'I'm not sure that you'd be helping her by disclosing the full details of her husband's death,' said Colbeck, gently. 'They are rather gruesome, Madame.'
'What I am interested in are the circumstances.'
'Circumstances?'
'I think you know what I mean, Inspector.' She got up to close the door then resumed her seat. 'And whatever you tell me, it will not be passed on to Catherine. That would be too cruel.'
'Madame Rivet,' he said, 'we are still in the middle of this investigation and I can only speculate on what we will discover next. As for what you call the circumstances, I fear that you might find them very distressing. Some things are best left unsaid.'
'I disagree, Inspector Colbeck. I do not believe you can tell me anything that would surprise me.' She took a deep breath before going on. 'When he was working on this new railway, my son-in-law rented a room in Mantes.'
'I know. I visited the house.'
'Did it not seem odd to you that he did not live at home and travel to Mantes every day by train? It is not very far. Why did he have to be so close to the railway?'
'He worked long hours.'
'That was one of his excuses. There were several others.'
'I hear a rather cynical note in your voice, Madame.'
'It's one that I take care to hide from Catherine,' she said, grimly. 'You may as well know that I did not wish my daughter to marry Gaston Chabal. He was a handsome man with a good future ahead of him, but I did not feel that I could ever trust him. Catherine, of course, would hear none of my warnings. She was young, innocent and very much in love. For the last two years, she thought that she had been happily married.' She pulled a piece of paper from the sleeve of her dress. 'This is something you may have seen before, Inspector.'
'What is it?'
'One of the letters that were found at the house where Gaston was staying in Mantes. The police returned his effects to us earlier this week. Fortunately,' she said, unfolding the letter, 'I was able to see them first. I've destroyed the others and will make sure that my daughter does not see this one either.'
Colbeck remembered the billets-doux he had seen at the lodging. Out of consideration to her, he had taken it upon himself to tear up the letters from Hannah Marklew but it had never crossed his mind that he should also get rid of the anonymous correspondence from the young Parisian woman. He felt a stab of guilt as he realised the anguish he had inadvertently caused and he was grateful that Chabal's wife had not been allowed to read the letters from one of her husband's mistresses. He knew how explicit they had been.
'Did you see any letters, Inspector?'
'Yes.'
'Then you must have read them.'
'I glanced at one or two.'
'Then you appreciate the sort of person who wrote them.'
'I think so.'
'Do you know who Arnaud Poulain is, Inspector?' she asked.
'No, Madame.'
'He is a banker here in Paris, a wealthy and successful man. Gaston convinced him to invest in the railway between Mantes and Caen. My son-in-law was not simply an engineer,' she went on. 'If he could persuade anyone to put money into the project, he earned a large commission. Arnaud Poulain was one of the men he talked into it. As a consequence, others followed Monsieur Poulain's example.'
'Why are you telling me this?' wondered Colbeck, guessing the answer even as he spoke. 'Monsieur Poulain has a daughter.'
'A very beautiful daughter.'
'What's her name?'
'Danielle.'
Colbeck thought of the 'D' at the end of the letters. It seemed as if Chabal had used his guile to ensnare another woman in order to secure some investment for the railway on which he was engaged.
'We may be wrong,' cautioned Madame Rivet. 'I have no proof that Danielle wrote these letters and I will certainly not confront her with them. The girl will have suffered enough as it is. I doubt very much if Gaston mentioned to her that he was married. In a liaison of that kind, a wife must always be invisible.'
'The young lady must have read about his death.'
'The discovery that he was married would have come as a terrible shock to Danielle and, I suspect, to her father. Monsieur Poulain would no doubt have welcomed Gaston into his home. The daughter was used callously as a means of reaching the father. Now, Inspector,' she continued, 'even if Danielle is not the woman who wrote this letter, the fact remains that somebody did and that does not show my son-in-law in a very flattering light.'
'I should have destroyed those letters when I had the chance.'
'You had no right to do so.'
'It would have saved you unnecessary pain.'
'The letters confirmed what I already knew,' she said, tearing the paper into tiny pieces before tossing them into a wastepaper basket. 'So, please, do not hold anything back. What were the exact circumstances of the murder?'
'M. Chabal was on his way to visit a woman in Liverpool,' he said. 'I'm not at liberty to give you her name, but I can tell you that someone close to her was persuaded to invest money in the railway.'
'At least we know what they talked about in bed.' She raised both hands in apology, 'I am sorry, Inspector. That was a very crude remark and I withdraw it. I have been under a lot of strain recently, as you can understand. But,' she added, sitting up and folding her hands in her lap, 'I would still like to hear more about what actually happened that day.'
'Then you shall, Madame Rivet.'
Colbeck was succinct. He gave her a straightforward account of the murder and told her about the clues that had led him to come to France in the first place. What he concealed from her was the series of incidents that had occurred on the new railway that was being built. Hortense Rivet listened with an amalgam of sadness and fortitude.
'Thank you,' she said when he had finished.
'That is all I can tell you.'
'It was more than I expected to hear.'
'Then my visit was not wasted.'
'Catherine is heartbroken now but she will recover in time. She will always nurture fond thoughts of Gaston and I will say nothing to her of the other life that he led. It is over now. He died before his wife could learn the ugly truth about him.' She let out a long sigh. 'Who knows? Perhaps it is better that way.'
Colbeck got up. 'I ought to be going.'
'It was good of you to come, Inspector.'
'Your request could not be ignored, Madame.'
'You will understand now why I wrote to you.'
'I do indeed.'
'Have you learned anything from this conversation?'
'Oh, yes. I feel as if I know your son-in-law a little better now.'
'Does that help?'
'In some ways.'
'Then there is one last thing you should know about him,' she said, rising from her chair. 'The last time I saw Gaston was in this very room. He had come home for the weekend. He did something that he had never done before.'
'And what was that?'
'My son-in-law was a very confident man, Inspector. He had the kind of natural charm and assurance that always appeal to women.' She gave a faint smile. 'You have the same qualities yourself but I do not think you
