“Ah!” cried Louis Besnard. “That is important.”
“Mme. Dauvray was, as she always was before a séance, in a feverish flutter. ‘You will help Mlle. Célie to dress, Hélène, and be very quick,’ she said; and with an extraordinary longing she added, ‘Perhaps we shall see her tonight.’ Her, you understand, was Mme. de Montespan.” And she turned to the stranger and said, “You will believe, Adèle, after tonight.”
“Adèle!” said the Commissaire wisely. “Then Adèle was the strange woman’s name?”
“Perhaps,” said Hanaud dryly.
Hélène Vauquier reflected.
“I think Adèle was the name,” she said in a more doubtful tone. “It sounded like Adèle.”
The irrepressible Mr. Ricardo was impelled to intervene.
“What Monsieur Hanaud means,” he explained, with the pleasant air of a man happy to illuminate the dark intelligence of a child, “is that Adèle was probably a pseudonym.”
Hanaud turned to him with a savage grin.
“Now that is sure to help her!” he cried. “A pseudonym! Hélène Vauquier is sure to understand that simple and elementary word. How bright this M. Ricardo is! Where shall we find a new pin more bright? I ask you,” and he spread out his hands in a despairing admiration.
Mr. Ricardo flushed red, but he answered never a word. He must endure gibes and humiliations like a schoolboy in a class. His one constant fear was lest he should be turned out of the room. The Commissaire diverted wrath from him however.
“What he means by pseudonym,” he said to Hélène Vauquier, explaining Mr. Ricardo to her as Mr. Ricardo had presumed to explain Hanaud, “is a false name. Adèle may have been, nay, probably was, a false name adopted by this strange woman.”
“Adèle, I think, was the name used,” replied Hélène, the doubt in her voice diminishing as she searched her memory. “I am almost sure.”
“Well, we will call her Adèle,” said Hanaud impatiently. “What does it matter? Go on, Mademoiselle Vauquier.”
“The lady sat upright and squarely upon the edge of a chair, with a sort of defiance, as though she was determined nothing should convince her, and she laughed incredulously.”
Here, again, all who heard were able vividly to conjure up the scene—the defiant sceptic sitting squarely on the edge of her chair, removing her gloves from her muscular hands; the excited Mme. Dauvray, so absorbed in the determination to convince; and Mlle. Célie running from the room to put on the black gown which would not be visible in the dim light.
“Whilst I took off mademoiselle’s dress,” Vauquier continued, “she said: ‘When I have gone down to the salon you can go to bed, Hélène. Mme. Adèle’—yes, it was Adèle—‘will be fetched by a friend in a motorcar, and I can let her out and fasten the door again. So if you hear the car you will know that it has come for her.’ ”
“Oh, she said that!” said Hanaud quickly.
“Yes, monsieur.”
Hanaud looked gloomily towards Wethermill. Then he exchanged a sharp glance with the Commissaire, and moved his shoulders in an almost imperceptible shrug. But Mr. Ricardo saw it, and construed it into one word. He imagined a jury uttering the word “Guilty.”
Hélène Vauquier saw the movement too.
“Do not condemn her too quickly, monsieur,” she, said, with an impulse of remorse. “And not upon my words. For, as I say, I—hated her.”
Hanaud nodded reassuringly, and she resumed:
“I was surprised, and I asked mademoiselle what she would do without her confederate. But she laughed, and said there would be no difficulty. That is partly why I think there was no séance held last night. Monsieur, there was a note in her voice that evening which I did not as yet understand. Mademoiselle then took her bath while I laid out her black dress and the slippers with the soft, noiseless soles. And now I tell you why I am sure there was no séance last night—why Mlle. Célie never meant there should be one.”
“Yes, let us hear that,” said Hanaud curiously, and leaning forward with his hands upon his knees.
“You have here, monsieur, a description of how mademoiselle was dressed when she went away.” Hélène Vauquier picked up a sheet of paper from the table at her side. “I wrote it out at the request of M. le Commissaire.” She handed the paper to Hanaud, who glanced through it as she continued. “Well, except for the white lace coat, monsieur, I dressed Mlle. Célie just in that way. She would have none of her plain black robe. No, Mlle. Célie must wear her fine new evening frock of pale reseda-green chiffon over soft clinging satin, which set off her fair beauty so prettily. It left her white arms and shoulders bare, and it had a long train, and it rustled as she moved. And with that she must put on her pale green silk stockings, her new little satin slippers to match, with the large paste buckles—and a sash of green satin looped through another glittering buckle at the side of the waist, with long ends loosely knotted together at the knee. I must tie her fair hair with a silver ribbon, and pin upon her curls a large hat of reseda green with a golden-brown ostrich feather drooping behind. I warned mademoiselle that there was a tiny fire burning in the salon. Even with the fire-screen in front of it there would still be a little light upon the floor, and the glittering buckles on her feet would betray her, even if the rustle of her dress did not. But she said she would kick her slippers off. Ah, gentlemen, it is, after all, not so that one dresses for a séance,” she cried, shaking her head. “But it is just so—is it not?—that one dresses to go to meet a lover.”
The suggestion startled everyone who heard it. It fairly took
