The forgotten clue : stories of the Parisian Sûretʹe : with an account of its methods

Front matter

a BY THE AUTHOR OF CRIMES OF LOVE AND HATE

THE

FORGOTTEN

Preface

Many of the scientific methods described in this book, the official photographs illustrating them, and also the dossiers from which the various cases have been taken, were placed at my disposal by Dr. Edmond Locard, chief of the Lyons laboratories. It is the least I can do, therefore, to dedicate this book to that eminent scientist and to express publicly my sincere gratitude for his generous assistance. Dr. Locard, under whose sole responsibility are more than a million criminal charts, and the dossiers in which details of the crimes and their clever detection are set forth, has continued and elaborated the work so ably initiated by my former teacher, the great Alphonse Bertillon. He alone of the French experts is not only a chemist, but a doctor, a psychologist, and a specialist on forgeries. The records of crimes committed on French soil are collected and classified in Paris, but all crimes committed in the Rhone Department are investigated by Dr. Locard, whose laboratories at Lyons contain the most up-to-date instruments, many of which are of his invention. He, too, was the first to utilize many of the methods evolved by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and attributed to the legendary Sherlock Holmes. That is because Dr. Locard is not only a scientist, but a poet with the poet’s imagination. I also desire to make my acknowledgments to M. R. A. Reiss, the great criminologist of Lausanne, who for many years instructed detectives, sent to him from every land, in those precise methods of scientific crimedetection which are superseding all former systems. H. Asuton-WoLreE hy hes y My My WAST

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Contents

THE DETECTIVE OF FICTION AND THE DETECTIVE

IN REAL LIFE 3 IDENTIFICATION OF CRIMINALS 21 THE MINUTI& OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 53 THE MINUTIL& OF SCIENTIFIC DETECTION 89 THE CLUE OF THE BLIND BEETLES III THE VARIOUS TYPES OF CRIME 134.

FORGERIES AND THEIR DETECTION 160

Chapter I The Detective Of Fiction And The Detective In Real Life

Curlous.Ly enough, most writers of detective stories have manifested a decided preference for what has been termed analysis and deduction, and the immediate popularity of Sherlock Holmes was due chiefly to his extraordinary ability to reconstruct a crime from insignificant details. Yet it was this very quality which awakened the hostility of the real-life investigators. Methods of crime detection are useless if they are individual — that is, if they repose upon personal ability alone. The more mechanical and impersonal the science of investigation becomes, the more easily is it imparted to each unit of the great army of detectives. When a crime has been reported, it must be investigated immediately, before the scent grows stale; therefore every detective must possess the knowledge necessary for the work quite apart from his personal talent. That is why, among the countless methods invented by writers for discovering who committed a crime, only those which can be taught to every officer have been adopted by the police. In this respect Emile Gaboriau, who wrote his stories at a time when detection was in its infancy, may be considered a pioneer. Truly his heroes, Lecoq and Tabaret, are endowed with exceptional flair, but they also proceed methodically and almost scientifically. The four best stories Gaboriau published, which were assiduously studied by detectives, are: ‘L’Affaire Lerouge,’ ‘Monsieur Lecoq,’ ‘Dossier 113,’ and ‘Le Crime d’Oretval.’

In the first book M. Lecoq is quite a novice, but he is ambitious and determined to succeed. His opportunity comes when he and several colleagues arrive at a miserable tavern, on the outskirts of Paris, just as several shots are fired by someone inside. The police force their way into the place, and are confronted by a man dressed as a labourer, who threatens them with a pistol. Lecoq enters through a back door and takes him by surprise. At Lecoq’s unexpected appearance, the fellow with the revolver exclaims: “The Prussians! I am lost!’ This cryptic remark is the starting-point of Lecoq’s investigation.

What should a mere labourer know of the words Napoleon used at Waterloo, when, instead of Grouchy, Bliicher arrived and made defeat certain? Three men are lying on the sanded tavern floor. Two have been shot and are dead; the third has a fractured skull and dies without giving the police any useful information. Lecoq’s chief is of the opinion that the whole affair is nothing but the outcome of a quarrel among ruffians.. He arrests the murderer and, leaving Lecoq in charge, returns to headquarters. The young detective at once sets to work. His belief that the murderer is-an educated man is strengthened by the fact that, instead of escaping before the police broke down the door, he remained to face them, probably because he covered the retreat of someone whose safety was dearer to him than his own. This, Lecog reasons, would only be a woman, Fortunately it had snowed, and at the back of the tavern Lecoq discovers the footprints of two women, who ran across the garden towards a timber-yard, where, judging from the marks he left, a man joined them. Lecoq describes this man as tall, athletic, dressed in black woollen garments, and wearing a cap. He believes him to be married, about forty years old, and devoted to the man who was arrested. He explains to a colleague how he arrived at these conclusions. The footprints in the snow reveal the fact that the man approached the rear of the tavern after the shots were fired, because his boots have obliterated the women’s footprints in several places.

Only an exceptionally cool and daring man would have risked this, and only if he were determined - to help his friend at all costs. One of the women had tripped and fallen headlong, and the unknown had carried her some distance and placed her on a heap of planks, from which the detective concluded that he was athletic. His clothes and cap have left traces and shreds of wool on a rough plank, from which he wiped the snow, and he had rested his elbow on another heap of boards, four feet high, which proves that he was tall. The man also left the imprint of his hand in the snow, and the mark of a plain ring on the third finger suggests to Lecoq that the fellow is probably married. All these signs strengthen the detective’s conviction that the murderer is not the labourer his clothes would seem to indicate. He goes to headquarters, compels the prisones to remove his boots, and finds that his feet are caked with dry mud. He at once scrapes some of this away, and perceives that under the superficial coating of dirt the man’s feet are soft and white and the nails well-kept. Lecoq believes that the fellow purposely dirtied them after his arrest. The only opportunity he had to do this was while he was locked for the night in a cell at a suburban police-station. The detective immediately examines this cell, and perceives that the prisoner emptied his drinking-water on the dusty floor and shuffled back and forth in the resulting slush. To make quite sure, Lecoq compares the mud he scraped from the man’s feet with that left on the floor, and finds that it is composed of similar particles.

Although the mysterious prisoner has been placed in a special cell to prevent any news from reaching him, it soon becomes obvious that he does obtain news from outside. Lecoq learns that Mai— the prisoner’s assumed name — has been permitted to study a volume of Bérenger’s songs, and that he sings these lustily at a certain hour every morning. The detective causes the man to be taken to the governor’s office the next day, and at the hour Mai generally began to sing, Lecoq repeats the same verse, imitating his voice. Instantly a pellet of bread, containing a message in cypher, is flipped through the tiny window from the grounds. Since Mai has only the book of songs, Lecoq reasons that the figures on the note must correspond to certain words in the book and decodes the message. Finally, Lecoq’s theory is vindicated; Mai is the Duke de Sairmeuse. The Duke had discovered that his wife was being blackmailed. Disguised as a labourer, he followed her to the haunt where the criminals compelled her to meet them, and for the honour of his ancient name, and in order to protect his unhappy wife, he killed the blackmailers.

In ‘Dossier 113’ a banker is robbed of a large sum of money which had been placed in his private safe. The secretary, a young man with expensive habits, is arrested as the thief, because only he and his employer possessed the keys of the safe and knew the combination. Furthermore, the secretary had been repeatedly ordered not to leave large sums in the house overnight; yet he had deliberately disregarded these instructions. A deep scratch near the lock of the safe becomes the principal clue. Lecoq perceives that this scratch is fresh. He tests the paint, and discovers it to be extremely hard. His experiments demonstrate that a mere slip of the key could not have scored the surface so deeply, therefore a second person must have come on the scene and violently pulled the thief’s hand away just as the key was being inserted in the lock. The detective thereupon orders an examination of the banker’s and the secretary’s keys, since traces of the paint will naturally be found on the tip of one of them. Lecoq fully expected this test to be conclusive, but to his surprise it is the banker’s key which has been used. This leaves the intervention of the person who pulled the thief’s hand away with such violence unexplained. Lecoq’s subtle brain senses a woman somewhere in the background. Instead of arresting the banker, he investigates the wife’s past, and discovers that she has an illegitimate son, a ne’er-do-well, who visited his mother in secret when in need of money. It was he who had stolen the key, wheedled the combination from the unhappy woman, and entered the house at night. The mother had surprised him busy on the safe, and it was during a struggle for the key that the paint had been scratched. Bertillon used the same method of investigation with success in the famous Rémy case, although he would not admit that he had been inspired by Gaboriau’s novel.

The investigation in “L’Affaire Lerouge’ is carried out by a queer character named Tabaret, but dubbed Tirauclair by the police. He was for many years a clerd in a stock-broker’s office, but puzzles of every kind attracted him, and finally he became an unofficial auxiliary of the Stireté. It was he who taught Lecoq how to proceed in an investigation, and in the following story

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Tabaret is at his best. A woman residing in a Paris suburb has been found murdered. She has been stabbed in the back by a long, thin blade, much like that of a foil. The police, all unskilled at that time in the art of reading the minute traces a murderer always leaves, are unable to visualize what occurred. Tabaret is summoned, and proceeds to investigate in his own fashion. After an hour’s work he rejoins the juge d’ instruction and lays a series of what to-day are termed exhibits on the table, and relates what he has discovered.

“This crime,’ Tabaret declares, ‘was not committed for gain. The assassin arrived here before nine o’clock; rain began to fall then, and although there is some dirt from his boots under the table at which he sat, there is no mud. His visit was unexpected, and Madame Lerouge had begun to undress — you see she has a shawl over her cotton bed-jacket — and was pulling up the weights of that clock against the wall, when a knock came on her door. I have examined the clock — it must be wound every twenty-four hours. There is a chair before it and the weights are hanging midway. The mark of the dead woman’s foot is still visible on the leather top of the chair. She must have known the assassin, since she admitted him without hesitation. He is a tall young man and was well dressed. He wore a silk hat, carried an umbrella, and smoked a Trabuco cigar, using a holder. Here are plaster casts of his footprints! Examine the elegant shape of the sole and the small heel! Instead of crossing a flower-bed in the garden, he leapt over it, his deep toe-marks on both sides prove it, and the leap was over five feet, therefore the man was young and vigorous. He searched for something after the murder and felt with his hands in the dust on the top of that wardrobe; only a tall man could do that. Had he stood on a chair he would have looked instead of passing his hands over the surface. His silk hat has left a circle on a small, dusty table, and his umbrella made several clear imprints in the soft earth outside. I came to the conclusion that it was an umbrella and not a stick, because not only the ferrule but the end of the cloth have sunk into the ground. I found two Trabuco cigar-stumps in the grate, and the ends were neither wet nor bitten, so he used a holder.

“The woman and her visitor sat and talked for some time — note that he had leisure to smoke two cigars — and that bottle of cognac is half-empty. It was specially opened for the visitor, because the cork and corkscrew are still on the table. Then at some time the man killed the woman with a very thin stiletto, which he wiped on her apron, leaving two narrow lines of blood. She struggled for a moment and clutched at the murderer’s hands. He was wearing grey gloves, and some shreds from these are under her nails. Thereafter he searched for a document, which he found and threw on the fire. The ashes are on top and the fire was almost out. Then, as a blind, to make us believe that robbery was the motive for the crime, he tied some silver and other trifles in a napkin and left, first extinguishing the candle. That proves he was cool, determined, and deliberate. I am certain the assassin was a young man of good family, and this woman probably blackmailed him.’

The sequel proves Tabaret to have been right!

When Gaboriau conceived this story, such precision was unknown to investigators. To him belongs the merit of having drawn the attention of the police to the importance of taking plaster casts of footprints and the value of a minute examination of dusty surfaces. The method he indicated for determining the height and age of a man by his stride, the need for a close scrutiny of the victim’s finger-nails, and many other details are all taught to modern detectives. It is true, Gaboriau did not foresee that one day the flakes of burnt documents could be read, yet the methodical analysis and deduction displayed by Tabaret and Lecog, in other stories, certainly did much to show what scientific investigation may accomplish.

The last of the series is a perfect resumé of the manner in which an expert should proceed when called to the scene of acrime. The body of the Countess de Tremorel has been found in the park surrounding her mansion. She and the Count had remained alone the previous night, because all the servants had gone to a wedding. When the police arrived, they found that every room in the house had been broken into, the furniture smashed, drawers and cupboards emptied of their contents, curtains torn from their rings, and even the upholstery of chairs and sofas pierced and torn. Blood has drenched the stair-carpet, and the imprint of a blood-stained hand is found on a door. In the dead woman’s boudoir tea had been prepared, and on a table in the dining-room are eight empty bottles and five glasses. A large sum, which the Count had drawn from his bank two days before, is missing, and the police believe that it was this sum which attracted the criminals, and that the Count was also murdered and thrown into the river. Traces on the lawn show where at least one body was dragged over the grass, and not far away is a slipper and a silk muffler which belonged to the Count.

Lecogq is called in, and at once perceives that there are too many apparently obvious clues. He believes these have been manufactured and that the whole thing 1s a mise en scene, which, as usual in such cases, has been

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overdone. The clock in the boudoir is lying on the floor. It is not broken, but has stopped at three-twenty. Since the servants did not leave until four the previous afternoon, this would seem to indicate 3.20 a.m. No tea had been served before their departure, and it appeared extremely unlikely the Countess would prepare tea for herself just before dawn. Lecoq moves the hands of the clock until they point to the half-hour, whereupon the clock strikes eleven. That then is the time at which the crime was actually committed, and, as he thought, every seeming clue has been faked. He examines the bedroom, and perceives that although it is apparently in great disorder the bed has not been slept in; his arguments are conclusive and have become classical.

“To give a bed the appearance it would have after a person has slept in it,’ he explains to the police, ‘can only be done dy sleeping in it. See — the pillows are rumpled, but look at the bolster, there is no sign of the deep impress a head and shoulders would leave. Moreover, the sheet and blankets have been thrown back at the top, but they are still tucked so tightly under the mattress from the end of the bed to the middle that it is evident no one has lain beneath them. Yet more important than these trifles is the second mattress. Look, it is smooth and flat, not a crease, let alone the depression two heavy people lying in it for several hours would inevitably leave.’ Lecoq then examines the five glasses in the dining-room with a lens; not one has the characteristic smears that lips would leave had they been used for drinking, and in his haste the criminal mixed the various wines, of which he poured a little into each glass, with some vinegar which had stood on the sideboard. The footprints in the garden, intended to convey the impression that a furious struggle had taken place, were all made by the same man, who, Lecoq suspects, was the Count himself. His suspicion becomes a certainty when he finds that a pair of the missing Count’s boots exactly fit the impressions. As a final proof Lecoq discovers the Count’s dressing-gown and his second slipper under a cupboard in a corner of the bedroom, whilst a complete outfit — clothing, overcoat, boots, and hat — is missing from his wardrobe. Lecoq traces the Count to an obscure lodging and the man commits suicide to avoid arrest.

The detective’s procedure in this story is simple, logical, and obvious, but it demonstrated the value of minute traces and paved the road for modern investtgators.

The adventures of Sherlock Holmes are too well known to require retelling, but many of the methods invented by Conan Doyle are used now in the scientific laboratories. Sherlock Holmes made the study of tobacco ashes his hobby. It was a new idea, but the police at once realized the importance of such specialized knowledge, and to-day every laboratory has a complete set of tables giving the appearance and composition of the various ashes, which all detectives must learn to recognize. Mud and soil from various districts are also classified much after the manner that Holmes describes. Dr. Locard, who was in the French Secret Service during the Great War, was able, by examining the stains on soldiers’ and prisoners’ uniforms, to determine from what sections they had come. Conan Doyle made Holmes a complex personality; not only a tracker, but a logician and an analyst, and thus evolved and disseminated successfully the constructive method adopted since then by all criminal investigation departments. In the story ‘The Cardboard Box,’ Holmes unravels the puzzle, because he observed that the ear of an old lady had all the hereditary characteristics of the several ears which had been sent to her, and not long after, Bertillon wrote a monograph on this theme. Holmes is also a clever chemist, and the police of every country now have expert chemists in their service. In the ‘Study in Scarlet,’ Holmes discovers a reactant which precipitates blood and nothing else, and he distinguishes between arterial and venous blood. That also has become a distinct branch of criminal investigation. Poisons, handwriting, stains, dust, footprints, traces of wheels, the shape and position of wounds, and therefore the probable shape of the weapon which caused them; the basic principle of cryptograms — all these and many other excellent methods which germinated in Conan Doyle’s fertile imagination are now part and parcel of every detective’s scientific equipment.

It cannot be doubted that it is to these clever books the detective chiefly owes his recent extraordinary popularity, although stories describing the detection and hunting down of criminals have always delighted old and young alike. They combine the excitement of the chase with the satisfaction of beating an opponent in a game that calls for acute mental activity. The primeval instinct of the hunter is still very strong in mankind. To watch and lie in wait and then to pounce suddenly; to match cunning with cunning; to take by surprise when the quarry believes itself safe is thrilling and fascinating. Moreover, the unceasing and inevitable warfare between the malefactor and the police and the delight men take in solving intricate puzzles are also a vital manifestation of Nature’s law — the survival of the fittest. On the day we shall have ceased to crave for excitement or to take part in contests for superiority, we shall have arrived at the summit of civilization, but before us will be only the steep down grade to mental and physical degeneracy.

Until lately, however, the great reading public was denied any real insight into the occult methods of investigators and compelled to satisfy a natural curiosity with fiction. The detective remained a mysterious entity living aloof from his fellows, a member of a dread society, almost a species of legal “Black Hand,’ with powers, ramifications, experience, and knowledge only unveiled to the initiated. Nemo me impune lacessit is his motto, and to this is added a dread of the unknown forces of which he disposes. But although criminal investigation is a mystery to the honest citizen, it quickly ceased to have any terrors for the professional lawbreaker. The old dictum of familiarity, no doubt. It was his business to study and observe the police just as they have to study him; and he soon came to believe them very human and vulnerable, because in order to approach him and learn his secrets, the detective was compelled to assume the language and manners of the denizens of the underworld. But to the honest man, the methods of those who fight for his security are still to a great extent a sealed book. It is the object of these stories to initiate the reader into the secrets of real-life detection, to describe the complex and wonderful instruments with which science has armed the law, to relate what actually takes place at home and abroad when a crime has been committed, and to show that very soon criminals, no matter how cunning, will inevitably have to pay the price of their misdeeds. It is not an exaggeration to state that in the very near future the methods for discovering and punishing those who prefer the crooked path to useful citizenship will have become infallible. And because that infallibility will have been attained by the adaptation of scientific knowledge to the needs of the detective, instead of the morally degrading system of depending on spies and informers only, this evolution will also have for effect to bring him into the light of day. He will lose none of his powers and he will steadily gain in prestige.

Some may argue that to disclose the means by which criminals are tracked is to arm these with knowledge which may help them. The same was said when it became generally known that a criminal could be identified by his finger-prints. Nevertheless, it is only exceptionally that a burglar or murderer wears gloves. The reason is obvious. Forced to shun the light, his fingers are to him so many sensitive antenne, and to cover them with leather or rubber makes them useless. Furthermore, it will be seen that the scientific police laboratories are now so formidably armed, at any rate abroad, that whatever a man may do, he must leave some trace by which he will be found out. And that will make crime, if not impossible, at any rate so dangerous and unprofitable that in sheer despair the novice, and perhaps even the hardened offender, will turn to honest work. Although many officials may become superfluous, the community has everything to gain by such a result. Only lately the Gutteridge murder demonstrated that even a bullet ora cartridge-case carries marks impressed on its surface, produced by the weapon from which it was fired, by which it can be positively asserted that such and such a pistol was used. Thus a day must inevitably come when a man will feel that no crime can be committed with impunity.

Criminal investigation is in reality divided into three distinct and separate methods: the primitive system of spying and bribing men of the criminal class to become informers and betray their fellows; the science of tracking the criminal from minute traces left by him on the scene of the crime, and by his manner of operating, which to the trained observer is often as plain as a signature; and the classification of the various types of habitual law-breakers and the certainty of recognizing a man or woman who has already been convicted, no matter how disguised and no matter under what alias he is hiding.

Among savages and hunters, the art of tracking man or beast, with the faculty of arriving at a logical conclusion by deduction from tiny clues, was, and is, in some cases, still practised as a science. It degenerated in civilized lands as the senses degenerated and became dulled; and thus the use of informers and an elaborate system of spying and keeping criminals under observation replaced the better method. Only lately, with the help of wonderfully perfect instruments, has criminal investigation again begun to tread the upward path to the perfect science it should be. The system of betrayal has nothing to recommend it. It is degrading for the officers of the law, who are forced to consort with and to reward men who in reality hate and despise them. Such creatures inevitably sell to the highest bidder, and nearly always run with the hare and with the hounds; and what is more important, the system fails utterly when a crime is committed spontaneously or by an amateur, by someone who, since he is not a member of the criminal clan, has, fortunately for him, no pal to give him away. Science and brains only can successfully combat crime; for to-day, motor-cars, aeroplanes, and the resources of chemistry and electricity are at the disposal of those who prey on their fellows, and they have begun to use them quite as much as the police. If one considers what large sums are spent on rewarding informers, it is clear that this money could be used more efficiently to install scientific laboratories capable of dealing with any eventuality.

A case which demonstrated how useful such laboratories can be, and how much those specialists in criminology who direct the forces of which they dispose can help the law, occurred recently in Paris. Deprez, a bank messenger, disappeared. His last call was at the house of a man named Nourric. He and his brother-in-law, Duquesne, were immediately suspected of having murdered the unfortunate collector. There was, however, no proof against either of the men. Because Deprez had made his last call at the house of Nourric, it did not follow that he had been murdered there. He might have been waylaid and killed on his way home, or he might have absconded with the important sum he carried that day. Worst of all, no body had been found, and without the corpus delicti there can be no prosecution. Nourric and Duquesne were therefore simply kept under observation. It was, however, ascertained that they unexpectedly paid their rent and also various debts, although for some time past creditors has besieged them in vain. Questioned on this point, Nourric averred that he had won money at the races. Again the detectives on the case were at a standstill. Meanwhile, every nook and corner where a body might be concealed was being searched, and dogs and divers explored the Seine and the Marne, although both rivers were at a considerable distance from the house. Then abruptly the detectives discovered a queer vehicle in the workshop of a wheelwright, where the suspected men had left it for repairs. It was the poussette which later became so notorious. This was a species of pushcart,

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made of two bicycle wheels fastened under a deal box, to which long handles had been added. One of the wheels was twisted and several spokes broken. Nourric and Duquesne, who were bricklayers and jobbing electricians, proved conclusively that they used this home-made vehicle to transport their tools and material. They declared that on the day following the disappearance of Deprez, they had carried a heavy load of bricks and piping to a contractor’s yard. This was found to be true. But — at the laboratory — tiny smears of blood were found on the sides of the deal box, and the blood was human. Nourric triumphantly pointed to a jagged cut on his right hand.