The Witness
The ghost of Father Brown must be turning in its grave at the fate of a truly Chestertonian character. The provincial court of Aix-en-Provence has been trying twelve men for the theft, some four years ago, of the Begum Aga Khan's jewels. Ten of the accused were in the dock. But where, the court demanded, were the other two, whose names were Leca and Senuedj ? An ex-official of the Suret6, M. Valantin, told the court that the former Director-General of the Suretd —M. Bertaux—could be proved responsible not only for the Irritating disappearance of Lem but, with Leca, for the robbery itself. M. Bertaux is a man of distinction, courage and learning. On his retirement from the Surete in 1951 he was appointed to the grand and remunerative sinecure of Prefet Hors Grade. He and Leca, he explained, were close personal friends since the war days when they had been in prison together (for very different offences) and subsequently in the Resistance. But it was unthinkable, on both their parts, that they should have had a professional relationship. For Leca, though a criminal, was a man with a rudimentary but tres puissant sense of honour, which was more than could be said for M. Valaiiiin. He, Bertaux; had sacked Valantin for falsifying his expense accounts; Valantin had later tried to blackmail Bertaux with facts of his friendship with Leca, and had personally applied to Lloyd's for a ten per cent. reward (which had obviously been intended for the robbers not the police) on the grounds that he was solely responsible for arresting the criminals. If the court Would ask him for a detailed account of what had really happened, he, Bertaux, would be only too glad to give it. The strange end to this story is that the Court did nothing of the sort. " Your ideas," said the President " appear to us suffocating." And he went off to perstade the Minister of the Interior to suspend M. Bertaux from his prefecture and to keep him out of court— presumably because he was reallS, suffocated by the idea that thieves could be honourable men.
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