SAVED BY DUST.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 232, 1 October 1925, Page 11

SAVED BY DUST.

FALSE TALK OF MURDER. SLEEP OF DEATH. Man's destiny at times depends upon very trivial things. Two little heaps of duit in a cellar have just sufficed to stand between a Parisian antiquary and a charge of wife murder.

Jean Baude, an antiquary, who lives at 41, Avenue de Neuilly, recently lost his wife in somewhat mysterious circumstances. Baude, who is 62 years of age, kept an antique shop a short distance away from his home, and on July 1 he reported to the police that while he had been busy in his shop his wife had disappeared.

Inquiries were made in many quarters, but without results. The next the police beard of Madame Baude was that ber body, in an advanced state of decomposition, had been found in-a cellar, where it must have lain for some three weeks. It was not M. Baude's cellar, but one belonging to another resident in the same block of buildings, who, however, never descended into these lower regions.

Gossips' "Solution." Madame Baude was notoriously a heavy drinker, whose husband had long since despaired of her. She was quarrelsome after her drinking bouts. Evidently, said the gossips, there had been a more serious quarrel than usual, during which husband and wife had come to blows. The wife bad been killed and her husband, fearful of the consequences when he realised what he had done in the heat of the moment, had hidden the body in the cellar.

When be was questioned, M. Baude told how his wife had for some years been addicted to alcohol and how; during her drunken fits, she had a habit of losing all sense of her surroundings. She would rush about the house as though she were lost in it, and one of her peculiarities was that in the end she would strip herself and lie down on the floor, often in the cellar where she had emptied a bottle or two of wine. For his own pride's sake Baude' had never said much about these affairs to his neighbours, but they knew something of his domestic trials.

Other witnesses were examined, including the concierge of the building, who described some of Madame Baude's escapades, and mentioned the woman's habit of flinging herself on her back during her drunken fits. Questioned ' more closely about this, she described how usually Madame Baude in this state had a trick of calling for help and groaning, drawing up ber legs and then thrusting them out again much like a swimmer doing the back stroke.

Sleep of Death. M. Baude had already tpld the police that his theory of the affair was that his wife during a drinking bout had gone into the cellar to seek more wine, and then, being seized by one of her fits of frenzy, had stripped herself and flung herself down to sleeD off the effects. But this time she went to sleep for ever. He could say no more save to swear that he was innocent of the murder of his wife.

But before he declared his innocence the police knew sufficient of the story. It happened that when they examined the body they noticed two little heaps of duSt piled against the dead woman's heels. These showed that, while dying, she had kicked her heels repeatedly along the cellar floor. Now this was just the action that the concierge had described. When Madame Baude lay down to die, therefore, she was acting as dhe had acted scores of times before. She had .Stripped and flung her clotheS down to lie on and then lacked as she sank into a drunken slumber which merged into, the deeper sleep of death.

A post mortem inquiry has also shown that Madame Baude had not suffered any kind of violence just before her death.