“You had valuable jewellery, mademoiselle?”
Ariadne laughed.
“I have one stone of great value, monsieur, but I have been for a little while in the habit of wearing it always.”
She drew out from the bosom of her dress a great ruby glowing upon a platinum chain; she did not look at Strickland as she showed it, but she flushed very prettily. Monsieur Dauguignon turned to another door.
“And this leads...?”
“To my friend’s room.”
“Ah, the truant’s,” said the magistrate, and he opened the door. Strickland’s eyes were fixed upon the ruby. It was his gift to her, and it had been held against her heart — for a little while, she said — ever since that morning when she had longed for that drive through the greenery of England to the sea, and had stayed for a moment upon the threshold of her house, and then with a little shrug of the shoulders, had gone in. It glowed now in the play of her fingers, it had lain secret in her bosom, it was warm with the warmth of her white skin. She looked at him beneath lowered eyelids and she tightened her hand about the ruby and hid it as something divinely precious in her palm. Dauguignon, who had been looking all this while into Corinne’s bedroom, closed the door and came back to Ariadne.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “this friend of yours — she is Corinne the dancer?”
“Yes.”
“And I understand from Colonel Strickland that the fugitive Clutter,” — he pronounced the name Cluttaire— “had some grievance against her?”
Ariadne flushed up instantly.
“Yes, but there were no grounds for it,” she began hotly to protest, but the magistrate interrupted her.
“You will forgive me, but it is not necessary at this moment to enter upon that matter at all. All I wish to do,” and he moved across the room into the window, whither Ariadne, ready for battle on Corinne’s behalf, was drawn insensibly after him “All I wish to do is to establish the fact.”
“Clutter certainly imagined that he had been wronged,” Ariadne conceded. There was a cushioned seat in the window.
“Let us sit down here for a moment, mademoiselle,” Monsieur Dauguignon said gently. Strickland had the impression that in drawing Ariadne across the room, as he had very deliberately done, the magistrate was merely obeying the ancient practice of so disposing his witness that the light should fall full upon her face.
“So,” he continued genially when Ariadne had sat down. “There is a little thing which puzzles me. Let us see if we can clear it up.”
Ariadne’s instinct warned her to suspect the magistrate’s geniality. There might be traps in it. She had heard something of the methods by which these examinations were conducted.
“I shall answer any questions, of course, which you wish to put to me, monsieur,” she said.
“That is good,” and he took his seat in the window facing her. “It is about this telegram from the Colonel here. It came up with the morning’s letters, and those letters are placed by Denise Bochon on a table in the drawing-room until you come down, since she is too busy to be running up and down stairs.”
Ariadne nodded.
“Now, does Denise Bochon sort those letters?”
“No,” Ariadne answered, wondering whither Monsieur was leading her. “Denise leaves them all together in a little heap.”
“Exactly. That is what I thought. And the first of you who comes down, selects her letters from the heap.”
“Yes.”
“And Corinne was the first down yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Then it follows, does it not? that Corinne must have seen that telegram addressed to you. She must have made sure that it was not meant for her?”
“I suppose so,” Ariadne agreed. She began to see the drift of the magistrate’s questions. It is the misfortune and, at the same time, the happiness of loyal people that they are very slow to suspect disloyalty in their friends. Ariadne was merely puzzled when she grasped the point which was troubling Monsieur Dauguignon, but she was very definitely puzzled.
“Would it not have been natural then for Corinne to have run upstairs with that telegram and given it to you?” he continued, and with a shrug of his shoulders, he added indisputably:
“After all, a telegram is a telegram.”
Ariadne did not answer.
“If it had been you who had come down first, mademoiselle, you would have done that,” he continued, pressing her for a reply.
“I suppose that I should,” she answered slowly, and then found the reply which relieved her of a trifle of discomfort. “But Corinne was in a hurry. She had to catch a train.”
Monsieur Dauguignon took her up on the instant.
“Ah, but none the less, Corinne, I understand, did run up stairs. She called to you through the door of her bedroom the time of the train by which she was returning.”
Ariadne for the moment had forgotten that. Her discomfort was re-awakened in her. But she blamed the magistrate for it rather than Corinne.
“So she did,” she answered with her brows drawn together in a frown.
“And she never mentioned that telegram?”
“No.”
“That is curious. It is curious, too, that you did not see it, mademoiselle, when you came down.”
Ariadne had an explanation to cope sufficiently with that perplexity.
“I was in a hurry, too. I just glanced at the envelopes, and shuffled them all together again and tucked them away in the book. No doubt the telegram had got stuck to one of them.”
“Yes,” said Monsieur Dauguignon a little doubtfully. “Yes.”
He looked round the room with an air of a man wanting help of some kind, but his eyes came back very sharply, almost guiltily, to Ariadne when she moved; and he held her by another question, spoken almost in a flurry. His uneasiness must have been apparent to any onlooker. It certainly became at once very significant to Strickland. It suggested to him that, quite apart from the problem of the telegram, there was some other mystery troubling Monsieur Dauguignon and troubling him very much.
“Corinne is a great friend of yours, mademoiselle?” said Dauguignon, and he made a gesture with his hand, which said: “I have not done with you: Please keep your seat!”
“A great friend,” Ariadne answered firmly.
“Yes, your great ladies are more democratic than ours, mademoiselle...That is known. We are a Republic, you are a democracy. We keep the social grades distinct, perhaps because we are not so sure of ourselves as you...Yes, no doubt”; and again the magistrate’s worried eyes swept the room for help.
He was playing for time Strickland realised with amazement. He was waiting upon chance to assist him in some grave predicament. Strickland was suddenly seized with panic. He fancied that there was some new horror lurking for them all, some secret, monstrous and inconceivable, of which only the magistrate was aware. He was clearly quite at the end of his resources when an interruption came. A sergeant of police entered the room and saluted.
“Yes?”
Monsieur Dauguignon turned to him eagerly. Nothing could have been more welcome to him than this diversion.
“We have searched the park, your honour, and we have not found Hospel Roussencq. But there is a place where, with the help of a tree, the wall can be climbed. There is blood upon the wall there and blood upon the road outside.”
“For the moment he has escaped then,” said Dauguignon, and then his face cleared surprisingly. He had found his way out of his difficulty. He turned back to Ariadne with a smile.
“Mademoiselle, you have, doubtless, in the pocket of your car, one of those fine, big maps of the district. It will be of great help if you will fetch it for me without delay.”
Ariadne rose and with her Monsieur Dauguignon. He escorted her to the door and saw her go down the stairs, talking to her all the while with the utmost profusion.
“We shall be able to see which road that bandit Roussencq is likely to have taken, and in what barn h
e is likely to be hiding—”
He was back in the room, a second later, a changed man, keen, quick, transformed into activity.
“Roussencq! Bah! We know very well where to hear news of him. In the little bars round the Grand Theatre at Marseilles. The Rue Corneille, eh, Monsieur he Commissaire? Those little narrow bars with their sanded floors, their mirrors on the walls and their gaudy red panels with the gilt nails. Roussencq! We have him!” He snapped his fingers contemptuously and gave quick orders to the sergeant.
“You will stand outside the front door of this suite, my friend. You will not allow that young lady to come in again — no, not however prettily she may persuade you. You will pretend to know nothing of that map. You will ask the questions. You understand?”
“Perfectly, your honour.”
The sergeant saluted and went out. Monsieur Dauguignon turned to the commissary, the surgeon and Strickland with a face now quite pale and marked with a great gravity.
“Gentlemen,” he said simply, “I beg you to prepare yourselves.”
He opened the door leading into Corinne’s bedroom. The room was in such disorder that a tornado might have wrecked it. Chairs were overset, curtains torn down, with every suggestion of despair and violence.
But none of the four men crowded in the doorway had eyes for that disorder. An exclamation of horror broke from Strickland’s mouth. For from the great chandelier of crystal pendants in the middle of the ceiling, Corinne dangled by a cord, with her hands strapped behind her back. Her face was dark and swollen, her eyeballs bursting from her head and her tongue, bitten through in her agony, projected between her teeth. Every trace of her delicate beauty was gone with her life. Strickland himself only recognised her by her figure and her dress.
They cut her down, removed the noose from about her neck and laid her upon the bed.
“Poor creature, whatever wrongs she did, she has paid for them,” said the magistrate. He took a linen towel and reverently covered her face.
“Yes, cover her up,” said Strickland gently. “She would have hated to know she was going to look like that after her death.”
XXVII. CORINNE’S LAST DAY
SIX WEEKS LATER, John Strickland was summoned for the twelfth time from his hotel to the prefecture.
“I announce to you that I need keep you here no longer,” said Monsieur Dauguignon. “This morning Hospel Roussencq died in the prison hospital at Marseilles. So all this terrible affair is at an end.”
He closed the cover of the dossier as he spoke and gave it a pat. He smiled at his visitor.
“Of course, there might be a charge made against you, Colonel Strickland, for carrying a pistol, and you are hereby found guilty and condemned to take an aperitif with me. But before we go forth to carry out your sentence, there is still a little word which must be said.”
He pointed to a chair by the side of his table and Strickland sat down.
“I have now traced Corinne’s movements upon that last day of her life. The mystery is solved, and it is not, as you no doubt suspected, a very pretty mystery. Corinne took your famous telegram with her to Marseilles. We cannot doubt it. When she went upstairs and shouted through the door that she would return by the last train, she packed the necessaries for a night away. That, too, we cannot doubt. She certainly travelled to Marseilles. She left her bag in the Terminus Hotel, and engaged a bedroom for the night. She returned to the station and took a return ticket for Nîmes, where she arrived at two forty-eight in the afternoon. At Nîmes, she bought a small black hat of the fashion which hides the eyes, a veil, and a dust-cloak to cover her dress. She returned to the station and again took a return ticket, this time to Pont d’Avignon. She reached Pont d’Avignon a little after seven. It is the small station at the end of the bridge on the opposite side of the river, and — I beg you to observe this — not more than a kilometre and a half from the Villa Laure. Corinne therefore had ample time for — let us be frank! — her treachery. She made the little changes in her dress and appearance between Nîmes and Pont d’Avignon. Certainly at the latter station no one recognised her. It was not yet dusk. The gates of the park would be open for another hour, or nearly another hour. She went quickly to the house and placed the telegram amongst her friend’s letters. And then — ah, and then — she makes the fatal step. She runs upstairs for some little thing which, in the hurry of the morning, she has forgotten — a lipstick, perhaps Who shall say? She runs upstairs and finds her enemies already hidden in her room.”
Strickland nodded his head.
“Clutter and Roussencq must have been hiding in the park throughout the day until they saw their chance and slipped into the house.”
“No, sir,” Monsieur Dauguignon corrected him. “They came in a hired motor-car from Marseilles during the afternoon. They hid the car in an old unused outhouse, not far from where they scaled the wall. They had in the car a wicker-work basket with a padlock. It is not difficult to guess to what purpose that basket was to be put.”
“No,” said Strickland in a low voice.
The magistrate rose and from a cupboard took his hat and his stick.
“But as for Corinne, it is clear what her intention was. She would have caught the last train to Nîmes. From Nîmes she would have travelled through the early part of the night to Marseilles. First thing the next morning, she would have sent a telegram to the Villa Laure, saying that she had missed her train from Marseilles and was compelled to spend the night at the Terminus Hotel. It is not a pretty story.”
He held open the door with a bow. But Strickland paused upon the threshold.
“I ask a favour of you, monsieur,” he said. “I should not like that story to reach my wife.”
“A lady of so brave a loyalty has a claim upon our reverence,” cried Monsieur Dauguignon, and with a fine flourish of his cane he drew an imaginary line across the threshold. “It shall not be heard outside that frontier.”
THE END
The Prisoner in the Opal (1928)
First published in 1928, this novel is regarded as the darkest and most macabre of the Hanaud novels. Ricardo returns to centre stage, after being more of a background character in the recent tales. In fact, at times in The Prisoner in the Opal he seems more the leading character than Hanaud. The story opens with Mr. Julius Ricardo, the fastidious Englishman that has accompanied Hanaud on many of his cases, who is known for his finicky nature and the exacting standards for fine living that he imposes upon himself. It is August and therefore Ricardo must travel to Aix-les-Bains for his continental rest cure (unnecessary, as he enjoys excellent health) and holiday. Having put his health to rights, he plans to travel on to Bordeaux for his leisure trip — effectively a wine tasting tour (or, as he would have it, his ‘dignified pilgrimage through the Medoc and the Gironde’), culminating in the pleasant town of Arachon, but certain events add a distinctly menacing frisson to his summer trip.
The sinister side of his story actually begins prior to his departure, when he meets a pretty young American woman, Joyce Whipple, at a party. Joyce is ‘radiant…trim and spruce’ and Ricardo is bemused that such a lovely creature might take an interest in him, ‘a retired tea broker from Mincing Lane.’ Joyce encourages Ricardo to go and see a mutual friend, Diana Tasborough, not far from where he will spend his Bordeaux holiday. He is most reluctant to assent to her request until Joyce explains that in her friend’s letters to her, she sees alarming premonitions — one might even say visions — of danger for Diana. As she elaborates: ‘I have a horrible dread that utterly evil spirits — the elementals are fighting in the darkness for her soul.’ Also, unaccountably, Diana has ended her engagement to Bryce Carter, despite loving him deeply.
Before leaving London, Ricardo is able to discuss the mystery with his now old friend, Inspector Hanaud. The latter identifies three possible explanations: firstly, that Joyce Whipple is playing a trick on Ricardo; secondly, that Joyce is an hysteric, prone to generating excitable situations; and thirdly, that Joyce is t
ruthfully relating a warning of some sort that she was sent through the letter; a premonition of terrible events to come.
Fate conspires to make Ricardo comply with Joyce’s wishes, as his original host is not able to accommodate him and he finds himself a guest of Diana and her aunt at the Château Suvlac. Diana, is pleasant enough, but seems distracted and her friend Mrs. Evelyn Devenish is rather odd (‘A most unpleasant young woman…bold and without respect’); he also meets Diana’s vineyard manager, Webster, the Vicomte de Mirandol, and, to his surprise, Joyce Whipple is a guest at the chateau too, despite having previously said she was to travel to America. Monsieur l’Abbe Fauriel, the local priest, also attends.
The dinner party and subsequent social is a rather strange event and is followed by a disturbed night for Ricardo, with strange nocturnal prowlings going on in and around the house and lights blazing in the middle of the night, causing him to lose sleep. The next day, the house party gathers for lunch, but still awaits Evelyn Devenish and Joyce Whipple. As they wait, to their collective shock, the local commissaire of police – and, to Ricardo’s astonishment, Inspector Hanaud who from his expression and demeanour is there on business – arrive at the chateau. Ricardo is deeply alarmed. He knows from his involvement in police business that ‘Both Hanaud and the commissaire are too eager in their encouragements, too delicate in their approach, to leave him in any doubt that they were concealing to the very last possible moment some unutterable horror.’ The two policemen continue with their questioning, all the time moving slowly, inexorably, towards the revelation of a grotesque crime…
This novel has been criticised by some as excessively melodramatic, far-fetched and even indulging in histrionics, but if one approaches it as a murder mystery in the gothic genre, with a hint of the supernatural, it becomes an excellent read. Ricardo is an engaging character that drives the plot forward and a good foil for the theatricals of Hanaud, whilst there is a strong feeling of tension. It is a shame it has not been adapted for either film or television, as one could easily see it as a gripping and highly entertaining feature.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 86