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in view, it became necessary to attach something like a rope to one of
the extremities. It could be best attached about the neck, where the
head would prevent its slipping off. And, now, the murderer bethought
him, unquestionably, of the bandage about the loins. He would have used
this, but for its volution about the corpse, the hitch which embarrassed
it, and the reflection that it had not been 'torn off' from the garment.
It was easier to tear a new slip from the petticoat. He tore it, made
it fast about the neck, and so dragged his victim to the brink of the
river. That this 'bandage,' only attainable with trouble and delay, and
but imperfectly answering its purpose--that this bandage was employed
at all, demonstrates that the necessity for its employment sprang from
circumstances arising at a period when the handkerchief was no longer
attainable--that is to say, arising, as we have imagined, after quitting
the thicket, (if the thicket it was), and on the road between the
thicket and the river.
"But the evidence, you will say, of Madame Deluc, (!) points especially
to the presence of a gang, in the vicinity of the thicket, at or about
the epoch of the murder. This I grant. I doubt if there were not a dozen
gangs, such as described by Madame Deluc, in and about the vicinity of
the Barrière du Roule at or about the period of this tragedy. But the
gang which has drawn upon itself the pointed animadversion, although the
somewhat tardy and very suspicious evidence of Madame Deluc, is the
only gang which is represented by that honest and scrupulous old lady
as having eaten her cakes and swallowed her brandy, without putting
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