At the Villa Rose ih-1

by A. E. W. Mason

  "That is so."

  "Very well. Now, after Mlle. Celie had gone down the stairs-"

  "I put the lights out in her room and, as she had ordered me to do, I went to bed. The next thing that I remember-but no! It terrifies me too much to think of it."

  Helene shuddered and covered her face spasmodically with her hands. Hanaud drew her hands gently down.

  "Courage! You are safe now, mademoiselle. Calm yourself!"

  She lay back with her eyes closed.

  "Yes, yes; it is true. I am safe now. But oh! I feel I shall never dare to sleep again!" And the tears swam in her eyes. "I woke up with a feeling of being suffocated. Mon Dieu! There was the light burning in the room, and a woman, the strange woman with the strong hands, was holding me down by the shoulders, while a man with his cap drawn over his eyes and a little black moustache pressed over my lips a pad from which a horribly sweet and sickly taste filled my mouth. Oh, I was terrified! I could not scream. I struggled. The woman told me roughly to keep quiet. But I could not. I must struggle. And then with a brutality unheard of she dragged me up on to my knees while the man kept the pad right over my mouth. The man, with the arm which was free, held me close to him, and she bound my hands with a cord behind me. Look!"

  She held out her wrists. They were terribly bruised. Red and angry lines showed where the cord had cut deeply into her flesh.

  "Then they flung me down again upon my back, and the next thing I remember is the doctor standing over me and this kind nurse supporting me."

  She sank back exhausted in her chair and wiped her forehead with her handkerchief. The sweat stood upon it in beads.

  "Thank you, mademoiselle," said Hanaud gravely. "This has been a trying ordeal for you. I understand that. But we are coming to the end. I want you to read this description of Mlle. Celie through again to make sure that nothing is omitted." He gave the paper into the maid’s hands. "It will be advertised, so it is important that it should be complete. See that you have left out nothing."

  Helene Vauquier bent her head over the paper.

  "No," said Helene at last. "I do not think I have omitted anything." And she handed the paper back.

  "I asked you," Hanaud continued suavely, "because I understand that Mlle. Celie usually wore a pair of diamond ear-drops, and they are not mentioned here."

  A faint colour came into the maid’s face.

  "That is true, monsieur. I had forgotten. It is quite true."

  "Any one might forget," said Hanaud, with a reassuring smile. "But you will remember now. Think! think! Did Mlle. Celie wear them last night?" He leaned forward, waiting for her reply. Wethermill too, made a movement. Both men evidently thought the point of great importance. The maid looked at Hanaud for a few moments without speaking.

  "It is not from me, mademoiselle, that you will get the answer," said Hanaud quietly.

  "No, monsieur. I was thinking," said the maid, her face flushing at the rebuke.

  "Did she wear them when she went down the stairs last night?" he insisted.

  "I think she wore them," she said doubtfully. "Ye-es-yes," and the words came now firm and clear. "I remember well. Mlle. Celie had taken them off before her bath, and they lay on the dressing-table. She put them into her ears while I dressed her hair and arranged the bow of ribbon in it."

  "Then we will add the earrings to your description," said Hanaud, as he rose from his chair with the paper in his hand, "and for the moment we need not trouble you any more about Mademoiselle Celie." He folded the paper up, slipped it into his letter-case, and put it away in his pocket. "Let us consider that poor Madame Dauvray! Did she keep much money in the house?"

  "No, monsieur; very little. She was well known in Aix and her cheques were everywhere accepted without question. It was a high pleasure to serve madame, her credit was so good," said Helene Vauquier, raising her head as though she herself had a share in the pride of that good credit.

  "No doubt," Hanaud agreed. "There are many fine households where the banking account is overdrawn, and it cannot be pleasant for the servants."

  "They are put to so many shifts to hide it from the servants of their neighbours," said Helene. "Besides," and she made a little grimace of contempt, "a fine household and an overdrawn banking account-it is like a ragged petticoat under a satin dress. That was never the case with Madame Dauvray."

  "So that she was under no necessity to have ready money always in her pocket," said Hanaud. "I understand that. But at times perhaps she won at the Villa des Fleurs?"

  Helene Vauquier shook her head.

  "She loved the Villa des Fleurs, but she never played for high sums and often never played at all. If she won a few louis, she was as delighted with her gains and as afraid to lose them again at the tables as if she were of the poorest, and she stopped at once. No, monsieur; twenty or thirty louis-there was never more than that in the house."

  "Then it was certainly for her famous collection of jewellery that Madame Dauvray was murdered?"

  "Certainly, monsieur."

  "Now, where did she keep her jewellery?"

  "In a safe in her bedroom, monsieur. Every night she took off what she had been wearing and locked it up with the rest. She was never too tired for that."

  "And what did she do with the keys?"

  "That I cannot tell you. Certainly she locked her rings and necklaces away whilst I undressed her. And she laid the keys upon the dressing-table or the mantel-shelf-anywhere. But in the morning the keys were no longer where she had left them. She had put them secretly away."

  Hanaud turned to another point.

  "I suppose that Mademoiselle Celie knew of the safe and that the jewels were kept there?"

  "Oh yes! Mademoiselle indeed was often in Madame Dauvray’s room when she was dressing or undressing. She must often have seen madame take them out and lock them up again. But then, monsieur, so did I."

  Hanaud nodded to her with a friendly smile.

  "Thank you once more, mademoiselle," he said. "The torture is over. But of course Monsieur Fleuriot will require your presence."

  Helene Vauquier looked anxiously towards him.

  "But meanwhile I can go from this villa, monsieur?" she pleaded, with a trembling voice.

  "Certainly; you shall go to your friends at once."

  "Oh, monsieur, thank you!" she cried, and suddenly she gave way. The tears began to flow from her eyes. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. "It is foolish of me, but what would you?" She jerked out the words between her sobs. "It has been too terrible."

  "Yes, yes," said Hanaud soothingly. "The nurse will put a few things together for you in a bag. You will not leave Aix, of course, and I will send some one with you to your friends."

  The maid started violently.

  "Oh, not a sergent-de-ville, monsieur, I beg of you. I should be disgraced."

  "No. It shall be a man in plain clothes, to see that you are not hindered by reporters on the way."

  Hanaud turned towards the door. On the dressing-table a cord was lying. He took it up and spoke to the nurse.

  "Was this the cord with which Helene Vauquier’s hands were tied?"

  "Yes, monsieur," she replied.

  Hanaud handed it to the Commissaire.

  "It will be necessary to keep that," he said.

  It was a thin piece of strong whipcord. It was the same kind of cord as that which had been found tied round Mme. Dauvray’s throat. Hanaud opened the door and turned back to the nurse.

  "We will send for a cab for Mlle. Vauquier. You will drive with her to her door. I think after that she will need no further help. Pack up a few things and bring them down. Mlle. Vauquier can follow, no doubt, now without assistance." And, with a friendly nod, he left the room.

  Ricardo had been wondering, through the examination, in what light Hanaud considered Helene Vauquier. He was sympathetic, but the sympathy might merely have been assumed to deceive. His questions betrayed in no particular the colour of his mind. Now, however, he made
himself clear. He informed the nurse, in the plainest possible way, that she was no longer to act as jailer. She was to bring Vauquier’s things down; but Vauquier could follow by herself. Evidently Helene Vauquier was cleared.

  CHAPTER VII

  A STARTLING DISCOVERY

  Harry Wethermill, however, was not so easily satisfied.

  "Surely, monsieur, it would be well to know whither she is going," he said, "and to make sure that when she has gone there she will stay there-until we want her again?"

  Hanaud looked at the young man pityingly.

  "I can understand, monsieur, that you hold strong views about Helene Vauquier. You are human, like the rest of us. And what she has said to us just now would not make you more friendly. But-but-" and he preferred to shrug his shoulders rather than to finish in words his sentence. "However," he said, "we shall take care to know where Helene Vauquier is staying. Indeed, if she is at all implicated in this affair we shall learn more if we leave her free than if we keep her under lock and key. You see that if we leave her quite free, but watch her very, very carefully, so as to awaken no suspicion, she may be emboldened to do something rash-or the others may."

  Mr. Ricardo approved of Hanaud’s reasoning.

  "That is quite true," he said. "She might write a letter."

  "Yes, or receive one," added Hanaud, "which would be still more satisfactory for us-supposing, of course, that she has anything to do with this affair"; and again he shrugged his shoulders. He turned towards the Commissaire.

  "You have a discreet officer whom you can trust?" he asked.

  "Certainly. A dozen."

  "I want only one."

  "And here he is," said the Commissaire.

  They were descending the stairs. On the landing of the first floor Durette, the man who had discovered where the cord was bought, was still waiting. Hanaud took Durette by the sleeve in the familiar way which he so commonly used and led him to the top of the stairs, where the two men stood for a few moments apart. It was plain that Hanaud was giving, Durette receiving, definite instructions. Durette descended the stairs; Hanaud came back to the others.

  "I have told him to fetch a cab," he said, "and convey Helene Vauquier to her friends." Then he looked at Ricardo, and from Ricardo to the Commissaire, while he rubbed his hand backwards and forwards across his shaven chin.

  "I tell you," he said, "I find this sinister little drama very interesting to me. The sordid, miserable struggle for mastery in this household of Mme. Dauvray-eh? Yes, very interesting. Just as much patience, just as much effort, just as much planning for this small end as a general uses to defeat an army-and, at the last, nothing gained. What else is politics? Yes, very interesting."

  His eyes rested upon Wethermill’s face for a moment, but they gave the young man no hope. He took a key from his pocket.

  "We need not keep this room locked," he said. "We know all that there is to be known." And he inserted the key into the lock of Celia’s room and turned it.

  "But is that wise, monsieur?" said Besnard.

  Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.

  "Why not?" he asked.

  "The case is in your hands," said the Commissaire. To Ricardo the proceedings seemed singularly irregular. But if the Commissaire was content, it was not for him to object.

  "And where is my excellent friend Perrichet?" asked Hanaud; and leaning over the balustrade he called him up from the hall.

  "We will now," said Hanaud, "have a glance into this poor murdered woman’s room."

  The room was opposite to Celia’s. Besnard produced the key and unlocked the door. Hanaud took off his hat upon the threshold and then passed into the room with his companions. Upon the bed, outlined under a sheet, lay the rigid form of Mme. Dauvray. Hanaud stepped gently to the bedside and reverently uncovered the face. For a moment all could see it-livid, swollen, unhuman.

  "A brutal business," he said in a low voice, and when he turned again to his companions his face was white and sickly. He replaced the sheet and gazed about the room.

  It was decorated and furnished in the same style as the salon downstairs, yet the contrast between the two rooms was remarkable.

  Downstairs, in the salon, only a chair had been overturned. Here there was every sign of violence and disorder. An empty safe stood open in one corner; the rugs upon the polished floor had been tossed aside; every drawer had been torn open, every wardrobe burst; the very bed had been moved from its position.

  "It was in this safe that Madame Dauvray hid her jewels each night," said the Commissaire as Hanaud gazed about the room.

  "Oh, was it so?" Hanaud asked slowly. It seemed to Ricardo that he read something in the aspect of this room too, which troubled his mind and increased his perplexity.

  "Yes," said Besnard confidently. "Every night Mme. Dauvray locked her jewels away in this safe. Vauquier told us so this morning. Every night she was never too tired for that. Besides, here"-and putting his hand into the safe he drew out a paper-"here is the list of Mme. Dauvray’s jewellery."

  Plainly, however, Hanaud was not satisfied. He took the list and glanced through the items. But his thoughts were not concerned with it.

  "If that is so," he said slowly, "Mme Dauvray kept her jewels in this safe, why has every drawer been ransacked, why was the bed moved? Perrichet, lock the door-quietly-from the inside. That is right. Now lean your back against it."

  Hanaud waited until he saw Perrichet’s broad back against the door. Then he went down upon his knees, and, tossing the rugs here and there, examined with the minutest care the inlaid floor. By the side of the bed a Persian mat of blue silk was spread. This in its turn he moved quickly aside. He bent his eyes to the ground, lay prone, moved this way and that to catch the light upon the floor, then with a spring he rose upon his knees. He lifted his finger to his lips. In a dead silence he drew a pen-knife quickly from his pocket and opened it. He bent down again and inserted the blade between the cracks of the blocks. The three men in the room watched him with an intense excitement. A block of wood rose from the floor, he pulled it out, laid it noiselessly down, and inserted his hand into the opening.

  Wethermill at Ricardo’s elbow uttered a stifled cry. "Hush!" whispered Hanaud angrily. He drew out his hand again. It was holding a green leather jewel-case. He opened it, and a diamond necklace flashed its thousand colours in their faces. He thrust in his hand again and again and again, and each time that be withdrew it, it held a jewel-case. Before the astonished eyes of his companions he opened them. Ropes of pearls, collars of diamonds, necklaces of emeralds, rings of pigeon-blood rubies, bracelets of gold studded with opals-Mme. Dauvray’s various jewellery was disclosed.

  "But that is astounding," said Besnard, in an awe-struck voice.

  "Then she was never robbed after all?" cried Ricardo.

  Hanaud rose to his feet.

  "What a piece of irony!" he whispered. "The poor woman is murdered for her jewels, the room’s turned upside down, and nothing is found. For all the while they lay safe in this cache. Nothing is taken except what she wore. Let us see what she wore."

  "Only a few rings, Helene Vauquier thought," said Besnard. "But she was not sure."

  "Ah!" said Hanaud. "Well, let us make sure!" and, taking the list from the safe, he compared it with the jewellery in the cases on the floor, ticking off the items one by one. When he had finished he knelt down again, and, thrusting his hand into the hole, felt carefully about.

  "There is a pearl necklace missing," he said. "A valuable necklace, from the description in the list and some rings. She must have been wearing them;" and he sat back upon his heels. "We will send the intelligent Perrichet for a bag," he said, "and we will counsel the intelligent Perrichet not to breathe a word to any living soul of what he has seen in this room. Then we will seal up in the bag the jewels, and we will hand it over to M. le Commissaire, who will convey it with the greatest secrecy out of this villa. For the list-I will keep it," and he placed it carefully in his pocket-book.


  He unlocked the door and went out himself on to the landing. He looked down the stairs and up the stairs; then he beckoned Perrichet to him.

  "Go!" he whispered. "Be quick, and when you come back hide the bag carefully under your coat."

  Perrichet went down the stairs with pride written upon his face. Was he not assisting the great M. Hanaud from the Surete in Paris? Hanaud returned into Mme. Dauvray’s room and closed the door. He looked into the eyes of his companions.

  "Can’t you see the scene?" he asked with a queer smile of excitement. He had forgotten Wethermill; he had forgotten even the dead woman shrouded beneath the sheet. He was absorbed. His eyes were bright, his whole face vivid with life. Ricardo saw the real man at this moment-and feared for the happiness of Harry Wethermill. For nothing would Hanaud now turn aside until he had reached the truth and set his hands upon the quarry. Of that Ricardo felt sure. He was trying now to make his companions visualise just what he saw and understood.

  "Can’t you see it? The old woman locking up her jewels in this safe every night before the eyes of her maid or her companion, and then, as soon as she was alone, taking them stealthily out of the safe and hiding them in this secret place. But I tell you-this is human. Yes, it is interesting just because it is so human. Then picture to yourselves last night, the murderers opening this safe and finding nothing-oh, but nothing!-and ransacking the room in deadly haste, kicking up the rugs, forcing open the drawers, and always finding nothing-nothing-nothing. Think of their rage, their stupefaction, and finally their fear! They must go, and with one pearl necklace, when they had hoped to reap a great fortune. Oh, but this is interesting-yes, I tell you-I, who have seen many strange things-this is interesting."

  Perrichet returned with a canvas bag, into which Hanaud placed the jewel-cases. He sealed the bag in the presence of the four men and handed it to Besnard. He replaced the block of wood in the floor, covered it over again with the rug, and rose to his feet.

  "Listen!" he said, in a low voice, and with a gravity which impressed them all. "There is something in this house which I do not understand. I have told you so. I tell you something more now. I am afraid-I am afraid." And the word startled his hearers like a thunderclap, though it was breathed no louder than a whisper, "Yes, my friends," he repeated, nodding his head, "terribly afraid." And upon the others fell a discomfort, an awe, as though something sinister and dangerous were present in the room and close to them. So vivid was the feeling, instinctively they drew nearer together. "Now, I warn you solemnly. There must be no whisper that these jewels have been discovered; no newspaper must publish a hint of it; no one must suspect that here in this room we have found them. Is that understood?"