“You remember perhaps the colour of the dress Madame Devenish wore last night?”
“It was green.”
“Do you see it here?” Hanaud asked, standing by the open wardrobe.
“No.”
“We shall ring for Marianne.”
Hanaud rang the bell, and whilst he waited examined a little writing table near the window, on which stood a blotting pad, an inkstand with a tray of pens and a small despatch-case. The blotting pad was as clean as the flags outside the window. The pens had the rusty look of pens which had not been used for many a long day. Hanaud opened the despatch-case. It held a few small receipted bills from shops in Biarritz, and a chequebook on a London bank. Hanaud looked at the counterfoils. A few cheques had been drawn to “self” for small amounts. Hanaud replaced everything in its old position and smiled ruefully at Mr. Ricardo.
“Not a letter from a friend! It is true! That young lady was lonely and poor. She paid for that flight across the water on the eve of her birthday.”
A dressing table stood beneath a pendant of electric light, and this was the only piece of furniture in the room which showed the least disarrangement. The lid of the big glass powder bowl was off, the hair brushes, backed with tortoiseshell and set with Evelyn’s maiden initials E. B., in gold, were one here one there. A hare’s foot lay dropped at random; a tiny pot of dry rouge was uncovered; a pencil of lipstick had not been sheathed. Hanaud nodded his head and pursed his lips as he took note of this disarray. Then he turned towards the door almost before Marianne had opened it.
“Marianne,” he asked, “can you tell me what clothes are missing from this poor woman’s wardrobe?”
Marianne shrugged her shoulders.
“That should not be difficult. She had not so many, the poor lamb!”; and of all the inappropriate expressions which Mr. Ricardo had ever heard, that word “lamb” as applied to a creature of passions and strong hate like Evelyn Devenish, seemed to him the worst. It was magnificent in its absurdity.
“There is missing, monsieur, the dress which madame wore last evening,” said Marianne, as she felt along the hanging row of clothes, “and a cloak.”
“Ah!” Hanaud exclaimed. “A cloak!”
“Yes, monsieur, a cloak of brown satin, warmly lined with white ermine and with a big collar and cuffs and border of white ermine too. It was a cloak of madame’s other days. For very sure, she could not have afforded so beautiful a wrap today.”
“Thank you,” said Hanaud. He cast one final look about the room and added: “We will now visit the room of mademoiselle the American. For very likely, Marianne, you can help us there too.”
Marianne threw up her hands.
“For Mademoiselle Whipple, my good gentleman! That is a very different thing! She goes from here to America, so she has everything here. If you are fond of fine clothes, you shall see them, I promise you. And boxes besides which have never been unlocked. Oh, la, la! And shoes and stockings! And scarves and cloaks! Oh, you like wonderful clothes, my gentleman. For me, I tell you frankly, I have no very high idea of men who run here and there to see ladies’ clothes.”
If ever there was a lamb, Mr. Ricardo reflected, that lamb was Hanaud of the Sûreté Générale of Paris. Marianne stood with her arms akimbo, wilfully misunderstanding the help she was asked to give. She resented in every fibre this invasion of the Château Suvlac by the police. She had seen her beloved young mistress struck down, as if by a merciless fist. Mr. Ricardo wondered whether behind all this violence there was not a fear of whither this inquiry would lead. She affected to frown upon the burly Hanaud as though he were some hopeless decadent. Hanaud, however, was meekness itself; so that the Commissaire, who was red in the face with outraged dignity, could not believe his eyes or ears.
“It is because I wish to see mademoiselle wearing once more her pretty frocks that I ask you to show me them, Marianne,” he said, but it seemed that Marianne knew better, for she turned to the door with a disdainful toss of her head and strode back along the corridor past the front door again and turned down the passage towards the turret.
A door faced her, and in the corner at the angle was a second door a good deal narrower, with panels of ground glass in the upper part of it. This door Marianne unlatched and threw open. A narrow spiral stone staircase constructed in the thickness of the wall wound upwards. Marianne ascended it to a small landing and halted in front of another door. On this a sheet of notepaper was fixed with a pin. It read:
Marianne
Je vous prie de ne pas
me réveiller le matin.
Hanaud asked of Marianne,
“Is that mademoiselle’s handwriting?”
“Yes, monsieur. I give the letters to the postman. That is the writing of mademoiselle.”
“No doubt,” Hanaud agreed.
Moreau produced another key and unlocked the door,
