The Waxworks Murder

Surete, and with the prefecture of police several blocks away.

The lie de la Cite, which really is an island shaped like a narrow ship, stretches for nearly a mile in the Seine; at the rear end, broadening out, is the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, and at the front - tapering out in the fashion of a bowsprit -is a drowsy park bravely called The Square of Gallant Green. Between these two, jutting up over the bustle of the New Bridge, rise the buildings of justice. The windows of Bencolin's room are high up under the roof; they look down on the New Bridge, past this tapering point and up the dark river. From here you have an illusion of keeping watch over all Paris. It is an eerie place, with its brown wails, its easy-chairs, its grisly relics in glass cases, its framed photographs, and an old rug worn threadbare by the ceaseless pacing of Bencolin,

We sat in the dark, except for dim lights over bookcases in an alcove. Their yellow illumination was faint behind Bencolin, silhouetting his head as he sat beside the windows with a telephone in his hand. My chair was opposite his, beside the windows, also, and I wore a headpiece from an extension to the phone. I heard the clicking and buzzing, the ghostly voices which spoke from all parts of the building, and my hands were on all the filaments which stretched from this room, responsive to the slightest pull, wound invisibly about every house in Paris.

There was silence after his last request. I saw his long fingers tap impatiently on the chair arm, and my eyes wandered out of the windows. They rattled dimly, for a cold wind was sweeping down the river. The glass was still blurred with rain, which snapped there in little whips. I could see the smudgy lamps on the New Bridge, far below: it was thick with pedestrians, traffic whistles, the lights and rumble of buses. Then, out farther, there were a few gleams on the tapering point, reflected brokenly in the river. But the rest was lost. Cold lamps, a row of them on each bank of the river, moved away, grew blurred, and then were dimmed in rain.

'Inspector Lutrelle speaking,' sang a voice in my ear. We were far from that prospect in the cold. We were shut in behind glass, with great machinery in motion; with a scent of thick cigar smoke, and a frayed rug where those pacing footfalls followed killers.

'Lutrelle? Bencolin. What have you on the Duchene murder?'

'Routine, so far. I went round to see her mother this afternoon, and was told you had been there. Had a talk with Durrand. He's in charge of the Martel affair, isn't he?'

'Yes.'

'He says you believe the two are connected with the Mask Club in the Boulevard de Sebastopol. I wanted to crash in there, but he told me you'd issued orders to keep off. Is that right?'

'For the present.'

The voice said, querulously: 'Well, if those are instructions, all right. I don't see the idea, though. The body was picked up against the foot of the Pont au Change, against one of the piles of the bridge. The current is swift, and that hadn't been allowed for. It was probably thrown in just about there, where it got wedged in. And that bridge is right at the end of the Boulevard de Sebastopol. It could have been brought down from the club in a direct line.'

'Anybody notice anything suspicious?'

'No. We've questioned that neighbourhood. That's the devil of it.'

'Laboratory reports?'

'Laboratory can't tell anything. She was in the water too long, and it destroyed indications as to the clothes. There's one more lead, if you insist on keeping away from the club. ...'   '

'The glass cuts in her face, eh? The glass is probably of an unusual type - opaque, certainly, and probably coloured - and you found pieces of it. Oh, yes, Inspector. She either jumped or was thrown out of a window, and windows of that club would in all likelihood have —'

Over the wire there was a smothered exclamation of annoyance. 'Yes,' the voice admitted grudgingly, 'there were slivers in some of the cuts. It's dark red and very expensive. So you saw that, eh? We're questioning all the glaziers within a mile of the Porte Saint-Martin. If they got that window repaired . .. Any instructions?'

'None for the present. Keep after it; but understand ! No inquiries of any kind at the Mask Club until I give you permission.'

The voice grunted and rang off. Bencolin put down his telephone, shifting his fingers nervously up and down the arms of the chair. We were silent, listening to the distant hum of the building and the spurting rain.

'So,' I said, 'the Duchene girl was killed at the club. That seems to establish it. But Claudine Martel... Bencolin, was she killed because she knew too much about the first death?'

He turned his head slowly. 'What makes you think so?'

'Well, her behaviour at home on the night of Duchene's disappearance. You know — the crying, the agitation, and telling her mother 'You can't help me. Nobody can help me.' She seems ordinarily to have been a very self- possessed young lady. ... Do you think they were both members?'

He leaned over slightly to draw closer to him a tabouret on which stood a decanter of brandy and a box of cigars. The light from the alcove behind lay along the side of his face, hollowing the cheek bone, and glowed scarlet through the liquid in the decanter.

'Well, we can make a shrewd guess. Odette Duchene, I think, was not. The Martel girl, however, clearly was.'

'Why 'clearly' ?'

'Oh, there are any number of indications. First, because she certainly was known to Mademoiselle Augustin, and well known; Mademoiselle Augustin had her freshly in mind, though she may not have known the name. Claudine Martel must have been in the habit of going to the club through the waxworks, by which we may infer she was a constant visitor. ...'

'One moment! Suppose her face was known to Mademoiselle Augustin, and fresh in the lady's mind, because she had seen Claudine Martel dead?'

Pouring out a glass of brandy, he regarded me thoughtfully.

'I see, Jeff. You are trying to tangle up our waxworks proprietress in a guilty knowledge of the murder? - Well, it is possible from several angles. We will discuss that point later. But, as to Mademoiselle Martel's being a member of the club, there was (secondly) the black mask we found in the passage beside her body. It obviously belonged to her.'

I sat up straight and said: 'What the devil! I distinctly heard you tell Inspector Durrand, and prove it by the mask, that it belonged to another woman!'

'Yes,' he said, chuckling - 'yes, I was forced to deceive you both in order to deceive the inspector. I was afraid for a moment he would see the ghastly and glaring flaw in my reasoning —'

'But why?'

'Deceive him? .. . Because, Jeff, Inspector Durrand is too much a man of action to be discreet. He believes that she was lured to the club, an innocent girl, and murdered during a brutal attack; that is what I want everybody to believe. If Durrand had known she was a member, he would instantly have called on her parents - her friends - everybody, and he would have told them all that fact. Result: they would either have flown into a terrific rage and kicked us all out of the house, or else slammed the door in our faces to begin with. In any event, we should have received no help or information whatever. ... As you may have noticed, I have not told either family that these deaths were connected, or that either girl had any connexion with the club.’

I shook my head. 'It's a damned intricate game.'

'It has to be! Otherwise, we shall get nowhere. A public scandal of this club, now, would blast our whole hope of getting at the truth. But about the mask: here was the weak point in the argument I put before the inspector. If you remember, the woman whose appearance I deduced from the indications could have been nobody else but the dead girl!

Small, dark complexion, brown hair worn long: why, it fitted perfectly, and there was the mask to prove it. But by sleight-of-hand reasoning I convinced Durrand'

'There was lipstick on the mask. You pointed out that the dead woman wore none.'

This time his chuckle became a roar of laughter. 'And yet you yourself picked up the lipstick she was carrying in her bag! Why, Jeff, surely you realize that her wearing no lipstick at the time of her death does not mean she never wore the mask. ... I grieve to think how easily Durrand swallowed it. On the contrary, all it means is that she had definitely worn the mask in the past, but did not have it on then.'

'The torn elastic?'