Chapter 44 disappearing corpse

It happened suddenly.One night, around eleven o'clock, g. 7 (the nickname of the detective in Georges Simenon's Thirteen Mysteries.) received an urgent call and decided to take me immediately for a ride an hour later. The train departs. At four o'clock that afternoon, a resident of a small village called Tracy on the Loire River found the body of a girl floating in the water. The body was brought up in a small boat.There seemed to be no hope of survival.Even so, a grape grower in the village took his car to the town of Pouilly to fetch a doctor. The doctor gave her artificial respiration for two hours, but it was in vain.

No one in the village knew who she was.She never woke up.The mayor was absent, and there were no police.The Sheriff of Puy is out on a mission and won't be back until the next day. There was a long-lost shed in the backyard of the crossing watchman's house, and the bodies were carried there.At dawn, everyone dispersed and went home. At about ten o'clock in the evening, the crossing watchman came out to move the switch for a freight train.When he passed the hut where the girl's body was stored, he was stunned.He found the door of the hut which he had closed with his own hands was ajar.

He was frightened and called his wife back.Two men held a lantern and looked in through the half-open door. The dead man is gone, and there is nothing in the house! We arrived at the scene at six in the morning.The boat can be seen from the railway station, surrounded by restless peasants. The village of Tracy is situated on the right bank of the Loire, in a wider section of the river, dotted with several rather large islands of sand and stone. Opposite the village is the Saint-Cerre Castle, which can be seen at a glance.But it takes a big detour to reach the drawbridge leading to the castle.Therefore, Tracy village is still very remote.

Most of the people we saw were grape growers, and several of them waited on the road all night after hearing the news, waiting for the arrival of the police. The police arrived before us.They conducted a general enquiry, and the results were mixed. One thing is certain: two hours of artificial respiration did not bring her back to life.The doctor signed the death certificate without hesitation. However, a story told by an old boatman caused confusion in people's minds.He said he had witnessed a crew member's daughter fall into the river in the absence of her father and be rescued an hour later.Two doctors failed to rescue her and said she was dead.The father didn't believe it when he came back. He lay on his daughter and performed rhythmic arm bending movements for her for ten hours. Finally, the girl slowly woke up.

The reaction to the story told by the boatman is indescribable.People trembled with shock, and even the railway crossing guards dared not look in the direction of the boat again. g·7 thinks that one should not lower one's social status.We mingled among the curious crowd, listening to it all, watching it all.It was August, and the weather was dry. It hadn't rained a drop for half a month.Even so, there are still people who are very stubborn and insist on finding some clues on the ground. The sheriff didn't know what to do.He wrote down everything that was told to him.His handwriting was thick and dense, and he wrote several pages densely.

At about ten o'clock in the morning, the dramatic scene appeared.At this moment a small car came from a village called Loge, which was about the same size as Tracy.The village of Louge is located on the upper reaches of the Loire, four kilometers from Tracy.A fat woman jumped out of the car hastily. She was yelling, crying and fussing, shaking all over.Another old farmer followed closely behind her without saying a word. "It's my daughter, isn't it?" People described to her the drowning man the night before, the clothes the drowning man was wearing, and so on.People were clamoring and saying different things about the color of the drowned man's hair.But the identity of the deceased is beyond doubt.

The drowning person was none other than Angéléc Briot, the daughter of the couple who had just arrived from the village of Loge. Father was completely devastated by the incident.He couldn't say a word, but looked at everything blankly with dull eyes.The mother spoke on behalf of the two, and she let out a series of piercing screams. "Gaston did it, it must be him..." The people around listened to her with pricked up ears, and learned that Angéric was nineteen years old and fell in love with a clerk who worked in the Saint-Satur City Taxation Bureau, was penniless, and had not even served in the military. .

There is no doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Brioux were firmly opposed to this marriage, and they had already selected a partner for their daughter. He was a relatively rich grape grower in the village of Pouilly, thirty years old, and very rich. The wedding was supposed to take place two months later. G.7 and I first arrived in Saint-Sature, and left the policemen, the parents of the drowned man, and the group of curious people watching from the beginning to the end in front of the hut. We arrived at the Saint-Sature tax office at eleven o'clock.Gaston himself, or rather Gaston Verthierier, received us at the opening window of the tax office.

This is a tall young man of twenty years old, his eyes are restless, and his lips tremble when he is agitated. "Come out with us, please..." "But……" Verthier pointed to the wall clock on the wall, the hands had not reached twelve o'clock. "Would you like me to talk here? It's about Angéric..." He grabbed his peaked cap and followed us outside. "What time did you leave her yesterday afternoon?" "But... what do you want to say?... I haven't seen her..." "You love her, don't you?" "right……" "She loves you too..."

"yes……" "You don't want her to belong to someone else? . . . " "It's not true!" "What? What isn't true?" "I didn't kill her!" "Then do you know something?" "I don't know... I know... I found her again, didn't I?" "Yes, we found her again. The police will be here soon..." "who are you?" "It doesn't matter who we are. What do you know? Why do you claim you didn't kill her when I didn't say anything?" "Because I knew that Angéric would not accept the marriage... She told me more than once that she would rather die..."

"Then what about you..." We walked to the drawbridge.From a distance, you can see the red roofs of Traxi Village. "I, I'm desperate..." "Were you in the office yesterday afternoon? You know it's no use lying! I'll ask your superiors..." "No... I asked for leave..." "Then you are going to see Angéric?" "Yes... near the village of Luori... let's take a walk together..." "She was alive when you left her?" "Of course I'm alive!" "Didn't you see anyone walking around?...For example, Fatty Jean...the person she should marry is named Fatty Jean...isn't it?" "I didn't see him..." The young man was terrified and almost out of breath.His face was sweaty and his lips were gray. "Shall we see her now?" he asked. "good!" "Ah!...Let's go...she..." He stopped. "How? . . . You have no courage? . . . " "Courage...I...but you should understand..." He suddenly burst into tears. g.7 made him cry, ignored him, and went to the police station without saying a word.The crowd that had crowded there made way for Gaston Verthierier. Gaston Verthierer buried his face in his hands.he asked: "Where is she?" At this time, the girl's mother came over, pointed at him and yelled at him, and the scene became chaotic, as long as there was a spark, it would turn into a big battle. "Take him to the Pouilly police station to explain!" said the superintendent, grabbing the young man by the wrist. The young man was terrified.I don't think I've ever seen such a distorted face.He looked for us with his eyes, and seemed to pin his hopes on us, hoping that we would rescue him from the embarrassing situation. "I didn't kill her, I swear it!" he yelled as they pushed him into their car to take him away. The car had already left for about a hundred meters, and his cries could still be heard. All these changes happened so fast, and the atmosphere was so strange, I didn't even have time to think about it, what is going on? I don't think I'd be surprised to see the girl alive.Nor would I be surprised if people told me that her official fiancé killed her. It was a fine day and the sun was shining brightly.The white building of the police station gleamed. The onlookers were hesitant to go or stay, and the incident seemed a bit absurd. The parents who didn't even know where their daughter's body was were also flustered, and the atmosphere became more and more tragic. g·7 has not officially played yet.He watched everything that happened around him.He is listening. "Hey, tell me!" g. 7 suddenly asked the old boatman who told the resurrection story, "were you in St. Satur last night?" "Of course, I live there." "Didn't you go to the café?" "I went for an aperitif. Why do you ask that?" "Where did you tell your story?" "what story?" G.7 probably already knew what was in his mind, so he turned around calmly and motioned for me to follow him. "We're in no hurry!" he said. "There's a train for Pouilly at two o'clock in the afternoon. We'll still have time to lunch at an inn and taste some of the local wine." "but……" "But what?" he whispered to me in a very natural tone, like we're here to get some fresh air and some local delicacies. Just based on his gestures to me, I feel that he has a well-thought-out plan and has mastered the way to deal with the incident. Two hours later, we stood in front of Gaston. At this moment, Gaston drooped his head and stared blankly, trying to defend himself against the sheriff's accusations. His eyes were full of tears, his face was purple, and his nails were bleeding from biting. "I didn't kill anyone!...It's not true..." He cried out, feeling both angry and wronged. "You didn't commit suicide either!" Suddenly, g·7 said calmly. I never expected g·7 to say such a sentence.The same goes for Gaston, who jumped up and fixed his eyes on my friend's face like a sarcasm. "How... how do you know?..." A pungent but quite humane smile appeared on g·7's mouth. "I need only take one look at you to see it all...to see that you had no courage at the last moment!...the last kiss!...the last embrace!...it is better for one to give up the other than to die together!...Ang Zelek fell headlong into the river... And you, you, suddenly woke up, you watched the river sweep her body away, you took a few steps back, stopped there, motionless, a cold current ran through your body... ..." "Shut up! . . . " "In the evening, in the city of Saint-Satur, you go to a café to calm yourself with wine. There is a man in the café who is telling a terrible story... The people of the village of Tracy brought a girl from the river ...People thought she was dead...But there was a man, he had a mind of his own...He was in the same situation before, before... "You trembled as you listened to him. You might have imagined Angéric buried alive. . . . "You rushed out...you reached the village of Tracy...you stole the body and carried it to the nearby forest... "You are trying to bring her back to life! . . . At least that's what I think, isn't it? . . . You're doing it to atone for your sins! . ..." The young man uttered a terrible cry. "Cough! She is indeed dead..." g. 7 continued. His voice dropped. "Well, now tell us where you put her? . . . " Outside, after five minutes, g. 7 sighed with a kind of longing: "I don't know why... I would rather this is a shameful crime!" When two policemen accompanied the twenty-year-old lover to When walking through the woods, g·7 may be as heavy-hearted as I am.