Milford chronicle., 1895-03-01
raE eIRE ssrTLEp n.
There Was No Esidcncn Against AIur-
derer but IIis Erieruood.

dcrer but Ills Eridrwood.
Irememberon clia occasion. writes George
I Augustus Sala, Gustave Dore telling me q
I story of a murder in France. the perpetrator
7 Of which was brought TO justice by means
Of wh..t the gifted artist called malice de
I gendarme. The wife Of peasant farmer
notoriously III treated by her husband. was
found one morning strangled in a wood.
The husband was suspected, and several
witnesses declared that be had been seen
on the morning tf the assassination hang
ing about the wood and smoking a short
pipe with pewter covering to the bowl
thereof There was no further evidence
against him, and he was discharged.
Some weeks afterward, atdead Of night.
and in the midst Of a pelting storm, two
gendMmes knocked at thedo0r of the lone
ly farmhouse where the suspected man
lived and asked him for temporary shelter,
which, somewhat churlishly, lie accorded
thern. One Of theagents Of the law said be
war ted a smoke and asked the farmer to
lend im that well known brierwood pipe
Of his. The man replied that he had lost
the pipe some years before. "Surely you
must be wrong" replied the gendarme,
"let's look about and see if we can find it,"
The man protested thar he had searched
every room in his house over and over again,
but Intellectually; but, to crafty the whim
OF his visitor, he would have another hunt
for the missing article
Suddenly gendarme No. 2 exclaimed,
''Why, here's the pipe in corner behind
some wood 'Is this your pipe, mon
amif" he continued, holding up a short
hrerwood pipe, the bowl covered with
disk Of pewter on which were cut the ini-
tials Of the suspected man. Then, quoth
geudarme No 2, "in the name OF the law
arrest you for the murder Of your vile.
1t appears that after the discovery OF the
body and It's iuterment the gendarmes had
diligently day after day examined that
part of the underwood in the forest where
the corpse OF the murdered woman had
beeu discovered lying on her back. One
day the searohers became aware of some
metallic object shining among the twigs,
and they found that it was the disk GOV
ering the bowl Of a brierwood pipe, the
stem Of which had been forced into the
ground evidently by some heavy weight |
10 was here that the malice de gendarme
came i'm. The body was exhunied, and be- |
tween he shoulders, which We're uncovered |
when tie woman was murdered, was found |
the brand or stigma Of q disk, the diameter |
Of which precisely corresponded with that /
The theory Of the prosecution was that /
during the death struggle the assassin had /
dropped his pipe, the tobacco in which was I
still incandescent, and that the poor woman /
had fallen fat on the pipe, so that the /
heated metal had branded her flesh as /
aforesaid, while theweight Of her body had /
forced the pipe stem into the earth.
Whether this curious circumstantial evil
dence would have led an English jury to
ind the man guilty is questionable, but ia
was found quite adequate in France to CON
vict and guiDotine the bloodthirsty farmer
The pretense of the gendarmes that they
bad found the pipe ia the culprigs cottage
was a mere police ruse. They had brought
the pipe with them and only professed TO
have found it on the mans premises in
order 10 induce him to acknowledge that it
WAS his