“That young Prince has learned something from his tribulations which will be of more value to him than his necklace, even if we didn’t get it back for him,” he said to Parcolet.
Followed conversations with Trouville, which gave Hanaud a good deal of satisfaction, and others with Paris which caused him a good deal of annoyance. “So she will not talk, that little one. She is stubborn. Very well, she shall come to Havre, and I will persuade my friend Mr. Ricardo to put some probing questions to her and ask her how many suit-cases she possesses.”
The part which Elsie Marsh had played in this business intrigued and puzzled the Inspecteur Principal as much as any feature of it. He carried the problem of Elsie Marsh back with him to the hotel at the luncheon hour. “A great deal is clear,” he said to Ricardo. “I do not say that it can yet all be proved to a jury, but to us, I think, yes. Here is a plan to steal a great jewel, and blackmail the owner of the jewel in addition. Yes, a quite simple, ruthless, devastatingly wicked plan. One man is to disappear — we do not talk of murder, no, that is bad taste — we say he disappear, until, by repeating it, we come to forget that grave in the forest of Brotonne and content ourselves with the knowledge that he has disappeared. A girl is mixed up in the theft. She may protest as much as she likes that she is innocent — we who invent this pretty plan, we know that she is not guilty, but no one will believe her. However, she goes scot-free. For according to our plan, the young Prince is persuaded to palm off the copy as the original, and pretend that he has never been robbed at all.
“But then — and this is what interests me, for it lifts the crime out of the common straightforward everyday affairs with which I live — the passions of the undisciplined people, who must carry out this plan, begin to play upon it, to warp it, to alter its pattern, as the pattern of those handkerchiefs was altered, until the fine and clear plan becomes of no consequence at all to those undisciplined ones compared with the gratification of their passions. It is a soldier who prepares the plan, but they are not soldiers at all, those who carry it out. They are people who take their orders from their lusts and hates. There are people who are not so strong as they thought themselves. There are others who are stronger than we thought them. Thus, Nahendra Nao. He does not, as he is expected to do, run crying to his good Major: ‘I am finished! Save me!’ No. He goes quietly — to whom? Why, to Hanaud,” and Hanaud struck his breast a proud, resounding thump.
“The wise man!” said Mr. Ricardo.
“Then Stallard is not content to do his work. We shall find out more about the millionaire from Arizona. I think myself his mine is in Chitipur. He wants Lydia Flight in prison — for a little while, as a first offender. He wants her for himself, and that’s the way for him to get her. Then the woman Bouchette sets what heart she has on Stallard. The necklace? The money to burn? To the devil with it! She wants her man. Yes, but the man wants the singer. Very well, the singer must disappear like the poor Oliver Ransom, and she’ll see to it. Yes, and she’ll see that the way of disappearance is unpleasant. Aha! That woman Bouchette — a bad one, my friend!”
Ricardo was staring at his companion.
“You mean to say that Lucrece Bouchette meant to — oh!”
“Reflect!” Hanaud recommended. “It was not Lydia Flight who went down the Seine past this Caudebec hotel on the aquaplane board. That was obvious, when you spoke to her about it at the Restaurant du Sceptre.”
“Was it?” Mr. Ricardo asked weakly.
“Quite! It was still more obvious when I mentioned it to Stallard and the Major. They knew very well that Lydia Flight had slept that night at Trouville. Yet they did not dare to contradict me. For they didn’t know what the Bouchette woman was up to. They were” — and Hanaud chuckled over his recollection of his witticism— “they were like me and Moses.”
“I am glad that you put yourself first,” said Ricardo cordially. “Otherwise I should have had to correct you.”
Again Hanaud took no notice of these sarcasms.
“So you see, it was not Lydia Flight who aquaplaned yesterday on the Seine...”
“Lucrece Bouchette meant to murder her? No! I’m hanged if I see it at all,” said Mr. Ricardo in exasperation.
“Well, Mademoiselle herself will tell me her story to-night, and it will not be a pretty one,” Hanaud replied. “She is brave, that young lady;” and he spoke with so sincere an accent of sympathy and regret that Ricardo could not doubt that she knew of that grave in the forest.
“You have told her, then?”
“Yes. All this morning it has been troubling me that she did not know. It wasn’t fair. She might hear abruptly from someone too rough to convey such news. I thought of passing the deer on to you.”
“The buck,” Ricardo corrected.
“The deer or the buck. Both phrases are in use,” said Hanaud shamelessly. “But I thought to myself: ‘Mr. Ricardo will ask her about her suit-cases instead. So I shall tell her myself.’ I found that she was awake just before luncheon, and willing to receive me.” He flung up his hands in a gesture of distress. “She was sitting up against her pillows in a little pale blue jacket edged with white fur. As pretty as a picture, and her face full of hope. It was your great Shakespeare who said the policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”
“Was it?” Mr. Ricardo asked innocently.
“Yes. He knew. So I told her, and saw the hope vanish from her face, and heard her ask very gently if I would see that for a few hours she was left alone. Oh, well” — and he shook his shoulders in discomfort— “let us get back to the fine plot and the finer mess they all made of it — even the Major, who thought it out. You saw him last night. Aha, he is not the man for the great crimes. Listen! Here is a report from the police at Trouville.”
He took a sheet of typewritten paper from a pocket, and read.
“‘The night-porter at the Hotel des Fontaines reports that at three o’clock on Saturday morning—’”
Hanaud broke off his reading to make his dates and times clear. “That was the next early morning after the ball. The ball at the Château du Caillou took place on the Thursday evening.”
“Yes,” Ricardo agreed.
“Well, ‘at three o’clock on the Saturday morning, the night-porter, being on duty in the hall, was astonished to see Major Scott Carruthers descending the staircase, half dressed, with a walking-stick which he used both hands to carry, as if it was heavy. He crossed the hall to the front door. He did not see the porter. When the porter spoke he did not answer. He fumbled with the key of the door, and the porter went to ask him if he wanted anything. Major Scott Carruthers then waked up. He was very troubled. He said that it had never happened before. He was frightened.’ The nightmares, the bad dreams! He was not the man for the great crimes. So last night at the Château du Caillou he stretches the painted rope across the doorway in the wall, to wake him up if he should walk again.”
A queer little smile played for a moment or two over Hanaud’s face.
“That weak one who thought himself so strong! I see him going to bed last night in the house where the murder was committed, shaking with fear. He dare not confess to the man from Arizona that since the murder he walks in his sleep. No. He is not going to be despised. No one must know that he is a feeble one. But he takes his precautions. And so we see him with the spade in his hands and the rope across the doorway to wake him up, or if he does not wake up, to show him the next morning by the white paint across his thighs what he was doing whilst he slept. Aha, he is not enjoying these fine days of summer, our Major. I’ll make a bet with you. The first night he sleeps peacefully and restfully will be the first night he sleeps in prison.”
He lit a cigar and leaned back in his chair. He had made his analysis aloud, the better to review it, and he now sat seeking for its weak links.
“Who, then, was the chauffeur who drove the yellow car away from the courtyard towards Rouen? The man I saw whilst the tight-rope performance was going on?” Ricardo asked.
“Scott Carruthers,” Hanaud replied. “It must have been. He was not at the ball, it is true, but he was not in his hotel either.” He took the typewritten page again from his pocket and glanced at it.
“Scott Carruthers left the Hotel des Fontaines in a blue car numbered 4312C.T.4 at five o’clock on Thursday afternoon. He was dressed in a grey lounge suit. Three hours afterwards, a man in a chauffeur’s uniform left that car in a garage in Rouen which stays open all night, saying that he would call for it late, since he had business in the town. From that hour we have a blank. I think he must have hired a car from another garage and driven to some point near the Château. Sooner or later we shall know. It is routine. But we do know that soon after two o’clock that morning the chauffeur called for the car number 4312C.T.4, and that at half-past four in the morning, Major Scott Carruthers, in his grey lounge suit, brought back his car number 4312C.T.4 to the Hotel des Fontaines and was admitted by the night-porter.”
“Was the chauffeur’s kit found in the car?” Ricardo asked.
“Not a button of it. But then, the road skirts the river, and the river runs fast and a bundle with a weight in it — how shall we find it? Also — oh, a little thing, but perhaps of significance. Lydia Flight was very anxious to drive off to Trouville the moment the rope of pearls had been stolen. Who dissuades her? Stallard, the sympathetic Stallard. She must wait until morning. Then, with the first of the dawn, she shall go. Meanwhile he will get her a cup of tea, the thoughtful man, and she drinks it, and she, half out of her mind with distress, she falls asleep and sleeps till seven. My friend, there is only one explanation of that long deep sleep on the couch in the lounge.”
“Drugs?”
“Yes. If she starts from the Château at the first of the dawn, she is like to arrive at the Hotel des Fontaines at exactly the same time as the Major. And that would not do. No, no! The Major must be in his bed, having the good night’s rest. Ten francs to the night-porter and he will tell no tales to inquisitive young ladies. With the police, however, it is another matter.”
He replaced the paper in his pocket and stretched his arms out above his head.
“But to prove it all to a jury — not so easy. Possibly Scott Carruthers will snap. Perhaps Miss Lydia Flight’s story will help us. Perhaps Scotland Yard may give us a lead. Perhaps Elsie Marsh may condescend to tell us what she was doing on the Marie-Popette. And perhaps those handkerchiefs may serve us better than some of us expect. The Bouchette woman we have, but the others — clever counsel and alternative explanations — not so easy, my friend.”
CHAPTER XXV
WHAT HAPPENED TO LYDIA
THAT EVENING LYDIA Flight told the stories of her last three days to Hanaud and Mr. Ricardo in the quiet room above the river. The night was warm and still, and the windows opening on to the balcony were thrown wide. A young crescent of moon, silver-washed and sharp, decorated rather than lit the sky. From time to time a great cargo-ship, invisible but for its red side-light and the white lantern on its mast, glided up the dark river, the steady beat of its propeller dwindling in the distance to a pleasant message of farewell. Three days, but they had dimmed the radiance and altogether extinguished the sparkle of gaiety which had made Lydia so lovely a companion. It would need months, and all her youth, to get them back. She told her story quietly and simply; and if now and again her eyes filled with tears, she held them there; and when once or twice she shivered with terror and her voice failed her, as though the horrid cruelties she was relating were happening in this friendly room, she recovered spirit enough to continue after the smallest pause.
She told them of the uneasiness which had been growing in the minds of both Oliver and herself, of their anxiety that the month should end, of that one last day when they drove together through the forests from Caudebec to Rouen, and then on to the House of the Pebble. She put a stress upon that odd moment when they had gazed from the window of the corridor on the second floor and had seen Guy Stallard in the little open space amidst the trees with the birds settling and strutting on his shoulders and clustering about his feet.
“That was the first time Oliver was sure there was something evil and dangerous prepared. Before we had suspected. But now he knew. I don’t know to-day what it was that he knew. He wouldn’t tell me, because he didn’t want to frighten me, just when all my courage would be needed. But it was something quite unexpected. I remember that Oliver stood in the window utterly disconcerted. He had recalled a memory — words that he had heard, or something which he had seen.”
They had got to go, and to go secretly. Oliver Ransom had not had the time to explain to her why the spectacle had so disturbed him. They had to arrange the best plan of escape they could and be down, at their ease, in the lounge, when Guy Stallard came hurrying back to the house.
“Did Guy Stallard see you at the window?” Hanaud asked.
“I am sure that he saw Oliver,” Lydia replied. “But I was standing behind Oliver, and against the dark walls of that passage. He may not have seen me.”
They had to go. If they could have gone then, they would have gone. But the gates of the courtyard were closed. They had no excuse for their departure, and even if they had had a whole basketful of the most perfect excuses which a reluctant guest could invent, they would never have been allowed to go.
“We arranged that at supper, just before the tightrope dancer began his performance, Oliver should upset a bottle of champagne over my costume,” she said. “I was to run up to my rooms to change. Oliver was to wait outside my door whilst I did change, for fear lest we should be trapped inside of it. We were to slip down whilst the entertainment was going on. Oliver was to get out the car, and we should be miles away on the road to Pont Audemer and Trouville whilst the rope-dancer was still doing his tricks above the heads of the people in the garden.”
That they were playing straight into the hands of their enemies, they had not one idea. Mr. Ricardo remembered well enough the anger and discontent which Lucrece Bouchette had betrayed when Oliver Ransom had snatched up the bottle, instead of herself; and her laugh of stupefaction when Oliver Ransom did the very thing which it was her allotted business to see done. But it was still a mystery to Lydia Flight that they should have been so quickly outwitted.
She did remember that they had been held up in the supper-room by the hustle of people crowding past them on to the terrace; and she remembered too that Lucrece Bouchette had slipped across the room and out by the service door. But she had attached no importance to that at the time; she had merely blamed herself for not noticing before that across the room and out by that uncrowded door would have been the quickest way upstairs.
However, they pushed their way at last into the lounge and moved as carelessly as they could manage it up the first flight of the broad staircase. Once they were out of sight, they ran. There was no one in the first passage outside the gallery. Inside the gallery, whence the tight-rope dancer emerged upon his rope and the great lights were projected, there was noise and movement. Oliver Ransom and Lydia ran the length of the passage on tiptoe, and up the spiral staircase, at the other end. The second floor, where their bedrooms were located, was in darkness. But on the left-hand side in the pillar at the head of the stairs there was a switch. Oliver pulled it down, and the lights went on, showing them the windows on the right, the line of doors upon the left, and the door to Lydia’s set of rooms opposite to them. The corridor was quite empty. There was not a movement there anywhere, and the only sound was the faint far-away moan of the violins from the orchestra upon the terrace. They ran across to Lydia’s room.
“I’ll wait for you here. Outside I can keep better guard. Both inside, we might be caught in a trap. Be quick!” Oliver whispered.
She opened her door and went in. He saw — he must have seen the darkness of the little passage beyond the door. He must have seen the door close behind her; and then all the lights in the corridor suddenly went out.
Lydia had not closed the door behind her. She had me
ant to leave it open. But none the less it closed silently behind her; and she was in the dark; utterly in the dark. Not a thread of light gleamed at any of the edges of the door, and there was no window in this tiny passage. She raised her hand and she could not see it. The white dress she wore might have been a suit of black. She took a step and not even a glint struck up from the buckles of her shoes. She was in the darkness of a cavern underground.
But as yet she had not one qualm of apprehension. She had noticed that afternoon a bracket light and a switch beneath it, on the wall by the side of the door. The step she took was in the direction of that switch, and the hand she raised was lifted in search of it. For a moment or two Lydia couldn’t find it. Her fingers slid up and down the wall, reached out and drew in. She had not gauged its height on the wall. It was whilst she was seeking for the switch that she became conscious first of a misgiving. It occurred to her sharply as odd that she had not heard the door latch as it swung to. It had shut fast without a sound — just as if someone in the darkness just behind her had closed it very carefully. The conjecture flung her at once into a panic. She had been on the very brink and lip of panic, ever since Oliver had betrayed his consternation that afternoon at the window of the corridor. But in the daylight, and with him at her side, she had fought it down, and kept it under.
Now, however, she was in darkness and alone, and fear welled up in her. She heard sounds which shamed her — a wild fluttering of her hand against the wall, a babble of broken words from her mouth. Then, with a relief so intense that her muscles turned weak, her fingers found the switch. With a low gasp, she pulled it down; she heard the snap as it made its connection. And no light came.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 143