True Stories of Crime from the District Attorney's Office by Arthur Train

Author:Arthur Train [Train, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, True Crime, Historical, Murder, Serial Killers, General
ISBN: 9781528792288
Google: GU01EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
Published: 2021-06-24T05:19:37+00:00

VII

THE "DUC DE NEVERS"

"And God gives to every man

The virtue, temper, understanding, taste,

That lifts him into life, and lets him fall

Just in the niche he was ordained to fill."

—COWPER,

The Task

One morning there lay on my desk a note finely written in pencil and dated:

Tombs Prison.

Monsieur:

Will you be so gracious as to extend to the undersigned the courtesy of a private interview in your office? I have a communication of the highest importance to make to you.

Respectfully,

Charles Julius Francis De Nevers.

Across the street in the courtyard the prisoners were taking their daily exercise. Two by two they marched slowly around the enclosure in the centre of which a small bed of geraniums struggled bravely in mortal combat with the dust and grime of Centre Street. Some of the prisoners walked with heads erect and shoulders thrown back, others slouched along with their arms dangling and their chins resting upon their chests. When one of them failed to keep up with the rest, a keeper, who stood in the shade by a bit of ivy in a corner of the wall, got after him. Somehow the note on the desk did not seem to fit any one of the gentry whom I could see so distinctly from my window. The name, too, did not have the customary Tombs sound—De Nevers? De Nevaire—I repeated it slowly to myself with varying accent. It seemed as though I had known the name before. It carried with it a suggestion of the novels of Stanley J. Weyman, of books on old towns and the châteaux and cathedrals of France. I wondered who the devil Charles Julius Francis de Nevers could be.

Of course, if one answered all the letters one gets from the Tombs it would keep a secretary busy most of the working hours of the day, and if one acceded to all the various requests the prisoners make to interview them personally or to see their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sweethearts and wives, a prosecutor might as well run an intelligence office and be done with it. But as I re-read the note I began to have a sneaking feeling of curiosity to see what Charles Julius Francis de Nevers looked like, so I departed from the usual rule of my office, rang for a messenger and directed him to ascertain the full name of the prisoner from whom the note had come, the crime with which he was charged, and the date of his incarceration, also to supply me at once with copies of the indictment and the complaint; then I instructed him to have De Nevers brought over as soon as he could be got into shape.

I had almost forgotten that I was expecting a visitor when, a couple of hours later, an undersized deputy-sheriff entered my office and reported that he had a prisoner in his custody for whom I had sent to the Tombs. Glancing up from my desk I saw standing behind his keeper a tall and distinguished-looking man in

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