VITAL CLUE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1937, Page 9

VITAL CLUE.

WOMAN'S MAKE-UP. BAFFLING MURDER. BODY ON RAILWAY LINE. (Special.—By Air Mail.) PARIS, October 15. A woman's make-up is a vital clue in one of the most baffling express train murders of recent years now confronting the French police. Shortly after 2 p.m. the other day railway officials found lying between the lines near Fontainebleau in the patli of the Paris-Kiviera express the body of Mine. Marie Celestine Renard, widow of a colonel of the French Army who was formerly a Secret Service agent. Kxperts who examined the body noticed once that the make-up 011 the face was perfect, whereas if she had fallen from the express lime. Renard would have l»een lying on the line for hours and become covered with dust. M. Heonique, the examining magistrate at Fontainebleau, said: — "It seems definite that the body was •lumped there not long before it was discovered, which would account for the face being so clean." Feared Death. I>ess than 12 hours' before her death Mine. Henard, who has been staying with her sister at Charleville. in Eastern France, declared that she feared she would I>e murdered. "She spoke to me of two men who had been following her about on the Riviera," her sister said. "As she kissed me good-bye at the station she wrung my hand and said. 'I may never see you aaain.' As she spoke she glanced anxiously up and down the platform. "I think there was someone who sought to do her injury, probably for something that may have happened a long time ago. She often used to talk of her husband's secret service work."

The police are working on a theory that after arriving in Paris from Charleville, Mine. Renard was seized by her murderers, taken out of Pari*, battered to death, and dumped on the line under cover of darkness.

Cases Missing. When she left Charleville she had two large suitcases. These were not found in the ft.-'M) p.m. Riviera train which she was supposed to take.

Her handbag, found near the body, contained about £12 in cash. which suggest* that the crime was not committed for robberv.

Mme. Renard had a large wound on the temple and on the left side of her chest. Her right leg was also broken, but this is thought to have been done hv a train which parsed shortly before the Ikklv was found.

Many phases of the murdered woman's life are mysterious. She is known to have paid daily visits to Nice from Cap d'Ail, and so far the object of them is not known.

Always elegantly dressed and looking much younger than her 4.) years, Mme. Renard had very few friends on the Riviera.

"Mme. Renard was, T believe, in love with someone, but she never mentioned his name to anyone," said a friend at Cap d'Ail.