They depend entirely on anonymous letters.
There are a whole mass of people who can’t wait if they have the chance of doing down someone who’s trying to get away with anything.”
“It’s a grim thought,” said Charley, but added cheerfully: “I can only hope you’re exaggerating.”
“Well, anyhow, a woman from the glove department at the Trois Quartiers came forward and said she remembered selling a young man a pair of gray suede gloves on the day of the murder.
She was a woman of about forty and she’d liked the look of him.
He was particularly anxious that they should match his gray suit and he wanted them rather large so that he shouldn’t have any difficulty in slipping into them.
Berger was paraded with a dozen other young men and she picked him out at once, but, as his lawyer pointed out, that was easy since she had only just seen his picture in the paper.
Then they got hold of one of Berger’s crooked friends who said he’d met him on the night of the murder, not walking towards the boulevard, but in a direction that would have taken him to Jordan’s apartment.
He’d shaken hands with him and had noticed that he was wearing gloves.
But that particular witness was a thorough scamp.
He had a foul record, and Berger’s counsel at the trial attacked him violently.
Berger denied that he had seen him on that particular evening and his counsel tried to persuade the jury that it was a cooked-up story that the man had invented in order to ingratiate himself with the police.
The damning thing was the trousers.
There’d been a lot of stuff in the papers about Berger’s smart clothes, the well-dressed gangster and all that sort of thing; you’d have thought, to read it, that he got his suits in Savile Row and his haberdashery at Charvet’s.
The prosecution was anxious to prove that he was in desperate need of money and they went round to all the shops that supplied things both to him and for the household to find out if there had been any pressure put to settle unpaid accounts.
But it appeared that everything bought for the house was paid for on the nail and there were no outstanding debts.
So far as clothes were concerned Berger, it turned out, had bought nothing since he lost his job but one gray suit.
The detective who was interviewing the tailor asked when this had been paid for and the tailor turned up his books.
He was an advertising tailor in a large way of business who made clothes to measure at a lowish price.
It was then discovered that Berger had ordered an extra pair of trousers with the suit.
The police had a list of every article in his wardrobe, and this pair of trousers didn’t figure on it.
They at once saw the importance of the fact and they made up their minds to keep it dark till the trial.
“It was a thrilling moment, believe me, when the prosecution introduced the subject.
There could be no doubt that Berger had had two pairs of trousers to his new gray suit and that one of the pairs was missing.
When he was asked about it he never even attempted to explain.
He didn’t seem flummoxed.
He said he didn’t know they were missing.
He pointed out that he had had no opportunity of going over his wardrobe for some months, having been in prison awaiting trial, and when he was asked how he could possibly account for their disappearance suggested flippantly that perhaps one of the police officers who had searched the house was in need of a pair of new trousers and had sneaked them.
But Madame Berger had her explanation pat, and I’m bound to say I thought it a very ingenious one.
She said that Lydia had been ironing the trousers, as she always did after Robert had worn them, and the iron was too hot and she had burnt them.
He was fussy about his clothes and it had been something of a struggle to find the money to pay for the suit, they knew he would be angry with his wife, and Madame Berger, wishing to spare her his reproaches and seeing how scared she was, proposed that they shouldn’t tell him; she would get rid of the trousers and Robert perhaps would never notice that they had disappeared.
Asked what she had done with them she said that a tramp had come to the door, asking for money, and she had given him the trousers instead.
The size of the burn was gone into.
She claimed that it made the trousers unwearable, and when the public prosecutor pointed out that invisible mending would have repaired the damage, she answered that it would have cost more than the trousers were worth.
Then he suggested that in their impoverished circumstances Berger might well have worn them in the house; it would surely have been better to risk his displeasure than to throw away a garment which might still be useful.
Madame Berger said she never thought of that, she gave them to the tramp on an impulse, to get rid of them.
The prosecutor put it to her that she had to get rid of them because they were blood-stained and that she hadn’t given them to a tramp who had so conveniently presented himself, but had herself destroyed them.
She hotly denied this.
Then where was the tramp?
He would read of the incident in the papers and knowing that a man’s life was at stake would surely present himself.
She turned to the press, throwing out her arms with a dramatic gesture.
“ ‘Let all these gentlemen,’ she cried, ‘spread it far and wide. Let them beseech him to come forward and save my son.’
“She was magnificent on the witness stand.
The public prosecutor subjected her to a merciless examination; she fought like a fury.
He took her through young Berger’s life and she admitted all his misdeeds, from the episode at the tennis club to his thefts from the broker who after his conviction had, out of charity, given him another chance.
She took all the blame of them on herself.
A French witness is allowed much greater latitude than is allowed to a witness in an English criminal trial, and with bitter self-reproach she confessed that his errors were due to the indulgence with which she had brought him up.
He was an only child and she had spoilt him.
Her husband had lost a leg in the war, while attending to the wounded under fire, and his ill health had made it necessary for her to give him unremitting attention to the detriment of her maternal duties.
His untimely end had left the wretched boy without guidance.