“And even that wasn’t enough,” Hanaud added. There was a note of reluctant admiration in his voice. He lived in a contact so close with the shifty volatile mind of the criminal, that he could not but respect thoroughness, even if it were a thoroughness in cruelty.
“No, that wasn’t enough,” Diana agreed. “Evelyn wrote to her father. She was absolutely destitute. She was answered by a clerk and a typewritten letter. Every quarter, if she applied for it, she would receive one hundred and twenty- five pounds for the rest of her life. That was three years ago. Evelyn could live cheaper on the Continent than in England. She went abroad and I met her, for the first time since her birthday party in Scotland, this summer at Biarritz.”
“She was — you will forgive the question — alone?”
“Terribly alone.”
“And you came upon her in the Casino, I suppose?”
Diana seemed to be upon the point of saying “Yes”; but she reflected for a moment and then answered: “No. Let me seel It certainly wasn’t in the Casino. I think that it was upon the golf-links. She had some lodging in the cheaper part of the town, and I asked her to stay with me and then brought her on here.”
“Mademoiselle, that was generous,” Hanaud observed with a little bow. “Now you shall tell me about your real friend, the American, Joyce Whipple.”
Diana Tasborough threw up her hands in a gesture of despondency. “It is curious, Monsieur Hanaud, but I know much less about my real friend than I do about my acquaintance. That she and her sister are alone in the world, that they came over from America two years ago, that they have an oil-well on their land in California, that the sister married recently and returned to America — the whole world knows as much as I do. Joyce was always very reticent about herself — even to me. She was full of enthusiasm for the things she was doing and seeing over here, and the people whom she met. But about herself and her home, you couldn’t get her to talk of them.”
“Yes, that is curious,” Hanaud agreed, but he did not press Diana with any more questions. He rose from his chair and spoke gratefully. “I must thank you, mademoiselle. What you have told me will be of the greatest help. I make a little recommendation to you in return. Telegrams must be sent both to America and to this inexorable Monsieur Blackett—” He broke off from his recommendation to interject— “Do you know, I have a great sympathy with that stern man? All that devotion, foolish no doubt but frank, and for reward first the treachery, then this miserable end. It will be right that he should hear the bad news from you, before the newspapers tell it to him. It is the only bright spot, eh? that at Suvlac we are far from the newspapers. I recommend, therefore, that mademoiselle put herself into her car and drive to Pauillac or whatever telegraph office is nearest, and send off the messages herself. It will give mademoiselle something to do.”
Diana looked at him with unbelieving eyes. Then a light shone in her eyes and the blood rushed in a torrent into her face. “Ah, you are happy that I ask you to go upon this errand,” Hanaud observed with a smile.
“Happy — no. Glad — yes — immensely glad,” she answered in a sort of eager confusion. “To sit here useless on this terrace watching the Gironde, and that sentinel by the flower-bed, with one’s hands idle and one’s thoughts going round and round in a circle! Oh, terrible! Thank you! I’ll get my hat”; and she sprang up, restored to life and animation, and ran off through the open window into the drawing-room.
Mr. Ricardo had strolled away to the edge of the terrace occupied with a little struggle of his own. He was quite aware of Diana’s dislike for and disdain of him, and was inclined to think the worse of her in consequence. On the other hand he was a susceptible person and her immense relief at being given something to do moved him. He was thus in two minds whether to warn Hanaud with some such subtle question as, “Are you wise to let her go off without a gendarme in the car to take care of her?” or to congratulate him upon his delicate consideration. Mr. Ricardo’s higher nature, however, got the upper hand of him; and as Hanaud joined him, he said encouragingly: “That was very thoughtful of you, my friend.”
“Yes, yes,” Hanaud answered. “It was very thoughtful of me.”
“The drive in the fresh air will do her a world of good.”
“Yes, yes, and we shall have the house to ourselves, and that will do us a world of good too,” said Hanaud with a grin.
Mr. Ricardo turned round with a start. So that was the aim which had prompted all this show of delicate feeling! But he said nothing in criticism of this duplicity. He stood on the contrary with his mouth open. For he was looking now into the drawing-room and he saw a man there talking to Diana. The man stood with his back to the long window and well within the shadow of the room, so that it was easy to mistake him. Mr. Ricardo, however, had not a shred of doubt.
“So, after all, he is here,” he cried in a low voice.
“Who?” Hanaud asked, swinging round towards the window.
“Why, look! The examining judge, Monsieur Tidon.”
“Oh!” said Hanaud slowly in a dry voice. “So that is Monsieur Tidon, is it?” and at that moment the man turned round.
It was not the examining judge at all, but merely Mr. Robin Webster, the manager of the vineyard. He came to the window.
“Monsieur Hanaud, if you don’t want me I’ll drive with Miss Tasborough into Pauillac. The work at the vats can go on without me. There are overseers of experience. It is true that with my hand crippled like this,” and he glanced down at his arm supported in a sling, “I shall not be of much use for driving. But after the shock which Miss Tasborough had this morning, I’m not very easy about her driving herself alone. I want no more tragedies in the Chateau Suvlac.”
“I understand that very well, Monsieur Webster,” Hanaud replied. Nothing could have been more cordial and kindly than his manner. “By all means drive that young lady into Pauillac and help her with her telegrams. And for yourself. You will not think me guilty of an impertinence. No. But I heard your little cry of distress this morning. You shall not lose heart, hein? We shall try to find for you your little friend with the charming name,” and he clapped Robin Webster on the shoulder heartily.
“I shall not lose heart,” Webster asserted. But his face was convulsed with a spasm of pain and grief. “But, oh, be quick! Be quick!” he cried in a low voice. “We are all near to breaking-point in this house.” He recovered himself in a moment, and coloured as a man will when he is caught in a display of emotion.
“I am afraid, too, that your wounded hand is giving you a great deal of pain,” said Hanaud gravely.
“It throbs, of course, as such wounds will. But it is only for a day or two. If that were the sum of our troubles here, we should not think much of them,” Robin Webster replied with a shrug of the shoulders, and turned to another topic. “You will perhaps speak to Monsieur Le Commissaire Herbesthal, so that we may take out the car from the garage.”
Hanaud stepped back in astonishment. “But certainly I will, although there is no need. Monsieur Herbesthal will not interfere with you. You go of course where you will, and Mademoiselle Tasborough too.”
He hurried into the house and to the room in the wing where the Commissaire sat making his report. He was back again upon the terrace with an agility which quite belied his lamentations over his age, and found Mr. Ricardo deep in thought.
“I have been reflecting,” he said. “I am obviously unwelcome to Miss Tasborough. It is right that I have my bags packed and return to Bordeaux.”
But Hanaud would not hear a word of any such conduct. “Listen! This is not a moment for the dignities! No — I detain you, I, Hanaud. I will make myself clear upon that point to Mademoiselle Tasborough. Let the inestimable Thomson put one of your paper collars in your bag, and I arrest you very severely. You shall pack your sensibilities into the bag, but nothing more. That is understood. One paper collar — one arrest. For you are of use to me — do you appreciate that?” He used a tone of wonder which was quite natural
and sincere. Yes, he was astonished that Mr. Ricardo could help him. But there it was. He looked his companion over and saw nothing which could explain the remarkable fact.
“Yes,” he repeated, “Hanaud is actually helped by this Mr. Ricardo.”
Mr. Ricardo smiled modestly. He was immensely relieved that he was not to be allowed to retire from this tragic embroglio where every hour brought its new thrill, its new mystification. “Once more,” he said to himself with a lifting heart, “I chase criminals to their doom. They are cubbing in the Midlands. Let them cub!”
“Help you is a big word,” he said with a totally false diffidence. “I have had the good fortune to reveal a few strange facts to you—”
“More than that,” said Hanaud, and he himself fell into a troubled muse.
Mr. Ricardo was buoyant.
“More than that?” he exclaimed. “For instance?”
“For instance — yes,” and Hanaud came out of his muse. He slipped his arm through Ricardo’s and bent his eyes closely upon him. “For instance, what made you mistake just now the unhappy Robin Webster for the Juge d’Instruction? They are both more or less of the same build to be sure. The hair of one is growing a little grey; the hair of the other is white, though, again, it would not look so very white in the shadow of the room. Yes, yes. But you sprang at your conjecture very confidently. You clung to it. You would have it so. There in that room was Monsieur Tidon. Now, why were you so sure? Can you tell me? Think well!” and he shook Ricardo’s arm that he might think the better.
Mr. Ricardo went over in his mind this and that detail. Yes, undoubtedly he had been very sure. Clothes? No. Monsieur Tidon had worn a black coat, and Robin Webster a — a — a — brown one. Certainly not a black one. Why then had he been so sure?
“No,” he said at last. “I cannot tell you why.”
“Yet nothing more illuminating to me has happened since this morning than that cry of yours,” Hanaud continued. “For without that cry I should not have seen—”
“What?”
Hanaud wrinkled up his nose in a grimace. “What I did see. I tell you, my friend. In this case you are the germ-carrier. I get the disease and you give it to me without knowing what you are doing.”
Mr. Ricardo drew his arm sharply away. “That is a most unseemly metaphor,” he said, and stopped. For Hanaud was not listening to him. His hand was raised, his head inclined towards the house. The silence was broken by the throb and whine of a motor-car.
“They have gone,” cried Hanaud. “Let us be quick.”
CHAPTER 10
THREE ROOMS
HANAUD SWEPT THROUGH the drawing-room into the hall, where Moreau his assistant was sitting. He spoke an order over his shoulder without pausing in his walk.
“Bring the keys, Moreau,” and with Moreau and Ricardo following behind him, he turned to the left and at the end of the passage again to the right, into the wing where Mr. Ricardo slept. It was in the middle of this wing that the Commissaire Herbesthal had installed himself. Hanaud opened the door.
“Monsieur Le Commissaire, I propose now to visit the bedrooms of these two young ladies.”
Monsieur Le Commissaire rose at once. “I am at your disposal.”
Evelyn Devenish had occupied a room in the same wing but nearer to the back of the house. Moreau led the way to it and taking a key from his pocket unlocked the door. Hanaud stood in the doorway blocking the entrance.
“There is little, it seems, to help us here,” he said.
Behind him Mr. Ricardo dodged about, seeking in vain for a clear view. But he got the impression of a room tidy and neat as though the housemaid had just left it. The window was closed and looked upon the avenue of dark trees. The coverlet of grey silk was spread over the bed. Every chair was in its place. Hanaud crossed the room to the window. It was a window on the English pattern and the sashes were not bolted. He lifted the lower one and looked out. The terrace was prolonged round the side of the house for a full quarter of the length of the wing, and the flags stretched beneath the window to the edge of the avenue of dark trees. Upon their dry surface there was not a mark. Hanaud closed the window again and turned back into the room. There was a wardrobe in which some dresses were hung, and a chest of drawers filled with the more intimate details of the toilet. Hanaud turned towards Ricardo.
“You remember perhaps the colour of the dress Madame Devenish wore last night?”
“It was green.”
“Do you see it here?” Hanaud asked, standing by the open wardrobe.
“No.”
“We shall ring for Marianne.”
Hanaud rang the bell, and whilst he waited examined a little writing- table near the window, on which stood a blotting-pad, an inkstand with a tray of pens and a small despatch-case. The blotting-pad was as clean as the flags outside the window. The pens had the rusty look of pens which had not been used for many a long day. Hanaud opened the despatch-case. It held a few small receipted bills from shops in Biarritz, and a cheque-book on a London bank. Hanaud looked at the counterfoils. A few cheques had been drawn to “self” for small amounts. Hanaud replaced everything in its old position and smiled ruefully at Mr. Ricardo.
“Not a letter from a friend! It is true! That young lady was lonely and poor. She paid for that flight across the water on the eve of her birthday.”
A dressing-table stood beneath a pendant of electric light, and this was the only piece of furniture in the room which showed the least disarrangement. The lid of the big glass powder-bowl was off, the hair brushes, backed with tortoiseshell and set with Evelyn’s maiden initials E.B., in gold, were one here one there. A hare’s foot lay dropped at random; a tiny pot of dry rouge was uncovered; a pencil of lip-stick had not been sheathed. Hanaud nodded his head and pursed his lips as he took note of this disarray. Then he turned towards the door almost before Marianne had opened it.
“Marianne,” he asked, “can you tell me what clothes are missing from this poor woman’s wardrobe?”
Marianne shrugged her shoulders. “That should not be difficult. She had not so many, the poor lamb!”; and of all the inappropriate expressions which Mr. Ricardo had ever heard, that word “lamb” as applied to a creature of passions and strong hate like Evelyn Devenish, seemed to him the worst. It was magnificent in its absurdity.
“There is missing, monsieur, the dress which madame wore last evening,” said Marianne, as she felt along the hanging row of clothes, “and a cloak.”
“Ah!” Hanaud exclaimed. “A cloak!”
“Yes, monsieur, a cloak of brown satin, warmly lined with white ermine and with a big collar and cuffs and border of white ermine too. It was a cloak of madame’s other days. For very sure, she could not have afforded so beautiful a wrap today.”
“Thank you,” said Hanaud. He cast one final look about the room and added: “We will now visit the room of mademoiselle the American. For very likely, Marianne, you can help us there too.”
Marianne threw up her hands. “For Mademoiselle Whipple, my good gentleman! That is a very different thing! She goes from here to America, so she has everything here. If you are fond of fine clothes, you shall see them, I promise you. And boxes besides which have never been unlocked. Oh, la, la! And shoes and stockings! And scarves and cloaks! Oh, you like wonderful clothes, my gentleman. For me, I tell you frankly, I have no very high idea of men who run here and there to see ladies’ clothes.”
If ever there was a lamb, Mr. Ricardo reflected, that lamb was Hanaud of the Surety Generale of Paris. Marianne stood with her arms akimbo, wilfully misunderstanding the help she was asked to give. She resented in every fibre this invasion of the Chateau Suvlac by the police. She had seen her beloved young mistress struck down, as if by a merciless fist. Mr. Ricardo wondered whether behind all this violence there was not a fear of whither this inquiry would lead. She affected to frown upon the burly Hanaud as though he were some hopeless decadent. Hanaud, however, was meekness itself, so that the Commissaire, who was red in
the face with outraged dignity, could not believe his eyes or ears.
“It is because I wish to see mademoiselle wearing once more her pretty frocks that I ask you to show me them, Marianne,” he said; but it seemed that Marianne knew better, for she turned to the door with a disdainful toss of her head and strode back along the corridor past the front door again and turned down the passage towards the turret.
A door faced her, and in the corner at the angle was a second door a good deal narrower, with panels of ground glass in the upper part of it. This door Marianne unlatched and drew open. A narrow spiral stone staircase constructed in the thickness of the wall wound upwards. Marianne ascended it to a small landing and halted in front of another door. On this a sheet of note-paper was fixed with a pin. It read:
MARIANNE — Je vous prie de ne pas me reveiller Le matin.
Hanaud asked of Marianne, “Is that mademoiselle’s handwriting?”
“Yes, monsieur. I give the letters to the postman. That is the writing of mademoiselle.”
“No doubt,” Hanaud agreed.
Moreau produced another key and unlocked the door, and the whole party followed Hanaud into a large room with one wide window which overlooked the garden and the broad water of the Gironde. The window stood open and Hanaud paused at it. The tide had turned again and was running seawards, so that the breast of the river was sprinkled with little ships at anchor, their sails all furled and their sterns towards distant Bordeaux. The gold of a September afternoon painted the lovely country. In the furrows between the vines the peasants stooped and straightened their backs and stooped again; and for a moment or two the contrast between the peace outside and the mystery which haunted this room held everyone in a spell.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 96