“A week, in fact—with Boris Waberski in the house,” said Hanaud.
“Yes … yes,” said Betty. “Only … but I expect it is just mislaid and we shall find it. You see Monsieur Boris expected to get some money from my lawyers in London. No doubt he meant to make a bargain with me. It doesn’t look as if he had stolen it. He wouldn’t want a thousand pounds if he had.”
Jim had left Boris out of his speculations. He had recollected him with a thrill of hope that he would be discovered to be the thief when Hanaud mentioned his name. But the hope died away again before the reluctant and deadly reasoning of Betty Harlowe. On the other hand, if Boris and Ann were really accomplices in the murder, because he wanted his legacy, the necklace might well have been Ann’s share. More and more, whichever way one looked at it, the facts pointed damningly towards Ann.
“Well, we will see if it has been mislaid,” said Hanaud. “But meanwhile, Mademoiselle, it would be well for you to lock that case up and to take it some time this afternoon to your bankers.”
Betty shut down the lid and spun the knobs one after the other. Three times a swift succession of sharp little clicks was heard in the room.
“You have not used, I hope, the combination which Madame Harlowe used,” said Hanaud.
“I never knew the combination she used,” said Betty. She lifted the jewel-case back into its cupboard; and the search of the drawers and the cupboards began. But it was as barren of result as had been the search of the treasure-room for the arrow.
“We can do no more,” said Hanaud.
“Yes. One thing more.”
The correction came quietly from Ann Upcott. She was standing by herself, very pale and defiant. She knew now that she was suspected. The very care with which everyone had avoided even looking at her had left her in no doubt.
Hanaud looked about the room.
“What more can we do?” he asked.
“You can search my rooms.”
“No!” cried Betty violently. “I won’t have it!”
“If you please,” said Ann. “It is only fair to me.”
Monsieur Bex nodded violently.
“Mademoiselle could not be more correct,” said he.
Ann addressed herself to Hanaud.
“I shall not go with you. There is nothing locked in my room except a small leather dispatch-case. You will find the key to that in the left-hand drawer of my dressing-table. I will wait for you in the library.”
Hanaud bowed, and before he could move from his position Betty did a thing for which Jim could have hugged her there and then before them all. She went straight to Ann and set her arm about her waist.
“I’ll wait with you, Ann,” she said. “Of course it’s ridiculous,” and she led Ann out of the room.
XV
The Finding of the Arrow
Ann’s rooms were upon the second floor with the windows upon the garden, a bedroom and a sitting-room communicating directly with one another. They were low in the roof, but spacious, and Hanaud, as he looked around the bedroom, said in a tone of doubt:
“Yes … after all, if one were frightened suddenly out of one’s wits, one might stumble about this room in the dark and lose one’s way to the light switch. There isn’t one over the bed.” Then he shrugged his shoulders. “But, to be sure, one would be careful that one’s details could be verified. So—” and the doubt passed out of his voice.
The words were all Greek to the Commissary of Police and his secretary and Monsieur Bex. Maurice Thevenet, indeed, looked sharply at Hanaud, as if he was on the point of asking one of those questions which he had been invited to ask. But Girardot, the Commissary who was panting heavily with his ascent of two flights of stairs, spoke first.
“We shall find nothing to interest us here,” he said. “That pretty girl would never have asked us to pry about amongst her dainty belongings if there had been anything to discover.”
“One never knows,” replied Hanaud. “Let us see!”
Jim walked away into the sitting-room. He had no wish to follow step by step Hanaud and the Commissary in their search; and he had noticed on the table in the middle of the room a blotting-pad and some notepaper and the materials for writing. He wanted to get all this whirl of conjecture and fact and lies, in which during the last two days he had lived, sorted and separated and set in order in his mind; and he knew no better way of doing so than by putting it all down shortly in the “for” and “against” style of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. He would have a quiet hour or so whilst Hanaud indefatigably searched. He took a sheet of paper, selected a pen at random from the tray and began. It cost Ann Upcott, however, a good many sheets of notepaper, and more than once the nib dropped out of his pen-holder and was forced back into it before he had finished. But he had his problem reduced at last to these terms:
| For | Against |
|---|---|
| (1) Although suspicion that murder had been committed arose in the first instance only from the return to its shelf of the Treatise on Strophanthus Hispidus, subsequent developments, e.g., the disappearance of the Poison Arrow, the introduction into the case of the ill-famed Jean Cladel, Ann Upcott’s story of her visit to the Treasure Room, and now the mystery of Mrs. Harlowe’s pearl necklace, make out a prima facie case for inquiry. |
But in the absence of any trace of poison in the dead woman’s body, it is difficult to see how the criminal can be brought to justice, except by
|
| (2) If murder was committed, it is probable that it was committed at half-past ten at night when |
