At the Villa Rose (3 page)

"No doubt, monsieur," said Wethermill, with perfect quietude. "But
Celia Harland is not one of those women."

"I do not now say that she is," said Hanaud. "But the Juge
d'lnstruction here has already sent to me to ask for my assistance, and
I refused. I replied that I was just a good bourgeois enjoying his
holiday. Still it is difficult quite to forget one's profession. It was
the Commissaire of Police who came to me, and naturally I talked with
him for a little while. The case is dark, monsieur, I warn you."

"How dark?" asked Harry Wethermill.

"I will tell you," said Hanaud, drawing his chair still closer to the
young man. "Understand this in the first place. There was an accomplice
within the villa. Some one let the murderers in. There is no sign of an
entrance being forced; no lock was picked, there is no mark of a thumb
on any panel, no sign of a bolt being forced. There was an accomplice
within the house. We start from that."

Wethermill nodded his head sullenly. Ricardo drew his chair up towards
the others. But Hanaud was not at that moment interested in Ricardo.

"Well, then, let us see who there are in Mme. Dauvray's household. The
list is not a long one. It was Mme. Dauvray's habit to take her
luncheon and her dinner at the restaurants, and her maid was all that
she required to get ready her 'petit dejeuner' in the morning and her
'sirop' at night. Let us take the members of the household one by one.
There is first the chauffeur, Henri Servettaz. He was not at the villa
last night. He came back to it early this morning."

"Ah!" said Ricardo, in a significant exclamation. Wethermill did not
stir. He sat still as a stone, with a face deadly white and eyes
burning upon Hanaud's face.

"But wait," said Hanaud, holding up a warning hand to Ricardo.
"Servettaz was in Chambery, where his parents live. He travelled to
Chambery by the two o'clock train yesterday. He was with them in the
afternoon. He went with them to a cafe in the evening. Moreover, early
this morning the maid, Helene Vauquier, was able to speak a few words
in answer to a question. She said Servettaz was in Chambery. She gave
his address. A telephone message was sent to the police in that town,
and Servettaz was found in bed. I do not say that it is impossible that
Servettaz was concerned in the crime. That we shall see. But it is
quite clear, I think, that it was not he who opened the house to the
murderers, for he was at Chambery in the evening, and the murder was
already discovered here by midnight. Moreover—it is a small point—he
lives, not in the house, but over the garage in a corner of the garden.
Then besides the chauffeur there was a charwoman, a woman of Aix, who
came each morning at seven and left in the evening at seven or eight.
Sometimes she would stay later if the maid was alone in the house, for
the maid is nervous. But she left last night before nine—there is
evidence of that—and the murder did not take place until afterwards.
That is also a fact, not a conjecture. We can leave the charwoman, who
for the rest has the best of characters, out of our calculations. There
remain then, the maid, Helene Vauquier, and"—he shrugged his
shoulders—"Mlle. Celie."

Hanaud reached out for the matches and lit a cigarette.

"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 passion 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 class, superstitious to the degree of folly."

Suddenly Mr. Ricardo started in his chair. Superstitious! 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 superstitious—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—damning 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
tomorrow. 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'lnstruction, 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 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."

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."