“It is all very odd,” Mr. Ricardo reflected for the twentieth time since he had arrived at the Château Suvlac. But the oddest thing of all was to happen to him now.
He went to his room, washed, and brushed his hair. Luncheon was fixed for half-past twelve. There were still twelve minutes. He walked down the avenue, and as he returned he heard a motorcar approaching the front of the house. He mounted on to the terrace and was joined there by Robin Webster. Both men, thereupon, entered the drawing-room by the window. Mrs. Tasborough, seated on her throne, was glancing through the newspaper from Bordeaux which had just arrived. Diana at the centre table, with a tray of glasses in front of her, was vigorously shaking cocktails. At that moment the door opening on to the hall was flung open, and Jules Amadée, with his eyes starting out of his head, broke into the room.
“Madame!” he cried, and again “Madame!” and then a quiet hand pushed him aside.
A small square man dressed in a morning coat, with a tricolour sash about his waist and a bowler hat in his hand stepped forward and bowed.
“Messieurs, Mesdames, I am Herbesthal, the Commissaire of Police. I beg of you as yet not to distress yourselves.”
Spoken in the grave, cool voice of the Commissaire, no beginning could have been more ominous. Yet it was not that which made Mr. Ricardo utter a little shrill cry. To his stupefaction through the doorway he saw standing in the hall the burly figure of Hanaud. Only a few days ago he had left the inspector sunning himself at Aix and practising his deplorable humour upon his friends. Now he was here at the Château Suvlac—on business. His smoothed-out expressionless face was sufficient evidence of that. Hanaud could see Mr. Ricardo quite clearly, and yet gave him no sign of recognition. It was all very well for the Commissaire Herbesthal to beg his audience not to distress itself. Mr. Ricardo knew better. Since Hanaud was here on business, someone was certainly going to distress himself very much. The Commissaire Herbesthal looked round the room. He was obviously relieved. He turned towards the door and Hanaud, in reply, stepped with his noiseless feet into the room. He too bowed, but there was no relief visible upon his face.
“You see?” said Herbesthal. “It is all a mistake. Nothing could be more calm. It’s not here that we must look!”
“Pardon me,” Hanaud objected. He advanced and bowed again, rather ridiculously Mr. Ricardo thought, to Mrs. Tasborough. “Madame, I think, does not drink the cocktails. She belongs to a more orderly world.”
The old lady might have taken the words as a compliment, or as an unnecessary reflection on her age. She chose the latter interpretation. For she looked stonily at Hanaud and then turned to the Commissaire:
“And, pray, who is this gentleman?”
Herbesthal was a little shocked.
“Madame,” he protested, “this gentleman is the famous Monsieur Hanaud of the Sûreté Générale of Paris.”
The name meant nothing whatever to Mrs. Tasborough. It was known, however, to Robin Webster. Mr. Ricardo heard him draw in his breath sharply and ask in a wondering voice:
“What in the world does he want here?” And as Mr. Ricardo looked at him, he added with a laugh, “Whenever I find myself in the presence of the police, I begin to ask myself whether after all I have not committed some crime.”
Hanaud meanwhile had not taken his eyes from Mrs. Tasborough’s face.
“I ask if Madame drinks the cocktails for a reason,” he said suavely. “There are five glasses upon the tray, and if Madame avoids the cocktail, then two of her party are not yet here.”
Mr. Ricardo just lifted his shoulders. This was his dear friend at his worst. He must show off. Everyone must applaud the acuteness of his observation. A simple question—“Is the whole party present?”—no, that would not do at all. Mr. Ricardo coined a phrase and stored it for future use. Hanaud must be on the spot. Diana was no more impressed than Mr. Ricardo. She gave her cocktail mixer such a shaking that the ice rattled within it like a handful of pebbles.
“That is so,” she answered. “Two of the house party are absent, but it is not yet a crime to be late for luncheon. No doubt in time we shall have inspectors to look after these things.”
“Mademoiselle,” the Commissaire interrupted quietly. “This is not the moment for amusement. I beg you to remember that there are two parties to a crime. The criminal and the victim.”
Up to this moment, the two women had been disposed merely to resent the visit of the police as an intrusion upon their privacy. But the Commissaire’s words were too disquieting to be taken lightly. Mrs. Tasborough uttered a little cry of fear and sank back in her chair, her tiny sceptre of authority struck out of her grasp in a second. Diana was paralysed. She stood with the cocktail mixer still uplifted in her hand, her eyes fixed in horror upon Hanaud, and the blood receded slowly from her face until her very lips were white.
“A victim?” she repeated in a shaking voice.
“Let us not be too quick to assume that trouble has visited this house,” said Hanaud compassionately. “There are two absentees—”
“Evelyn Devenish—” Diana began.
“A lady?” asked Hanaud.
“Yes.”
“And the other?”
“Joyce Whipple.”
Hanaud started ever so slightly. His eyes did not seek Ricardo’s, but he remained silent for a time. And his silence was more noticeable than his movement had been.
“You know that young lady?” Robin Webster asked quickly, and Hanaud looked at him curiously, as though he wondered why the question was put.
“No, monsieur, I have not that good fortune,” he replied.
