. London speaks of little else than this appalling crime; nor am I sure that the voice of popular opinion does not agree with the cruel assumptions of those officially in charge of this case.

I have, my dear Farman, been associated with you in much that concerns my private life, and always in the cause of one dear to me and to whom my happiness is for ever linked. You will imagine my situation this day in England. I am alone in my house, and there is a hue and cry in the streets for the woman I love more than anything on earth. I can say nothing to which the world will listen in her defence. My letter to the newspapers is printed by some, by others withheld as indiscreet. The police themselves but repeat a parrot’s tale--“The man came to the house; he was my wife’s lover; he was killed by her, aided, it may be, by some of the disreputable friends she knew in Paris and who are now hiding her for their own ends.”

Admit, my friend, the preposterous nature of this assumption. You have known the child that the Butte called Mimi La Godiche. Is not her whole story a refutation of this calumny most base? Did she not guard her virtue in a circle where the very name of virtue has long been forgotten? Were not her gentleness, her charity, her forbearance the wonder even of the outcasts among whom she was thrown? And this child is now charged with a lover and with his murder! Oh, monstrous, I say! most monstrous and damnable, as I will presently prove to them.

In a common way, I have now no right to speak of fortune; but I have been saving of my resources, and still possess a few thousand pounds of my own, every penny of which goes to the purpose of my wife’s vindication. If others fail, I will find her. If these vigilant police cannot track her down, I will do so, going by night and day to my task until the truth is known and justice accomplished. Be you my friend in this, I beg of you. By all that is of old association and friendship, stand by me now and bring your magnificent resources to my aid.

I should tell you that the murdered man was apparently forty years of age, small of stature, with a trimmed black beard and a wealth of black hair slightly speckled with grey. He was very well dressed, apparently a man of the world--but there is nothing on the body to tell us who he was nor any clue as yet to his identity. Cross to London, I beg of you, and help us to identify him. Our work will begin when that is done; it cannot begin before.

So I repeat, come without delay to a man whose friends stand apart from him but whose faith is unshaken.

Henry Gastonard.