The Waxworks Murder

the windows, and the thin mutter of traffic - all this dissolved into the damp passageway he pictured. The boulevard door was opening, throwing a spangled glimmer like moonlight. A woman stood there, Bencolin's low voice quickened :

'It is Claudine Martel. She is coming into the passage, where she is to wait (let us say) for Gina Prevost. She is silhouetted there, but too dimly. The murderer does not know - he cannot know, since he came by way of the museum - that this is his victim, Mademoiselle Martel. He thinks this is she. But he must make sure, and it is too dark to be sure.

'He must have undergone some horrible moments of indecision while he hears her pacing up and down the passage in the dark. He hears her footsteps on stone, the click of her heels, but he cannot see her. She paces here, Mademoiselle Prevost paces outside the waxworks, and there are three hearts beating heavily; all because the museum has been closed at eleven-thirty and the lights turned out. .. . Jeff, if Claudine Martel had illuminated the passage by pressing that light-button at the entrance! If she had done that, the whole tale would have been different. But she didn't. This we must know from that vital statement of Mademoiselle Prevost, which you heard, 'It was dark.'

'Note now how the time must synchronize with each act, in order to get the situation as we found it, and see what inevitably followed:

'It is precisely eleven-forty. Gina Prevost determines to enter the passage by way of the boulevard door. So she leaves the front of the waxworks, and turns up into the Boulevard de Sebastopol. Immediately afterwards, Mademoiselle Augustin turns on the lights inside the museum, and, in doing so, she switches on that green light which is in the corner of the staircase beside the satyr. As I pointed out to you, with the dummy wall and the museum door into the passage both open, the green light would shine faintly into the passage beyond . . . just enough for a person to be recognized at close range.. . .

'Seeing the light, Claudine Martel whirls round. It falls green on her face as she stares, and she sees before her the silhouette of the murderer. As she retreats a step towards the brick wall, he hesitates no longer. She has not even time to scream before he pulls her against him and drives the knife into her back. . ..’

'And this, Jeff, occurs at the very instant when Gina Prevost unlocks the boulevard door with her silver key and opens it!'

He paused, his voice tense, and the cigar had gone out in his fingers. My blood pounded at the suggestion of that scene: the dull green glow, the murderer's thrust, just as the lock clicked to the turn of the silver key, and another woman's figure loomed in the passage. How the murderer's heart must have turned over in a sick wrench when he saw it!

A long silence, eerie with portent, like small fingers stroking the nerves, and the ceaseless gurgling splash of the rain . ..

'Jeff,' the detective continued, slowly, 'what went on in that passage we can only guess. Thus far we have been able to reconstruct with tolerable certainty, but the sequel — ? The light was so dim that the murderer could have recognized his victim only at close quarters. Therefore it is not reasonable to say that Gina Prevost, being some distance away, could have recognized either murderer or victim. Clearly, however, judging by her talk with Galant, she must have known at least who the victim was.

'It is inconceivable that she ran down to investigate. She must have seen the gleam of the knife, the blood, the fall of the body; she knew it was murder, she saw a killer turning his face towards her, and she would not be likely to want to see much more....

'She screamed and ran, leaving the door open. Therefore we must believe that Claudine Martel, with the dagger buried under her shoulder-blade, must have cried out some words. Gina Prevost recognized the voice and knew that it was her friend who had been stabbed. If we assume this, we must assume something more than a cry or a scream; Gina Prevost could scarcely have known, from a mere outcry, whose voice it was. Words, Jeff; several words!' He paused, and then his low voice rolled through the gloom: 'We may say then, that, with death clouding her brain, Claudine Martel cried out, echoing along those hollow walls, the name of her murderer.'

Bencolin's telephone rang stridently. He picked it up.

'Allo!' I heard his voice from a distance, and a buying. Who? Madame Duchene and Monsieur Robiquet? ... Hm. Well, all right. Send them up,'

Some Charming Habits of Red-nose

Bencolin's words I scarcely heard. I knew he was speaking on the telephone, but I heard him as one hears a radio programme when absorbed in a book. More than any person I know, he has in his choice of words the power to suggest. A few phrases clang in the mind like bells, and then go reverberating with multitudinous echoes through every corner of that brain, so that spectres are roused. The whitewashed passage, with the green light falling into it, seemed now more ghastly than ever before. The sudden spring of the murderer from his cubbyhole in the dark took on a suggestion of the inexorable savagery of an animal. I could feel the shock of horror, like a blow under the heart, which Claudine Martel must have experienced when the thing, he or she, leapt. And, more terrifying than even the rest was the thought of the dying girl crying the name of her murderer to the senseless walls . . .

'Madame Duchene and Monsieur Robiquet.' For the first time I recalled the words. Bencolin had switched on the hanging light over his desk; its yellow pool threw into shadow all the room save the vast flat-topped desk, which was littered to confusion with papers. He sat down in a padded chair behind it, a slouching image with heavy-lidded eyes, face shadowed and lined harshly, and the greying black hair which was parted in the middle and twirled up like horns. One hand lay on the desk, idly. Beside it, as he stared at the door, I saw glittering on the blotter a small silver key.

An attendant ushered in Mme Duchene and Robiquet; Bencolin rose to greet them, and indicated chairs beside his desk. Despite bad weather, the woman was exquisitely turned out - sealskin and pearls, her face almost youthful under the wings of a tight black hat. The pouches under her eyes might have been shadows, like her pinched look; she hardly seemed the bedraggled and sharp-featured woman we had seen that morning. Her eyes, I now perceived, were not black; they were of a misty dark grey. With one gloved hand she tapped on the desk a copy of a newspaper, and, as she tapped, her wet face became grey with something like despair....

'Monsieur Bencolin,' she said in her dry voice, 'I have taken the liberty of coming to you. Certain insinuations were dropped to me by an inspector of police who called this afternoon. I did not understand them. I should have forgotten them entirely, but ... I saw this.' Again she tapped the paper. 'I asked Paul to bring me here.'

'Of course,' said Robiquet, nervously. He was bundled into a thick overcoat, and I saw that he was glancing at the silver key.

'The pleasure is mine, madame,' said Bencolin. She made a gesture, as of brushing politeness aside. 'Will you speak to me frankly?' 'About what, madame?'

'About my daughter's - death. And Claudine Martel's,' breathlessly. 'You did not tell me about that this morning.'

'But why should I, madame? You surely had enough on your mind, and any other painful —'

'Please, please don't try to evade me! I must know. I am sure they are related. This matter of Claudine's being found in a waxworks, that is police subterfuge, is it not?'

Bencolin studied her, his fingers at his temple. He did not reply.

'Because, you see,' she went on, with an effort, 'I myself was once a member of that Club of Masks. Oh. years ago! Fifteen years. It is not a new institution, though I suppose,' bitterly, 'it is under new management since my time I know where it is situated. The waxworks - no, I might never have suspected the waxworks at all. But I sometimes suspected that Claudine went there, to the club. And when I learned of her death - and thought of Odette's death. ... She moistened her lips with her tongue. The greyness had settled on her face. She continued to tap the newspaper spasmodically. . . .

'All of a sudden, monsieur, it rushed over me. I knew. Mothers do. I have felt something wrong. Odette was concerned. Wasn't she?'

'I do not know, madame. If so - innocently.'

A blankness had come into her eyes. She murmured:

' 'Unto' ... what is it? . .. 'unto the third and fourth generation.' I have never been religious. But I believe in God now. Oh, yes. And His wrath. On me.'