“The failure of Wethermill to discover Mme. Dauvray’s jewels,” said Ricardo at once.
“No, my friend,” answered Hanaud. “That made them keep Mlle. Célie alive. It enabled us to save her when we had discovered the whereabouts of the gang. It did not help us very much to lay our hands upon them. No; the little accident which happened was the entrance of our friend Perrichet into the garden while the murderers were still in the room. Imagine that scene, M. Ricardo. The rage of the murderers at their inability to discover the plunder for which they had risked their necks, the old woman crumpled up on the floor against the wall, the girl writing laboriously with fettered arms ‘I do not know’ under threats of torture, and then in the stillness of the night the clear, tiny click of the gate and the measured, relentless footsteps. No wonder they were terrified in that dark room. What would be their one thought? Why, to get away—to come back perhaps later, when Mlle. Célie should have told them what, by the way, she did not know, but in any case to get away now. So they made their little mistake, and in their hurry they left the light burning in the room of Hélène Vauquier, and the murder was discovered seven hours too soon for them.”
“Seven hours!” said Mr. Ricardo.
“Yes. The household did not rise early. It was not until seven that the charwoman came. It was she who was meant to discover the crime. By that time the motorcar would have been back three hours ago in its garage. Servettaz, the chauffeur, would have returned from Chambéry some time in the morning, he would have cleaned the car, he would have noticed that there was very little petrol in the tank, as there had been when he had left it on the day before. He would not have noticed that some of his many tins which had been full yesterday were empty today. We should not have discovered that about four in the morning the car was close to the Villa Rose and that it had travelled, between midnight and five in the morning, a hundred and fifty kilometres.”
“But you had already guessed ‘Geneva,’ ” said Ricardo. “At luncheon, before the news came that the car was found, you had guessed it.”
“It was a shot,” said Hanaud. “The absence of the car helped me to make it. It is a large city and not very far away, a likely place for people with the police at their heels to run to earth in. But if the car had been discovered in the garage I should not have made that shot. Even then I had no particular conviction about Geneva. I really wished to see how Wethermill would take it. He was wonderful.”
“He sprang up.”
“He betrayed nothing but surprise. You showed no less surprise than he did, my good friend. What I was looking for was one glance of fear. I did not get it.”
“Yet you suspected him—even then you spoke of brains and audacity. You told him enough to hinder him from communicating with the red-haired woman in Geneva. You isolated him. Yes, you suspected him.”
“Let us take the case from the beginning. When you first came to me, as I told you, the Commissaire had already been with me. There was an interesting piece of evidence already in his possession. Adolphe Ruel—who saw Wethermill and Vauquier together close by the Casino and overheard that cry of Wethermill’s, ‘It is true: I must have money!’—had already been with his story to the Commissaire. I knew it when Harry Wethermill came into the room to ask me to take up the case. That was a bold stroke, my friend. The chances were a hundred to one that I should not interrupt my holiday to take up a case because of your little dinner-party in London. Indeed, I should not have interrupted it had I not known Adolphe Ruel’s story. As it was I could not resist. Wethermill’s very audacity charmed me. Oh yes, I felt that I must pit myself against him. So few criminals have spirit, M. Ricardo. It is deplorable how few. But Wethermill! See in what a fine position he would have been if only I had refused. He himself had been the first to call upon the first detective in France. And his argument! He loved Mlle. Célie. Therefore she must be innocent! How he stuck to it! People would have said, ‘Love is blind,’ and all the more they would have suspected Mlle. Célie. Yes, but they love the blind lover. Therefore all the more would it have been impossible for them to believe Harry Wethermill had any share in that grim crime.”
Mr. Ricardo drew his chair closer in to the table.
“I will confess to you,” he said, “that I thought Mlle. Célie was an accomplice.”
“It is not surprising,” said Hanaud. “Someone within the house was an accomplice—we start with that fact. The house had not been broken into. There was Mlle. Célie’s record as Hélène Vauquier gave it to us, and a record obviously true. There was the fact that she had got rid of Servettaz. There was the maid upstairs very ill from the chloroform. What more likely than that Mlle. Célie had arranged a séance, and then when the lights were out had admitted the murderer through that convenient glass door?”
“There were, besides, the
