“ ‘Yes, I slept a good deal better. I didn’t wake up so often.’
“Evelyn Devenish nodded her head.
“ ‘Well, I’ll give you a stronger draught next time. But it mustn’t be yet. If you get into the habit of taking this stuff it won’t have any effect. You shall have some more of the crystals in five days’ time, if you remind me.’
“Now five days brought us exactly to the Wednesday when I was to be out of the way. I thanked her very gratefully for her kindness. She must have taken me for a zany, I slipped my foot so stupidly into her trap.
“So far all was very promising, but I had one more precaution to take. I knew that the celebration of the Black Mass followed the ritual of the true Mass, and I must be familiar with it. I therefore attended the little church at Suvlac assiduously during the next week, and I am afraid that I left the Abbé Fauriel under the belief that he was in the way of making a valuable convert of a girl from the United States with millions of money. As a matter of fact, I was watching every movement of the one small boy of the village who acted as his acolyte. There were movements not so very easy to get into one’s head. For sometimes they corresponded with the movements of the priest, sometimes they were in a sort of opposition, like—I don’t use the words irreverently—like dancers setting to partners. However, by the Wednesday, what with attendance at the church and rehearsing in my bedroom, I felt that I could get through. On Tuesday morning, too, the registered parcel arrived from Leeds, and so everything was ready.”
Joyce Whipple drew in a breath as she thus reached the last stage of her adventure, and sat with her eyes brooding upon the table. A bottle of Evian water stood in the centre. She touched the arm of her lover and asked for a glass of it.
“Mademoiselle,” Hanaud said gently, “if you are disturbed by your recollections of that night, you must not let us add the distress of relating them to us here. You will, alas! have to tell them once more.”
“At the Cour d’Assizes,” she answered. “I know, and I confess that I shrink from the prospect of the publicity and the gaping faces. But it will help me against that hour of ordeal if I tell it first among my friends. My story will be all the more ordered, and its repetition less of a penance.”
She drained her glass of water and resumed.
XXVIII
The Night of Wednesday
“On the Wednesday after luncheon I took Evelyn Devenish aside upon the terrace and startled her thoroughly by saying:
“ ‘It’s for tonight, isn’t it?’
“Her eyes opened to their full width in consternation, and the blood left her face.
“ ‘For tonight? What’s for tonight?’ she stuttered, and waited in suspense for my answer. I took a little malicious pleasure in keeping her for as long as I could safely do it in her embarrassment and agitation.
“ ‘What?’ I repeated with an air of surprise. ‘Oh, you won’t have forgotten! I can’t believe it,’ and with every fresh sentence I spoke she lost more and more of her power to dissimulate, until her face looked like a pair of hard eyes bright with hate set in a white mask. I thought indeed as I looked at her: ‘There’s the very disguise for me.’ But at the same time I realised that I wasn’t being very wise. So I said quickly:
“ ‘You promised me a sleeping-draught for tonight, Mrs. Devenish. I have been looking forward to it tremendously.’
“The colour rushed back into her face. ‘Of course I hadn’t forgotten,’ she answered. ‘You shall certainly have it, Joyce.’ Then she changed her note. ‘I want you to do something for me in return. Oh, a little thing! It’ll sound silly to you. Perhaps it is. But I am rather superstitious,’ and she pulled herself up as though she had said too much. ‘I want you to lend me something you usually wear—that bracelet, for instance,’ and she pointed to the gold band round my wrist. ‘I’ll give it back to you tomorrow.’
“No doubt I looked surprised. I couldn’t imagine why even the most superstitious person should want it. It wasn’t a charm, or a thing which is supposed to bring luck, like a bracelet of elephant’s hair. It was just a strip of gold with a fire opal at the clasp. I unfastened it, however, and gave it to her.
“ ‘Of course you can have it,’ I said, rather amused. Evelyn Devenish almost snatched at it. Then she looked at me with amusement, too, but a secret sort of amusement, as though I was the greatest fool in the world to let her have it.
“I waited until after tea in the garden—we had no expedition arranged for that day—and then I slipped out alone for a walk, with the varnish, a small paintbrush and a thick pair of gloves in my handbag. I went by the hill road to the little gate in the tall hedge of the Mirandol garden. No one was within sight. I put on the thick gloves and painted the latch and the post and the rail carefully and quickly. Then I made a bundle of the bottle, the brush and the gloves and pushed it deep into the hedge; from which place Monsieur Hanaud has, I think, recovered it.”
Hanaud contented himself with a nod of assent. This was not the moment for even the most commodious of phrases. For a curious uneasiness had been gaining upon Joyce’s
