“Well, Hortense!” he said, in a rather thick voice. “You know that it’s pretty dull here, except in these September days. You must make the most of them. Have you had a pleasant ride with Rénine?”
“That’s just what I wanted to talk about, my dear sir,” interrupted the prince.
“You must excuse me, but I have to go to the station in ten minutes, to meet a friend of my wife’s.”
“Oh, ten minutes will be ample!”
“Just the time to smoke a cigarette?”
“No longer.”
He took a cigarette from the case which M. d’Aigleroche handed to him, lit it and said:
“I must tell you that our ride happened to take us to an old domain which you are sure to know, the Domaine de Halingre.”
“Certainly I know it. But it has been closed, boarded up for twenty-five years or so. You weren’t able to get in, I suppose?”
“Yes, we were.”
“Really? Was it interesting?”
“Extremely. We discovered the strangest things.”
“What things?” asked the count, looking at his watch.
Rénine described what they had seen:
“On a tower some way from the house there were two dead bodies, two skeletons rather … a man and a woman still wearing the clothes which they had on when they were murdered.”
“Come, come, now! Murdered?”
“Yes; and that is what we have come to trouble you about. The tragedy must date back to some twenty years ago. Was nothing known of it at the time?”
“Certainly not,” declared the count. “I never heard of any such crime or disappearance.”
“Oh, really!” said Rénine, looking a little disappointed. “I hoped to obtain a few particulars.”
“I’m sorry.”
“In that case, I apologise.”
He consulted Hortense with a glance and moved towards the door. But on second thought:
“Could you not at least, my dear sir, bring me into touch with some persons in the neighbourhood, some members of your family, who might know more about it?”
“Of my family? And why?”
“Because the Domaine de Halingre used to belong and no doubt still belongs to the d’Aigleroches. The arms are an eagle on a heap of stones, on a rock. This at once suggested the connection.”
This time the count appeared surprised. He pushed back his decanter and his glass of sherry and said:
“What’s this you’re telling me? I had no idea that we had any such neighbours.”
Rénine shook his head and smiled:
“I should be more inclined to believe, sir, that you were not very eager to admit any relationship between yourself … and the unknown owner of the property.”
“Then he’s not a respectable man?”
“The man, to put it plainly, is a murderer.”
“What do you mean?”
The count had risen from his chair. Hortense, greatly excited, said:
“Are you really sure that there has been a murder and that the murder was done by someone belonging to the house?”
“Quite sure.”
“But why are you so certain?”
“Because I know who the two victims were and what caused them to be killed.”
Prince Rénine was making none but positive statements and his method suggested the belief that he supported by the strongest proofs.
M. d’Aigleroche strode up and down the room, with his hands behind his back. He ended by saying:
“I always had an instinctive feeling that something had happened, but I never tried to find out. … Now, as a matter of fact, twenty years ago, a relation of mine, a distant cousin, used to live at the Domaine de Halingre. I hoped, because of the name I bear, that this story, which, as I say, I never knew but suspected, would remain hidden forever.”
“So this cousin killed somebody?”
“Yes, he was obliged to.”
Rénine shook his head:
“I am sorry to have to amend that phrase, my dear sir. The truth, on the contrary, is that your cousin took his victims’ lives in cold blood and in a cowardly manner. I never heard of a crime more deliberately and craftily planned.”
“What is it that you know?”
The moment had come for Rénine to explain himself, a solemn and anguish-stricken moment, the full gravity of which Hortense understood, though she had not yet divined any part of the tragedy which the prince unfolded step by step.
“It’s a very simple story,” he said. “There is every reason to believe that M. d’Aigleroche was married and that there was another couple living in the neighbourhood with whom the owner of the Domaine de Halingre were on friendly terms. What happened one day, which of these four persons first disturbed the relations between the two households, I am unable to say. But a likely version, which at once occurs to the mind, is that your cousin’s wife, Madame d’Aigleroche, was in the habit of meeting the other husband in the ivy-covered tower, which had a door opening outside the estate. On discovering the intrigue, your cousin d’Aigleroche resolved to be revenged, but in such a manner that there should be no scandal and that no one even should ever know that the guilty pair had been killed. Now he had ascertained—as I did just now—that there was a part of the house, the belvedere, from which you can see, over the trees and the undulations of the park, the tower standing eight hundred yards away, and that this was the only place that overlooked the top of the tower. He therefore pierced a hole in the parapet, through one of the former loopholes, and from there, by using a telescope which fitted exactly in the grove which he had hollowed out, he watched the meetings of the two lovers. And it was from there, also, that, after carefully taking all his measurements, and calculating all his distances, on a Sunday, the 5th of September, when the house was empty, he killed them with two shots.”
The truth was becoming apparent. The light of day was breaking. The count muttered:
“Yes, that’s what must have happened. I expect that my cousin d’Aigleroche. …”
“The murderer,” Rénine continued, “stopped up the loophole neatly with a clod of earth. No one would ever know that two dead bodies were decaying on the top of that tower which was
