A translation I did sophomore year of college –
Photos are the original, text is my translation.
All rights belong to the author, Maurice Leblanc.
Two or three times per year, on serious, important occasions, like the balls of the ambassador of Austria or the evening receptions of lady Billingstone, the countess of Dreux-Soubise put on her pale shoulders “The Queen’s Necklace.”
It was in fact the famous necklace – the legendary necklace that Böhmer and Bassenge (jewelers to the Crown) intended for Du Barry, that the cardinal of Rohan-Soubise believed offered to Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France, and that the adventuress Jeanne de Valois, countess de la Motte, cut up one night in February 1785, with the help of her husband and of their accomplice Rétaux de Villette.
To tell the truth, only the setting was authentic. Rétaux de Villette had preserved it, while the Master de la Motte and his wife scattered the brutally extracted stones to the four winds, the stones so carefully chosen by Böhmer. Later, in Italy, he sold it to Gaston de Dreux-Soubise, nephew and heir of the Cardinal, saved by him of the ruin during the resounding bankruptcy of Rohan-Guéménée, and who, remembering his uncle, bought back the few diamonds that remained in the possession of the English jeweler Jefferys. These diamonds along with the others completed a much lower value, but the same dimensions, and managed to reconstitute the marvelous “Slave’s Collar” as it had left the hands of Böhmer and Bassenge.
For close to a century, the Dreux-Soubises prided themselves on this historic piece of jewelry. Although various circumstances noticeably diminished their fortune, they preferred to reduce the expenses of running their household than to alienate the royal and precious relic. In particular, the current story holds it as one holds on to the home of one’s father. In prudence, he had rented a safe at the Crédit Lyonnais in which to deposit it. He himself went to get it the afternoon that his wife wished to wear it, and returned it himself the next day.
That night, at the reception of the Palais de Castille – the adventure rising at the beginning of the century -, the countess had an absolute success, and King Christian, in whose honor the reception was held, noticed her magnificent beauty. The gems fell gracefully around her neck. The thousand facets of the diamonds shone and sparkled like flames in the brightness of the lights. No one other than she, it seemed to him, could bear the weight of such jewelry with so much ease and nobility.
It was a double triumph, that the count de Dreux tasted deeply, and of which he applauded himself when they returned to their bedroom of their old hotel in the suburbs of Saint-Germain. He was proud of his wife, and maybe equally of the jewel that had illustrated his family for four generations. And his wife pulled out a slightly childish vanity, but it was a good reflection of her arrogant character.
Not without regret, she removed the necklace from her shoulders and held it out to her husband, who examined it with admiration, as if he had not ever seen it. Then, having put it back in its box of red leather of the weapons of the Cardinal, he passed into a neighboring room, a sort of dressing room, rather than it being completely isolated from the bedroom. As in the past, he concealed it on a fairly elevated board, among the hatboxes and piles of linen. He closed the door and undressed.
In the morning, he got up around nine o’clock, with the intention of going, before breakfast, to the Crédit Lyonnais. He got dressed, drank a cup of coffee, and went down to the stables. There, he gave the orders. One of the horses worried him. He walked it and trotted it in front of him in the paddock. Then, he returned to his wife.
She had not left the bedroom, and was dressing her hair, helped by her maid. She said to him,
“You’re going out!”
“Yes…for this errand…”
“Ah! Actually that’s more prudent…”
He entered the small room. But after a few seconds, he asked, without even the slightest surprise,
“Have you taken it, my dear?”
She replied,
“What? No, I haven’t taken anything.”
“You disturbed the room.”
“Not at all…I didn’t even open this door.”
He seemed distraught, and he stammered, his voice barely intelligible,
“You don’t have it? … It’s not you? … So…
She hurried up and they searched feverishly, throwing boxes to the ground and overturning piles of linens. And the count repeated,
“Useless…All that we’re doing is useless…it’s here, there, on that board, where I put it.
“You could have been mistaken.”
“It’s here, there, on that board, and not on another.”
They lit a candle, because the room was rather dark, and they removed all the linens and all the objects that hampered them. And when there was nothing left in the room, they had to confess to themselves with despair that the famous necklace, the Queen’s “Slave’s Collar,” had disappeared.
The countess, of a resolute nature, without losing any time in vain lamentations, informed the commissioner, Mr. Valorbe, of whom they had already had the opportunity to appreciate the wiseness and insightfulness. They updated him with the details, and immediately he asked,
“Are you sure, Mr. Count, that no one could have crossed your room last night?”
“Absolutely sure. I slept very lightly. Better still: the door of this bedroom was bolted. I had to unbolt it this morning when my wife called the maid.”
“And there exists no other passage that leads into the dressing room?”
“None.”
“No window?”
“Yes, but it is sealed.”
“I would like to see it.”
We lit candles, and Mr. Valorbe noticed straight away that the window was only sealed halfway-up, by a chest, apart from which did not exactly touch at the hinges.
“It aligns well enough, replied Mr. Dreux, because it would be impossible to move it without making a great amount of noise.
“And onto what does this window look?”
“Onto an interior courtyard.”
“And you have another floor above this one?”
“Two, but on the servant’s floor, the courtyard is protected by chain-link railing. That’s why we have so little daylight.”
By the by, when they had moved the chest aside, they noted that the window was closed, but would not have been if someone had accessed it from outside.
“At least,” observed the count, “no one left through our bedroom.”
“In which case, you would not find this bedroom door lock forced.”
The commissioner considered a moment, then turned towards the countess.
“Did people in your entourage know, Madame, that you were to wear the necklace last night?”
“Certainly, I did not hide the fact. But no one but us knew that we locked it in this room.”
“No one?”
“No one…except…”
“Please Madame, specify. This is one of the most important points.”
She said to her husband,
“I was thinking of Henriette.”
“Henriette? She ignores this detail like the others.”
“Are you certain of it?”
“Who is this woman?” questioned Mr. Valorbe.
“A friend from the convent, whose family got angry at her for marrying a working-class man. At the death of her husband, I took her in along with her son, and furnished them an apartment in this hotel.
And she added with embarrassment,
“She returns me some services. She is very clever with her hands.”
“On what floor does she live?”
“On ours, not far from the rest…at the end of that hallway…And, I think, even the window of her kitchen…”
“Opens onto this courtyard, does it not?”
“Yes, just opposite ours.”
A silent pause followed this statement.
Then, Mr. Valorbe asked that they take him to Henriette.
They found her in the middle of sewing, while her son Raoul, a child six or seven years old, read at her side. Stunned enough to see the miserable apartment they had furnished for her, and which consisted of one room without a chimney and one recess serving as a kitchen, the commissioner questioned her. She seemed stricken upon learning of the crime. The previous evening, she had dressed the countess herself and placed the necklace around her neck.
“Good God! she cried, “Who would have told me?”
“And you have no idea? Not the slightest doubt? It is even possible that the guilty passed through our room.”
She laughed heartily, without even imagining what one could suspect.
“But I never left it, my bedroom! I never go out, me. What’s more you didn’t even see?”
She opened the window of the recess.
“Look, it is easily three meters to the opposite sill.”
“Who told you that we considered the hypothesis of a robbery done by there?
“But…the necklace wasn’t in the dressing room?”
“How did you know that?”
“Woman! I have always known where you put it at night…you speak about it in front of me…”
Her figure, still young, but sorrows had aged it marking a great gentleness and resignation. Even so, in the silence she held suddenly an expression of anguish, as if a danger had threatened her. She coaxed her son towards her. The child took her hand and kissed her softly.
“I don’t suppose,” said Mr. Dreux to the commissioner, when
Raleigh Anne Butler