"Let us take first the maid, Helene Vauquier. Forty years old, a Normandy peasant woman--they are not bad people, the Normandy peasants, monsieur--avaricious, no doubt, but on the whole honest and most respectable. We know something of Helene Vauquier, monsieur. See!" and he took up a sheet of paper from the table. The paper was folded lengthwise, written upon only on the inside. "I have some details here.
Our police system is, I think, a little more complete than yours in England. Helene Vauquier has served Mme. Dauvray for seven years. She has been the confidential friend rather than the maid. And mark this, M. Wethermill! During those seven years how many opportunities has she had of conniving at last night"s crime? She was found chloroformed and bound. There is no doubt that she was chloroformed. Upon that point Dr.
Peytin is quite, quite certain. He saw her before she recovered consciousness. She was violently sick on awakening. She sank again into unconsciousness. She is only now in a natural sleep. Besides those people, there is Mlle. Celie. Of her, monsieur, nothing is known. You yourself know nothing of her. She comes suddenly to Aix as the companion of Mme. Dauvray--a young and pretty English girl. How did she become the companion of Mme. Dauvray?"
Wethermill stirred uneasily in his seat. His face flushed. To Mr.
Ricardo that had been from the beginning the most interesting problem of the case. Was he to have the answer now?
"I do not know," answered Wethermill, with some hesitation, and then it seemed that he was at once ashamed of his hesitation. His accent gathered strength, and in a low but ringing voice, he added: "But I say this. You have told me, M. Hanaud, of women who looked innocent and were guilty. But you know also of women and girls who can live untainted and unspoilt amidst surroundings which are suspicious."
Hanaud listened, but he neither agreed nor denied. He took up a second slip of paper.
"I shall tell you something now of Mme. Dauvray," he said. "We will not take up her early history. It might not be edifying and, poor woman, she is dead. Let us not go back beyond her marriage seventeen years ago to a wealthy manufacturer of Nancy, whom she had met in Paris. Seven years ago M. Dauvray died, leaving his widow a very rich woman. She had a pa.s.sion for jewellery, which she was now able to gratify. She collected jewels. A famous necklace, a well-known stone--she was not, as you say, happy till she got it. She had a fortune in precious stones--oh, but a large fortune! By the ostentation of her jewels she paraded her wealth here, at Monte Carlo, in Paris. Besides that, she was kind-hearted and most impressionable. Finally, she was, like so many of her cla.s.s, superst.i.tious to the degree of folly."
Suddenly Mr. Ricardo started in his chair. Superst.i.tious! The word was a sudden light upon his darkness. Now he knew what had perplexed him during the last two days. Clearly--too clearly--he remembered where he had seen Celia Harland, and when. A picture rose before his eyes, and it seemed to strengthen like a film in a developing-dish as Hanaud continued:
"Very well! take Mme. Dauvray as we find her--rich, ostentatious, easily taken by a new face, generous, and foolishly superst.i.tious--and you have in her a living provocation to every rogue. By a hundred instances she proclaimed herself a dupe. She threw down a challenge to every criminal to come and rob her. For seven years Helene Vauquier stands at her elbow and protects her from serious trouble. Suddenly there is added to her--your young friend, and she is robbed and murdered. And, follow this, M. Wethermill, our thieves are, I think, more brutal to their victims than is the case with you."
Wethermill shut his eyes in a spasm of pain and the pallor of his face increased.
"Suppose that Celia were one of the victims?" he cried in a stifled voice.
Hanaud glanced at him with a look of commiseration.
"That perhaps we shall see," he said. "But what I meant was this. A stranger like Mlle. Celie might be the accomplice in such a crime as the crime of the Villa Rose, meaning only robbery. A stranger might only have discovered too late that murder would be added to the theft."
Meanwhile, in strong, clear colours, Ricardo"s picture stood out before his eyes. He was startled by hearing Wethermill say, in a firm voice:
"My friend Ricardo has something to add to what you have said."
"I!" exclaimed Ricardo. How in the world could Wethermill know of that clear picture in his mind?
"Yes. You saw Celia Harland on the evening before the murder."
Ricardo stared at his friend. It seemed to him that Harry Wethermill had gone out of his mind. Here he was corroborating the suspicions of the police by facts--d.a.m.ning and incontrovertible facts.
"On the night before the murder," continued Wethermill quietly, "Celia Harland lost money at the baccarat-table. Ricardo saw her in the garden behind the rooms, and she was hysterical. Later on that same night he saw her again with me, and he heard what she said. I asked her to come to the rooms on the next evening--yesterday, the night of the crime--and her face changed, and she said, "No, we have other plans for to-morrow. But the night after I shall want you.""
Hanaud sprang up from his chair.
"And YOU tell me these two things!" he cried.
"Yes," said Wethermill. "You were kind enough to say to me I was not a romantic boy. I am not. I can face facts."
Hanaud stared at his companion for a few moments. Then, with a remarkable air of consideration, he bowed.
"You have won, monsieur," he said. "I will take up this case. But," and his face grew stern and he brought his fist down upon the table with a bang, "I shall follow it to the end now, be the consequences bitter as death to you."
"That is what I wish, monsieur," said Wethermill.
Hanaud locked up the slips of paper in his lettercase. Then he went out of the room and returned in a few minutes.
"We will begin at the beginning," he said briskly. "I have telephoned to the Depot. Perrichet, the sergent-de-ville who discovered the crime, will be here at once. We will walk down to the villa with him, and on the way he shall tell us exactly what he discovered and how he discovered it. At the villa we shall find Monsieur Fleuriot, the Juge d"instruction, who has already begun his examination, and the Commissaire of Police. In company with them we will inspect the villa.
Except for the removal of Mme. Dauvray"s body from the salon to her bedroom and the opening of the windows, the house remains exactly as it was."
"We may come with you?" cried Harry Wethermill eagerly.
"Yes, on one condition--that you ask no questions, and answer none unless I put them to you. Listen, watch, examine--but no interruptions!"
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 a.s.sembly 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 the 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 superst.i.tious, 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 a.s.sociated 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 G.o.d 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.