“But you never looked up at the windows once,” cried Betty in perplexity.
Hanaud smiled gaily.
“Mademoiselle, it is in the technique of my trade never to look up at windows and yet to know what is going on behind them. With your permission?” And he laid his hat and cane upon a big writing-table in the middle of the room.
V
Betty Harlowe Answers
“But we cannot see even through the widest of windows,” Hanaud continued, “what happened behind them a fortnight ago. In those cases, Mademoiselle, we have to make ourselves the nuisance and ask the questions.”
“I am ready to answer you,” returned Betty quietly.
“Oh, of that—not a doubt,” Hanaud cried genially. “Is it permitted to me to seat myself? Yes?”
Betty jumped up, the pallor of her face flushed to pink.
“I beg your pardon. Of course, Monsieur Hanaud.”
That little omission in her manners alone showed Jim Frobisher that she was nervous. But for it, he would have credited her with a self-command almost unnatural in her years.
“It is nothing,” said Hanaud with a smile. “After all, we are—the gentlest of us—disturbing guests.” He took a chair from the side of the table and drew it up close so that he faced Betty. But whatever advantage was to be gained from the positions he yielded to her. For the light from the window fell in all its morning strength upon his face, whilst hers was turned to the interior of the room.
“So!” he said as he sat down. “Mademoiselle, I will first give you a plan of our simple procedure, as at present I see it. The body of Madame Harlowe was exhumed the night before last in the presence of your notary.”
Betty moved suddenly with a little shiver of revolt.
“I know,” he continued quickly. “These necessities are distressing. But we do Madame Harlowe no hurt, and we have to think of the living one, you, Miss Betty Harlowe, and make sure that no suspicion shall rest upon you—no, not even amongst your most loyal friends. Isn’t that so? Well, next, I put my questions to you here. Then we wait for the analyst’s report. Then the Examining Magistrate will no doubt make you his compliments, and I, Hanaud, will, if I am lucky, carry back with me to that dull Paris, a signed portrait of the beautiful Miss Harlowe against my heart.”
“And that will be all?” cried Betty, clasping her hands together in her gratitude.
“For you, Mademoiselle, yes. But for our little Boris—no!” Hanaud grinned with a mischievous anticipation. “I look forward to half an hour with that broken-kneed one. I shall talk to him and I shall not be dignified—no, not at all. I shall take care, too, that my good friend Monsieur Frobisher is not present. He would take from me all my enjoyment. He would look at me all prim like my maiden aunt and he would say to himself, ‘Shocking! Oh, that comic! What a fellow! He is not proper.’ No, and I shall not be proper. But, on the other hand, I will laugh all the way from Dijon to Paris.”
Monsieur Hanaud had indeed begun to laugh already and Betty suddenly joined in with him. Hers was a clear, ringing laugh of enjoyment, and Jim fancied himself once more in the hall hearing that laughter come pealing through the open door.
“Ah, that is good!” exclaimed Hanaud. “You can laugh, Mademoiselle, even at my foolishnesses. You must keep Monsieur Frobisher here in Dijon and not let him return to London until he too has learnt that divinest of the arts.”
Hanaud hitched his chair a little nearer, and a most uncomfortable image sprang at once into Jim Frobisher’s mind. Just so, with light words and little jokes squeezed out to tenuity, did doctors hitch up their chairs to the bedsides of patients in a dangerous case. It took quite a few minutes of Hanaud’s questions before that image entirely vanished from his thoughts.
“Good!” said Hanaud. “Now let us to business and get the facts all clear and ordered!”
“Yes,” Jim agreed, and he too hitched his chair a little closer. It was curious, he reflected, how little he did know of the actual facts of the case.
“Now tell me, Mademoiselle! Madame Harlowe died, so far as we know, quite peacefully in her bed during the night.”
“Yes,” replied Betty.
“During the night of April the 27th?”
“Yes.”
“She slept alone in her room that night?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
“That was her rule?”
“Yes.”
“I understand Madame Harlowe’s heart had given her trouble for some time.”
“She had been an invalid for three years.”
“And there was a trained nurse always in the house?”
“Yes.”
Hanaud nodded.
“Now tell me, Mademoiselle, where did this nurse sleep? Next door to Madame?”
“No. A bedroom had been fitted up for her on the same floor but at the end of the passage.”
“And how far away was this bedroom?”
“There were two rooms separating it from my aunt’s.”
“Large rooms?”
“Yes,” Betty explained. “These rooms are on the ground-floor, and are what you would call reception-rooms. But, since Madame’s heart made the stairs dangerous for her, some of them were fitted up especially for her use.”
“Yes, I see,” said Hanaud. “Two big reception-rooms between, eh? And the walls of the house are thick. It is not difficult to see that it was not built in these days. I ask you this, Mademoiselle. Would a cry from Madame Harlowe at night, when all the house was silent, be heard in the nurse’s room?”
“I am very sure that it would not,” Betty returned. “But there was a bell by Madame’s bed which rang in the nurse’s room. She had hardly to lift her arm to press the button.”
“Ah!” said Hanaud. “A bell specially fitted up?”
“Yes.”
“And the button within reach of the fingers. Yes. That is all very well, if one does not faint, Mademoiselle. But suppose one does! Then the bell is not very
