tinct is right in accusing me.

"Apart from Hippolyte Fauville, there is necessarily a criminal; and that
criminal is necessarily Cosmo Mornington's heir. As I am not the man,
another heir of Cosmo Mornington exists. It is he whom I accuse, Monsieur
le Prefet.

"There is something more than a dead man's will in the wicked business
that is being enacted before us. We thought for a time that there was
only that; but there is something more. I have not been fighting a dead
man all the time; more than once I have felt the very breath of life
strike against my face. More than once I have felt the teeth of the tiger
seeking to tear me.

"The dead man did much, but he did not do everything. And, even then, was
he alone in doing what he did? Was the being of whom I speak merely one
who executed his orders? Or was he also the accomplice who helped him in
his scheme? I do not know. But he certainly continued a work which he
perhaps began by inspiring and which, in any case, he turned to his own
profit, resolutely completed and carried out to the very end. And he did
so because he knew of Cosmo Mornington's will. It is he whom I accuse,
Monsieur le Prefet.

"I accuse him at the very least of that part of the crimes and felonies
which cannot be attributed to Hippolyte Fauville. I accuse him of
breaking open the drawer of the desk in which Maitre Lepertuis, Cosmo
Mornington's solicitor, had put his client's will. I accuse him of
entering Cosmo Mornington's room and substituting a phial containing a
toxic fluid for one of the phials of glycero-phosphate which Cosmo
Mornington used for his hypodermic injections. I accuse him of playing
the part of a doctor who came to certify Cosmo Mornington's death and of
delivering a false certificate. I accuse him of supplying Hippolyte
Fauville with the poison which killed successively Inspector Verot,
Edmond Fauville, and Hippolyte Fauville himself. I accuse him of arming
and turning against me the hand of Gaston Sauverand, who, acting under
his advice and his instructions, tried three times to take my life and
ended by causing the death of my chauffeur. I accuse him of profiting by
the relations which Gaston Sauverand had established with the infirmary
in order to communicate with Marie Fauville, and of arranging for Marie
Fauville to receive the hypodermic syringe and the phial of poison with
which the poor woman was able to carry out her plans of suicide."

Perenna paused to note the eff