f a wronged husband.

The only step he took after the alleged confession of his wife on March
22 was to go to a commissary of police and ask him to recover from
Aubert certain letters of his wife's that were in his possession. This
the commissary refused to do. Mme. Gibon, the mother-in-law, was sent to
Aubert to try to recover the letters, but Aubert declined to give them
up, and wrote to Mme. Fenayrou:

"Madame, to my displeasure I have had a visit this morning from your
mother, who has come to my home and made a most unnecessary scene
and reproached me with facts so serious that I must beg you to see me
without delay. It concerns your honour and mine.... I have no fear of
being confronted with your husband and yourself. I am ready, when
you wish, to justify myself.... Please do all you can to prevent
a repetition of your mother's visit or I shall have to call in the
police."

It is clear that the Fenayrous attached the utmost importance to the
recovery of this correspondence, which disappeared with Aubert's death.
Was the prime motive of the murder the recovery and destruction of these
letters? Was Aubert possessed of some knowledge concerning the Fenayrous
that placed them at his mercy?

It would seem so. To a friend who had warned him of the danger to which
his intimacy with Gabrielle Fenayrou exposed him, Aubert had replied,
"Bah! I've nothing to fear. I hold them in my power." The nature of
the hold which Aubert boasted that he possessed over these two persons
remains the unsolved mystery of the case, "that limit of investigation,"
in the words of a French judge, "one finds in most great cases, beyond
which justice strays into the unknown."

That such a hold existed, Aubert's own statement and the desperate
attempts made by the Fenayrous to get back these letters, would seem
to prove beyond question. Had Aubert consented to return them, would
he have saved his life? It seems probable. As it was, he was doomed.
Fenayrou hated him. They had had a row on a race-course, in the course
of which Aubert had humiliated his former master. More than this, Aubert
had boasted openly of his relations with Mme. Fenayrou, and the fact
had reached the ears of the husband. Fenayrou believed also, though
erroneously, that Aubert had informed against him in the matter of the
table-water fraud. Whether his knowledge of Aubert's relations with
his wife was recent or of long standing, he had other grounds of hate
against his