THE Abbé Bruneau, who gave his shaven head in atonement for unnumbered
crimes, was a finished exponent of duplicity. In the eye of day and of
Entrammes he shone a miracle of well-doing; by night he prowled in the
secret places of Laval. The world watched him, habited in the decent black
of his calling; no sooner was he beyond sight of his parish than his
valise was opened, and he arrayed himself—under the hedge, no doubt—in
a suit of jaunty grey. The pleasures for which he sacrificed the lives of
others and his own were squalid enough, but they were the best a
provincial brain might imagine; and he sinned the sins of a hedge priest
with a courage and effrontery which his brethren may well envy. Indeed,
the Man in the Grey Suit will be sent down the ages with a grimmer
scandal, if with a staler mystery, than the Man in the Iron Mask.
He was born of parents who were certainly poor, and possibly honest, at
Assé-le-Berenger. He counted a dozen Chouans among his ancestry, and
brigandage swam in his blood. Even his childhood was crimson with crimes,
which the quick memory of the countryside long ago lost in the pride of
having bred a priest. He stained his first cure of souls with the poor,
sad sin of arson, which the bishop, fearful of scandal and loth to check a
promising career, condoned with a suitable advancement. At Entrammes, his
next benefice, he entered into his full inheritance of villainy, and here
it was—despite his own protest—that he devised the grey suit
which brought him ruin and immortality. To the wild, hilarious dissipation
of Laval, the nearest town, he fell an immediate and unresisting prey.
Think of the glittering lamps, the sparkling taverns, the bright-eyed
women, the manifold fascinations, which are the character and delight of
this forgotten city! Why, if the Abbé Bruneau doled out comfort and
absolution at Entrammes—why should he not enjoy at Laval the wilder
joys of the flesh? Lack of money was the only hindrance, since our priest
was not of those who could pursue bonnes fortunes; ever he sighed for
'booze and the blowens,' but 'booze and the blowens' he could only
purchase with the sovereigns his honest calling denied him. There was no
resource but thievery and embezzlement, sins which led sometimes to
falsehood or incendiarism, and at a pinch to the graver enterprise of
murder. But Bruneau was not one to boggle at trifles. Women he would
encounter—young or old, dark or fair, ugly or beautiful, it was all
one to him—and the fools who withheld him riches must be punished
for their niggard hand. For a while a theft here and there, a cunning
extortion of money upon the promise of good works, sufficed for his
necessities, but still he hungered for a coup, and patiently he devised
and watched his opportunity.
Meanwhile his cunning protected him, and even if the gaze of suspicion
fell upon him he contrived his orgies with so neat a discretion that the
Church, which is not wont to expose her malefactors, preserved a timid and
an innocent silence. The Abbé disappeared with a commendable constancy,
and with that just sense of secrecy which should compel even an
archiepiscopal admiration. He was not of those who would drag his cloth
through the mire. Not until the darkness he loved so fervently covered the
earth would he escape from the dull respectability of Entrammes, nor did
he ever thus escape unaccompanied by his famous valise. The grey suit was
an effectual disguise to his calling, and so jealous was he of the
Church's honour that he never—unless in his cups—disclosed his
tonsure. One of his innumerable loves confessed in the witness-box that
Bruneau always retained his hat in the glare of the Café, protesting that
a headache rendered him fatally susceptible to draught; and such was his
thoughtful punctilio that even in the comparative solitude of a guilty
bed-chamber he covered his shorn locks with a nightcap.
And while his conduct at Laval was unimpeachable, he always proved a nice
susceptibility in his return. A cab carried him within a discreet distance
of his home, whence, having exchanged the grey for the more sober black,
he would tramp on foot, and thus creep in tranquil and unobserved. But
simple as it is to enjoy, enjoyment must still be purchased, and the Abbé
was never guilty of a meanness. The less guilty scheme was speedily
staled, and then it was that the Abbé bethought him of murder.
His first victim was the widow Bourdais, who pursued the honest calling of
a florist at Laval. Already the curate was on those terms of intimacy
which unite the robber with the robbed; for some months earlier he had
imposed a forced loan of sixty francs upon his victim. But on the 15th of
July 1893, he left Entrammes, resolved upon a serious measure. The black
valise was in his hand, as he set forth upon the arid, windy road. Before
he reached Laval he had made the accustomed transformation, and it was no
priest, but a layman, doucely dressed in grey, that awaited Mme. Bourdais'
return from the flower-market. He entered the shop with the coolness of a
friend, and retreated to the door of the parlour when two girls came to
make a purchase. No sooner had the widow joined him than he cut her
throat, and, with the ferocity of the beast who loves blood as well as
plunder, inflicted some forty wounds upon her withered frame. His escape
was simple and dignified; he called the cabman, who knew him well, and who
knew, moreover, what was required of him; and the priest was snugly in
bed, though perhaps exhausted with blood and pleasure, when the news of
the murder followed him to his village.
Next day the crime was common gossip, and the Abbé's friends took counsel
with him. One there was astonished that the culprit remained undiscovered.
'But why should you marvel?' said Bruneau. 'I could kill you and your wife
at your own chimney-corner without a soul knowing. Had I taken to evil
courses instead of to good I should have been a terrible assassin.' There
is a touch of the pride which De Quincey attributes to Williams in this
boastfulness, and throughout the parallel is irresistible. Williams,
however, was the better dandy; he put on a dress-coat and patent-leather
pumps because the dignity of his work demanded a fitting costume. And
Bruneau wore the grey suit not without a hope of disguise. Yet you like to
think that the Abbé looked complacently upon his valise, and had
forethought for the cut of his professional coat; and if he be not in the
first flight of artistry, remember his provincial upbringing, and furnish
the proper excuse.
Meanwhile the scandal of the murdered widow passed into forgetfulness, and
the Abbé was still impoverished. Already he had robbed his vicar, and the
suspicion of the Abbé Fricot led on to the final and the detected crime.
Now Fricot had noted the loss of money and of bonds, and though he
refrained from exposure he had confessed to a knowledge of the criminal.
M. Bruneau was naturally sensitive to suspicion, and he determined upon
the immediate removal of this danger to his peace. On January 2, 1894, M.
Fricot returned to supper after administering the extreme unction to a
parishioner. While the meal was preparing, he went into his garden in
sabots and bareheaded, and never again was seen alive. The supper cooled,
the vicar was still absent; the murderer, hungry with his toil, ate not
only his own, but his victim's share of the food, grimly hinting that
Fricot would not come back. Suicide was dreamed of, murder hinted; up and
down the village was the search made, and none was more zealous than the
distressed curate.
At last a peasant discovered some blocks of wood in the well, and before
long blood-stains revealed themselves on the masonry. Speedily was the
body recovered, disfigured and battered beyond recognition, and the voice
of the village went up in denunciation of the Abbé Bruneau. Immunity had
made the culprit callous, and in a few hours suspicion became certainty. A
bleeding nose was the lame explanation given for the stains which were on
his clothes, on the table, on the keys of his harmonium. A quaint and
characteristic folly was it that drove the murderer straight to the solace
of his religion. You picture him, hot and red-handed from murder, soothing
his battered conscience with some devilish Requiem for the unshrived soul
he had just parted from its broken body, and leaving upon the harmonium
the ineradicable traces of his guilt. Thus he lived, poised between murder
and the Church, spending upon the vulgar dissipation of a Breton village
the blood and money of his foolish victims. But for him 'les tavernes et
les filles' of Laval meant a veritable paradise, and his sojourn in the
country is proof enough of a limited cunning. Had he been more richly
endowed, Paris had been the theatre of his crimes. As it is, he goes down
to posterity as the Man in the Grey Suit, and the best friend the cabmen
of Laval ever knew. Them, indeed, he left inconsolable.
