The Hand story, summary

     A judge, whose name was M.Bermutier, was giving his opinion about the Saint-Cloud mystery, an inexplicable crime in Paris, to a crowd of people. A woman from the crowd said that the crime verged on the supernatural levels. The judge did not agree with the word supernatural and decided to tell the crowd the story of an affair that he took charge of, that did not make any sense. He lived in a small city, called Ajaccio, where a number of murders took place because of old vendettas. Because an Englishman had just hired a little villa at the city, many people suspected him for being responsible for the murders. The judge was able to meet him and talk to him. He also got the chance to see his collection of rifles. But what stood out was a dried human hand with an iron chain around the wrist. The Englishman after being asked by the judge said that the hand belonged to his best enemy and that the chain chain was always needed,because it tried to run away. After a year the judge learnt that the Englishman was murdered. This born many questions to him. In the villa after examimating the body they found out that he got strangled by a skeleton, like the human hand that was missing. Three months later on the grave of the Englishman the same hand was found. In the end, the explanation of the judge towards the crowd for this crime was that the Englishman's enemy was alive and came to get his hand back. The story was very interesting and had an unexpected end to it, with the murder of the Englishman.