"Your uncle doesn't want another mouth to feed."

The result proved how well-founded were the niece's fears. Pingret was
murdered on a dark night, in the middle of his clover-field, where he
may have been adding a few coins to a buried pot of gold. The
servant-woman, awakened by the struggle, had the courage to go to the
assistance of the old miser, and the murderer was under the necessity
of killing her to suppress her testimony. This necessity, which
frequently causes murderers to increase the number of their victims,
is an evil produced by the fear of the death penalty.

This double murder was attended by curious circumstances which told as
much for the prosecution as for the defence. After the neighbors had
missed seeing the little old Pingret and his maid for a whole morning
and had gazed at his house through the wooden railings as they passed
it, and seen that, contrary to custom, the doors and windows were
still closed, an excitement began in the Faubourg Saint-Etienne which
presently reached the rue de la Cloche, where Madame des Vanneaulx
resided.

The niece was always in expectation of some such catastrophe, and she
at once notified the officers of the law, who went to the house and
broke in the gate. They soon discovered in a clover patch four holes,
and near two of these holes lay the fragments of earthenware pots,
which had doubtless been full of gold the night before. In the other
two holes, scarcely covered up, were the bodies of old Pingret and
Jeanne Malassis, who had been buried with their clothes on. The poor
girl had run to her master's assistance in her night-gown, with bare
feet.