“Yes, I understand that,” said Hanaud, as cordially as a man could speak. “It would take time. The telegram arrives, then, some time after twelve at Goodwood. There were probably many telegrams on the wire to Goodwood, and its neighbourhood, on that day. Shall we say that the telegram written by you and Lydia Flight left Trouville between ten and eleven?”
“Yes! Oh, certainly! Yes.”
The Major was re-acquiring assurance. Hanaud added to his sheet of paper, repeating the words as he wrote them. “Between ten and eleven!”
“Now!”
He hitched his chair closer to the table, and laid the sheet of paper on the blotting-pad, and dipped his nib into the inkpot.
“At what hour on that day, did Lydia Flight start out on her return to Caudebec?”
“Start out on her return...to Caudebec!”
The repetition came after a pause, and was uttered in a wondering voice.
“But precisely,” said Hanaud innocently, looking at the Major. “At what hour? It was certainly before His Highness’s telegram asking you both to wait for him at Trouville reached you.”
Scott Carruthers had a difficulty in answering at all. His throat was altogether too dry. He had still some of his brandy and soda left; he lifted the glass and drained it. He muttered some words which were quite inaudible. The reassurance of a minute ago had withered already. Guy Stallard, however, interposed a remark.
“I didn’t know until this moment,” he said, “that Lydia had returned to Caudebec yesterday.”
“No, of course you wouldn’t know that,” Hanaud returned cheerfully. “But my friend Mr. Ricardo knows. He saw her.”
“Oh, he saw her?” said Guy Stallard, turning the oddest glance upon Hanaud’s friend. It wasn’t friendly. It wasn’t actually threatening. It simply made his blood run cold and ice drip down his spine.
“Yes, he saw her, and very graceful and pretty she looked, he tells me. She was on her aquaplane board, tearing down the Seine under the early moon behind Madame Bouchette’s fast launch...”
Guy Stallard drew his chair forward. Was it to cover Scott Carruthers, the forceful weakling, Ricardo wondered?
“She was aquaplaning, Monsieur Hanaud. But no! I must have seen her...”
“But yes! I and everyone on the balcony of the hotel saw her,” Ricardo cried stoutly.
“I should like to hear more of that aquaplaning,” said Stallard, his face now very dark, and his voice dangerously quiet.
“The launch turned before the bend of the river was reached. Mr. Ricardo was alarmed. The swiftness of the current and the speed of the launch made the — shall we say the joy-ride — dangerous.”
“Dangerous!” cried Stallard. He was a man in a rage now. “Damnably dangerous! That woman Bouchette’s a fool to have let her do it — a ghastly God-forsaken idiot!”
“But — but...” Scott Carruthers, hidden behind the stalwart shoulders of his angry friend, seemed to protest. “It can’t be...”
“It can’t be allowed. I agree,” Stallard took him up sharply. “It certainly can’t. Suppose that she had got herself drowned last night! Where would you be? Oliver Ransom off with Nahendra Nao’s rope, and Lydia drowned! The one person who can tell us the truth! That woman Bouchette’s off her head!” Hanaud followed this explosion with the keenest interest. Guy Stallard’s anger against Lucrece Bouchette for abetting the risky display whilst he had no word of condemnation for Lydia, made a new angle from which to regard the affair.
“You speak very strongly, Monsieur Stallard,” he said. “I feel strongly,” Stallard returned; but he took a grip upon himself. “It may be that Lydia Flight planned this theft with her friend Oliver Ransom. Harvey says so, and he knows her better than the rest of us. But even so, there are extenuations.”
An exclamation of anger broke from Scott Carruthers, but Stallard was not to be denied.
“Yes, and in Lydia’s case very special extenuations. Beautiful jewels have their lure for women, and for many men too. It is not a question always of their value in the market. It’s not a question of dazzling their friends. They want to look at them, to feel them, to put them on and take them off in front of their mirrors, when they’re alone. They want to own them. Do you agree?” Hanaud nodded his head. Ricardo remembered how Madame de Viard’s mouth had seemed to water when she described how she had fondled the Chitipur pearls in Tabateau’s back office in the Rue de la Paix.
“Very well. Now consider the special case of this girl. I heard the story to-day. I knew nothing of it yesterday. She has been healing those pearls. For months she has been wearing them. Month by month she has been watching them improve, and at the end, there they are, soft sheen and delicate colour, the world’s perfect jewel. She has made them. It’s a very short step, Monsieur Hanaud, to thinking that she owns them, that really they are hers. Oh, I don’t say that it’s an honest step. I don’t say that she oughtn’t to be punished.”
“You accept her guilt, then?” Hanaud interrupted him to ask.
Guy Stallard spread out his arms.
“How can I refuse to? I’m not a sentimentalist. I don’t say that a girl because she’s lovely must be good. High-steppin’ dancers commit murders just like Charlie Peace. But here the guilt’s forgivable. And Bouchette helping her to risk her life on this damned river — no, sir! If you’ve got to send the girl up for a year or so — well, that can’t be helped, I suppose. I for one shouldn’t turn my back upon her afterwards.”
Guy Stallard was open and earnest and philosophical, and Mr. Ricardo’s heart began to warm to him. Ricardo did not quite like his ready acceptance of the idea that Lydia must walk the world for life with the stigma of prison upon her, but he had stated the case for her with a discerning sympathy. Ricardo was not yet pro-Stallard, but he was weakening as anti-Stallard. Hanaud was still in his difficulties.
“Of course, if Lydia Flight is a thief, that madcap display last night on the river is intelligible. For it was more than a trifle shameless. Coming on the top of this crime of which she was obviously suspect — yes, a want of tact, eh? A flamboyancy more than a little deplorable. But I can’t reconcile it with the distress which she showed to Monsieur Ricardo in the lounge, after the necklace had gone, and to you, Monsieur Stallard, after that.”
Scott Carruthers laughed vindictively.
“She’s an actress, isn’t she?”
“I’ve always heard, and my own eyes have borne it out, that prima donnas can’t act,” Mr. Ricardo suggested meekly.
Hanaud continued as though nobody had interrupted him at all.
“Nor can I reconcile it with what I saw of her myself.” For a moment there was silence. Then the same cry broke from two people, but with very different accents.
“You have seen her?” cried Stallard: and the cry was eager. He wanted to hear of Lydia Flight, to know where she was and what she was doing.
“You have seen her?” cried Scott Carruthers, and there were no notes in his voice but notes of consternation and despair.
“Oh, yes. I’ve seen her,” Hanaud answered casually.
“Lydia Flight?”
This from Scott Carruthers was now a whisper of disbelief.
“Yes, Lydia Flight.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“And where?”
“At the Restaurant du Sceptre at Havre.”
“Oh!”
There was no doubt that Stallard was relieved to hear news of her.
“She came in a little after the luncheon hour, looking for someone, if not expecting someone. Wouldn’t you say so?” and Hanaud looked towards Ricardo.
“I should.”
“Mr. Ricardo was there, of course,” the Major observed, unpleasantly. “I might have known.”
“Yes, Mr. Ricardo was kind enough to introduce me to the young lady whilst he entertained her to lunch.”
“Oh, she had luncheon with you?”
“She did,” Hanaud answered. “Some of Victor
’s speciality, an omelette, a glass of Haut Brion — not so bad!”
“And I suppose she gave you a very different account of how she lost the necklace from the one she gave to me,” Scott Carruthers exclaimed violently.
Hanaud shook his head.
“She gave me no account of it at all, Major. She couldn’t very well in that restaurant, where there’s excellent food but no privacy. But she was going to. She made an appointment with me in fact for half-past five at the hotel at Caudebec.”
“Did she keep it?” and the Major half started from his chair, his face white, his fists clenched.
“No, she didn’t,” Hanaud answered, and he looked at Guy Stallard. “I am a little troubled by that,” he said, quietly and seriously. “Yes, quite a little troubled.”
Stallard swung round upon Scott Carruthers, his face dark. Were they going to quarrel, Mr. Ricardo pondered, and led himself on to another question. Was Hanaud trying to make them quarrel? To split any alliance which there might be between them?
“Of course she didn’t keep her appointment,” Scott Carruthers urged. “She fobbed you off with it. She has bolted — that’s what has happened to her.”
“Maybe,” said Hanaud. “If she has, she won’t get far. But she gave me quite a different impression, Major Scott Carruthers.” He raised his eyes and fixed them on the Major. “I think that she was startled by Mr. Ricardo’s description of her aquaplaning feat last night,” and Scott Carruthers sank back in his chair. He had the look of a man quite baffled. Ricardo’s silent comment was that he looked like a man trying to do a difficult cross-word puzzle who had lost his Thesaurus. Hanaud continued.
“Though why she should have been startled because Mr. Ricardo knew of it, since she aquaplaned past the hotel, when the balcony was full of people taking their coffee, I can’t understand, can you?”
He waited for an answer and got none. He repeated his question to Guy Stallard.
“I know nothing about it,” said Stallard shortly.
“Lydia Flight gave me the impression that she was certainly coming back to Caudebec, because of that odd exhibition on the Seine last night;” Hanaud was choosing his words carefully. “She quoted a motto from a window in the Cathedral: ‘Je m’y oblige.’ Now what in the world did she mean by that?”
“I haven’t one idea,” cried Scott Carruthers, in an extreme exasperation.
“Neither have I,” said Guy Stallard.
Hanaud looked from one to the other.
“I am sure that neither of you have,” he said, and he got up from his chair. “I see that Durasoy has finished his work. I thank you both for the help you have given to me. You will be staying here, both of you, I understand. I shall be as quick as I can, but I may need your help again.” He handed the parcel of Lydia Flight’s shoes again to the Brigadier and went out into the courtyard. It was still quite empty. Guy Stallard accompanied Hanaud, Parcolet, Ricardo and the Brigadier Durasoy down to the pier where the launch was waiting.
“By the way,” said Hanaud, “the Police at Rouen have Ransom’s small yellow car in safe keeping.”
“Oh, it has been discovered?” cried Stallard. “I am very glad.”
“Yes, it was discovered in a small street close by the railway station,” Hanaud explained. “It had been abandoned there.”
“At what hour?”
“We know that too,” said Hanaud, and he stepped on to the launch.
CHAPTER XX
PERRICHET GETS HIS ORDERS
THE LAUNCH HAD a tiny cabin with a table swung between the benches, and a large cockpit. The pilot and engineer was at the wheel forward of the cabin, the hand in the bows.
“We shall go into the cabin,” said Hanaud with an unusual quiver of eagerness in his voice. “Durasoy has news for us. He came back into the lounge, a placard of headlines. Hanaud knows his brigadiers. But I beg you not to switch on the light” — this as Ricardo bustled into the cabin— “until you have drawn the curtains over the windows. We are within view of the house, and the man Stallard, you may take it all from Hanaud, he has not the bats in his bonnet.”
“No, but I am sure he keeps his bees in his belfry,” Mr. Ricardo interrupted his work at the windows to put his head out of the door and observe. “It is done.” He turned on the lights. Hanaud and Parcolet entered the cabin and sat down at the table. Durasoy the Brigadier stood just within the door.
Mr. Ricardo, who took a seat in the corner by the door, looked out over the stern of the launch. The night was gathering fast on the hills and the river. In the dusk this pleasant and intimate corner of the country was magnified into something vast and wide. The river spread out into a sea, the wooded hills receded and towered into mountains, and with every throb of the propeller the tumbled wake took more and more of the brightness of silver. The small lighted cabin, the darkening and vanishing world without, the lights flashing out in the river-side houses and the swish of the water against the boat’s sides remained vividly in Ricardo’s memories to mark one of the outstanding moments of this strange and horrible affair.
For Durasoy began to speak.
“Acting upon Monsieur Hanaud’s instructions, I went out of the lounge, crossed the dining-room, and using the service door and the hall, let myself out quietly into the courtyard. It was empty. The garage doors were shut, but not locked. I went up the stairs to the living-rooms above the garage. In a drawer of the bedroom I found a passport issued this year to Nicholas Furlong, ostler. I left it there. In a corner of the room I found a cardboard box of cartridges and I brought one away.”
Durasoy produced from his pocket a cartridge with a green shell of No. 4 shot and with the name Harris embossed on the metal head. He laid it on the table.
“There was no gun, either in the rooms upstairs or in the garage below. Amongst Furlong’s belongings I found these handkerchiefs.”
“Ah!” cried Hanaud, pouncing upon them with a little squeal of pleasure.
“I found nothing else of a suspicious character,” Durasoy continued. “I looked into the tool shed. There was no gun hidden in it. There were some garden tools, a wheelbarrow, a rake, a couple of spades. I saw a pot of white paint with a brush in it on the brick floor and by the side of the pot a piece of rope newly painted white. The paint was still wet. The key of the door into the forest hung upon a nail; I tried it and put it back. I did not alter the position of anything. I then proceeded to the servants’ quarters in the house and went through their clothes and property. I found nothing suspicious.”
“You have done very well, Brigadier Durasoy,” said Hanaud warmly. “I shall ask Monsieur Parcolet to take note of it,” and he beamed at Parcolet, who certainly would bear it in mind, praise from Monsieur Hanaud being something one does not forget. Durasoy, his face one broad and happy smile, saluted and backed out into the cockpit. Hanaud gingerly separated the folded handkerchiefs.
“One, two, three, four.”
They were big, coarse, cotton handkerchiefs, woven in parallel strips, coloured alternately crimson and dark yellow. All in that cabin had seen already that afternoon a handkerchief of precisely the same texture and colours. Hanaud had taken it out from the pocket of Octavian’s satin coat. Hanaud took it out again now from his own pocket. He laid it carefully open upon the table and by the side of it he spread one of those which Durasoy had brought away from Furlong’s lodging above the garage. He bent his head over first one, then the other. He uttered a little hoot of pleasure and looked up at his companions with his eyes very bright.
“More suitable to Furlong’s wardrobe than to Mademoiselle’s fine coat. No wonder the excellent Major and the beautiful millionaire from Arizona were disturbed when Hanaud lifts it out from the pocket!”
He folded the Lydia Flight handkerchief and replaced it in its envelope and the envelope in his breast pocket. He patted his breast, as though he had done something of which an emperor might be proud.
“One, two, three, four, five,” said he, looking round at faces whi
ch were only bewildered by his contentment. He handed the remaining four handkerchiefs to Parcolet for safe keeping.
“One, two, three, four, five,” he repeated, so perkily that Mr. Ricardo said to himself: “If I had closed my eyes, I should think that I had on board a parrot in a cage.”
Hanaud counted the number with the fingers of a hand.
“I set the question now. Where is the sixth?”
The heat, the long day, the difficulty of the problem — had these factors combined been too much for the Inspecteur Principal? Parcolet remonstrated with him gently.
“But, my friend, there isn’t a sixth?”
“There is,” Hanaud returned, “or there was a sixth. These handkerchiefs — they are strong, they are made in these colours so that they shall not show the dirt, they are cheap, and they are sold by the big cheap outfitting shops, La Samaritaine, le Bon Marché, Au Profit des Pauvres. But they are sold in sets of six or a dozen. We have five here. So I ask where is the sixth?”
Since Parcolet the Commissaire had failed to reduce Hanaud’s satisfaction within reasonable limits, Mr. Ricardo felt that the time had come for him to bring some common sense to bear upon the question.
“But, Hanaud,” he expostulated, “if those great establishments, with their chains of shops all over France, sell these handkerchiefs in sets of six or a dozen, there will be a sixth anywhere and everywhere. It is certainly curious that one of these handkerchiefs was found in the coat of Mademoiselle Lydia, but it is a coincidence which might happen to anyone that Furlong should also have four. After all, the handkerchiefs of La Samaritaine may get lost, may be picked up and tucked into a pocket, may wear out so that only four are left. No, no, Hanaud, my friend. Let us not lose our heads. Logic is what is needed. Let us be logical!”
Hanaud smiled imperturbably.
“I give you the good mark. Yes! Now I take it away again. No! In general you are right. With regard to these five handkerchiefs, I think you are wrong. What did the fine fellow from Arizona say when I screw my glass in my eye and look at the handkerchief of Lydia Flight? ‘You see something?’ ‘Yes, I see something very odd.’ Look for yourselves!”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 137