“Mr. Robin Webster, my manager,” Diana explained.
Hanaud nodded his head and bowed with a smile to Robin Webster.
“Now! Has anyone in this room seen either of these two ladies this morning?”
At once Webster, Mr. Ricardo, Diana, even Mrs. Tasborough, began to look quickly and anxiously at each other.
“Have you?”
“No!”
“And you?”
“No!”
No one had seen either of them; and on every face anxiety suddenly deepened into alarm.
“Of course we have been all very busy this morning,” said Diana hurriedly. She had the air of one trying to convince herself that there were no real grounds for apprehension. “This is the first day of our vintage, and there has been, in consequence, an unusual bustle. The house is awake early, the service disarranged.”
“I understand that very well,” said Hanaud. “It may well be that your two friends are still amongst your vines. It is known that young ladies will pursue a new pastime with an enthusiasm which scorns the hours of meals. But they will hardly have left the house, bent upon so arduous a morning, without taking first their little breakfast.”
Diana Tasborough crossed the room at once and rang the bell. Jules Amadée answered it with a suspicious celerity.
“Will you send Marianne to me?” Diana commanded; and Jules Amadée disappeared.
“Aha! He listens at the door, that one,” said Hanaud with a grin. “Yet so do we all—each in our different way. We strain our ears for the little private conversation a few feet away. I, Hanaud, if I see an open letter on a table, I must read it, if I can manoeuvre myself near enough. No, let us not blame Jules Amadée!”
He spoke lightly, and because of his very lightness Mr. Ricardo’s heart lost a beat. Both Hanaud and the Commissaire were too eager in their encouragements, too delicate in their approach, to leave him in any doubt that they were concealing to the very last possible moment some unutterable horror.
“Marianne is your housemaid, I suppose,” said Hanaud.
Mr. Ricardo reflected how curious it was that in a crisis the truth of things should proclaim itself so naturally that not a soul was surprised by the most sudden of changes. Hanaud addressed himself now altogether to Diana. Mrs. Tasborough with her little reprimands and complaints was no longer of any account whatsoever. She did not even resent her dethronement. Diana, yesterday the dutiful ward, was now the unquestioned mistress and châtelaine.
“Marianne is everything, Monsieur Hanaud,” Diana answered with the glimmer of a smile, “as only a Frenchwoman can be. She is the wife of Jules Amadée, and since for the great part of the year the château is empty, they are the only permanent servants we have. During this month or two she gets some assistance from the village, but very reluctantly, and hates everybody she engages and would never let any one of them approach her patrons or any of their guests.”
Hanaud bowed and smiled in the friendliest way.
“Ah, mademoiselle, if everyone whom I ask to help me could sketch for me a character with such clear lines, I could have six months holiday a year and yet do all the work it takes me twelve months to do.”
Compliments and compliments! When would these petty trappings be torn aside and the shattering facts be disclosed? A sound of heavy shoes clattering along the polished corridor was heard and Marianne marched into the room, defiance in every stubborn line of her. She was a woman of middle age with a full, freshly-coloured face. She turned her back upon Hanaud and the Commissaire Herbesthal. No one could doubt that Jules Amadée had primed her with all he had learnt by his eavesdropping.
“Mademoiselle wants me?” she asked.
“Yes, Marianne. At what time this morning did you take their coffee to Mrs. Devenish and Miss Whipple?” Diana asked.
“At seven o’clock,” Marianne answered.
“They were both in their rooms?”
“See, mademoiselle! This is a special day, isn’t it? People are up and about early. Madame Devenish was already out of doors.”
“And Miss Whipple?”
“That was a different thing. There was a notice pinned on that young lady’s door that she had not slept well and did not wish to be disturbed. So I carried her coffee away, meaning to make some hot and fresh for her when she rang for it.”
“And has she rung?”
The question was asked gently enough, but Marianne was deaf to it. She neither turned nor looked in Hanaud’s direction. He repeated it patiently; and suddenly Marianne’s face grew crimson, and crossing her arms upon her breast, she cried out in a sort of angry screech:
“Look, mademoiselle! I don’t know what the police are doing in this house. What affair is it of theirs, if one young lady gets up earlier than usual and another has a migraine? Let them go away and find the poor curé’s stolen vestments! Aha! They will be at last of a utility.”
“I ask you if Miss Whipple has yet rung her bell,” Hanaud repeated.
“And I, by my silences, have replied that I do not answer monsieur’s questions,” said Marianne.
“That won’t do, Marianne,” Diana rebuked her gently. “You must answer monsieur.”
Marianne turned sullenly towards Hanaud.
“Well then, she has not rung,” and Marianne broke out again in exasperation: “But—Saperlipopette—what questions to be asking when mademoiselle’s luncheon is all frizzling away to cinders—”
“And I ask you another question,” Hanaud interrupted with authority now rather than patience ringing in his voice. “Had the bed of Madame Devenish been slept in?”
The question took all who were in the room aback, and no one more so than Marianne. She looked at Hanaud with a little respect. She replied in a humbler voice:
“See, monsieur! As I have told you already, this is a busy day for everyone. It is very likely that Madame Devenish thought of it, knowing what idle good-for-nothings all the young girls are today. She may well have said: ‘Ah, that poor Marianne, today I must help her.’ ”
“Which means that the bed had not been slept in,” Hanaud insisted.
“No, monsieur, it does not,”
