The evening the false magistrates rang at the door on Avenue Marceau, the concierge sensed almost immediately that something was amiss. The men wore frock coats and silk hats; one of them sported the rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honor; yet she whispered to her husband that they appeared "in disguise." Her husband, for his part, already heard the clank of prison bars in the threats uttered by the man who called himself Commissaire Clément. It was this domestic hesitation, suspended between suspicion and subservience, that the thieves exploited for seven hours.
On the night of January 27–28, 1893, the Marquis de Panisse-Passis was away in Nice. His mansion on Avenue Marceau, left in the care of the concierges, commanded attention on account of its paintings, jewels, and plate. In the account later published by Marie-François Goron, then head of the Sûreté, four men presented themselves around five in the afternoon. The leader of the band announced himself as Clément, a commissaire attached to the judicial delegations. He pointed out an accomplice as the Prefect of Police, then admitted a fifth man, introduced as a summoned police brigadier.
The warrant he flourished bore the outward stamp of the law. It ordered the arrest of the Marquis, indicted for having received a cheque for 200,000 francs from the Panama Company, and named the concierge as the endorser of the draft. The real Panama affair then filled the daily press: ministers, deputies, and grandees seemed menaced each morning by some fresh revelation. The impostors had chosen their backdrop with cunning. They did not require the concierges to believe every detail; it sufficed that fear rendered all resistance perilous.
The wife protested that their master’s explicit orders forbade entry in his absence. "We have fallen into an ambush," she breathed to her husband. He replied that a concierge was bound to obey the police. The bogus commissaire ushered him into the Marquis's study and commenced an interrogation whose very absurdity helped to bewilder the victim. He asserted that the concierge had endorsed the cheque and pocketed 30,000 francs. He even maintained that the transaction had occurred in 1888, though the man had entered the Marquis's service merely seventeen or eighteen months prior. To this objection, Clément countered that his appointment as concierge had in fact been his reward.
An accomplice enacted the role of secretary, feigning to record the depositions. When the concierge inadvertently sat upon the alleged magistrate's hat, the latter flew into a rage over the crushed headgear before resuming his interrogation. This blend of solemnity, nonsensical particulars, and petty outbursts lent the scene the semblance of an official proceeding whose intricacies the victims could not hope to grasp. The couple was questioned separately. The wife's hands were bound with a strap; meanwhile, a rogue left in the lodge donned the concierge's apron and skullcap, receiving the evening mail as though nothing were out of course.
From seven o’clock onwards, the mansion was methodically stripped. The thieves forced a secretary desk, pocketed a chequebook, unhooked canvases, and carried off an autograph collection. In the Marchioness's bedchamber, they discovered the key to the cabinet housing the safe. They had brought their tools concealed beneath their frock coats; after some two hours' labour, the safe yielded. The silverware, jewels, and bearer bonds were packed into trunks. Then one of the men descended to the cellar in search of wine. The intruders had leisure enough to drink before resuming their inventory.
They loaded the plunder into a covered cart and a cab. Before departing, the false prefect—whom his confederates familiarly addressed as "Monsieur Lozé"—had the two concierges bound back-to-back, informing them that an escort would arrive within the hour to convey them to the Dépôt. Once the couple perceived that their wardens had gone, they managed to loosen their bonds. They went down to their lodge and brewed two cups of tea to compose themselves. The detail provoked laughter at the trial, yet it measured above all the terror inflicted upon them: the thieves had quitted the house, yet the victims were still awaiting the arrival of the genuine police.
They did not sound the alarm until two o’clock in the morning. Goron was notified the following day, alongside the examining magistrate Atthalin. At the outset, the investigation possessed scarcely any clues; the concierges themselves were liable to suspicion of having concocted the tale. Their innocence was swiftly established. The Marquis returned to Paris, but could supply no useful intelligence. The inventory of stolen property was published to hinder its disposal and alert informers. It catalogued Flemish paintings, silver plate bearing the owner’s crest, and fine jewels, but also a soufflé pan and spoons. The thieves had made off even with the modest belongings of the concierges.
After eight days of fruitless inquiry, an informant pointed toward a man named Pierre Alleaume, whose judicial record, he urged, warranted scrutiny. Goron had him shadowed rather than arrested, hoping to reach his associates. At six in the morning, as Goron ascended toward Alleaume's lodgings on Rue des Petits-Carreaux, he encountered a frail old man coming down the stair. The old man explained with unruffled calm that he was coming precisely from the quarters of that rogue, on his way to warn the head of the Sûreté. Goron replied that he was that very official, and bid him empty his pockets. Gold fragments were brought to light. The old man protested that Alleaume had flung the overcoat across his shoulders.
In the bedchamber, Goron arrested Alleaume, whose true name was Tajean. He admitted the burglary at the mansion, but refused to name his confederates. His account attributed the scheme to two unknown figures, Julot and Amédée, whose real identities he claimed not to know. He maintained that he had remained in the lodge, attired as the concierge, while the others entered the mansion, after which one of them had fetched a carriage. Goron did not take him at his word. He pursued his searches and arrests across several quarters until, by nightfall, twenty-four persons were in custody. The declarations of receivers and accomplices enabled the police to complete the case.
"Fat Paul," known as Paul the Coachman, and an older man named Renard were apprehended on February 25 in a wine shop on Avenue Hoche. They initially denied having been in Paris on the night of the burglary, claiming to have just arrived from London. But Alleaume identified Renard as the bogus Commissaire Clément and named Paul as the man who had impersonated Prefect Lozé. The two men had been taken together; the confessions of their confederates delivered to Goron what the concierge’s earliest accounts could not supply: precisely who had sustained the roles in that theatrical masquerade.
Renard's room, rented on Rue Lafontaine under an assumed name, laid bare the scale of his enterprise. There Goron recovered the bulk of the Marquis's silver plate and several of his paintings. Printed letterheads from the Prefecture, stamps, seals, blank warrants, and calling cards belonging to magistrates and police officers lay alongside fine jewelry and advanced safe-breaking tools. A notebook listed two hundred prospective victims, detailing their periods of absence, their daily routines, and their temperaments. The forged warrant of Avenue Marceau was no isolated improvisation: it belonged to an established method of intelligence, reconnaissance, and disguise.
The dossier also contained letters from an unidentified hand, and Goron was never able to uncover the identity of a female correspondent named Octavie. He discovered additional lodgings and other aliases employed by Renard, as well as evidence concerning multiple burglaries. In these pages, he describes a network operating between Paris and London, though many of his conclusions remain those of an investigator penning his memoirs. He notes in particular that the thieves had operated in Rueil and several provincial towns, and that Renard had negotiated proceeds from robberies attributed to anarchists. The narrative carefully distinguishes such fencing operations from any proven political allegiance.
At the trial, Renard jested regarding his talent for impersonating a commissaire. Goron records that he was sentenced to twenty years of hard labour and transported to French Guiana. Renard subsequently escaped and wrote to the former head of the Sûreté to dispute an accusation levied against him during the trial; Goron reproduced this protest without confirming or refuting it. The concierges of Paris, however, were left to endure a long-lasting legacy: whenever an authentic commissaire arrived to conduct a search, some would answer that they knew the trick all too well. The impostor had vanished; his performance of the law had left behind an enduring legacy of mistrust.