Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

The neighbors uttered their sorrow and comforted the widow as well as they could, but they were not long able to bear the sight of the deceased. Soon they departed in little groups, and the woman was left alone to take care of her dead.

The bereaved wife sent word to her daughter, who had been spending a fortnight with her friends in a near-by town.

When Yvette arrived a day later, she gazed not upon her father’s face, but on his grave, for, swiftly as the death had come, the burial was equally surprisingly sudden. Such hurried management drew more than censure upon Madame Aubertin; it drew suspicion, for whisper followed whisper about the circle of scattered cottages.

“Alas, the good man dies like a candle snuffed out, and she does not even wait for the body to lose its warmth. She is in a remarkable hurry, that woman!”

“Yet why not?” a somewhat kindlier villager said. “Even in life Aubertin’s face was a large replica of a meat ball. And since you say that he was a sight a pig would turn its eyes away from when the fit possessed him, do you blame the poor woman, all alone as she was, for burying him with such dispatch?”

“Not only are you stupid, Alphonse, but you are also gullible,” the wife of this charitable citizen said. “It is fortunate for her that the gendarmerie are also men. As if every one who is not blind cannot see how greatly the Monsieur Hennezal is concerned. And how much she is concerned with him — la! There is neither grief nor shame in the hussy.”

Thus were opinions voiced and thus were they somewhat allayed — until a day during the harvest. The death and the burial together created less consternation than what then occurred.

“Did I not tell you, Alphonse — a hundred times, no?”

The widow Aubertin had married Hennezal, maker of goblets, candlesticks and ornaments of glass. Whereupon the whispers grew to murmurs, and what was voiced as mere suspicion and gossip, became established in the minds of the villagers as a fact. Aubertin had been dealt with foully.

Whether these suspicions reached the ears of the law, the history of this case does not show.

At any rate, they were not acted upon at the time.

It is only apparent that the police authorities would not take up the stray, possibly malicious, gossip of a community, nor would it order a disinterment on the strength of such gossip unless expressly desired by the near kin of the deceased.

Thus the matter rested for a time until further circumstances, coupled with the suspicions already known, took form in a chain of evidence that made Madame Aubertin’s case exceedingly more fascinating.

Some little time passed. The Madame, seeing that her daughter was fair to look upon (indeed Yvette was being “looked upon” to some small notoriety), began to cast her eyes about her upon the eligibles of her vicinity. With characteristic suddenness, Mine. Aubertin — now Mme. Hennezal — made a choice, namely, Bourlette, a prospering butcher in a village not far away.

A meeting was arranged, and when Bourlette beheld the vivacious beauty of Madame’s daughter, he decided that his prosperity would adorn her admirably. The news of the forthcoming marriage of these two was an occasion for much cynicism in the village.

“She is young, and she has a charming face,” Bourlette heard himself congratulated. And truer, sterner friends he would not heed.

“She is cunning, like her mother. You have heard the rumor, I suppose, of the late M. Aubertin?”

Bourlette grunted, annoyed. “I look upon the litter, and you show me the sow! What have the mother’s affairs to do with the character of my Yvette? Answer me that!”

“But, my dear Bourlette, isn’t it a fact that the woman poisoned her husband?”

“My friend, your venerable beard ought to restrain such witless gossip. It is not a fact, and if it were, you could not prove it. You are positively out of your senses to repeat such gossip even to a friend.”

“Bourlette,” said the other, irritably, “I open my mouth wide to tell you are a fool. She is young and you are old, and there you have my opinion!”

“And you,” came the answer, “are altogether a confirmed cynic. You are well aware that I love the wench, and she is also, if I may say it, fond enough of me.”

“Of you,” scoffed the friend with a grimace. “Bourlette, I would save you from this misstep even at the cost of our friendship. You are certainly not what you might call a cavalier. You are certainly not young. As a matter of fact you are old. Besides that you are fat, you have three teeth missing and the others will soon drop out.

“You may be rich after a fashion, but by all the saints you haven’t a hair on your smooth, flat, empty pate. And there you have my opinion, and the opinion of every one else, if that matters to you!”

That year, 1884, Yvette came into possession of the butcher as his lawfully wedded wife.

II