At the Villa Rose

by A. E. W. Mason

  Hanaud's manner had altogether changed. It was now authoritative and alert. He turned to Ricardo.

  "You will swear to what you saw in the garden and to the words you heard?" he asked. "They are important."

  "Yes," said Ricardo.

  But he kept silence about that clear picture in his mind which to him seemed no less important, no less suggestive.

  The Assembly Hall at Leamington, a crowded audience chiefly of ladies, a platform at one end on which a black cabinet stood. A man, erect and with something of the soldier in his bearing, led forward a girl, pretty and fair-haired, who wore a black velvet dress with a long, sweeping train. She moved like one in a dream. Some half-dozen people from the audience climbed on to the platform, tied thy girl's hands with tape behind her back, and sealed the tape. She was led to the cabinet, and in full view of the audience fastened to a bench. Then the door of the cabinet was closed, the people upon the platform descended into the body of the hall, and the lights were turned very low. The audience sat in suspense, and then abruptly in the silence and the darkness there came the rattle of a tambourine from the empty platform. Rappings and knockings seemed to flicker round the panels of the hall, and in the place where the door of the cabinet should be there appeared a splash of misty whiteness. The whiteness shaped itself dimly into the figure of a woman, a face dark and Eastern became visible, and a deep voice spoke in a chant of the Nile and Antony. Then the vision faded, the tambourines and cymbals rattled again. The lights were turned up, the door of the cabinet thrown open, and the girl in the black velvet dress was seen fastened upon the bench within.

  It was a spiritualistic performance at which Julius Ricardo had been present two years ago. The young, fair-haired girl in black velvet, the medium, was Celia Harland.

  That was the picture which was in Ricardo's mind, and Hanaud's description of Mme. Dauvray made a terrible commentary upon it. "Easily taken by a new face, generous, and foolishly superstitious, a living provocation to every rogue." Those were the words, and here was a beautiful girl of twenty versed in those very tricks of imposture which would make Mme. Dauvray her natural prey!

  Ricardo looked at Wethermill, doubtful whether he should tell what he knew of Celia Harland or not. But before he had decided a knock came upon the door.

  "Here is Perrichet," said Hanaud, taking up his hat. "We will go down to the Villa Rose."

  Chapter III - Perrichet's Story

  *

  Perrichet was a young, thick-set man, with, a red, fair face, and a moustache and hair so pale in colour that they were almost silver. He came into the room with an air of importance.

  "Aha!" said Hanaud, with a malicious smile. "You went to bed late last night, my friend. Yet you were up early enough to read the newspaper. Well, I am to have the honour of being associated with you in this case."

  Perrichet twirled his cap awkwardly and blushed.

  "Monsieur is pleased to laugh at me," he said. "But it was not I who called myself intelligent. Though indeed I would like to be so, for the good God knows I do not look it."

  Hanaud clapped him on the shoulder.

  "Then congratulate yourself! It is a great advantage to be intelligent and not to look it. We shall get on famously. Come!"

  The four men descended the stairs, and as they walked towards the villa Perrichet related, concisely and clearly, his experience of the night.

  "I passed the gate of the villa about half-past nine," he said. "The gate was dosed. Above the wall and bushes of the garden I saw a bright light in the room upon the first floor which faces the road at the south-western comer of the villa. The lower windows I could not see. More than an hour afterwards I came back, and as I passed the villa again I noticed that there was now no light in the room upon the first floor, but that the gate was open. I thereupon went into the garden, and, pulling the gate, let it swing to and latch. But it occurred to me as I did so that there might be visitors at the villa who had not yet left, and for whom the gate had been set open. I accordingly followed the drive which winds round to the front door. The front door is not on the side of the villa which faces the road, but at the back. When I came to the open space where the carriages turn, I saw that the house was in complete darkness. There were wooden latticed doors to the long windows on the ground floor, and these were closed. I tried one to make certain, and found the fastenings secure. The other windows upon that floor were shuttered. No light gleamed anywhere. I then left the garden, closing the gate behind me. I heard a clock strike the hour a few minutes afterwards, so that I can be sure of the time. It was now eleven o'clock. I came round a third time an hour after, and to my astonishment I found the gate once more open. I had left it closed and the house shut up and dark. Now it stood open! I looked up to the windows and I saw that in a room on the second floor, close beneath the roof, a light was burning brightly. That room had been dark an hour before. I stood and watched the light for a few minutes, thinking that I should see it suddenly go out. But it did not: it burned quite steadily. This light and the gate opened and reopened aroused my suspicions. I went again into the garden, but this time with greater caution. It was a clear night, and, although there was no moon, I could see without the aid of my lantern. I stole quietly along the drive. When I came round to the front door, I noticed immediately that the shutters of one of the ground-floor windows were swung back, and that the inside glass window which descended to the ground stood open. The sight gave me a shock. Within the house those shutters had been opened. I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins and a chill crept along my spine. I thought of that solitary light burning steadily under the roof. I was convinced that something terrible had happened."

  "Yes, yes. Quite so," said Hanaud. "Go on, my friend."

  "The interior of the room gaped black," Perrichet resumed. "I crept up to the window at the side of the wall and dashed my lantern into the room. The window, however, was in a recess which opened into the room through an arch, and at each side of the arch curtains were draped. The curtains were not closed, but between them I could see nothing but a strip of the room. I stepped carefully in, taking heed not to walk on the patch of grass before the window. The light of my lantern showed me a chair overturned upon the floor, and to my right, below the middle one of the three windows in the right-hand side wall, a woman lying huddled upon the floor. It was Mme. Dauvray. She was dressed. There was a little mud upon her shoes, as though she had walked after the rain had ceased. Monsieur will remember that two heavy showers fell last evening between six and eight."

  "Yes," said Hanaud, nodding his approval.

  "She was quite dead. Her face was terribly swollen and black, and a piece of thin strong cord was knotted so tightly about her neck and had sunk so deeply into her flesh that at first I did not see it. For Mme. Dauvray was stout."

  "Then what did you do?" asked Hanaud.

  "I went to the telephone which was in the hall and rang up the police. Then I crept upstairs very cautiously, trying the doors. I came upon no one until I reached the room under the roof where the light was burning; there I found Helene Vauquier, the maid, snoring in bed in a terrible fashion."

  The four men turned a bend in the road. A few paces away a knot of people stood before a gate which a sergent-de-ville guarded.

  "But here we are at the villa," said Hanaud.

  They all looked up and, from a window at the corner upon the first floor a man looked out and drew in his head.

  "That is M. Besnard, the Commissaire of our police in Aix," said Perrichet.

  "And the window from which he looked," said Hanaud, "must be the window of that room in which you saw the bright light at half-past nine on your first round?"

  "Yes, m'sieur," said Perrichet; "that is the window."

  They stopped at the gate. Perrichet spoke to the sergent-de-ville, who at once held the gate open. The party passed into the garden of the villa.

  Chapter IV - At the Villa

  *

  The drive curved between tree
s and high bushes towards the back of the house, and as the party advanced along it a small, trim, soldier-like man, with a pointed beard, came to meet them. It was the man who had looked out from the window, Louis Besnard, the Commissaire of Police.

  "You are coming, then, to help us, M. Hanaud!" he cried, extending his hands. "You will find no jealousy here; no spirit amongst us of anything but good will; no desire except one to carry out your suggestions. All we wish is that the murderers should be discovered. Mon Dieu, what a crime! And so young a girl to be involved in it! But what will you?"

  "So you have already made your mind up on that point!" said Hanaud sharply.

  The Commissaire shrugged his shoulders.

  "Examine the villa and then judge for yourself whether any other explanation is conceivable," he said; and turning, he waved his hand towards the house. Then he cried, "Ah!" and drew himself into an attitude of attention. A tall, thin man of about forty-five years, dressed in a frock coat and a high silk hat, had just come round an angle of the drive and was moving slowly towards them. He wore the soft, curling brown beard of one who has never used a razor on his chin, and had a narrow face with eyes of a very light grey, and a round bulging forehead.

  "This is the Juge d'Instruction?" asked Hanaud.

  "Yes; M. Fleuriot," replied Louis Besnard in a whisper.

  M. Fleuriot was occupied with his own thoughts, and it was not until Besnard stepped forward noisily on the gravel that he became aware of the group in the garden.

  "This is M. Hanaud, of the Surete in Paris," said Louis Besnard.

  M. Fleuriot bowed with cordiality.

  "You are very welcome, M. Hanaud. You will find that nothing at the villa has been disturbed. The moment the message arrived over the telephone that you were willing to assist us I gave instructions that all should be left as we found it. I trust that you, with your experience, will see a way where our eyes find none."

  Hanaud bowed in reply.

  "I shall do my best, M. Fleuriot. I can say no more," he said.

  "But who are these gentlemen?" asked Fleuriot, waking, it seemed, now for the first time to the presence of Harry Wethermill and Mr. Ricardo.

  "They are both friends of mine," replied Hanaud. "If you do not object I think their assistance may be useful. Mr. Wethermill, for instance, was acquainted with Celia Harland."

  "Ah!" cried the judge; and his face took on suddenly a keen and eager look. "You can tell me about her perhaps?"

  "All that I know I will tell readily," said Harry Wethermill.

  Into the light eyes of M. Fleuriot there came a cold, bright gleam. He took a step forward. His face seemed to narrow to a greater sharpness. In a moment, to Mr. Ricardo's thought, he ceased to be the judge; he dropped from his high office; he dwindled into a fanatic.

  "She is a Jewess, this Celia Harland?" he cried.

  "No, M. Fleuriot, she is not," replied Wethermill. "I do not speak in disparagement of that race, for I count many friends amongst its members. But Celia Harland is not one of them."

  "Ah!" said Fleuriot; and there was something of disappointment, something, too, of incredulity, in his voice. "Well, you will come and report to me when you have made your investigation." And he passed on without another question or remark.

  The group of men watched him go, and it was not until he was out of earshot that Besnard turned with a deprecating gesture to Hanaud.

  "Yes, yes, he is a good judge, M. Hanaud—quick, discriminating, sympathetic; but he has that bee in his bonnet, like so many others. Everywhere he must see l'affaire Dreyfus. He cannot get it out of his head. No matter how insignificant a woman is murdered, she must have letters in her possession which would convict Dreyfus. But you know! There are thousands like that—good, kindly, just people in the ordinary ways of life, but behind every crime they see the Jew."

  Hanaud nodded his head.

  "I know; and in a Juge d'Instruction it is very embarrassing. Let us walk on."

  Half-way between the gate and the villa a second carriage-road struck off to the left, and at the entrance to it stood a young, stout man in black leggings.

  "The chauffeur?" asked Hanaud. "I will speak to him."

  The Commissaire called the chauffeur forward.

  "Servettaz," he said, "you will answer any questions which monsieur may put to you."

  "Certainly, M. le Commissaire," said the chauffeur. His manner was serious, but he answered readily. There was no sign of fear upon his face.

  "How long have you been with Mme. Dauvray?" Hanaud asked.

  "Four months, monsieur. I drove her to Aix from Paris."

  "And since your parents live at Chambery you wished to seize the opportunity of spending a day with them while you were so near?"

  "Yes, monsieur."

  "When did you ask for permission?"

  "On Saturday, monsieur."

  "Did you ask particularly that you should have yesterday, the Tuesday?"

  "No, monsieur; I asked only for a day whenever it should be convenient to madame."

  "Quite so," said Hanaud. "Now, when did Mme. Dauvray tell you that you might have Tuesday?"

  Servettaz hesitated. His face became troubled. When he spoke, he spoke reluctantly.

  "It was not Mme. Dauvray, monsieur, who told me that I might go on Tuesday," he said.

  "Not Mme. Dauvray! Who was it, then?" Hanaud asked sharply.

  Servettaz glanced from one to another of the grave faces which confronted him.

  "It was Mlle. Celie," he said, "who told me."

  "Oh!" said Hanaud, slowly. "It was Mlle. Celie. When did she tell you?"

  "On Monday morning, monsieur. I was cleaning the car. She came to the garage with some flowers in her hand which she had been cutting in the garden, and she said: 'I was right, Alphonse. Madame has a kind heart. You can go to-morrow by the train which leaves Aix at 1.52 and arrives at Chambery at nine minutes after two.'"

  Hanaud started.

  "'I was right, Alphonse.' Were those her words? And 'Madame has a kind heart.' Come, come, what is all this?" He lifted a warning finger and said gravely, "Be very careful, Servettaz."

  "Those were her words, monsieur."

  "'I was right, Alphonse. Madame has a kind heart'?"

  "Yes, monsieur."

  "Then Mlle. Celie had spoken to you before about this visit of yours to Chambery," said Hanaud, with his eyes fixed steadily upon the chauffeur's face. The distress upon Servettaz's face increased. Suddenly Hanaud's voice rang sharply. "You hesitate. Begin at the beginning. Speak the truth, Servettaz!"

  "Monsieur, I am speaking the truth," said the chauffeur. "It is true I hesitate ... I have heard this morning what people are saying ... I do not know what to think. Mlle. Celie was always kind and thoughtful for me ... But it is true"—and with a kind of desperation he went on—"yes, it is true that it was Mlle. Celie who first suggested to me that I should ask for a day to go to Chambery."

  "When did she suggest it?"

  "On the Saturday."

  To Mr. Ricardo the words were startling. He glanced with pity towards Wethermill. Wethermill, however, had made up his mind for good and all. He stood with a dogged look upon his face, his chin thrust forward, his eyes upon the chauffeur. Besnard, the Commissaire, had made up his mind, too. He merely shrugged his shoulders. Hanaud stepped forward and laid his hand gently on the chauffeur's arm.

  "Come, my friend," he said, "let us hear exactly how this happened!"

  "Mlle. Celie," said Servettaz, with genuine compunction in his voice, "came to the garage on Saturday morning and ordered the car for the afternoon. She stayed and talked to me for a little while, as she often did. She said that she had been told that my parents lived at Chambery, and since I was so near I ought to ask for a holiday. For it would not be kind if I did not go and see them."

  "That was all?"

  "Yes, monsieur."

  "Very well." And the detective resumed at once his brisk voice and alert manner. He seemed to dismiss Servettaz's a
dmission from his mind. Ricardo had the impression of a man tying up an important document which for the moment he has done with, and putting it away ticketed in some pigeon-hole in his desk. "Let us see the garage!"

  They followed the road between the bushes until a turn showed them the garage with its doors open.

  "The doors were found unlocked?"

  "Just as you see them."

  Hanaud nodded. He spoke again to Servettaz. "What did you do with the key on Tuesday?"

  "I gave it to Helene Vauquier, monsieur, after I had locked up the garage. And she hung it on a nail in the kitchen."

  "I see," said Hanaud. "So any one could easily, have found it last night?"

  "Yes, monsieur—if one knew where to look for it."

  At the back of the garage a row of petrol-tins stood against the brick wall.

  "Was any petrol taken?" asked Hanaud.

  "Yes, monsieur; there was very little petrol in the car when I went away. More was taken, but it was taken from the middle tins—these." And he touched the tins.

  "I see," said Hanaud, and he raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. The Commissaire moved with impatience.

  "From the middle or from the end—what does it matter?" he exclaimed. "The petrol was taken."

  Hanaud, however, did not dismiss the point so lightly.

  "But it is very possible that it does matter," he said gently. "For example, if Servettaz had had no reason to examine his tins it might have been some while before he found out that the petrol had been taken."

  "Indeed, yes," said Servettaz. "I might even have forgotten that I had not used it myself."

  "Quite so," said Hanaud, and he turned to Besnard.

  "I think that may be important. I do not know," he said.

  "But since the car is gone," cried Besnard, "how could the chauffeur not look immediately at his tins?"

  The question had occurred to Ricardo, and he wondered in what way Hanaud meant to answer it. Hanaud, however, did not mean to answer it. He took little notice of it at all. He put it aside with a superb indifference to the opinion which his companions might form of him.