“I’ll help you,” said Plantat, “that will be a quicker way.”

They lifted the top of the bed and set it on the floor, at the same time raising the curtains.

“Hum!” cried M. Lecoq, “was I right?”

“True,” said M. Domini, surprised, “the bed is rumpled.”

“Yes; and yet no one has lain in it.”

“But—­” objected M. Courtois.

“I am sure of what I say,” interrupted the detective.  “The sheets, it is true, have been thrown back, perhaps someone has rolled about in the bed; the pillows have been tumbled, the quilts and curtains ruffled, but this bed has not the appearance of having been slept in.  It is, perhaps, more difficult to rumple up a bed than to put it in order again.  To make it up, the coverings must be taken off, and the mattresses turned.  To disarrange it, one must actually lie down in it, and warm it with the body.  A bed is one of those terrible witnesses which never misguide, and against which no counter testimony can be given.  Nobody has gone to bed in this—­”

“The countess,” remarked Plantat, “was dressed; but the count might have gone to bed first.”

“No,” answered M. Lecoq, “I’ll prove to the contrary.  The proof is easy, indeed, and a child of ten, having heard it, wouldn’t think of being deceived by this intentional disorder of the bedclothes.”

M. Lecoq’s auditors drew up to him.  He put the coverings back upon the middle of the bed, and went on: 

“Both of the pillows are much rumpled, are they not?  But look under the bolster—­it is all smooth, and you find none of those wrinkles which are made by the weight of the head and the moving about of the arms.  That’s not all; look at the bed from the middle to the foot.  The sheets being laid carefully, the upper and under lie close together everywhere.  Slip your hand underneath—­there—­you see there is a resistance to your hand which would not occur if the legs had been stretched in that place.  Now Monsieur de Tremorel was tall enough to extend the full length of the bed.”

This demonstration was so clear, its proof so palpable, that it could not be gainsaid.

“This is nothing,” continued M. Lecoq.  “Let us examine the second mattress.  When a person purposely disarranges a bed, he does not think of the second mattress.”

He lifted up the upper mattress, and observed that the covering of the under one was perfectly even.

“H’m, the second mattress,” muttered M. Lecoq, as if some memory crossed his mind.

“It appears to be proved,” observed the judge, “that Monsieur de Tremorel had not gone to bed.”

“Besides,” added the doctor, “if he had been murdered in his bed, his clothes would be lying here somewhere.”

“Without considering,” suggested M. Lecoq, “that some blood must have been found on the sheets.  Decidedly, these criminals were not shrewd.”

“What seems to me surprising,” M. Plantat observed to the judge, “is that anybody would succeed in killing, except in his sleep, a young man so vigorous as Count Hector.”