“No woman, my friend, hacked off that right hand, though all the hatred in the world consumed her.”
“But no doubt she had accomplices to help her,” Mr. Ricardo answered with a patient and condescending kindness. “You had not thought of that!”
Hanaud smote his forehead with a slight exaggeration of despair.
“It is terribly true!” he cried. “Hanaud is growing old. How ever should I solve this mystery alone! Fortunately you are here, the Chief of the Staff who tells the General what to do; the power behind the sofa. I lean on you. So tell me this. You have just the time!”
The car was approaching the long street of Villeblanche, bordered by small white and dusty houses.
“When Madame Devenish turned this ugly look upon the delicate Joyce Whipple, who was beside Joyce Whipple? To whom was she talking?”
Mr. Ricardo rebuilt in his mind the drawing-room, its furniture and its occupants. He set them all in their places, and exclaimed:
“I know. He was at the side of Joyce Whipple, a little behind her perhaps. Yes, certainly a little behind her. For he was leaning forward over the back of her chair—Robin Webster.”
“Aha!” said Hanaud. “The good-looking young man with the white hair and the little shade of pedantry in his speech. The Apollo and the schoolmarm all in one, eh? So it was he. The same man who cried out suddenly ‘Joyce! Joyce!’ when it was discovered that she had disappeared. That is curious—yes! Well, we shall know in a minute whether you are right.”
For the car had stopped at the Prefecture. And in a minute Mr. Ricardo knew that he was entirely wrong. For stretched out upon the mortuary slab, wrapped decently about in a clean linen sheet, her eyes closed, a look of peace upon her face, lay Evelyn Devenish.
Mr. Ricardo’s surprise was intense, but his relief even greater. Joyce Whipple had wound herself about his heart a little more closely than he had known. He put aside from him, for the moment at all events, all that was enigmatic about her, and the possibility suggested by Hanaud at Aix that she might have invented her queer story about Diana Tasborough’s letters for some unknown purpose of her own. He was content that she was not lying there on the stone slab.
“It is Madame Devenish, then?” said Hanaud, reading his friend’s face.
“Yes.”
Hanaud turned to the Commissaire Herbesthal, who had joined them.
“It is as you thought. Let us see what we have to see. For we keep Mr. Ricardo from his luncheon.”
Led by the attendant of the mortuary they passed by a bare, whitewashed passage to a room at the back. The room was filled with cupboards, and the basket, still wet from the river, stood upon the floor.
“I want to see the piece of linen in which this poor woman was wrapped,” said Hanaud.
The attendant unlocked one of his cupboards, and took it out and handed it to Hanaud. Mr. Ricardo could see that one of its edges was torn from top to bottom, and that it was stained with blood. Hanaud carried it towards the window and turned it over and shook it out and gathered it together again in a bundle. When he turned back to the room again his face was quite changed. It was grave and discontented. Clearly he had no liking for the task to which he was now committed.
“This, I think, will prove to be very important,” he said, as he laid it carefully down upon a chair.
He went over to the basket and opened it. Mr. Ricardo, from the place where he stood, could not see the inside of it. He stole over on the tips of his toes to Hanaud’s side. It was lined with some sort of strong white canvas, which was here and there smeared with blood. Hanaud bent down into it swiftly, feeling the soaked lining at the corners.
“It has been torn here,” he said, thrusting his fingers into the rent, and then his face sharpened. He stood up, and turning the basket upon its side bent over the wickerwork at one corner and close to the bottom.
“See!” he said to Herbesthal. He pointed to a tiny wedge of yellow metal which projected between the withies of the wicker. He set the basket once more upon its bottom, and plunging in his hands worked for a moment or two with considerable exertion. When he stood up again he held in his hand a narrow gold bracelet. It was open. A tiny wedge was made to slide into a hollow, where a spring caught and fastened it, and at the catch there was a large fire opal. Mr. Ricardo gasped incredulously as he looked at it.
“May I see it?” he asked, and Hanaud, holding the two ends very gingerly in the tips of his fingers, stretched it out to him.
“You know it?” he asked.
“I have seen it before,” Mr. Ricardo replied, his face puckered in bewilderment.
“Where?”
“In London.”
Some part of Mr. Ricardo’s perplexity now showed in Hanaud’s face.
“But I understood you had never seen Evelyn Devenish before yesterday.”
“Nor had I,” said Mr. Ricardo. “When I saw that bracelet, it was upon Joyce Whipple’s wrist. It is hers.”
“Hers!”
Hanaud stared at Ricardo and from Ricardo to the bracelet.
“That is extraordinary,” he said slowly. He turned the golden circlet over and looked at the inside of it. But there was no inscription there at all. Then he asked for a sheet of paper, and wrapped the bracelet in it carefully and laid it on the folded linen.
“There may be some fingermarks upon it which may help us,” he said, and he stood back and stared at it again, as though, even hidden in its paper wrapper, it could be forced to explain its presence in the basket. He flung himself again upon the basket, dived into it, and searched its every crevice. But it held no other secrets. Hanaud stood erect again.
“You, Monsieur le Commissaire, will be good enough to
