At the Villa Rose (19 page)

"One of the instruments? Used, then, by whom?" asked Ricardo.

"By my Normandy peasant-woman, M. Ricardo," said Hanaud. "Yes, there's
the dominating figure—cruel, masterful, relentless—that strange
woman, Helene Vauquier. You are surprised? You will see! It is not the
man of intellect and daring; it's my peasant-woman who is at the bottom
of it all."

"But she's free!" exclaimed Ricardo. "You let her go free!"

"Free!" repeated Ricardo. "She was driven straight from the Villa Rose
to the depot. She has been kept au secret ever since."

Ricardo stared in amazement.

"Already you knew of her guilt?"

"Already she had lied to me in her description of Adele Rossignol. Do
you remember what she said—a black-haired woman with beady eyes; and I
only five minutes before had picked up from the table—this."

He opened his pocket-book, and took from an envelope a long strand of
red hair.

"But it was not only because she lied that I had her taken to the
depot. A pot of cold cream had disappeared from the room of Mlle Celie."

"Then Perrichet after all was right."

"Perrichet after all was quite wrong—not to hold his tongue. For in
that pot of cold cream, as I was sure, were hidden those valuable
diamond earrings which Mlle. Celie habitually wore."

The two men had reached the square in front of the Etablissement des
Bains. Ricardo dropped on to a bench and wiped his forehead.

"But I am in a maze," he cried. "My head turns round. I don't know
where I am."

Hanaud stood in front of Ricardo, smiling. He was not displeased with
his companion's bewilderment; it was all so much of tribute to himself.

"I am the captain of the ship," he said.

His smile irritated Ricardo, who spoke impatiently.

"I should be very glad," he said, "if you would tell me how you
discovered all these things. And what it was that the little salon on
the first morning had to tell to you? And why Celia Harland ran from
the glass doors across the grass to the motor-car and again from the
carriage into the house on the lake? Why she did not resist yesterday
evening? Why she did not cry for help? How much of Helene Vauquier's
evidence was true and how much false? For what reason Wethermill
concerned himself in this affair? Oh! and a thousand things which I
don't understand."

"Ah, the cushions, and the scrap of paper, and the aluminium flask,"
said Hanaud; and the triumph faded from his face. He spoke now to
Ricardo with a genuine friendliness. "You must not be angry with me if
I keep you in the dark for a little while. I, too, Mr. Ricardo, have
artistic inclinations. I will not spoil the remarkable story which I
think Mlle. Celie will be ready to tell us. Afterwards I will willingly
explain to you what I read in the evidences of the room, and what so
greatly puzzled me then. But it is not the puzzle or its solution," he
said modestly, "which is most interesting here. Consider the people.
Mme. Dauvray, the old, rich, ignorant woman, with her superstitions and
her generosity, her desire to converse with Mme. de Montespan and the
great ladies of the past, and her love of a young, fresh face about
her; Helene Vauquier, the maid with her six years of confidential
service, who finds herself suddenly supplanted and made to tend and
dress in dainty frocks the girl who has supplanted her; the young girl
herself, that poor child, with her love of fine clothes, the Bohemian
who, brought up amidst trickeries and practising them as a profession,
looking upon them and upon misery and starvation and despair as the
commonplaces of life, keeps a simplicity and a delicacy and a freshness
which would have withered in a day had she been brought up otherwise;
Harry Wethermill, the courted and successful man of genius.

"Just imagine if you can what his feelings must have been, when in Mme.
Dauvray's bedroom, with the woman he had uselessly murdered lying rigid
beneath the sheet, he saw me raise the block of wood from the inlaid
floor and take out one by one those jewel cases for which less than
twelve hours before he had been ransacking that very room. But what he
must have felt! And to give no sign! Oh, these people are the
interesting problems in this story. Let us hear what happened on that
terrible night. The puzzle—that can wait." In Mr. Ricardo's view
Hanaud was proved right. The extraordinary and appalling story which
was gradually unrolled of what had happened on that night of Tuesday in
the Villa Rose exceeded in its grim interest all the mystery of the
puzzle. But it was not told at once.

The trouble at first with Mlle. Celie was a fear of sleep. She dared
not sleep—even with a light in the room and a nurse at her bedside.
When her eyes were actually closing she would force herself desperately
back into the living world. For when she slept she dreamed through
again that dark and dreadful night of Tuesday and the two days which
followed it, until at some moment endurance snapped and she woke up
screaming. But youth, a good constitution, and a healthy appetite had
their way with her in the end.

She told her share of the story—she told what happened. There was
apparently one terrible scene when she was confronted with Harry
Wethermill in the office of Monsieur Fleuriot, the Juge d'lnstruction,
and on her knees, with the tears streaming down her face, besought him
to confess the truth. For a long while he held out. And then there came
a strange and human turn to the affair. Adele Rossignol—or, to give
her real name, Adele Tace, the wife of Hippolyte—had conceived a
veritable passion for Harry Wethermill. He was of a not uncommon type,
cold and callous in himself, yet with the power to provoke passion in
women. And Adele Tace, as the story was told of how Harry Wethermill
had paid his court to Celia Harland, was seized with a vindictive
jealousy. Hanaud was not surprised. He knew the woman-criminal of his
country—brutal, passionate, treacherous. The anonymous letters in a
woman's handwriting which descend upon the Rue de Jerusalem, and betray
the men who have committed thefts, had left him no illusions upon that
figure in the history of crime. Adele Rossignol ran forward to confess,
so that Harry Wethermill might suffer to the last possible point of
suffering. Then at last Wethermill gave in and, broken down by the
ceaseless interrogations of the magistrate, confessed in his turn too.
The one, and the only one, who stood firmly throughout and denied the
crime was Helene Vauquier. Her thin lips were kept contemptuously
closed, whatever the others might admit. With a white, hard face,
quietly and respectfully she faced the magistrate week after week. She
was the perfect picture of a servant who knew her place. And nothing
was wrung from her. But without her help the story became complete. And
Ricardo was at pains to write it out.

The story begins with the explanation of that circumstance which had
greatly puzzled Mr. Ricardo—Celia's entry into the household of Mme.
Dauvray.

Celia's father was a Captain Harland, of a marching regiment, who had
little beyond good looks and excellent manners wherewith to support his
position. He was extravagant in his tastes, and of an easy mind in the
presence of embarrassments. To his other disadvantages he added that of
falling in love with a pretty girl no better off than himself. They
married, and Celia was born. For nine years they managed, through the
wife's constant devotion, to struggle along and to give their daughter
an education. Then, however, Celia's mother broke down under the strain
and died. Captain Harland, a couple of years later, went out of the
service with discredit, passed through the bankruptcy court, and turned
showman. His line was thought-reading; he enlisted the services of his
daughter, taught her the tricks of his trade, and became "The Great
Fortinbras" of the music-halls. Captain Harland would move amongst the
audience, asking the spectators in a whisper to think of a number or of
an article in their pockets, after the usual fashion, while the child,
in her short frock, with her long fair hair tied back with a ribbon,
would stand blind-folded upon the platform and reel off the answers
with astonishing rapidity. She was singularly quick, singularly
receptive.

The undoubted cleverness of the performance, and the beauty of the
child, brought to them a temporary prosperity. The Great Fortinbras
rose from the music-halls to the assembly rooms of provincial towns.
The performance became genteel, and ladies flocked to the matinees.

The Great Fortinbras dropped his pseudonym and became once more Captain
Harland.

As Celia grew up, he tried a yet higher flight—he became a
spiritualist, with Celia for his medium. The thought-reading
entertainments became thrilling seances, and the beautiful child, now
grown into a beautiful girl of seventeen, created a greater sensation
as a medium in a trance than she had done as a lightning thought-reader.

"I saw no harm in it," Celia explained to M. Fleuriot, without any
attempt at extenuation. "I never understood that we might be doing any
hurt to any one. People were interested. They were to find us out if
they could, and they tried to and they couldn't. I looked upon it quite
simply in that way. It was just my profession. I accepted it without
any question. I was not troubled about it until I came to Aix."

A startling exposure, however, at Cambridge discredited the craze for
spiritualism, and Captain Harland's fortunes declined. He crossed with
his daughter to France and made a disastrous tour in that country,
wasted the last of his resources in the Casino at Dieppe, and died in
that town, leaving Celia just enough money to bury him and to pay her
third-class fare to Paris.

There she lived honestly but miserably. The slimness of her figure and
a grace of movement which was particularly hers obtained her at last a
situation as a mannequin in the show-rooms of a modiste. She took a
room on the top floor of a house in the Rue St. Honore and settled down
to a hard and penurious life.

"I was not happy or contented—no," said Celia frankly and decisively.
"The long hours in the close rooms gave me headaches and made me
nervous. I had not the temperament. And I was very lonely—my life had
been so different. I had had fresh air, good clothes, and freedom. Now
all was changed. I used to cry myself to sleep up in my little room,
wondering whether I would ever have friends. You see, I was quite
young—only eighteen—and I wanted to live."

A change came in a few months, but a disastrous change. The modiste
failed. Celia was thrown out of work, and could get nothing to do.
Gradually she pawned what clothes she could spare; and then there came
a morning when she had a single five-franc piece in the world and owed
a month's rent for her room. She kept the five-franc piece all day and
went hungry, seeking for work. In the evening she went to a provision
shop to buy food, and the man behind the counter took the five-franc
piece. He looked at it, rung it on the counter, and, with a laugh, bent
it easily in half.

"See here, my little one," he said, tossing the coin back to her, "one
does not buy good food with lead."

Celia dragged herself out of the shop in despair. She was starving. She
dared not go back to her room. The thought of the concierge at the
bottom of the stairs, insistent for the rent, frightened her. She stood
on the pavement and burst into tears. A few people stopped and watched
her curiously, and went on again. Finally a sergent-de-ville told her
to go away.

The girl moved on with the tears running down her cheeks. She was
desperate, she was lonely.

"I thought of throwing myself into the Seine," said Celia simply, in
telling her story to the Juge d'Instruction. "Indeed, I went to the
river. But the water looked so cold, so terrible, and I was young. I
wanted so much to live. And then—the night came, and the lights made
the city bright, and I was very tired and—and—"

And, in a word, the young girl went up to Montmartre in desperation, as
quickly as her tired legs would carry her. She walked once or twice
timidly past the restaurants, and, finally, entered one of them, hoping
that some one would take pity on her and give her some supper. She
stood just within the door of the supper-room. People pushed past
her—men in evening dress, women in bright frocks and jewels. No one
noticed her. She had shrunk into a corner, rather hoping not to be
noticed, now that she had come. But the novelty of her surroundings
wore off. She knew that for want of food she was almost fainting. There
were two girls engaged by the management to dance amongst the tables
while people had supper—one dressed as a page in blue satin, and the
other as a Spanish dancer. Both girls were kind. They spoke to Celia
between their dances. They let her waltz with them. Still no one
noticed her. She had no jewels, no fine clothes, no chic—the three
indispensable things. She had only youth and a pretty face.

"But," said Celia, "without jewels and fine clothes and chic these go
for nothing in Paris. At last, however, Mme. Dauvray came in with a
party of friends from a theatre, and saw how unhappy I was, and gave me
some supper. She asked me about myself, and I told her. She was very
kind, and took me home with her, and I cried all the way in the
carriage. She kept me a few days, and then she told me that I was to
live with her, for often she was lonely too, and that if I would she
would some day find me a nice, comfortable husband and give me a
marriage portion. So all my troubles seemed to be at an end," said
Celia, with a smile.

Within a fortnight Mme. Dauvray confided to Celia that there was a new
fortune-teller come to Paris, who, by looking into a crystal, could
tell the most wonderful things about the future. The old woman's eyes
kindled as she spoke. She took Celia to the fortune-teller's rooms next
day, and the girl quickly understood the ruling passion of the woman
who had befriended her. It took very little time then for Celia to
notice how easily Mme. Dauvray was duped, how perpetually she was
robbed. Celia turned the problem over in her mind.