“Of course,” she returned. But she was silent for at least a minute, looking at Hanaud with speculation and at Mr. Ricardo as though he did not exist, and so back again to Hanaud.
“I want you to spare her memory as much as you can,” Diana resumed in a sudden outburst. “She had of late years a most unhappy life. That indeed is why I asked her to stay with me this year at Suvlac. She was the daughter of Dennis Blackett, a financier of extremely wide interests and enormous wealth, a very good friend, I believe, and like so many men who are very good friends, a remorseless enemy. I don’t think Evelyn had much chance from the beginning.”
“He hated her?” Hanaud asked.
“On the contrary, he doted on her. Her mother died when she was six or seven; she was an only child, and she grew up amongst governesses and servants who had to obey every whim of hers or lose their jobs. Dennis Blackett made an idol of her. He named his yacht after her, and his crack filly and his prize Jersey cow, and an orchid of his own creation, and whilst she was still a child, she presided at his table. He flattered her beauty to her face. Nothing that she did was anything but uncommon; nothing that she said was anything but witty. And that wasn’t the end of his adoration. There was something fantastic in it—oh, even that doesn’t express what I mean! There was something abnormal in it. Yes, Dennis Blackett, with his hard city head, was silly in contact with Evelyn. I’ll give you an instance. I saw it happen myself, for I once stayed in his house—” Diana broke off suddenly. “But you want of course to hear about the marriage, not about these trifles.”
“The marriage afterwards—yes,” Hanaud pleaded earnestly. “But these details first, if you please. You call them trifles, mademoiselle. I don’t. For just such trifles build character. And how shall we reach the truth in a case so obscure, unless we understand something of the people concerned in it, of the what-they-have-been which has made them what-they-are.”
Ricardo had seldom seen Hanaud so eager, so insinuatingly insistent as he was at this moment. He sat leaning forward with his elbows upon his knees, his strong face and alert posture both claiming Diana’s narrative. “The instance, if you please.”
Diana nodded her consent and resumed.
“Well, then, here it is. Dennis Blackett had a great house in Morven on the Sound of Mull. The house had a high staircase with broad shallow treads all in dark gleaming oak. It was a fancy of his—no, ‘fancy’ is altogether too light a word—it was a passion of his to see Evelyn, dressed in her prettiest clothes, step daintily down this staircase. He would stand at the bottom of the stairs in the hall, and correct her just like a dancing-master if she stepped awkwardly or made an uneasy gesture, and send her back to the landing to begin all over again. Of course she made a very pretty picture, slim and fresh and young, glistening in her lovely clothes against the dark background, but the whole scene made me—what shall I say?—uncomfortable. It struck me as all wrong. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Hanaud replied.
“And you understand too, then, that Evelyn must have been an angel with silver wings if she hadn’t grown up vain, utterly self-willed and ready to repay his folly in the way such follies are repaid. Evelyn’s twenty-first birthday fell in the month of August. Dennis Blackett brought a great party of his friends up to Morven to celebrate it. For a week before her birthday the house was packed. They shot grouse by day, danced at night and kept high festival. I was there, and I could hardly imagine a man so absurdly happy and so absurdly proud as Dennis Blackett. Until the morning of Evelyn’s birthday. A message was brought to each one of his guests at breakfast time; no one saw him; and by the afternoon the house was empty but for him. Late on the night before Evelyn and Julian Devenish, a young man who owed everything to Blackett, had slipped down to the small harbour of the Sound, sailed across in a little sloop to Oban and taken the first train to London, where they were married.”
“And this Monsieur Blackett never forgave that treachery,” Hanaud interposed.
“Never. I told you he was a relentless enemy. He swept Evelyn out of his life altogether. He remained alone in his great house in Morven until the late autumn. Then he came down to London and methodically set to work to ruin Devenish. Oh, it wasn’t much work and it didn’t take long. If you dealt with Devenish, you see, you didn’t deal with Dennis Blackett. If you were interested in any of Devenish’s concerns, you were liable to find your shares knocked about from day to day until they went to nothing. The little swansdown pillbox of a house in Mayfair went piecemeal. One of a row of new red cottages at Surbiton took its place. Then that went in its turn and three rooms at Sydenham had to make a home for the girl of the shimmering frocks and the oak staircase at Morven. There were quarrels without end, of course, each one blaming the other. Within a year Devenish was stripped bare and blew his brains out.”
“And even that wasn’t enough,” Hanaud added. There was a note of reluctant admiration in his voice. He lived in a contact so close with the shifty volatile mind of the criminal, that he could not but respect thoroughness, even if it were a thoroughness in cruelty.
“No, that wasn’t enough,” Diana agreed. “Evelyn wrote to her father. She was absolutely destitute. She was answered by a clerk and a typewritten letter. Every quarter, if she applied for it, she would receive
