Created & Written by: Emile Gaboriau (1832-1873)
1. LITERARY CONTEXT
Emile Gaboriau has often been dubbed the
founding father of the modern detective novel.
There were other precursors in the genre: Edgar Allan Poe's Chevalier Dupin
made his first appearance in The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841.
Honoré de Balzac's Comedie Humaine novels introduced the notorious Vautrin in Le Père
Goriot in 1834 -- Vautrin was a character inspired by the real-life Vidocq, a former convict who rose to become head of the
French Surete, before opening the world's first detective agency. Vidocq's Memoirs were an influence on Poe's Dupin.
Paul Féval's Les
Mystères de Londres (1844) and Les Habits Noirs (The
Black Coats) (1863-75), a huge saga comprised of eight separate novels, introduced
the concept of organized crime, describing an evil international criminal empire, led by the mysterious immortal
figure of Colonel Bozzo-Corona.
Alexandre Dumas created the character
of Monsieur Jackal, the mysterious head
of the Paris Surete, in his novel Les Mohicans de Paris
(1854-59) -- the title of which was obviously borrowed from Fenimore Cooper.
Victor-Alexis
Ponson du Terrail, the author of the saga
of Rocambole
(aka Les Drames de Paris), comprising twenty-five volumes published between 1857 and 1867, mixed all these elements
together, adding the character of a superhumanly gifted hero born to challenge the forces of evil -- one that had,
in fact, began his career on the side of evil!
Even Victor Hugo's classic Les Miserables (1862) featured a remarkably persistent
detective, Inspector Javert.
But Emile Gaboriau was the first to invent
the character of the procedural detective, and place him in the context of a novel where the resolution of a murder,
not the rescue of an inheritance, a treasure, or some kind of grandiosely mad evil scheme, was at the core of the
book.
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2. THE CHARACTERS
Monsieur Lecoq (no first-name was ever given by Gaboriau)
is an agent of the dreaded French Sureté. He is a methodical, scientifically minded detective who, like
Sherlock Holmes,
carefully gathers minute clues from the scene of the crime and, from them, draws logical conclusions which, at
first, amaze his colleagues but prove eminently rational when explained.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle paid homage to
Gaboriau when he first introduced Holmes and, indeed, Monsieur Lecoq is a worthy precursor of the Great Detective,
who owes him more than a passing debt. Like Holmes, Lecoq is more than a mere crime-solver: he is a master of disguise
with a secret identity in the Paris underworld.
In the person of armchair detective Tabaret,
nicknamed Père Tireauclair, i.e,:
Father Bringer of Light, a title Lecoq himself will eventually inherit, Lecoq even has an older mentor who, like
Mycroft Holmes, helps him solve particularly challenging puzzles from the comfort of his bed.
3. THE BOOKS
Monsieur Lecoq first appeared as a supporting character, a student of the methods of Tabaret in L'Affaire Lerouge (The
Lerouge Affair), published in 1866, but taking place in 1862.
He then graduated
to the status of full-blown "hero" in Le Crime d'Orcival (The Orcival Crime),
published in 1867, but taking place in 1864.
The newspaper serializing Lecoq's adventures saw its sales skyrocket, which encouraged Gaboriau to write the classic
Le Dossier No.113 (File
113), also in 1867, but taking place a year earlier, in 1866, and then, Les Esclaves de Paris (The
Slaves of Paris), published in 1868, taking place in 1867. Lecoq retired from
the Surete soon after.
Finally, in 1869, Gaboriau wrote Monsieur Lecoq,
which told the story of Lecoq's first case, back in 1859.
A sixth volume, La Vieillesse de Monsieur Lecoq
(Mr. Lecoq's Old Age), was written by
another popular mystery writer, Fortuné de Boisgobey, in 1878. It takes place the same year. This novel anticipates the modern publishing phenomenon
of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. In it, Lecoq pretends to be older than he really is -- he would only be in his late
40ies -- but that is an illusion carefully cultivated because of his extra-curricular activities (see below).
Finally, La Fille de M. Lecoq (Mr. Lecoq's Daughter) was published in 1886 by & William
Busnach & Henri Chabrillat. The story takes place in the Batignolles and starts with the murder of Lecoq who
has retired and is living under the name of Muret. His dying words are "Three, the Three!". Lecoq's daughter
has to consult his hidden memoirs to solve his murder. (Thanks to Bevis Benneworth
for the info.)
To this list, one should add an "offstage" appearance by Lecoq, advising another character in Gaboriau
short story "Une Disparition" (A Disappearance),
taking place sometimes in the 1870s, and a 1952 novella by J. Kéry: Le
Dernier Dossier de M. Lecoq (Mr. Lecoq's
Last File), included with M. Frémond a disparu, a Simenon pastiche.
4. SOME SPECULATIONS...
Based on sometimes contradictory information given by Gaboriau, Lecoq could have been born any time between 1829
and 1834.
Lecoq is said to be the son of a rich and honorable family from Normandy. He
was embarking on the career of a law student in Paris, when he abruptly learned that his father, ruined, had died,
soon followed by his mother. These events happened in the early 1850s.
The Normandy connection, the date, and mysterious circumstances of his family disappearance, leave little doubt
that Lecoq's father was, in reality the equally mysterious Lecoq, a.k.a. Toulonnais l'Amitié,
a member of the High Council of the criminal society of the Black
Coats, the right-hand man of Colonel
Bozzo-Corona, the Moriarty-like godfather of that vast criminal empire.
Based on Paul Feval's research, we know
that Lecoq/Toulonnais was born sometimes
between 1795 (the year of the Wold Newton meteorite's fall!) and 1803. It is therefore reasonably certain that
Lecoq/Toulonnais was the son of Albert Lecoq, who was one of the Conspiracy's representatives
at the fateful meeting held at Wold Newton on December 13, 1795.
Soon after that event, Albert Lecoq became
the father of Lecoq/Toulonnais. The identity
of the woman who was Albert Lecoq's wife and his son's mother is unknown. We, however, have reason to believe she
was Anne de Breuil, the unnamed "beautiful
woman" of the 1807 Council of the Black Coats, and a descendent of the notorious Anne
de Breuil who fought d'Artagnan as "Milady".
Lecoq de la Perière, in turn, became the father of the notorious Monsieur Lecoq c. 1830. While the identity of the mother
remains unknown, there are reasons to believe it may have been Marguerite Sadoulas, another member of the High Council of the Black Coats.
Féval further tells us in Volume
1 of Les Habits Noirs that Lecoq/Toulonnais was particularly active in the Rouen
and Normandy area; that the Black Coats' power began to unravel after the reported death of the Colonel in 1842; and that Lecoq/Toulonnais was himself killed by André Maynotte that same year. One is therefore led to believe that his son (Gaboriau's Lecoq) was then raised
in a honorable local family.
(FOR MORE ON THIS TOPIC, SEE LES HABITS NOIRS AND OUR ARTICLE ON THE CONSPIRACY.)
5. LECOQ'S CHILDREN
During his youth, Lecoq was attractive and lucky in love. In 1849, according to Fortuné
du Boisgobey in La Vieillesse de Monsieur
Lecoq, he fathered a child, Louis, from an otherwise unidentified woman.
In 1864, Lecoq dropped hints about a mystery woman in his life, one whom he had known for a long time. He was putty
in her hands, and she was always deceiving him. This unidentified woman was not the beautiful Nina
Gypsy, who had been his mistress for a year and a half in 1866, as Nina was
easily manipulated by Lecoq.
For whatever reasons, the mother kept Louis' birth a secret from Lecoq. She then sent the young Louis to England
to be raised. In 1865, the woman probably died. Searching her papers after her death, Lecoq uncovered evidence
of Louis' existence. Lecoq the fetched the boy from England. This appears to more or less coincide with, or precede
by a couple of years, the date of his resignation from the Surete...
Lecoq's son was thereafter known under the alias of Louis Lecoq de Gentilly (likely the village of his birth). During the 1870s, he studied at the University of Heidelberg
in Germany, more likely playing some kind of role in one of the Conspiracy's schemes. By 1877, Louis is a notary's
clerk, and engaged to Therese Lecomte.
He is framed for murder but his father succeeds in establishing his innocence. Louis marries Therese and, a year
later, they have a daughter.
We believe that Louis' mother was, in fact, none other than Jeanne Ballmeyer, née Roussel. According to Albert Bataille, a journalist from Le
Figaro, quoted by his colleague Gaston Leroux, the notorious international criminal Ballmeyer was the son of a wealthy, respectable stock broker, and yet inexplicably grew up to become
one of the world's greatest criminals.
Ballmeyer was born circa 1850 -- a year
after Louis -- and began his criminal
career around or just before 1870. Among the aliases he used were Comte de Maupas, Vicomte Drouet d'Erlon, Comte
de Motteville, Comte de Bonneville, etc. He was living in the United States under the alias of "Jean Roussel"
when he met and married heiress Mathilde Stangerson.
Their son, the future Rouletabille, was born in 1884. We believe that Ballmeyer was, in reality, the second son of Lecoq, born
out of wedlock.
(FOR MORE ON THIS TOPIC, SEE OUR ARTICLE ON ROULETABILLE AND THE TANGLED WEB.)
[Thanks to Rick Lai, whose extraordinary research was invaluable in assembling
this article.]
1.
Monsieur Lecoq (Fr., B&W, 1914)
Dir/Wri: Maurice Tourneur.
Cast: Maurice de Féraudy, Charles
Kraus, Fernande Petit, Henry Roussel.
2. Monsieur Lecoq (US, B&W, 1915)
Dir/Wri: Maurice Tourneur.
Cast: William Morris (Lecoq), Alphonse
Ethier, Florence La Badie, Reginald Barlow, Julia Blanc, Morgan Jones.
3. The Family Stain [L'Affaire
Lerouge] (US, B&W, 1915)
Dir/Wri: Wil S. Davis.
Cast: Dixie Compton, Frank Evans, Carl
Gerard, Stephen Grattan, Edith Hallor, Louis Hendricks, Mayme Kelso, Carey Lee, Einar Linden, Walter Miller, Frederick
Perry, Helen Tiffany.
| Nina Gypsy [Le
Dossier 113] (24 July 1971) Dir: Claude-Jean Bonnardoit. Cast: Catherine Rouvel (Nina), Henri Lambert (Lecoq), François Perrot, Jacques Faber, Karine Lafabrie, Gilles Capelle, Jean-Pierre Granval, Annick Berger. |
 |
2. L'Affaire Lerouge
6. Histoires de Brigands |
There were two French comic strips adaptations of Monsieur Lecoq. The first was Inpecteur Lecoq by Marc Cardus, for the Mondial Presse Syndicate in 1956-60 -- four stories representing over 800 strip.
The second was Monsieur Lecoq by Guy Marcireau for Le Parisien Libéré in 1960-67 -- several stories representing 505 strips. |
