lt any surprise, doubtless because
events which, considered from a distance, would seem strange, when they
take place before us appear quite natural, as indeed they are. They
unfold themselves in an ordinary fashion, falling into place as a
succession of petty facts, and eventually losing themselves in the
everyday commonplace of life. His mind was distracted from the violent
death of an unfortunate fellow-creature by the very circumstances of
that death, by the part which he had played in the affair and the
occupation which it had imposed upon him. On his way to the commissary's
he felt as calm and as free from mental care as though he had been on
his way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to decipher despatches.

At nine o'clock in the evening, the police commissary entered the garden
with his secretary and a policeman. The municipal physician, Monsieur
Hibry, arrived simultaneously. Already, thanks to the industry of Madame
Simonneau, who was always interested in matters of supply, the house
exhaled a violent smell of carbolic and was blazing with the candles
which she had lit. Madame Simonneau was bustling to and fro, actuated by
an urgent desire to procure a crucifix and a bough of consecrated
box-wood for the dead. The doctor examined the corpse by the light of a
candle.

He was a bulky man with a ruddy complexion. He breathed noisily. He had
just dined.

"The bullet, a large calibre bullet," he said, "penetrated by way of the
palatal vault, traversed the brain and finally fractured the left
parietal bone, carrying away a portion of the cerebral substance, and
blowing out a piece of the skull. Death was instantaneous."

He returned the candle to Madame Simonneau and continued:

"Splinters of the skull were projected to a certain distance. They will
probably be found in the garden. I should conjecture that the bullet was
round-nosed. A conical bullet would have caused less destruction."

However, the commissary. Monsieur Josse-Arbrissel, a tall, thin man with
a long grey moustache, seemed neither to see nor to hear. A dog was
howling outside the garden gate.

"The direction of the wound," said the doctor, "as well as the fingers
of the right hand, which are still contracted, are more than ample proof
of suicide."

He lit a cigar.

"We are sufficiently informed," remarked the commissary.

"I regret, gentlemen, to have disturbed you," said Robert de Ligny, "and
I thank you for the courteous manner in whic