“I thought,” Hanaud continued easily, “that a little informal conversation between you and me and the two young ladies, without shorthand writers or secretaries, might be helpful.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Waberski hopefully.
“As a preliminary of course,” Hanaud added dryly, “a preliminary to the more serious and now inevitable procedure.”
Waberski’s gleam of hopefulness was extinguished.
“To be sure,” he murmured, plucking at his lean throat nervously. “Cases must proceed.”
“That is what they are there for,” said Hanaud sententiously; and the door of the library was pushed open. Betty came into the room with Ann Upcott immediately behind her.
“You sent for me,” she began to Hanaud, and then she saw Boris Waberski. Her little head went up with a jerk, her eyes smouldered. “Monsieur Boris,” she said, and again she spoke to Hanaud. “Come to take possession, I suppose?” Then she looked round the room for Jim Frobisher, and exclaimed in a sudden dismay:
“But I understood that—” and Hanaud was just in time to stop her from mentioning any name.
“All in good time, Mademoiselle,” he said quickly. “Let us take things in their order.”
Betty took her old place in the window-seat. Ann Upcott shut the door and sat down in a chair a little apart from the others. Hanaud folded up his newspaper and laid it aside. On the big blotting-pad which was now revealed lay one of those green files which Jim Frobisher had noticed in the office of the Sûrété. Hanaud opened it and took up the top paper. He turned briskly to Waberski.
“Monsieur, you state that on the night of the 27th of April, this girl here, Betty Harlowe, did wilfully give to her adoptive mother and benefactress, Jeanne-Marie Harlowe, an overdose of a narcotic by which her death was brought about.”
“Yes,” said Waberski with an air of boldness, “I declare that.”
“You do not specify the narcotic?”
“It was probably morphine, but I cannot be sure.”
“And administered, according to you, if this summary which I hold here is correct, in the glass of lemonade which Madame Harlowe had always at her bedside.”
“Yes.”
Hanaud laid the sheet of foolscap down again.
“You do not charge the nurse, Jeanne Baudin, with complicity in this crime?” he asked.
“Oh, no!” Waberski exclaimed with a sort of horror, with his eyes open wide and his eyebrows running up his forehead towards his hedge of wiry hair. “I have not a suspicion of Jeanne Baudin. I pray you, Monsieur Hanaud, to be clear upon that point. There must be no injustice! No! Oh, it is well that I came here today! Jeanne Baudin! Listen! I would engage her to nurse me tomorrow, were my health to fail.”
“One cannot say more than that,” replied Hanaud with a grave sympathy. “I only asked you the question because undoubtedly Jeanne Baudin was in Madame’s bedroom when Mademoiselle entered it to wish Madame good night and show off her new dancing-frock.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Waberski. He was growing more and more confident, so suave and friendly was this Monsieur Hanaud of the Sûrété. “But the fatal drug was slipped into that glass without a doubt when Jeanne Baudin was not looking. I do not accuse her. No! It is that hard one,” and his voice began to shake and his mouth to work, “who slipped it in and then hurried off to dance till morning, whilst her victim died. It is terrible that! Yes, Monsieur Hanaud, it is terrible. My poor sister!”
“Sister-in-law.”
The correction came with an acid calm from an armchair near the door in which Ann Upcott was reclining.
“Sister to me!” replied Waberski mournfully and he turned to Hanaud. “Monsieur, I shall never cease to reproach myself. I was away fishing in the forest. If I had stayed at home! Think of it! I ask you to—” and his voice broke.
“Yes, but you did come back, Monsieur Waberski,” Hanaud said, “and this is where I am perplexed. You loved your sister. That is clear, since you cannot even think of her without tears.”
“Yes, yes,” Waberski shaded his eyes with his hand.
“Then why did you, loving her so dearly, wait for so long before you took any action to avenge her death? There will be some good reason not a doubt, but I have not got it.” Hanaud continued, spreading out his hands. “Listen to the dates. Your dear sister dies on the night of the 27th of April. You return home on the 28th; and you do nothing, you bring no charge, you sit all quiet. She is buried on the 30th, and after that you still do nothing, you sit all quiet. It is not until one week after that you launch your accusation against Mademoiselle. Why? I beg you, Monsieur Waberski, not to look at me between the fingers, for the answer is not written on my face, and to explain this difficulty to me.”
The request was made in the same pleasant, friendly voice which Hanaud had used so far and without any change of intonation. But Waberski snatched his hand away from his forehead and sat up with a flush on his face.
“I answer you at once,” he exclaimed. “From the first I knew it here,” and he thumped his heart with his fist, “that murder had been committed. But as yet I did not know it here,” and he patted his forehead, “in my head. So I think and I think and I think. I see reasons and motives. They build themselves up. A young girl of beauty and style, but of a strange and secret character, thirsting in her heart for colour and laughter and enjoyment and the power which her beauty offers her if she will but grasp it, and yet while thirsting, very able to conceal all sign of thirst. That is the picture I give you of that hard one, Betty Harlowe.”
For the first time since the interview had commenced, Betty herself showed some interest in it. Up
