The Lerouge Case (1866) by Émile Gaboriau

Detective stories were in the air in the 1860s. In 1861 Mary Elizabeth Braddon wrote The Trail of the Serpent, and in 1868 The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins would follow; in between, we have the French police procedural The Lerouge Case by Émile Gaboriau. Of course, these early novels are not "whodunits" - we often know early on who the criminal is and the aim of the story is to show how he is caught by a shrewd detective. The influence of the "sensation novel," one of the major genres in this period, is also strong - we therefore find countless plots about intricate family problems (illegitimate sons, struggles about inheritance).

That is all old hat since more than a century, but when a story is well-told and has interesting characters, it still rewards reading. The interest of The Lerouge Case lies in the miscarriage of justice which almost succeeds. An amateur detective (Tabaret) helping the investigating magistrate (Daburon) thinks he has the solution, but he has devised a story in his head which fits the facts, but for which there is no proof.

Here is Tabaret:

A man appeared at the door, whose aspect it must be admitted was not at all what one would have expected of a person who had joined the police for honour alone. He was certainly sixty years old and did not look a bit younger. Short, thin, and rather bent, he leant on the carved ivory handle of a stout cane. His round face wore that expression of perpetual astonishment, mingled with uneasiness... His eyes of a dull gray, were small and red at the lids, and absolutely void of expression; yet they fatigued the observer by their insupportable restlessness. A few straight hairs shaded his forehead, which receded like that of a greyhound, and through their scantiness barely concealed his long ugly ears. He was very comfortably dressed, clean as a new franc piece, displaying linen of dazzling whiteness, and wearing silk gloves and leather gaiters. A long and massive gold chain, very vulgar-looking, was twisted thrice round his neck, and fell in cascades into the pocket of his waistcoat.

The investigating magistrate goes along with him, because he has his own hidden reasons - the accused is the fiance of the woman he loves himself.

M. Daburon was a man thirty-eight years of age, and of prepossessing appearance; sympathetic notwithstanding his coldness; wearing upon his countenance a sweet, and rather sad expression. This settled melancholy had remained with him ever since his recovery, two years before, from a dreadful malady, which had well-nigh proved fatal.

Investigating magistrate since 1859, he had rapidly acquired the most brilliant reputation. Laborious, patient, and acute, he knew with singular skill how to disentangle the skein of the most complicated affair, and from the midst of a thousand threads lay hold to the right one. None better than he, armed with an implacable logic, could solve those terrible problems in which X—in algebra, the unknown quantity—represents the criminal. Clever in deducing the unknown from the known, he excelled in collecting facts, and in uniting in a bundle of overwhelming proofs circumstances the most trifling, and in appearance the most insignificant.

Although possessed of qualifications for his office so numerous and valuable, he was tremblingly distrustful of his own abilities and exercised his terrible functions with diffidence and hesitation. He wanted audacity to risk those sudden surprises so often resorted to by his colleagues in the pursuit of truth.

Finally another policeman (Gévrol), doing the hard work of checking out leads, finds a crucial witness. As a result, the case is solved, and both magistrate and amateur detective, who were both so wrong, give up this type of work.

The story is told in a well-balanced way - neither too long nor too short, the characterization is good, and there is no unnecessary humor or frivolity (as sometimes is the case in the 19th c.).