“You think butter might possibly melt in her mouth, do you?” said Trent. “Well, I am not afraid. I want to put some questions to her.”
“I will send her up immediately, sir.” The butler withdrew, and Trent wandered round the little room with his hands at his back. Sooner than he had expected, a small neat figure in black appeared quietly before him.
The lady’s maid, with her large brown eyes, had taken favourable notice of Trent from a window when he had crossed the lawn, and had been hoping desperately that the resolver of mysteries (whose reputation was as great below-stairs as elsewhere) would send for her. For one thing, she felt the need to make a scene; her nerves were overwrought. But her scenes were at a discount with the other domestics, and as for Mr. Murch, he had chilled her into self-control with his official manner. Trent, her glimpse of him had told her, had not the air of a policeman, and at a distance he had appeared sympathique.
As she entered the room, however, instinct decided for her that any approach to coquetry would be a mistake, if she sought to make a good impression at the beginning. It was with an air of amiable candour, then, that she said, “Monsieur desire to speak with me.” She added helpfully, “I am called Célestine.”
“Naturally,” said Trent with businesslike calm. “Now what I want you to tell me, Célestine, is this. When you took tea to your mistress yesterday morning at seven o’clock, was the door between the two bedrooms—this door here—open?”
Célestine became intensely animated in an instant. “Oh yes!” she said, using her favourite English idiom. “The door was open as always, monsieur, and I shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain. Listen! When I enter the room of madame from the other door in there—ah! but if monsieur will give himself the pain to enter the other room, all explains itself.” She tripped across to the door, and urged Trent before her into the larger bedroom with a hand on his arm. “See! I enter the room with the tea like this. I approach the bed. Before I come quite near the bed, here is the door to my right hand—open always—so! But monsieur can perceive that I see nothing in the room of Monsieur Manderson. The door opens to the bed, not to me who approach from down there. I shut it without seeing in. It is the order. Yesterday it was as ordinary. I see nothing of the next room. Madame sleep like an angel—she see nothing. I shut the door. I place the plateau—I open the curtains—I prepare the toilette—I retire—voilà!” Célestine paused for breath and spread her hands abroad.
Trent, who had followed her movements and gesticulations with deepening gravity, nodded his head. “I see exactly how it was now,” he said. “Thank you, Célestine. So Mr. Manderson was supposed to be still in his room while your mistress was getting up, and dressing, and having breakfast in her boudoir?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Nobody missed him, in fact,” remarked Trent. “Well, Célestine, I am very much obliged to you.” He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.
“It is nothing, monsieur,” said Célestine, as she crossed the small room. “I hope that monsieur will catch the assassin of Monsieur Manderson. But I not regret him too much,” she added with sudden and amazing violence, turning round with her hand on the knob of the outer door. She set her teeth with an audible sound, and the colour rose in her small dark face. English departed from her. “Je ne le regrette pas du tout, du tout!” she cried with a flood of words. “Madame—ah! je me jetterais au feu pour madame—une femme si charmante, si adorable! Mais un homme comme monsieur—maussade, boudeur, impassible! Ah, non!—de ma vie! J’en avais par-dessus la tête, de monsieur! Ah! vrai! Est-ce insupportable, tout de même, qu’il existe des types comme ça? Je vous jure que—”
“Finissez ce chahut, Célestine!” Trent broke in sharply. Célestine’s tirade had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush. “En voilà une scène! C’est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ça, mademoiselle. Du reste, c’est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! Have some common sense! If the inspector downstairs heard you saying that kind of thing, you would get into trouble. And don’t wave your fists about so much; you might hit something. You seem,” he went on more pleasantly, as Célestine grew calmer under his authoritative eye, “to be even more glad than other people that Mr. Manderson is out of the way. I could almost suspect, Célestine, that Mr. Manderson did not take as much notice of you as you thought necessary and right.”
“A peine s’il m’avait regardé!” Célestine answered simply.
“Ça, c’est un comble!” observed Trent. “You are a nice young woman for a small tea-party, I don’t think. A star upon your birthday burned, whose fierce, serene, red, pulseless planet never yearned in heaven, Célestine. Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are a beauty!”
Célestine took this as a scarcely expected compliment. The surprise restored her balance. With a sudden flash of her eyes and teeth at Trent over her shoulder, the lady’s maid opened the door and swiftly disappeared.
Trent, left alone in the little bedroom, relieved his mind with two forcible descriptive terms in Célestine’s language, and turned to his problem. He took the pair of shoes which he had already examined, and placed them on one of the two chairs in the room, then seated himself on the other opposite to this. With his hands in his pockets he sat with eyes fixed upon those two dumb witnesses. Now and then he whistled, almost inaudibly, a few bars. It was very still in the room.
