PARIS MYSTERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

PARIS MYSTERY.

FROM OLD FRENCH SCANDAL.

MARQUIS AND BOY,

One day 6ome fishermen, walking along the rocks below Castellamare, near Naples, found the dead body of a youth. He was apparently between the age of 14 and 17, and wore the peculiar uniform of the French parochial schools. All identifying marks had been carefully cut out or removed from his clothing, with the exception of his stockings, which bore the number "56."

Certain cabdrivers who were in the habit of cruising along the road near this sea coast, said they had seen a boy of that age in thu company of a distinguished-look-ing man. The lad was in such a pitiful state of exhaustion that the drivers had offered them a lift, but the invitation was curtly declined. An hour later the man was seen alone. The police searched in vain for the mysterious stranger, and the body was buried and the incident forgotten. Now comes the amazing sequel. Nearly ten years afterward the Marquise de Nayve, wealthy, aristocratic, and respected, called upon the procureur of » ■üburb near Paris and informed him that ■he suspected her husband of murdering an Uligitunate fViilfi whom. Jibe had had by ft

former suitor before her marriage. The details she furnished aided the authorities in their investigation, and this child was identified as the unfortunate Hippolyte Menaldo, whose dead body was found on the sea coast. Marquis de Nayve was arrested and tried for the murder. His defence was as remarkable as it was disarming. He said his wife's parents had confessed the youthful folly of their daughter before her marriage. He declared that he had not only forgiven her freely, but to better look after the child's interests he had masqueraded as its guardian under the name of Monsieur Martin. ,In proof of this he produced a letter he hud written to his wife immediately after the disappearance of the child. He had proposed, he said in this communication, to send the boy to America, but before doing so wished to give him a pleasant holiday. He had taken him to Rome, Florence, and finally to Naples. They were walking along the sea coast when Hippolyte, suddenly objecting to the American trip, ran away and disappeared in the darkness. In this letter the Marquis had enclosed a newspaper clipping telling of the finding of the body near the water and its burial by the authorities. He further declared that on returning home he had called upon the parish priest and two eminent lawyers, and told the whole story, asking them to advise him what he should do under the circumstances. He also placed the facts before the headmaster of the Savoy Seminary, where Hippolyte had studied. Each of these persons agreed in saying that it was best for all concerned that nothing more should be said of the matter. Nothing more would have come of it, he said, if the broodings of the mother had not induced her to go to the authorities with her suspicions. He admitted that he had placed himself in a peculiar position, but appealed to the members of the jury to know what each of them would have done if they had been in his predicament. The distracted Marquise took the witness stand and declared that she had no proofs to back up her suspicions. Several of the boy's schoolmates testified that they had heard him threaten to commit suicide. It might have been said that the Marquis had a motive in getting rid of the child, who had become a spectre which threatened to destroy the happiness of the family. Also it might have been asked why the Marquis, after the disappearance of the boy, had not given the alarm and instituted a search. But the jury, disregarding such doubts, rendered a verdict of not guilty. Later the Marquise returned to her husband, "and lived happily ever afterward," although, as one chronicler tells us, "Paris never ceased to wonder how Hippolyte had come to his death."