Hanaud accepted the correction meekly, but to Mr. Ricardo’s thinking no one who was at all acquainted with Evelyn Devenish could agree with Marianne’s explanation for a moment. Evelyn Devenish was not the kind of person to give a thought as to whether Marianne’s fingers were worked to the bone or not. Nor could he imagine her springing out of her bed in the early morning to help the peasants to strip the grapes. The story was altogether too thin.
“It is enough, I think, that the bed was made,” said Hanaud. He was very grave, very reluctant to speak more openly. He looked at Herbesthal, and Herbesthal, with an inclination of the head, returned the look.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. The fine feelings—we cannot all the time consider them. I give you the word, Monsieur Hanaud!”
The Commissaire, magistrate though he was, was happy to pay deference to the great man from Paris.
Diana made a restless movement. She was not only distressed; she was puzzled too.
“I beg you not to keep us in suspense,” she cried nervously. “Suspense is worse than the worst of news.”
Even then for a moment Hanaud hesitated. He was uneasy. It seemed that he had a premonition that he was now being definitely committed to an inquiry which would open up a pit of monstrous iniquity from which even he shrank back.
“Very well,” he said at length. “At seven o’clock this morning a large dress-basket was seen floating up the Gironde on the flow of the tide by two boys belonging to the village of St. Yzans-d’Houlette, Albert Cordeau, aged fourteen, and Charles Martin, aged thirteen and five months. The village of St. Yzans-d’Houlette lies on the same bank as the Château Suvlac, but six miles nearer to the mouth of the river. These details are important. The dress-basket was carried by a current nearer and nearer to the shore, and the tide running then very slowly, the two boys were easily able to keep up with it. It grounded gently in a tiny bay in a lonely reach half a mile from the village. There were the low slope of grass bank, a strip of meadow, a hedge of brambles behind the meadow, and the village a hundred yards behind that. The two boys dragged the basket out of the water with difficulty. For it was almost too heavy for their strength. They found that it was fastened securely with a thick rope, and that attached to the rope at the bottom of the basket was a fragment of a small-meshed net—a sinister little circumstance. For it looked as if a weight intended to sink the basket had proved too heavy for the net and had torn itself free. The boys, excited at this discovery, sawed through the rope with a pocketknife and, raising the lid, were horrified to see a body wrapped in a piece of fine linen. They lifted the edge of the linen, and found a girl stark naked, with the knees drawn up towards her chin. They were too frightened to make any closer examination. They replaced the linen, and whilst one, Charles Martin, ran to St. Yzans-d’Houlette with the news, Albert Cordeau closed the basket and remained on guard beside it. The body still huddled inside the basket was then taken to the mortuary at Villeblanche.” He mentioned the little town which was the seat of the local administration. “It happens,” he resumed, “that I was at Bordeaux engaged upon some troublesome business, of which this affair of the basket may, or may not, be a development.” Hanaud at this point received such a glare of reproach from Mr. Ricardo that he was at pains to soften down his neglect of his friend’s neighbourhood.
“Business, I should add, which forbids me seeking advice, however valuable.” And he had the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Ricardo’s self-esteem restored. “Monsieur Herbesthal did me the honour over the telephone to inform me of this discovery and to invite my help. The medical officer, the Doctor Brune, made his examination in our presence. The body is that of a young lady, careful, even fastidiously careful, of her beauty and appearance. There is no mistaking the evidence of a hand in a matter of this kind. But everything—the delicate whiteness of her skin, the gloss of her hair—indicated that she was one who had the time and the inclination to give to herself the most meticulous attention.”
“She was dead?” Diana interrupted in a low voice.
“According to the Doctor Brune, she had been dead for some six hours.”
“Drowned? In that basket? Horrible!” said Diana, and with a shudder, she suddenly pressed her hands over her face.
“No, mademoiselle, not drowned,” Hanaud answered. “She had been stabbed through the heart. There was no mark of pain upon her face, nor any contortion of fear. She cannot have known what was happening, so completely was she at peace,” and having thrown all the emphasis of which he was master into those consoling words, he went on slowly:
“But there is one perplexing and dreadful detail in this crime. For crime, of course, it is. After she was dead, her right hand had been hacked off at the wrist.”
A wave of horror swept over everyone in that room. For what purpose could mutilation have been added to murder? It spoke of a hatred at once implacable and monstrous, a vengeance which sought to glut itself even beyond the grave. A cry broke from the trembling lips of Diana. Mrs. Tasborough was crying and moaning. Robin Webster, his face troubled and disordered, exclaimed: “Why? In God’s name, why?” Mr. Ricardo alone was silent, with a horrid fear growing in his mind. He sank down into a chair and sat and stared at the floor.
Meanwhile Hanaud went on.
“There was no mark whatever by which this young victim could be identified—not
