A subtle change came over Hanaud. His confidence vanished. His voice proceeded to shake with anxiety. “A precaution which I omit?” he cried despairingly. It seemed that he would tear his hair out by the roots. “Tell met I am in the dust at your feet!”
Mr. Ricardo smiled graciously.
“There is no need for any heroics. The omission can tonight no doubt be repaired. The moment of forgetfulness might have happened to anyone. I am, of course, speaking of the patron and the crew of the gabare which left the tiny dock at Suvlac against the tide hours before the appropriate time of casting off.”
The liveliest disappointment chased from Hanaud’s face the eager desire to repair a fault. He shook his head reproachfully. He spoke dejectedly. “My dear friend — the gabare — and is that all? But, of course — of course — the patron and his two sons have been locked up in separate cells ever since their arrival in Bordeaux yesterday evening. They will not even be able to drive Le Petit Mousse in the Municipal Gardens on Sunday afternoon. You will come with me?”
Mr. Ricardo, considerably abashed, answered with humility.
“Yes. A little moment” — he was rather taken with Domenique Pouchette’s favourite phrase— “a little moment to wash the hands.”
“Two little moments,” replied Hanaud, “and you will order perhaps your car. I am a snob. Yes. I prefer to ride in a Rolls-Royce. Besides, it goes very fast, without seeming to go fast at all — and — and — we shall have need to go fast and far tonight!”
There was a thrill in Hanaud’s voice, a gleam in his eyes which dispersed in an instant Mr. Ricardo’s ill-humour. He had been inclined to be touchy over this matter of the gabare. He took it rather as an offence that Hanaud had remembered to lay his hands upon it and its crew. The gabare was his contribution to the elucidation of the case, and he resented the fact that the contribution had already been made by someone else. But Hanaud was obviously up on the tips of his toes. He was going to bowl the wickets down. He had the measure of his enemies. He was to be swift and terrible.
“Yes,” cried Ricardo in an enthusiasm, running to the door and ordering his car and running back again. “The Rolls-Royce is yours. You shall give the orders to my chauffeur. You shall own it. We go fast and far tonight!”
“But not at once, my friend. In an hour and a half at the ‘Golden Pheasant.’ Even then he will wait,” Hanaud replied. “For in this we shall be different from Domenique Pouchette. We shall not close our offices tonight.”
CHAPTER 18
HANAUD DINES
THE SMALL HOTEL at which Hanaud put up was on the edge of the spacious Place des Quinconces and opposite to the great white memorial to the Girondins. A restaurant occupied the ground floor and Hanaud and Mr. Ricardo sat down by the open window. Outside, a few marble-topped tables and iron chairs were ranged upon the pavement beneath an awning, but two men only were drinking an aperitif at one of them, and they were out of earshot.
“Let us follow their example,” said Hanaud, after he had ordered dinner. “Some vermouth, I think. Yes, I promise you we shall eat well here.”
He tore open a new bright blue packet of Maryland cigarettes and smoked one of the black tubes of tobacco contentedly. Hanaud was not perhaps as marvellous as he invariably, his assistant Moreau generally, and Mr. Ricardo sometimes thought him to be. But he had one quality without which greatness is seldom found. He could disburden himself of all his anxieties the moment there came an interval in his labours. As the clock struck he closed his book and was in the playing-fields. He leaned back in his chair, smoothing out his mind and laving it in the peace of that vast quincunx of trees and of the river running red towards the sunset. Mr. Ricardo, however, had not the professional mind. He must always be busy, and the river with its load of great ships only recalled to him the pastoral reaches beyond the city and set before his eyes a big wicker basket gently rocking nearer and nearer to a bank of grass.
“You must tell me where we go to-night after we have dined,” he cried. “Not to know is more than I can bear.”
Hanaud came out of an abstraction very slowly. “Where do we go?” he repeated, with an air of profound astonishment. He looked anxiously at Ricardo, reached out a hand and felt his pulse. “You ask me that now that all this cloud of mystery is clearing away? There can be but the one place.”
“You can keep it to yourself if you want to, just as I like to keep my pulse to myself,” Mr. Ricardo rejoined sulkily, as he wrenched his hand away.
“Hanaud was wrong,” the detective exclaimed with his detestable habit of speaking of himself in the third person. “Hanaud should have recollected that he was in the proud position of being Mr. Ricardo’s host. Instead he must be the cat with the mouse — not nice — no!” He saw indignation gathering on Mr. Ricardo’s brow at the use of so objectionable a simile, and hastened on: “I tell you where we go. We go to the Chateau Mirandol and we interrupt the Vicomte in the act of writing a most interesting paper on the esoteric rites of the Rosicrucians, to be read to the young ladies of Bordeaux. And then we ask him very politely to show us that upper room where, two nights ago, the lights blazed to so late an hour.”
The tone of Hanaud’s voice more even than his words opened a tiny window in his companion’s mind. He saw again the long row of lights blazing across the sleeping country. What was going on in that big room? What strange ceremony was being conducted? For him too little pieces of the puzzle began to fall into their places — the theft and the return of the priest’s vestments, the priest’s obstinate strange silence, Hanaud’s visit this morning to the Archiepiscopal Palace.
“Then you think — ?” he exclaimed, and sat staring at his friend, on the brink, as he felt, of some dreadful revelation.
Hanaud nodded his head. “What took place two nights ago took place in that long upper room.”
“The murder of Evelyn Devenish?”
“Yes.”
“And of — no, I won’t believe that!”
Hanaud’s face grew dark and savage. He raised his hand and let it fall again. “About that I can tell you no more than you can tell yourself. For I don’t know! I don’t understand!” he cried in a sudden exasperation; and he sat with gloomy eyes fixed upon the table-cloth and his big face working. After a moment or two he leaned forward and whispered: “We two shall make a little prayer each in his own heart, that the brave Joyce Whipple shall tell us all we want to know with her own lips before the morning comes.”
He drew quickly back as the proprietor approached the table with his little dishes of radishes and black olives. “Come! Let us eat! We shall be fit for nothing unless we do.”
Hanaud had prophesied truly. One ate well at the little restaurant of the “Golden Pheasant,” though the only waiter was the proprietor in a tweed suit, and each step that he took sounded upon bare boards. Mr. Ricardo realized that he had eaten nothing that day except a very small luncheon at the “Chapon Fin”; whilst Hanaud had all the appearance of having eaten nothing for a year.
“This lobster Cardinal is delicious,” Mr. Ricardo observed, and very regrettably with his mouth full. He was already taking a rosier anticipation of the night’s adventure.
“It is not so bad,” Hanaud agreed. “There is a caneton de la presse to follow with a salad.”
“Admirable,” said Ricardo.
The proprietor brought tenderly to the table a black bottle in a wicker cradle, and laid it down as though it were a baby and he its loving nurse. “I thought that it would be appropriate on this night of all nights,” said Hanaud, “if we drank a bottle of old Mirandol. It is a second growth, to be sure, but according to many judges should be classed with the first. You shall tell me!”
Yes, it was Mr. Ricardo’s turn to tell. He was on his own ground. The red wines of the Medoc! Not for nothing had he travelled once a year from Bordeaux to Arcachon! Hanaud tipped a tablespoonful first into his own glass and then filled Mr. Ricardo’s. Mr. Ricardo beamed. Good manners and good wine — could there be
a more desirable conjunction? He held the glass up to the light. The wine was ruby-red, ruby-clear. He lowered it to his nostrils and savoured its aroma. “Exquisite,” he said. Then religiously he drank of it. “Adorable!” he cried; and drank again. He swam upwards into rosy clouds. That little affair at Suvlac would be settled in no time. “A wine for two friends to drink in a rapturous silence by the side of an historic square in la belle France.”
It was a pity that he must end his flight of poesy with so dreadful a banality as “la belle France.” But that was his way, and Hanaud took the compliment to himself as though he was la belle France all in one. And that was Hanaud’s way too. “The cellar here is not so bad,” he remarked. Ricardo drank again, and after much rolling of the wine upon his tongue, put down the glass with a vigour which threatened to break the stem.
“It is ‘93,” he declared; and Hanaud bowed in admiration of the subtle palate of his friend. Oh, certainly, Ricardo reflected, stretching out his legs beneath, the table, with the great detective of France to begin with, and a friend who could announce right off the year of a ‘93 claret to help him, the mystery of Suvlac was as good as solved, the criminals practically in the dock.
“To the widow Chicholle,” he said, leaning forward cunningly and holding up his replenished glass.
“But certainly,” Hanaud returned. “To the widow Chicholle!”
The word, however, brought to him no gaiety. It brought him a black mood. He declined into a vein of self-disparagement very unusual with him. “I think myself a very fine fellow, of course,” he said, “and so do you.”
“I don’t quite agree that I think myself a very fine fellow,” Mr. Ricardo objected.
“I expressed myself ill,” said Hanaud. “I meant that you think me a very fine fellow.”
“I am not always quite sure about that,” Mr. Ricardo answered upon reflection.
“No? There are times when we all fall below our true selves. But you recover, my friend, very, very quickly. For a minute there may be a doubt and then I do a little thing and at once you say — oh, with such a relief!— ‘That Hanaud! What a prodigy!’ But, even so” — and he shrugged his shoulders— “how often when I am in a tangle a little accident sets me on the road. The little accidents — yes — they happen. To know them when you see them, to catch them, to use them — that is half my business. But, of course, you must be always alert for them.”
It was Hanaud’s old doctrine many a time pronounced. Chance was the most willing of goddesses, but the most jealous. She demanded a swift mind and a deadly hand. She showed her face for the fraction of a second, just the time to breathe her message, and the clouds closed again. It was your fault if your ears were not quick to catch the words.
“Here’s Jeanne Corisot, for instance. You know something about these women, of course, a man of the world like you. A few of them marry, a good many of them put their money away in a safe place, but the rest when their youth is over” — and he made a gesture as though he were dropping a stone into a pool. “They have no friends to inquire for them. Some other woman looking round a cabaret at two o’clock in the morning may say carelessly: ‘The little Fifi! I have not seen her for a month. It is curious.’ But that will be all. The little Fifi has gone into outer darkness. She is nobody’s business. She will die in the gutter, possibly is dead already. Granted?”
“Yes,” the man of the world agreed.
“Very well,” Hanaud continued. “Jeanne Corisot was saved from a similar oblivion by just one circumstance. Her parents, a couple of old peasants owning a little farm near Fontainebleau, had been living for years upon Jeanne’s presents. Each season, you see, there arrived a little more money to buy a little more land and to stock it afterwards, and every year there was a ceremonial visit of Jeanne and her lover. They came down in their car, took their luncheon in the parlour with the antimacassars, and after the luncheon sat outside in the porch while one by one the family passed them in a procession, each one, you understand, receiving a few kind words and more than a few kind bank-notes. Ah, you must not look shocked, my friend! The family Corisot is not the only one. Take it from me!”
Then a year passed without presents. There was no day of ceremonial visit. Consternation reigned in the family Corisot. Was Jeanne turning her back upon her poor relations? No, Jeanne was a good girl. A letter with much heavy breathing and much labour of gnarled fingers was written to her. It returned in due course through the Dead Letter office. Her princeling had sailed back to the East. Jeanne Corisot had disappeared — and with her her money and her jewels.
“Now I come to the one circumstance,” Hanaud continued. “Jeanne Corisot had made a will sharing out her possessions amongst her family, and that will was safe in the walnut bureau in the room of the antimacassars. All that treasure mustn’t be lost, you see. No! Steps must be taken. So a deputation from the family Corisot, consisting of the old man and one son, knocked at the door of the Surete Generale. The case came to me, and I thought it would be easy. Jeanne, you see, was a careful wench, and to prevent mistakes and trouble, what particular pieces of her jewellery were to go to each member of the family was set out in that will very clearly. Domenique Pouchette gave you an idea of the sort of steps we take, but we never heard a word. If any rogue had got hold of those jewels, he was lying very quietly on the top of them. But after a time we got a line upon Jeanne herself. She had come to Bordeaux in the winter. So far we traced her, and then she disappeared again. I told you yesterday that I was at Bordeaux on quite other business than the Chateau Suvlac affair. Jeanne Corisot was my business, and the first news I have had of her was given to me tonight by Domenique Pouchette. But I have learnt other things. For instance, three women of the town, as the phrase has it, besides Jeanne Corisot, have disappeared in Bordeaux during the last year.”
He lowered his voice as he spoke and leaned forward out of the window to make sure that no one could overhear him.
“Three?” Mr. Ricardo exclaimed.
“Yes,” Hanaud answered with a nod. “Three of the kind I have described. Women no one would give a thought to, if they did disappear. And I am wondering whether the widow Chicholle has come at night to the apartment of Monsieur Pouchette to sell him cheap any of their little trinkets.”
Mr. Ricardo leaned back in his chair, all the exhilaration of his dinner quite sobered out of him. The disappearance of the three women — the furtive visits paid after dark to a dealer in precious stones by a woman with an evil name — the certainty that one, at all events, of Jeanne Corisot’s jewels was offered by her for sale — these facts gave a very sinister significance to her possession of Evelyn Devenish’s necklace.
“That necklace was not stolen,” said Mr. Ricardo. “For it was bought by Pouchette nine days before Evelyn Devenish’s death. She must have missed it, had it been stolen. She parted with it of her own accord, that afternoon when we met in the Cave of the Mummies. For a price, then — yes, for a price”; and again he saw the drawing-room of Suvlac and the flare of hatred in Evelyn Devenish’s eyes as Robin Webster leaned over Joyce Whipple’s chair. But then — and he was swept back into the old circle. It was Evelyn Devenish who had paid the price!
Mr. Ricardo looked across the table towards Hanaud, who was smoking a cigar as black as one of his cigarettes.
“You think Joyce Whipple is in the Chateau Mirandol.”
Hanaud would not answer.
“You suspected it yesterday when you were so careful to tell everyone that the neighbourhood was surrounded by police.”
Hanaud would not admit as much. “I was taking my precautions. I had no right then to do more. You will remember that I uttered another warning.”
“Against a second murder — yes. But desperate people don’t heed warnings.”
Hanaud replied with a deliberation which suggested that he was seeking rather to convince himself than his companion. “Mirandol knows that I suspect his house. I visited him to show him that I did. I spoke of the wheel marks i
n the road to show him that I did. I dropped the mask in the road to show him that I did. And his trembling hands acknowledged that he knew it. They dare not commit another crime in that house now. If that young lady is there, they will try to get her away. They will try tonight.”
“They will take her to the river,” cried Ricardo, and Hanaud shot the queerest glance at him, and shivered.
The movement of fear, so intense, so utterly strange in just that one man, threw Ricardo into a panic. “We ought to go at once,” he exclaimed, starting up. “We waste invaluable minutes over the delicacies of the table,” and in disgust he pushed away his empty glass of fine champagne.
“You are wrong, my friend,” said Hanaud gravely. He seemed to cast about for excuses. “It is barely eight o’clock. If we start in your car now, we shall reach the Chateau Mirandol before half-past nine. Too early! The neighbourhood will be awake. We should simply give them warning that we are at their heels.”
They spoke of “they” and “them,” Ricardo not daring to assign names, Hanaud, with all the spirit of his profession in his blood, maligning no one of whose guilt he was not sure. Ricardo recognized that the true reason for their delay had not been given to him, and lit another cigarette. But the dusk was changing swiftly into darkness. Beneath the great lime trees across the road the chauffeur switched on the lights of the car; and marvelling at his companion’s patience, Mr. Ricardo twitched in every limb.
Then an obstacle occurred to him which would surely spoil all their plans. Yesterday Hanaud had made clear to the Vicomte de Mirandol that he suspected that long white house of his. But he had no right to do more. He had confessed it.
“You had no authority to enter the house yesterday?” he asked.
“None,” replied Hanaud.
“Do you think that de Mirandol, who did not invite you into it yesterday, will be more likely to do so tonight?”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 105