Chapter 61

54 MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE at the public expense — that an advantageous offer of private sepulture was absolutely declined by the family — and that no member of the family attended the ceremonial : — although, I say, all this was asserted by “L’Etoile” in furtherance of the impression it designed to convey — yet all this was satisfactorily disproved. In a subsequent number of the paper, an attempt was made to throw suspicion upon Beauvais himself. The editor says: “Now, then, a change comes over the matter. We are told that on one occasion, while a Madame B was at Madame Roget’s house, M. Beauvais, who was going out, told her that a gendarme was expected there, and that she, Madame B , must not say anything to the gendarme until he returned, but let the matter be for him. ... In the present posture of affairs M. Beauvais appears to have the whole matter locked up in his head. A single step cannot be taken without M. Beauvais, for go which way you will you run against him. . . . For some reason he determined that nobody shall have anything to do with the proceedings but himself, and he has elbowed the male relatives out of the way, according to their representations, in a very singular manner. He seems to have been very much averse to permitting the relatives to see the body.” By the following fact some color was given to the suspicion thus thrown upon Beauvais. A visitor at his office a few days prior to the girl’s disappearance, and during the absence of its occupant, had observed a rose in the keyhole of the door, and the name “Marie” inscribed upon a slate which hung near at hand. The general impression, so far as we were enabled to glean it from the newspapers, seemed to be that Marie had been the victim of a gang of desperadoes — that by these she had been borne across the river, maltreated, and murdered. “Le Commercial,” however, a print of extensive influence, was earnest in combating this popular idea. I quote a passage or two from its columns: “We are persuaded that pursuit has hitherto been on a false scent, so far as it has been directed to the Barriere du Roule. It is impossible that a person so well known to thousands as this