Complete Works of a E W Mason
Page 113
This was the last extract to which Hanaud called Mr. Ricardo’s attention. He took back the copies of the letters and, replacing them in his portfolio, locked it.
“So there’s the history of this crime up to the point where Joyce Whipple begins her story,” he said. “Evelyn Devenish demanding the murder of Joyce Whipple under the threat of a complete exposure; Diana Tasborough in a maze of fear and excitement; Robin Webster at his wits’ ends, desiring Joyce as he had never desired anyone, and solving his dilemma as he thought by one swift blow which would implicate everyone, you understand — Diana, the Judge, Cassandre de Mirandol. Not one would be able to lift a finger against him. Not one but must conspire to bury that crime amongst the mysteries which have baffled the police. Yes, and he would have succeeded — but for the audacity and the devotion of your little friend, Joyce Whipple.”
He stood up as he ended his speech and reached for his hat. Mr. Ricardo, however, did not move. He looked about the room rather sadly.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I had a hope that Diana, somehow, would be found quite outside the crime. But since she was here upon that night — here in this room all ablaze with light—” He did not finish the sentence. But, in his turn, he stood up and took one last look about the room. His eyes met the eyes of the image upon the wall, and now could meet them. Hanaud’s hand fell upon his shoulder.
“I shall put your mind at ease,” he said gravely. “Diana Tasborough was not here upon that night. It was I who told her of the murder of Evelyn Devenish. Let us go!”
He locked the door of the conference room behind him and handed the key to the sergeant in charge.
CHAPTER 26
M TO O INCLUSIVE
ON THE FOLLOWING evening four people sat down to dinner at the corner table by the window in the restaurant of the Faisan d’Or — Julius Ricardo and Hanaud in chairs upon one side, Joyce Whipple and Bryce Carter upon the cushioned bench against the wall. The days were closing in. Already the lights were beginning to twinkle through the leaves of the lime trees in the Place des Quinconces. Mr. Ricardo could not but remember that other evening of suspense, so recent in fact, so immeasurably distant judged by events, when his motor-car had waited on the other side of the roadway and Hanaud had sat with his back against the wall smoking cigar after cigar and Joyce Whipple’s life had hung upon a thread. Now she sat in that same place, her delicate face still shadowed by the ordeal of terror through which she had passed, her old look of competence replaced by a tender wistfulness. She was as spruce and trim as ever in her suit of chestnut brown marocain, but her great haunting eyes turned continually to the lover at her side, and every now and then her hand would rest upon his arm, as though to assure herself of his neighbourhood. A tall vase of flowers had been idiotically placed upon the table after the fashion of restaurants, so that no one could see his or her opposite number without cricking his neck. But by a unanimous vote the obstacle was removed.
“Now!” said Mr. Ricardo, all in a twitter; and the shadow deepened upon the lovely face over against him.
“Now we dine,” Bryce Carter rejoined quickly. “It is a solemn moment. Without dinner, there is no life. We begin with caviare. That is as it should be. We are now upon the banks of the Volga. We listen to the far-famed song of its boat — We wear blouses and peaked caps and we dance very uncomfortably in top boots. But all that passes. For we proceed to turtle soup. We are dining now with the Aldermen, and the Lord Mayor, and Mr. Recorder at the Guildhall prior to the presentation of the Freedom of the City to Julius Ricardo, Esquire, Strengthened by the fat of the turtle, we proceed to lobster a l’Americaine. In a flash we are on the pier of Naragansett. Someone is singing. It is ‘The Belle of New York.’ Good! Let us catch the matchless words and the exquisite modest voice: ‘All the men follow me, when I go out for a walk.’ What follows? A partridge. Good! I am behind a hedge and over the hedge a field of turnips, in which there is no sign of life. In the far distance a line of men armed with white flags. I hear a whistle. I say to myself: ‘Take them as they come. Shoot well ahead!’ I hear a multitude of wings beating the air. There are partridges on the ground before every butt except mine. I say to myself: ‘Nevertheless I shall be given two partridges to send home to my wife, who, poor creature, in her blind devotion to her husband will say, “Bryce shot these!” and will have them stuffed and mounted in a glass case.’”
Joyce Whipple laughed.
“If I know anything about that young woman,” she said, “she will, on the contrary, observe: ‘Such wonderful birds can only be a present from my friend, Monsieur Hanaud.’”
Hanaud with a beaming face waved a hand under Mr. Ricardo’s nose.
“That is how the persons as one wants them, talk. They do not make the difficulties about the idioms. No! They do not look the offence if I give a tiny order to their chauffeur. They do not search all I say for the bad taste like a customs officer looking for the silk stockings. Gorblimey, no! They say ‘Hanaud,’ so,” and he wagged his head and kissed the tips of his fingers, fatuous as a second-rate tenor of grand opera.
In a word, Bryce Carter and Hanaud between them saw to it that Joyce should eat her dinner with nothing to distress her beyond the puerility of their facetiousness. But when the crumbs were brushed from the table and their coffee smoked in front of them and darkness had quite fallen upon the roadway outside, she began of her own accord.
“I shall tell you what happened to me,” she said, “for even Bryce, who flies back to London on any excuse of business, has not heard the story in detail — from the date of my arrival at the Chateau Suvlac. But I understand that a phrase I once used has caused Mr. Ricardo” — and she smiled very pleasantly at him across the table— “a good deal of perplexity. ‘Cinderella must be home by midnight.’ That was the sentence, wasn’t it? It surprised him, because two American girls let loose on Europe must according to all traditions be multi-millionaires. But my sister and I have never had millions of money. Three years ago, indeed, we couldn’t have scraped up enough between us to buy a baby Austin. We were both employed in a big library at Washington; and though we had inherited a tiny property at San Diego, in California, it just kept us decently dressed. We were workgirls. There was a head librarian, an assistant, and six girls under them who divided up the alphabet.”
Two points of importance to Joyce Whipple’s narrative were to be borne in mind by her audience. Firstly, the letters of the alphabet for which she was responsible were M to O inclusive. She had to possess, and did possess, a working knowledge of the subjects which fell within those letters. Secondly, Professor Henry Brewer, of the Pharmacological Laboratory at Leeds, came out to Washington whilst she was employed at the library, to serve upon an International Commission for the suppression of the opium traffic. His duties took him frequently to the library, and since opium was his subject, to the particular department in the charge of Joyce Whipple. The pair became friends, and when Brewer returned home he left behind him a warm invitation to the two girls to make every use of him should they ever come to England.
“Soon after Professor Brewer went away,” Joyce continued, “oil was found upon our little estate and a well was sunk. My sister and I became — I don’t say rich as riches are understood today — but very comfortably off. So making up our minds to see something of the world, we gave up our positions and crossed to Europe. But a year ago the well went dry. My sister was on the point of marrying and returning to the United States. I had to make up my mind what I should do. Our original plan had been to spend two years on this side of the Atlantic, and I had still money enough in hand to complete the programme. Of course, if I had been a really good girl,” she said with a bubble of laughter, “I should have gone straight back too, and saved what I had left. But I wasn’t going to. I meant to have my fling whilst I was young enough to get every ounce of fun and enjoyment out of it. Afterwards I would go back to M to O. I was going back this summer. The library was taking me on again. That’s what I meant when I
said to Mr. Ricardo: ‘Cinderellas must be home before midnight.’ Midnight for me was on the point of striking. But I was more and more troubled about Diana, and I got leave from Washington to put off my return for another month.”
She shivered as she thought upon the terrible days which that month had included, and then her eyes turned to Bryce Carter and she smiled.
“Yes,” said Mr. Ricardo sententiously. “It is very true. The darkest hour comes before the dawn.”
Bryce Carter stared across the table, sure that somehow his ears had misled him. But not a bit of it. Mr. Ricardo sat benevolent, complacent. He had interpreted in one concise allusion both Joyce Whipple’s shiver and her smile. And time and again during the rest of that evening Bryce Carter’s eyes eagerly sought his fellow — countryman’s face in the hope of another and as satisfying an imbecility.
“I reached the Chateau Suvlac a fortnight before you,” Joyce resumed. “I had invited myself by telegram, and when Jules Amadee led me out on to the terrace in the afternoon I found, besides Diana, Evelyn Devenish, Monsieur de Mirandol and Robin Webster assembled about the tea-tray. It was obvious after a very few minutes that they were there to give me the once-over — I mean,” she explained to Hanaud, “to inspect me.”
“The once-over is better,” returned Hanaud. “It is a phrase of the fashionables in New York. Yes. From the Bowery? Yes. Good, I use him.”
Both Bryce Carter and Joyce Whipple had moved a good deal in Hanaud’s society during the last week or two, and just accepted in grateful silence his promise to use their idiom, without discussing the residential quarter of the fashionables of New York.
“It will be perhaps better to allow Joyce to tell her story without interruption,” Mr. Ricardo suggested coldly, and Hanaud bowed his head.
“For the future,” he said, and he had clearly enjoyed some further conversation with Mr. Ricardo’s chauffeur, “I hold my blinking tongue.”
“That is sufficient,” said Mr. Ricardo. “Joyce, proceed!”
And Joyce proceeded.
“I was a disturbance, you see. Diana was nervous, with lapses into dreams. I was all at once a stranger to her. With Evelyn and Monsieur de Mirandol I was at once unpopular. On the other hand, Robin Webster showed me a good deal of attention. I had the misfortune to come over at him from the first,” and under Mr. Ricardo’s cold eye Hanaud repressed himself with extreme difficulty. “That relationship continued through the evening. Two young men from the neighbourhood dined at the chateau, and we danced afterwards upon the terrace to the gramophone until eleven o’clock. Robin Webster was troublesome, for I really didn’t want to dance with him, though he danced very well. And as often as I did, I could see Evelyn Devenish glowering at me. Once, indeed, when she was quite close to Robin Webster and myself, she refused brusquely an invitation to dance and, raising her voice, so that Robin Webster could hear, said: ‘It is hot. I shall stroll down to the river.’
“She went down the steps, waited without turning her head, and then wandered alone across the lawn. Robin Webster took no notice whatever. His face was smooth as a mask. Diana, in the library, put on a new record and set it spinning.
“‘You must leave me,’ I said to Robin Webster. ‘I am not here to make trouble. Please go!’ and I nodded to where Evelyn’s white dress shimmered against the dark grass. Webster’s eyes followed mine. I have never seen a face so harden into contempt as his did at that moment.
“‘She doesn’t know the difference between being a man’s master and a man’s mistress, and she has got to learn,’ he said. I recoiled from him, and at once his whole expression changed. He became piteous, appealing. ‘You think that hateful! I am overtried. The last thing in the world I want to do is to make you hate me,’ and his eyes slid over me from my head to my shoes — oh, odiously! He was making an inventory of me and my clothes. He said with a sudden passion which took me aback: ‘You have only to say the word, and I’ll give up this dance and go down there to Evelyn.’
“But I wasn’t going to tumble into that trap. If I did say the word, I — how shall I put it? — I established a relationship, I almost put myself under an obligation. He could come to me and plead: ‘The moment you told me to sacrifice myself, I did it. Now, when I ask the tiniest little thing, you turn me down.’ No, nothing of that for Joyce Whipple. I answered quickly: ‘I haven’t the slightest intention to interfere, and you have danced too often with me as it is. I hate being conspicuous. Good night!’
“I turned away to Diana and told her that I was tired and was going to bed. Diana looked at me for a moment, as though she was not quite sure who I was and what I was doing there. Then she waked up.
“‘I’ll go up with you and see that you’ve got everything, Joyce,’ she said. ‘I am delighted you could spare the time to pay me a visit here.’
“She slipped her arm through mine, and Robin Webster, who was at my elbow, afraid no doubt lest I should give him away, had the nerve to ask — oh I in the melting voice of a musical-comedy lover: ‘But you’ll come backl I’ll wait for you here. This is a wonderful waltz. Strauss wrote. it for you and me!’
“Diana hurried me up to my room, barely glanced round it, and said, ‘Yes, I see you have everything,’ and the next moment I heard her running down the stairs.
“Now, I really was tired, and being a healthy young woman I should naturally have slept from the moment when I got into bed until Marianne trotted in with my coffee. But, you see, I had come out to the Chateau Suvlac with a particular object, and my uneasiness was not at all relieved by what I had seen that evening. On the contrary. Diana was so unlike the Diana I used to know that I was alarmed. I thought Monsieur de Mirandol quite impossible and Robin Webster quite intolerable. I had a feeling, too, though, of course, I might have brought that with me, that something was being planned against Diana and that my presence interfered with the plan.
“I must have fallen asleep whilst I was worrying over these problems, but so restlessly that a mere murmur of voices underneath my window was sufficient to wake me up. The moon had now risen and my room was so bright that I could read my watch without turning on the lamp. The time was a few minutes past midnight. The gramophone had stopped. I heard no sound indeed at all but these voices whispering and murmuring upon the terrace, and an occasional quick ‘H’sh! H’sh!’ when one of them rose upon a higher note. Then my name was uttered. ‘She is staying for a fortnight. She goes straight from here to America.’
“I could not mistake the thin, high voice of Monsieur de Mirandol any more than the precise articulation of Robin Webster, who replied to the remark.
“‘She will be out of the way. Diana arranged that she should have the upper room on purpose,’ and quickly upon that came the ‘Hush! Hush!’ of the third voice.
“I sat up in my bed then. I should be out of the way. Out of the way of what? I listened with both my ears, I can tell you. But the voices sank again, and only the intermittent ‘Hush! Hush!’ reached me intelligibly.
“Good manners or bad manners, I could stand no more of it. I slipped out of bed and crawled on my hands and knees to the window. I raised my head very, very carefully and looked down on to the terrace. Three people were standing at the edge of the terrace in the moonlight, not exactly under my window, but a little to the right, opposite to the window of the drawing-room. They were Monsieur de Mirandol, Robin Webster and Evelyn Devenish. Although the gramophone had ceased, the drawing-room was still alight, and Evelyn Devenish was keeping a watchful eye upon its open door. She stood sentinel, as it were, with her back to the garden, and it was she who continually broke in with her hissed warning. She was not concerned with my window at all. Someone in the drawing-room was now approaching, now retiring, from the glass door. I, no doubt, was comfortably supposed to be fast asleep.
“I heard a day named and then another. ‘Wednesday or Friday, of course,’ said Robin Webster. ‘The sooner the better.’
“‘Wednesday week, then,’ Monsieur de Mirandol an
swered. ‘It will take a little time to let the right people know. I can have all ready by then.’
“But there was a note of hesitation in his voice. It became evident to me that Monsieur de Mirandol was alarmed. The affair, whatever it was, was becoming trop repandu altogether. There was danger. People who knew of it, really knew of it, so that it was impossible to maintain any denial, could insist upon coming, and for their own ends. He reproached Evelyn Devenish. She had spoken carelessly over there in Bordeaux, and some woman who was ‘affreuse’ had simply bullied her way in. Evelyn defended herself. I heard the name Corisot, and Monsieur de Mirandol shrugged his shoulders like a man who knows the world, and said quite clearly — it was strange how that high, piping voice carried— ‘Oh, Jeanne Corisot! I don’t say no! A different matter. But the old woman!’ And a phrase struck my ears and tingled.
“‘But since everyone is masked’, argued Evelyn. ‘Except me,’ said Robin Webster. ‘And, since it is my house which is used, me,’ continued Monsieur de Mirandol; and immediately the ‘Hush! Hush!’ came more insistently than ever.
“‘She is coming,.’ Evelyn Devenish said. ‘Then I’m off quick,’ said Robin Webster. What gave me the idea that he jumped at this excuse for getting away? ‘Good night,’ he said hurriedly, and as he turned away along the terrace towards the grove of trees and his house, an illuminating sentence was uttered. I might have listened to hints and allusions for a hundred years and never got near the truth. Now it flamed — blinding, horrible, so that I cowered down upon the floor in the cover of the wall.