nine o'clock in the evening
They unfold themselves in an ordinary fashion , falling into place as a succession of petty facts , and eventually losing themselves in the everyday commonplace of life . His mind was distracted from the violent death of an unfortunate fellow-creature by the very circumstances of that death , by the part which he had played in the affair and the occupation which it had imposed upon him . On his way to the commissary 's he felt as calm and as free from mental care as though he had been on his way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to decipher despatches . At nine o'clock in the evening , the police commissary entered the garden with his secretary and a policeman . The municipal physician , Monsieur Hibry , arrived simultaneously . Already , thanks to the industry of Madame Simonneau , who was always interested in matters of supply , the house exhaled a violent smell of carbolic and was blazing with the candles which she had lit . Madame Simonneau was bustling to and fro , actuated by an urgent desire to procure a crucifix and a bough of consecrated box-wood for the dead .