Towards the end of her narration she
softened a little. "I know I am a criminal," she exclaimed. "Since this
morning I have done nothing but lie. I am sick of it; it makes me
suffer too much. Don't tell my husband until this evening that I have
confessed; there's no need, for, after what I have told you, you can
easily expose his falsehoods and so get at the truth."

That evening the three prisoners--Lucien had been arrested at the
same time as the other two--were brought to Chatou. Identified by
the gardener as the lessee of the villa, Fenayrou abandoned his
protestations of innocence and admitted his guilt. The crime was then
and there reconstituted in the presence of the examining magistrate.
With the help of a gendarme, who impersonated Aubert, Fenayrou repeated
the incidents of the murder. The goat-chaise was wheeled to the bridge,
and there in the presence of an indignant crowd, the murderer showed how
the body had been lowered into the river.

After a magisterial investigation lasting two months, which failed
to shed any new light on the more mysterious elements in the case,
Fenayrou, his wife and brother were indicted on August 19 before the
Assize Court for the Seine-et-Oise Department, sitting at Versailles.

The attitude of the three culprits was hardly such as to provoke the
sympathies of even a French jury. Fenayrou seemed to be giving a clumsy
and unconvincing performance of the role of the wronged husband; his
heavy figure clothed in an ill-fitting suit of "blue dittos," his
ill-kempt red beard and bock-stained moustache did not help him in his
impersonation. Mme. Fenayrou, pale, colourless, insignificant, was cold
and impenetrable. She described the murder of her lover "as if she were
giving her cook a household recipe for making apricot Jam." Lucien was
humble and lachrymose.

In his interrogatory of the husband the President, M. Berard des
Glajeux, showed himself frankly sceptical as to the ingenuousness of
Fenayrou's motives in assassinating Aubert. "Now, what was the motive of
this horrible crime?" he asked. "Revenge," answered Fenayrou.

President: But consider the care you took to hide the body and destroy
all trace of your guilt; that is not the way in which a husband sets out
to avenge his honour; these are the methods of the assassin! With your
wife's help you could have caught Aubert in flagrante delicto and killed
him on the spot, and the law would have absolved you. Instead of
which you