TRAGEDY OF AVARICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14925, 24 February 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

TRAGEDY OF AVARICE.

1 A FATHER MURDERS HIS DAUGHTER. A DRAMATIC STORY. The gendarmes have arrested Duputs, of .Taybosc, the 82-year-old cobbler, who has already been in prison on suspicion of arson. His crime, this time is murder. Ho cut the throat of his daughter Jeanne Caubet on January 2, and as she. died the woman uhriokf-d the murderer's name aloud. It is a story of avarice. Old Duputs, vim lived with his daughter and her husband in their cottage in Puycasquier, .1 village between Audi and - Agen, bad every reason to 'be grateful to Jeanne Caubet and to Caubet too. But old Duputs was anything but grateful. He bated Caubet. and he hated his daughter oven more than her husband, for love of money had turned his peasant's brain, and ho was certain that his daughter Jeanne had robbed him. Some months! ago there had been an alarm of fire in Duputs'a home in Taybosc. Clouds of smoke rolled from the lower window, and the old man, shouting for help and slavering with fear and with cold, ran out of his mom and downstairs just as the staircase, fell in. An insurance company declined to pay the £90 for which Duputs had insured his cottage and the contents a few months before the fire: there was some talk of arson. Important-looking men in black coats and white collars drove to Taybosc in motorcars and questioned old Duputs uncomfortably, and one day .'the gendarmes had come, had arrested Duputs. and had taken him off to the prison at Audi. Old Man Duputs. Rut. old Duputs was 82 years old. Nobody liked him. for the cobbler of Taybosc was known and proved to be the meanest and most disagreeable man for many miles round. But everybody knows and likes Caubet, the stationmaster of Sainte-Christie (which is the nearest railway station to Puycasquier, on the lino from Audi to Agen). And everybody knew and liked Jeanne Caubet, old man Duputs's daughter, tho etationmaster's wife.

So when Duputs wis imprisoned for arson, Caubet, who had deserved well of his fellow-townsmen in a recent railway accident, went to Audi, interviewed lawyers, doctors, and magistrates, and managed to secure his father-in release. The old man was 82 after all, and could not do much harm, was the general excuse. And old Duputs was let out of prison, and went to live with Jeanne (Jaubet, his daughter, and Caubet, the stationmaster, in their little cottage' nest to tho post office in Puycasquier. Duputs was not in the least grateful to his daughter and her husband. Before his cottage was burned down at Taybose lie had insured it for £90. As he was a free man now, there could be no question of any fraud on his part, he declared. Therefore the insurance company must pay the £90. Duputs wanted the money. He said that ho was not as young as he had been, that nobody cared what became of "him, and that ho wanted a provision for his old age. Caubet refused to discuss the matter with the old man at all. Jeanne, who was with her disagreeable old father all day long, could not always avoid discussion. , And an idea took root in the old peasant miser's mind, that Jeanne Caubet and her husband had made the insurance company pay the £90 insurance, and were "keeping the money from him. It was not natural, old Duputs thought, that Caubet and his wife, with their small in- ■ come, should live as comfortably as they did, should have meat twice a week, sometimes three times, for mid-day dinner, and should, without payment, keep an old l _ man-of 82 who had a verv healthy appeitffSi, Ditpute did not believe in natural affection or in charity, and knew what money was. He had scraped all his life, he would do anything for money, and he thought that his daughter had hi* £90. Ho hated her. ..; Af raids of Her Father. Jcannem-Caubet often told her husband that she was frightened of her father. . "He glares at me when you are not there," said the old miser's daughter. *'He glared at everybody," said Caubet. On January 2 Caubet went off to the station, of Sainte Christie, as usual. .! Jeanne was not very well, and stayed in "bed to sleep an hour later than she usually did. After Caubet had gone the postmistress next door heard a, shriek proceeding from Caubet's house: "You have murdered me,. father And a dead silence followed. The postmistress rushed to the telephone and called up the magistrates at Audi. A magistrate and four gendarmes were in l'uycasquier very soon, and found everybody gathered round the street door of Caubet's house. " Nobody has gone in and no one has coma out since I telephoned an hour ago," said the postmistress. Jeanne Caubet lay dead* on the floor by her bedside. Her throat was cut. Death "had been almost instantaneous, for the razor had. severed the jugular artery. Duputs, the old cobbler of Taybosc, was in his own bed in the. next room. He had forgotten to undress again, but shivered us though with an ague. " I heard nothing, I know nothing," he repeated over and over again. "I don't know what has "happened to my daughter. But she and her husband have - robbed me of £90, I want my money back. Where is*my inoney?" He has been taken to tho prison infirmary at Auch. Ho was on his way there before Caubet, tho stationmaster,