Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “But that is a big change, my friend, a very big change. Let us understand it. Something has given the older woman the mastery over her niece. She had learnt something which gave her the control, eh? Some nice quiet piece of family blackmail, eh?”

  “No,” Mr. Ricardo replied. He was quite sure that that explanation wouldn’t do. He took a moment or two to put into clear words the impression which he had. “I think that Diana was occupied by some overmastering idea. You, see, there never was any rivalry between Diana and Mrs. Tasborough — never any struggle for control. Diana exercised it without question, and without question, too, Mrs. Tasborough acquiesced. It seemed to me that Diana had dropped that control as not worth bothering about, as too troublesome, as somehow interfering with whatever preoccupation possesses her. And that Mrs. Tasborough picked that control up and is making the most of it. Diana was always a little aloof; and last night it didn’t seem to me that she even noticed that she was no longer the queen, but the lady-in-waiting.”

  “Ah!”

  Hanaud’s exclamation was one of comprehension rather than of surprise. “To me that is very interesting,” he added softly, and leaning back again in the car he sat mum until they drew up at the pink archway of the Chateau Suvlac. Then he woke to life again. As he sprang out he said:

  “I shall be grateful if you will go into the house before me and say that we have returned. It may be that Miss Tasborough will be the first person you will meet. Already I have caused that young lady great distress. It might be a shock to her if when she does not expect it I come face to face with her again.”

  There were moments when Hanaud displayed a quite surprising delicacy. “After all, he has not known me for nothing all these years,” Mr. Ricardo said to himself with pride. He consented to Hanaud’s plan with alacrity, and went forward alone towards the door. But half-way up the drive, he turned about and noticed that Hanaud was engaged in an earnest conversation with his chauffeur. His thoughts took on a different and censorious complexion.

  “My car and my chauffeur!” he reflected now. “He behaves as if he owned them! I trust that I am not feudal, but even the liberties of a city have their bounds.”

  He was a little consoled by his quip, but at the front door he turned again. The conversation at the archway was still proceeding. It dawned upon Mr. Ricardo that he had been sent forward by Hanaud not from any delicacy of sentiment, but to make an opportunity for a quite private conversation with his chauffeur. He waited in the porch accordingly until Hanaud joined him, hauteur and indignation in every line of his face. But Hanaud waved his hand airily.

  “I know, I know, my friend. It was a subterfuge. Yes, my manners are all that is deplorable. But you must take me as I am. As you say very well in your idioms, you cannot make a silk purse out of a Bath chap.”

  CHAPTER 9

  TELLS OF EVELYN DEVENISH

  FOR HALF AN hour Hanaud was busy with the Commissary Herbesthal and his own assistant Moreau, in a room which had been put aside for them. Mr. Ricardo, left to his own devices and being in a maze of doubts, speculations, prejudices and ignorance, snatched some luncheon and set himself down in the library in front of the window. Half-way between the terrace and the hedge at the bottom of the garden a gendarme stood sentinel at the edge of a round flower-bed. There were three little brown mounds on the surface of the bed, as though a mole had been at work; and the thought of that industrious animal became to Julius Ricardo a reproach and an inspiration. He took a sheet of paper from the stand to make a table for his own guidance. He drew a dividing line down the middle of the sheet, set the facts, so far as he knew them, upon the left-hand side, and his questions and suspicions upon the right. After half an hour of laborious breathing and deep cogitation, he had produced the following compendium; upon the top of which he wrote the rather pretentious legend: “The Affair at the Chateau Suvlac” — so:

  THE AFFAIR AT THE CHATEAll SUVLAC

  (i) A crime has been committed. For young ladies do not stab themselves to the heart, cut off their hands, put themselves into baskets, and throw basket, themselves and all into a river unaided. This is true. (2) The victim is a young woman, Evelyn Devenish, who is or has been married, but wears no wedding-ring.

  Important to discover at the earliest moment Evelyn D.’s antecedents.

  (3) So far, no motive for the crime has been discovered or suggested.

  (4) So far, the severed hand has not been found.

  Question (i): Why was the hand severed after death? Or at all?

  (5) Another guest at the. Chateau Suvlac disappeared upon the same night, an American girl, Joyce Whipple, and a gold bracelet which she was wearing was found in E.D.’s basket.

  A very unusual occurrence. Question (2): Was J. W. present when E. D was basketed, and did the bracelet become unfastened and fall unnoticed in the horror of the moment?

  (6) My observation assured me that E. D had a great ill-will towards J. W and would gladly have seen her dead.

  On the face of it, therefore, it would have been more probable that J. W should be murdered by E. D., than E. D by J. W.

  (7) When E. D betrayed by a glance of hatred her feelings towards J. W., Robin Webster was seated close to J. W in a rather caressing attitude.

  (8) When the fact of J.W.’s disappearance became known, Robin Webster uttered a cry of grief and dismay.

  (7) and (8) might have provided a motive for the murder of J. W by E. D., if the two girls were rivals for the young man. But no motive for the murder of E. D by J. W., since J. W was the successful rival.

  (9) Since E. D.’s bed was undisturbed and there was no noise in the house, it looks as if she had left the house and was murdered outside.

  But when? The lights which I saw in the white house on the hill at two o’clock in the morning have been explained by the Juge d’Instruction.

  (10) It appears that Joyce Whipple did not sleep in her room either, and it becomes necessary to consider her position in this case.

  (11) Her first statement to me in London about the letters which she had received from Diana; which, according to Hanaud, may be explained either:

  (a) She wished to prepare me for what was to happen at the Chateau Suvlac, for some purpose of her own;

  (b) She was a hysterical person;

  (c) She was just speaking the truth.

  With regard to (a) Tidon, the Juge d’Instruction, would probably accept it. But he wants a good conviction.

  With regard to (b) no; she was not hysterical.

  With regard to (c) you cannot any longer scoff at telepathy. It is a fact.

  (12) Joyce Whipple is generally held to be a rich American girl. Yet she spoke of herself as Cinderella.

  (13) She might have been kidnapped.

  Why?

  (14) She might have run away.

  Why?

  (15) There remains Diana Tasborough for consideration. She was both astounded and horrified at the murder of E. D and the disappearance of J. W.

  Women criminals are admirable actresses. All police authorities agree.

  (16) Her docility to her aunt showed that she had some great obsession.

  Quite.

  (17) She has a picture over her bed which gave Hanaud an idea.

  Mem. I must see that picture as soon as I can.

  (18) A light was burning in her room at half-past two in the morning. When I knocked upon the glass door it went out extraordinarily quickly.

  Very suspicious.

  (19) In view of the surprising difficulties of the case, judgment must be suspended, But some questions must be borne in mind.

  Yes, eg. (i) Why was Evelyn Devenish’s hand chopped off?

  As Mr. Ricardo wrote those last ineffectual words Hanaud’s voice spoke above his shoulders.

  “So there we are! We suspend the judgment! To be sure. What else can we do when we have no judgment even to suspend? And some questions must be borne in the mind. How very, very true that is.”

  Mr. Ricardo flushe
d and looked up haughtily. “I made these notes solely for my own guidance.”

  “They are there, just as valuable as if they had been made to guide me.”

  “And, quite uninvited, you read them across my shoulder.”

  “Not as well as I could wish,” Hanaud answered imperturbably, as he reached forward and gathered the sheets in his hand. “You permit? But, of course! What a question!”

  Indeed it had been Mr. Ricardo’s intention to present this little summary of his inconclusions to Hanaud at some dramatic moment. For he realized that the inspector of the Surete would need all the help he could get from his friends before he cut to the core of his difficult problem. And he was pleased with his notes. The form of them with the dividing line had a literary flavour. There were some pages of Robinson Crusoe, casting up the “fors” and “againsts” in the same judicial spirit. Nevertheless he was a little nervous as he watched Hanaud reading them. He had been jeered at and trampled upon before very unceremoniously. He was delighted, therefore, to see that his friend read them slowly and with a serious face.

  When he had done, Hanaud folded the sheets and handed them back with a little smile of appreciation.

  “You shall put them in your pocket, and keep them safe, so that no one sees them but you and I. For I tell you, Mr. Ricardo, you almost write down there one most important question.”

  Mr. Ricardo, on the other hand, was conscious that he had written down not one but many important questions, and there was no “almost,” either, about his way of putting them. They were direct, short and pithy — models of questions. But, of course, Hanaud would never admit any really high merit in another. That was very, very far from the habit of his mind. Ricardo was accustomed to make an allowance for this defect in his friend the inspector, and he smiled indulgently.

  “You refer, of course, to the question why Evelyn Devenish’s hand was brutally hacked off after her death.”

  To his surprise, Hanaud shook his head vigorously. “No. That is a question — yes, but it leaps to the eyes that is a question.”

  Mr. Ricardo pulled his notes out of his pocket and studied them thoughtfully.

  “It is, then, the question of Evelyn Devenish’s antecedents,” he remarked, and was wrong again.

  “No. The question you approached was much more subtle than that. As for Madame Devenish’s antecedents — they come under the heading of routine. I think, indeed, we shall learn something definite about them at once — for Mademoiselle Tasborough has recovered from the shock of the bad news which I brought to her, and is good enough to receive us.”

  He unlatched the door between the library and the drawing-room and passed in with Ricardo at his heels. The room, however, was empty, and Hanaud stopped abruptly. The long windows stood open upon the terrace, and Hanaud with his noiseless step approached them and peered cautiously out. He returned to Mr. Ricardo with an odd smile upon his lips.

  “It was just as well that I did not read your notes out aloud, my friend,” he said in a low voice. “We spoke of what? The hand cut off — yes — and Evelyn Devenish’s antecedents — that was all.”

  He was clearly relieved, and now raised his voice a trifle above his usual compass.

  “We shall no doubt find that young lady upon the terrace,” and he stepped out at the window.

  Mr. Ricardo understood Hanaud’s anxiety when he followed him. For Diana was sitting upon a garden seat close by the open window of the library, and not a word which they had spoken, but she must have overheard it. She raised her head, however, without the slightest embarrassment. Though her face was still pale, her manner was collected, and she could even summon up the ghost of a smile. Only her eyes had the unmistakable look which comes with grave illness or immeasurable trouble.

  “I am sorry that I made such an idiot of myself this morning, Monsieur Hanaud,” she said,

  “Oh, mademoiselle, the regrets must come from me. To discover with so harsh a precipitancy that of two great friends one is lying mutilated and dead in a common mortuary, and the other has vanished, would tax anyone of sensibility.”

  Hanaud was speaking with the formality which became his position, but to Mr. Ricardo’s thinking he was repeating the fault for which he apologized. Diana replied with a slight hesitation: “You speak of two great friends, Monsieur Hanaud. But in an affair so serious it is best to be exact. I’ll admit to you that when your assistant told me that the girl who was dead was Evelyn Devenish, I did feel, heartless though it may sound, a considerable relief. For Joyce is one of my very dearest friends.”

  “Who shall blame you, mademoiselle?” Hanaud answered gently. “Let us after all admit that we are human.”

  “Your assistant, monsieur—”

  “Moreau,” Hanaud interposed as she paused.

  “Yes. Monsieur Moreau told me at the same time that you wanted to see me. Won’t you sit down? And you too, of course, Mr. Ricardo.” She turned to him for the first time during this interview, but though her lips counterfeited a faint smile, her eyes as they met his were hard as iron.

  “If I am not in the way,” said Ricardo in some confusion. There was no doubting her hostility. She was putting him down as a busybody who was clinging to the skirts of his beloved detective and poking his nose into matters much too momentous for so inconsiderable a person.

  “It is for Monsieur Hanaud to say who is in the way, and who not,” she answered coldly; and Hanaud came to the unfortunate man’s rescue.

  “Mr. Ricardo has already been of service this morning, in more ways than one,” he said with a gentle remonstrance to which Diana Tasborough made no response whatever.

  The two men drew up a couple of iron garden chairs to Diana’s bench and sat themselves down.

  “Now, mademoiselle,” Hanaud began briskly. “This young Madame Devenish was not, I gather, a great friend of yours, but she was your guest here, and no doubt you will know something of her history.”

  “Of course,” she returned. But she was silent for at least a minute, looking at Hanaud with speculation and at Mr. Ricardo as though he did not exist, and so back again to Hanaud.

  “I want you to spare her memory as much as you can,” Diana resumed in a sudden outburst. “She had of late years a most unhappy life. That indeed is why I asked her to stay with me this year at Suvlac. She was the daughter of Dennis Blackett, a financier of extremely wide interests and enormous wealth, a very good friend, I believe, and like so many men who are very good friends, a remorse-less enemy. I don’t think Evelyn had much chance from the beginning.”

  “He hated her?” Hanaud asked.

  “On the contrary, he doted on her. Her mother died when she was six or seven; she was an only child, and she grew up amongst governesses and servants who had to obey every whim of hers or lose their jobs. Dennis Blackett made an idol of her. He named his yacht after her, and his crack filly and his prize Jersey cow, and an orchid of his own creation, and whilst she was still a child, she presided at his table. He flattered her beauty to her face. Nothing that she did was anything but uncommon; nothing that she said was anything but witty. And that wasn’t the end of his adoration. There was something fantastic in it — oh, even that doesn’t express what I mean! There was something abnormal in it. Yes, Dennis Blackett, with his hard city head, was silly in contact with Evelyn. I’ll give you an instance. I saw it happen myself, for I once stayed in his house—” Diana broke off suddenly. “But you want, of course, to hear about the marriage, not about these trifles.”

  “The marriage afterwards — yes,” Hanaud pleaded earnestly. “But these details first, if you please. You call them trifles, mademoiselle. I don’t. For just such trifles build character. And how shall we reach the truth in a case so obscure, unless we understand something of the people concerned in it, of the what — they — have — been which has made them what — they — are.”

  Ricardo had seldom seen Hanaud so eager, so insinuatingly insistent as he was at this moment. He sat leaning with his elbows
upon his knees, his strong face and alert posture both claiming Diana’s narrative. “The instance, if you please.” Diana nodded her consent and resumed. “Well, then, here it is. Dennis Blackett had a great house in Morven on the Sound of Mull. The house had a high staircase with broad shallow treads all in dark gleaming oak. It was a fancy of his — no, fancy’s altogether too light a word — it was a passion of his to see Evelyn, dressed in her prettiest clothes, step daintily down this staircase. He would stand at the bottom of the stairs in the hall, and correct her just like a dancing-master if she stepped awkwardly or made an uneasy gesture, and send her back to the landing to begin all over again. Of course she made a very pretty picture, slim and fresh and young, glistening in her lovely clothes against the dark background, but the whole scene made me — what shall I say? — uncomfortable. It struck me as all wrong. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Hanaud replied.

  “And you understand too, then, that Evelyn must have been an angel with silver wings if she hadn’t grown up vain, utterly self-willed and ready to repay his folly in the way such follies are repaid. Evelyn’s twenty-first birthday fell in the month of August. Dennis Blackett brought a great party of his friends up to Morven to celebrate it. For a week before her birthday the house was packed. They shot grouse by day, danced at night and kept high festival. I was there, and I could hardly imagine a man so absurdly happy and so absurdly proud as Dennis Blackett. Until the morning of Evelyn’s birthday. A message was brought to each one of his guests at breakfast-time; no one saw him; and by the afternoon the house was empty but for him. Late on the night before Evelyn and Julian Devenish, a young man who owed everything to Blackett, had slipped down to the small harbour of the Sound, sailed across in a little sloop to Oban and taken the first train to London, where they were married.”

  “And this Monsieur Blackett never forgave that treachery,” Hanaud interposed.

  “Never. I told you he was a relentless enemy. He swept Evelyn out of his life altogether. He remained alone in his great house in Morven until the late autumn. Then he came down to London, and methodically set to work to ruin Devenish. Oh, it wasn’t much and it didn’t take long. If you dealt with Devenish, you see, you didn’t deal with Dennis Blackett. If you were interested in any of Devenish’s concerns, you were liable to find your shares knocked about from day to day until they went to nothing. The little swansdown pill-box of a house in Mayfair went piecemeal. One of a row of red cottages at Surbiton took its place. Then that went in its turn and three rooms at Sydenham had to make a home for the girl of the shimmering frocks and the oak staircase at Morven. There were quarrels without end, of course, each one blaming the other. Within a year Devenish was stripped bare and blew his brains out.”