It was a Tuesday afternoon in midsummer. Paris was deserted—a city of
the dead. Jim Barnett sat in his office with his feet on his desk. He
was in his shirt-sleeves. A glass of lager beer stood at his elbow. A
green blind shut out the blazing sun. To the prejudiced eye, Barnett’s
appearance would have suggested slumber, and this impression would have
been strengthened by his rather loud and rhythmical breathing.
A sharp tap on his door made him bring his feet down with a jerk and
sit bolt upright.
“No! It can’t be! The heat must be affecting my eyesight.” Barnett
affected elaborate astonishment.
Inspector Béchoux, for it was he, closed the door behind him and
observed with some distaste his friend’s state of déshabillé. It was a
fad with Béchoux to present at all times a perfectly groomed
appearance. On this sweltering day he was cool and immaculate, not a
hair out of place.
“How do you do it?” Barnett demanded, sinking back wearily into his
chair.
“Do what?”
“Look like a fashion-plate off the ice. Damned superior, I call it!”
Béchoux smiled with conscious pride.
“It’s quite simple,” he remarked modestly.
“But I take it the case you are working on is not quite so simple, or
you wouldn’t be coming to the enemy camp for assistance, eh Béchoux?”
Béchoux reddened. It was a very sore point with him that in his
difficulties he had several times been forced to accept Jim Barnett’s
help. For Barnett was helpful—almost uncannily so. The trouble was that
he always managed to help himself as well as others. But Béchoux felt
profoundly grateful to Barnett for having retrieved these African
shares—his precious Twelve Little Nigger Boys.
“What is it this time? I’ve all day to spare—and to-morrow—and the day
after. The Barnett Agency doesn’t get many clients at this time of
year, though it does guarantee ‘Information Free.’ I hear that they
can’t even get deadheads to go to the theatres—pouf!”
“How would you like a trip into the country?”
“Béchoux, you are a blessing, albeit heavily disguised. What is the
case, though?”
Inspector Béchoux grimaced involuntarily.
“It’s a real mystery—the sudden death of the famous scientist,
Professor Saint-Prix.”
“I know the name, but I haven’t read about his death in the papers. Has
he been murdered?”
Inspector Béchoux’s countenance took on a sphinx-like expression.
“That’s what I want you to help me to determine. I have my car at a
garage near here. Pack a bag and come right along. I’ll tell you the
facts of the case as we go.”
Reluctantly Barnett got up, drained the last of his beer, and made his
simple preparations for the trip.
A quarter of an hour later they were spinning out of Paris in Inspector
Béchoux’s little two-seater.
“I was called in on the case,” said Béchoux, “by Doctor Desportes of
Beauvray—an old friend. He rang up on Monday morning to say there was
going to be an inquest at Beauvray—Professor Saint-Prix, the scientist,
had been killed by falling into the stream at the bottom of his
garden.”
“Nothing very mysterious in that.”
“Ah, but wait. The professor was crossing the stream by a plank bridge,
and that bridge gave way under him and precipitated the old man into
the water. His head hit a sharp rock and he was killed
instantaneously.”
“Was the bridge rotten, then?”
Inspector Béchoux shook his head.
“My doctor friend informed me that though the police had not been
called in, they would have to be. The bridge was perfectly sound,
but—it had been sawed through!”
Barnett whistled.
“And so you went to Beauvray at once?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you find?”
“A queer situation. The professor had a little house where he lived
with his daughter, Thérèse Saint-Prix. Joined on to the house was a
very fine laboratory. The garden sloped down, first a lawn and then a
dense shrubbery, to a stream, sunk deep between rocky banks. A stout
plank bridge was the means of crossing from the Saint-Prix garden to
the adjoining property of the Villa Eméraude, the home of a married
couple, the Lenormands.
“Louis Lenormand is a young stockbroker. His wife, Cécile, is a
delicate, beautiful girl. Last Sunday afternoon, Madame Lenormand was
going to have tea with Thérèse Saint-Prix. Louis Lenormand was spending
the week-end in Paris with his invalid mother, but was expected back
that night.
“Madame Lenormand went through the garden of the Villa Eméraude down to
the stream. When she got there, she pulled up short and gave a cry of
horror! The plank bridge was broken, and in the water lay the body of
Professor Saint-Prix. She rushed back to the house for help, and then
fainted.”
“Well, where do I come in?”
“Almost as soon as they had got Madame Lenormand to bed, and were
breaking the news of her father’s death to Thérèse Saint-Prix, Louis
Lenormand arrived in his car, driving like a fury. He was pale and
trembling. The first words he spoke were: ‘Am I in time? Tell me—tell
me. My God, I’ve been a fool!’ He was like a madman and rushed upstairs
to his wife’s room without waiting for an answer from the astonished
servants. His wife’s maid told him what had happened. At first he did
not seem to understand. Then he stole to his wife’s bedside and kissed
her hands passionately, weeping and murmuring, ‘Cécile, I am a
murderer.’”
“Still I confess I don’t understand. You have your murder—you have your
murderer, self-confessed. What more do you want?”
“Well, the thing is this. We checked up on Louis Lenormand’s movements
while he was away from Beauvray. We know that the bridge was perfectly
safe on the Saturday morning, for a gardener crossed by it. Now all
Saturday afternoon Lenormand spent at his mother’s bedside. He sat with
her again after dinner until eleven o’clock, and then turned into bed
himself. Old Madame Lenormand’s maid and cook heard him kicking off his
shoes in the room next to theirs. And the maid swears that in the small
hours she heard him switch off his light, so she supposes he must have
been lying awake reading. All Sunday morning he did not stir out, so it
is out of the question that he could possibly have sawed through the
bridge between the gardens at Beauvray.”
“What made you establish such a thorough alibi for your suspect?”
“Madame Lenormand, though still weak from the shock, has recovered
consciousness. Her belief in her husband’s innocence is absolute. Her
one aim is to clear him. She insisted on these investigations being
made. He will not say a word in his own defence. It’s all very
mystifying.”
“You say that Louis Lenormand was not expected back until Sunday
evening. Do you know why he left Paris so much earlier?”
“That,” said Béchoux, “is a curious point. Apparently he was alone in
one of the rooms in his mother’s flat, reading a book while the old
lady had a nap after her lunch. The servants were both in the kitchen,
and testify that suddenly, at about three o’clock, he rushed into them
and said he was going home at once but would not disturb his mother to
say good-bye.”
“And the motive? What reason could Louis Lenormand have to murder his
neighbor?”
Inspector Béchoux shrugged his shoulders.
“I have an idea, and Doctor Desportes is making some investigations on
my behalf.”
“Is there no one else who comes under suspicion? What about Madame
Lenormand?”
Inspector Béchoux was silent. The car swung off the main road up a
shady avenue. They turned into the drive of the Villa Eméraude. They
were met outside the house by Doctor Desportes, who announced:
“The Beauvray police have arrested Monsieur Lenormand, but I have been
busy on the telephone to headquarters, and you are now officially in
charge of the case.”
“But his alibi—he was in Paris all the time—he could not have sawed
through the bridge!”
The doctor looked grave.
“Monsieur Lenormand had a latch-key to his mother’s flat. The Paris
police have inquired at the garage where he kept his car and they find
that he took it out shortly after midnight and told a mechanic that he
was unable to sleep because of the heat, and was going to try and get a
breath of air in the Bois. He returned after two in the morning.”
“Which,” observed Barnett, “gave him plenty of time to drive out here,
saw through the bridge and get back to Paris. And what the maid heard
was Monsieur Lenormand switching off his light when he really went to
bed at last. Both servants must have been asleep when he slipped out of
the flat.”
The doctor looked at Barnett in some curiosity, for he spoke in such an
assured tone and was so obviously no subordinate of Inspector Béchoux.
Barnett smiled and bowed easily.
“Allow me to remedy my friend Béchoux’s deplorable lack of manners. Jim
Barnett, at your service, doctor.”
“A friend of mine, who has helped me on more than one occasion,” said
Béchoux, not so easily. “Come, doctor, what news have you for me after
your confidential interview with the bank manager at Beauvray?”
“Poor Monsieur Lenormand.” The doctor shook his head sadly. “I wish it
had been a policeman who had found it out. But justice cannot be
cheated. I have established that for the past two years Monsieur
Lenormand has from time to time paid quite large checks into the
banking account of Professor Saint-Prix.”
“Blackmail?” Barnett and Béchoux came out with the word simultaneously.
“There we have at last the motive!” cried Béchoux, in purely
professional triumph. “Monsieur Lenormand must have had a very good
reason for sawing through that bridge——”
“But he did not do it!”
A young woman, deathly pale, wearing a brilliant Chinese wrap, was
coming slowly down the stairs into the hall, clutching at the banister
for support. A maid followed anxiously behind her.
“I repeat,” she said in a voice trembling with suppressed emotion,
“Louis is innocent!”
“Madame,” said Béchoux, “allow me to present my friend, Jim Barnett.”
Barnett bowed low. “If anyone can achieve the impossible and establish
your husband’s innocence, it is he! I admit, however, that I originally
brought him here because your husband’s alibi upset all my deductions:
Now that alibi no longer holds, and I have no objection if Barnett
transfers his assistance to you. Provided”——he grew thoughtful and did
not finish his sentence.
“Oh,” cried Madame Lenormand, taking Barnett’s hands impulsively in
hers, “save my husband, and I will give you any reward you care to
name.”
Barnett shook his head.
“I ask no reward, madame, beyond the privilege of serving you. Never
shall it be said that the Barnett Agency descended to base
commercialism in accepting a fee for its labors.”
At this point a gendarme came running in from the garden with a pair of
rubber boots.
“Where did you find those?” asked Béchoux.
“In a garden shed at the back of the grounds of the Villa.”
The boots were covered with fresh mud. In this sweltering weather the
only moisture on the ground would be along the channel of the stream.
Cécile Lenormand gave a sharp exclamation.
“Your husband’s?”
She nodded reluctantly.
“Well,” said Barnett, “let’s go and have a look at the stream—and we
ought to take those with us. À bientôt, madame.”
Béchoux and Barnett, accompanied by the doctor and the gendarme, walked
through the garden and down to the stream. The water was running
swiftly over the rocks below.
Béchoux looked unwillingly at the muddy foothold below the broken
bridge, and then at his shining new patent leather shoes topped by
snowy spats.
“I’ll do it!” cried Barnett gallantly, and, seizing a boot from
Béchoux, he leapt down, so that he sank ankle-deep in the mud beside
the torrent.
“Are there any marks?” asked the doctor eagerly.
“Yes,” said Barnett. “And they were made by these boots!”
“A clear case!” said Béchoux. “I need never have brought you along,
Barnett, and I’m afraid it’s no use your transferring your services to
Madame Lenormand. Really, I think you’d better hop back to Paris.”
“My dear Béchoux!” said Barnett in tones of shocked surprise. “Go off
and leave a client in the lurch? Do you imagine the Barnett Agency
shirks what appears to be a losing case?”
“Then you definitely regard Madame Lenormand as your client?”
“Why not?”
He handed up the boot and grovelled a few minutes longer in the mud.
Then he clambered up again, somewhat apoplectic of countenance.
“Now,” he said briskly, “suppose we visit Mademoiselle Saint-Prix and
inspect both the properties prior to consuming beef and wine at the
village inn.”
“What good can that do? I have my case.”
“And I have my own way of working. If you prefer it, I will pursue my
course quite independently on behalf of Madame Lenormand, and you
needn’t see me again until I, too, have my case.”
But this course Béchoux viewed with some apprehension, so he and
Barnett made their way round by the road to the Saint-Prix house.
On the way there Barnett solemnly handed Béchoux a very grubby sealed
envelope.
“Will you please keep that carefully for me?” he said, “and don’t let
it out of your inner pocket until I ask for it.”
“What is it?”
Barnett smiled mysteriously and laid a finger to his nose.
“A valuable diamond, old horse!”
“Idiot!”
At this point, they had arrived at the late professor’s house. Here all
the blinds were drawn. Barnett observed that the paint was peeling off
the walls, and the matting in the passage was worn and old. A
down-at-heel servant girl showed them into a small boudoir where they
were received by Thérèse Saint-Prix.
She was quite a young woman—a girl in years, but strikingly poised and
mature in bearing and appearance, tall and supple. She wore black, with
no ornament of any kind. Her smooth black hair, parted in the middle,
was drawn off her ears into a knot low on her neck. Her grave, dark
eyes searched the faces of the two men—she had already met Béchoux and
presumed Barnett to be an assistant.
She sat, very pale, though calm, in a high-backed, carved chair. Only
her strong white hands strained at her handkerchief as if there alone
her grief found outlet.
Barnett bowed low.
“Accept my profound sympathy, mademoiselle,” he murmured. “Your
father’s death will be felt by all France!”
“Yes,” the girl said, in a low voice. “Five years ago he discovered the
antiseptic which is now used in every hospital. That brought him
renown, though it did not mend our fortunes when we lost our money in
Russia.” She gave a pathetic little smile.
“How was that?”
“My father was half Russian. He invested everything in his brother’s
oil-wells near St. Petersburg. Revolutionaries burned the factory and
murdered my uncle. After that loss, we lived very modestly. But even in
poverty my father was generous. And he would take no money for his
discovery. He said his reward was to have been able to help in the
great war against disease. When my father died, however, he was on the
verge of completing another discovery of a different kind—one that
would have brought him wealth as well as fame.”
“What was this discovery?”
“A secret process which would have revolutionized the dye industry. But
I know scarcely anything about it—my father was secretive in some
matters and would not let me help him in his experiments.” Again she
smiled sadly. “I could only be his housekeeper, never his assistant.
And my chief occupation was to interest myself in the garden. Cécile
and I used to spend hours planning our flower-beds. She was always so
kind, helping me with gifts of plants. She was coming to tea on that
afternoon, you know, to advise me about some fruit-trees. Poor Cécile!
What will she do?”
“You are aware, mademoiselle,” said Béchoux, rather stiffly, as if to
recall his presence to her consciousness, “that Louis Lenormand is
under arrest? The case is practically complete against him.”
She nodded.
“What made Louis Lenormand do such a thing? Can you imagine?” Barnett
asked abruptly.
“If he did it,” said Thérèse gently. “We must remember that nothing is
proved yet.”
“But what reason can he have had? Well off, prosperous, married to a
charming wife——”
“Against the wishes of her family,” interposed the girl. “Louis
Lenormand was a penniless clerk, and it was by speculating with his
wife’s money that he became rich. The family all thought that was why
he wanted to marry her, though, of course, it was untrue. And Cécile
was passionately fond of her husband—she grudged every minute he spent
elsewhere. Indeed, I used to wonder if she was not a little jealous of
the time he spent with my father in the laboratory. I wondered, too, if
she minded his helping my father occasionally with loans of money. But
I do wrong if I suggest that Cécile is not all that is generous. Only,
where her husband is concerned, if you understand, I have often
wondered if she can be quite normal.”
Barnett looked distinctly interested, though Béchoux was obviously
bored.
“Mademoiselle,” said Barnett, “I have a favor to ask of you. May I see
the laboratory in which your father worked?”
Without another word she led the way down a passage and through a baize
door, which opened into the airy, white building.
The laboratory was in contrast to the house itself. Here all was new
and spotless. Phials were ranged in orderly rows along the shelves;
clean vessels sparkled on the benches. In all this dazzling whiteness
there was but one dark patch—a muddy coat trailing from a stool.
“What’s that?” asked Barnett.
“My poor father’s coat,” said Thérèse. “They carried him in here and
removed his coat when they were trying to restore life. But he must
have been killed instantaneously.”
“And these are all his chemicals?” Barnett indicated the gleaming
phials.
“Yes—to think he will never use them again!” She averted her head
slightly. “Ah, how my father loved this place; and so, I always
thought, did Louis Lenormand. Cécile did not, but that was because she
did not understand. She loved flowers, everything beautiful; but
science she thought ugly and repellent. Why, I have seen her shake her
fist at the laboratory windows when my father and her husband were
talking there together.”
“Well, mademoiselle, I thank you very much for being so helpful to us
in what must be painful and terrible circumstances so far as you are
concerned. And I won’t hide from you that I have already made one
little discovery.”
“What’s that?” demanded Béchoux.
“Aha, I thought you would want to know. Well, it is that I am on the
track of the motive for the murder. You have the murderer; I shall soon
have the motive. And there we are!”
Then, hastily dissembling his cheerfulness, he took a dignified
farewell of Thérèse Saint-Prix, and departed with Béchoux.
At the garden gate they were met by the doctor and the gendarme.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” the former observed. “We have found the
instrument of the crime.”
The gendarme held up a medium-sized saw.
“Where did you find it?” asked Béchoux eagerly.
“Among some laurel bushes, near the tool-shed where the boots were
discovered.”
“See,” cried Béchoux, turning eagerly to Barnett, “it is plainly
marked, ‘Villa Eméraude.’”
“Very interesting,” observed Barnett. “Béchoux, I feel your case is
becoming ever clearer. I almost wish I had never left Paris; it’s just
as hot here. In fact, I am getting distinctly warm. What about a drink
at the local hostelry? I hope you will join us, doctor?” He beamed a
comprehensive invitation.
“I shall be delighted to join you and your colleague,” answered the
doctor.
At the word “colleague,” Béchoux smiled wryly. He was wishing pretty
heartily that he had never brought Barnett into the case.
The sultry, airless evening was followed by a night of storm, but
Barnett slept through the thunderclaps. The next day dawned clear and
much cooler.
Béchoux informed his friend that Louis Lenormand was to be examined by
the magistrate up at the Saint-Prix house that afternoon.
“I am going to complete the necessary formalities this morning,” he
announced, sipping his coffee. After a moment he continued, “Won’t you
change your mind and pop back to Paris?”
“I’m sorry my society bores you so badly,” said Barnett sorrowfully,
and sought solace in a third cup of chocolate.
“Oh, very well!” Béchoux was inclined to be huffy. He left the inn, and
Barnett attacked another soft boiled egg.
When he had finished his breakfast, Jim Barnett spruced himself up and
made his way to the Villa Eméraude. Madame Lenormand received him in
her sitting-room, and for over an hour he remained talking with her.
Towards the end of the interview they moved into Louis Lenormand’s
study, and Béchoux, coming up the drive, could see through the open
window Barnett and Cécile Lenormand bending over an open desk together.
Barnett came out into the hall and greeted his friend as if the Villa
Eméraude was his own ancestral hall.
“Welcome, welcome, Béchoux. But I’m afraid you can’t see Madame
Lenormand. She’s feeling overtired already—a little hysterical—and she
must rest in view of her ordeal this afternoon. A charming woman; in
many ways a delightful woman——” He did not finish, but paused
thoughtfully.
Béchoux grunted. “I came up to find you,” he said, “to tell you a bit
of news.”
“What’s that?”
“We searched Louis Lenormand, and found on him a note-book in which he
made entries of payments made by him during the past six months or so.
One of these, dated three weeks ago, was for five thousand francs, paid
to ‘S,’ and against it was written ‘The last payment.’ Investigation
has shown that this amount was paid to Professor Saint-Prix. The case
is pretty black against Lenormand, Barnett, and I really should advise
you to quit now.”
But all Barnett answered was:
“I’m ready for a spot of lunch. Are you?”
The inquiry began at three o’clock. It was held in the narrow
dining-room of the Saint-Prix house. Louis Lenormand sat at one end,
between two gendarmes, never raising his eyes from the ground. The
magistrates and Béchoux conferred together in low tones. Doctor
Desportes gazed thoughtfully out of the window.
Barnett ushered in Madame Lenormand. She was very pale and leaned on
his arm for support. She took her seat in a low chair, looking all
around her with quick, nervous glances. Her husband seemed not to
observe her, so sunken was he in dejection.
Then Thérèse Saint-Prix entered the room. Her presence was like a
calming influence. She went over to Cécile Lenormand and laid a
compassionate hand on her shoulder, but the other started away
violently.
Almost immediately the examining magistrate began. He took the medical
evidence, which Doctor Desportes gave in even, colorless tones, clearly
establishing that the professor had been killed through his fall into
the stream.
After this came the questioning of Louis Lenormand.
“Did you take your car out late on Sunday night from the Paris garage?”
“I did.”
“Where did you drive?”
The prisoner was silent.
“Answer me!”
“I really forget.”
Béchoux gave Barnett a significant look.
“Did you pay Professor Saint-Prix large sums of money from time to
time?”
“I did.”
“For what reason?”
Louis Lenormand hesitated, and then replied haltingly:
“To assist him in his researches.”
Béchoux’s pitying contempt was unmistakable.
A small note-book was produced.
“This is yours?”
The prisoner assented.
“Here you have entered various payments made by you. There is one of
five thousand francs dated a month ago which says: ‘S. The last
payment.’ Was that a check paid to Professor Saint-Prix?”
“It was.”
“Won’t you tell us why you were being—blackmailed? Perhaps the
circumstances——” The magistrate seemed anxious to give Lenormand a
chance to defend himself.
“I have nothing to say.”
“Is it a fact that Professor Saint-Prix was in the habit of coming to
your house for a game of chess on Sunday afternoons?”
“Yes,” said the young man sullenly.
“Did you saw through the bridge?”
The prisoner was silent.
“You do not deny that these are your boots?” Béchoux produced them. The
prisoner looked slightly startled but made no protest.
“I submit,” said Béchoux, “that the case is clear.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Barnett, “there never was a clearer. As clear as
crystal—as a diamond—Béchoux, won’t you produce that little envelope I
entrusted to your care?”
With a premonition of disaster, Béchoux extracted the rather grubby
envelope from his inner pocket.
“Open it!” commanded Barnett.
He did so, and held up—a diamond earring!
Cécile Lenormand gave a little gasp. Her husband started up and then
sank back into his chair.
“Can anyone identify this little exhibit of jewelry?” Barnett asked the
assembly.
Doctor Desportes looked intensely worried. Poor man, his quiet life was
being rudely disturbed!
“Those earrings——” He paused. “They were given to Madame Lenormand by
her husband not very long ago!”
“Is that so?” Béchoux asked of Louis Lenormand.
The latter nodded.
Cécile had bowed her head in her hands. Thérèse reached out a pitying
hand to her, but she shook it off wildly.
“You have seen these earrings,” pursued Barnett, “but you can’t guess
where I found one of them. Inspector Béchoux will tell you, though. In
the mud by the stream, at the point where the body of Professor
Saint-Prix was found lying dead!”
“Can you tell us, madame,” inquired the magistrate of Cécile Lenormand,
“whether you were wearing those earrings on Sunday afternoon?”
Looking up, the young woman shook her head.
“I can’t—remember—when I last wore them!” she said in a confused
manner.
“You must forgive my asking you, madame, but you must tell us now
whether you left the Villa at any time during Saturday night.”
There was the merest hint of menace in the smooth tones. Louis
Lenormand’s mouth twitched painfully.
“I—I——” She looked from one face to another of those gathered in the
room. “Why, I believe I did. It was so hot.... I went out into the
garden for a little....”
“Was this before you retired for the night?”
“Yes—no—not exactly. I had gone to my room, but I had not undressed. I
had told my maid to go to bed. Then I felt oppressed by the heat and
went out into the garden through the French window of my boudoir.”
“So that no one heard you come or go?”
“No one, monsieur.”
“And, on Sunday afternoon, you were going to tea with Mademoiselle
Saint-Prix?”
“Yes.”
“At four o’clock?”
“That’s so——”
Thérèse Saint-Prix’s voice here interrupted gently, like a low-toned
bell.
“Don’t you remember, Cécile, the arrangement was that you should come
over soon after three to me, but that if you did not arrive by four, I
was to come up to the Villa? Why, I was just getting ready to come
when—when it happened. You see,” she turned to address the magistrate,
“we were going to make gardening plans together, but just lately Cécile
hasn’t been feeling too well, and she thought it possible that she
might not feel up to walking about the garden in the hot sun. So I was
quite prepared for her to stay resting in her boudoir that afternoon,
and then we would have had tea together there.”
“Is that true, madame?” asked the magistrate of Cécile Lenormand.
“I—I can’t remember. Perhaps that was the arrangement.”
“But—but——” Béchoux was stammering under the force of his discovery—“if
you, mademoiselle, had been just a few minutes quicker in getting ready
to go up to the Villa, you might yourself have been killed!”
“The question that presents itself,” said Barnett, in a level voice,
“is—for whom was the trap laid? Did Louis Lenormand lay it to kill
Professor Saint-Prix? We must remember that the old professor was
absent-minded, and was in the custom of going to play chess with his
neighbor on Sunday afternoon. Or, was the attack directed by Louis
Lenormand against his own wife? Or against Mademoiselle Saint-Prix?”
“Or,” said Béchoux, annoyed to find Barnett calmly taking the floor,
“did Madame Lenormand saw through the bridge because she guessed
Professor Saint-Prix would be coming that way? Remember what
Mademoiselle Saint-Prix has told us——”
Thérèse Saint-Prix was covered with confusion.
“I never meant you to take it that way,” she cried.
“Why, I only said Cécile sometimes appeared a little jealous of her
husband’s intimacy with my poor father. But that was nothing! Poor
darling, she was always jealous where Louis—Monsieur Lenormand—was
concerned. Why, she even at one time——” She broke off and was silent.
“She even what, mademoiselle?” asked the magistrate.
“Oh, it’s too silly. But at one time I used to wonder if she were not a
little jealous of me! I was giving Monsieur Lenormand lessons in
Russian—a language he was eager to learn—and so we were naturally
together a good deal. I even wondered if Cécile could be—could be
spying on us—she seemed so queer. But please don’t misunderstand me,
I’m not suggesting a thing against her.”
“But mademoiselle is right,” said Barnett gravely. “Madame Lenormand
had the most odd ideas concerning her husband and mademoiselle—almost
unbelievable. She imagined—I ask you!—that Mademoiselle Saint-Prix had
almost forced Monsieur Lenormand into having Russian lessons, in the
hope that she might thereby succeed in teaching him something besides
Russian! She had the absurd hallucination that she once saw her husband
kissing you, mademoiselle, in the little summer-house at the bottom of
the garden. And yet, and this is the most unbelievable part of all, she
never really doubted her husband—she believed that, like so many men,
he was capable of being superficially attracted without being guilty of
any serious infidelity. A trusting woman, one would say. But her
clemency hardly extended to her supposed rival.
“Now, on Sunday afternoon a woman telephoned from Beauvray to Louis
Lenormand at his mother’s flat and told him something terrible—so
terrible, in fact, as to bring him racing home in his car to try and
avert disaster. But he was too late. The tragedy had occurred. Only, it
was something quite different from what he had feared! To-day you have
before you a woman telling a vague, unsubstantiated story of having
wandered about on Saturday night in her garden—of having, perhaps,
asked her friend to come to tea instead of going to tea with her. And,
on the other hand, you must picture to yourselves a woman mad with
jealousy and fury—a woman telephoning in words of ice-cold rage—‘She
shall no longer come between us—she and she alone is the obstacle to
our love—it is because of her that you have turned a deaf ear to my
entreaties, but soon, soon the obstacle will be removed!’
“Gentlemen, which story are you going to believe?”
“There can be but one answer to that,” observed the magistrate, “if you
have proof of what you say. And much is explained if Cécile Lenormand
did indeed telephone to her husband in Paris that afternoon!”
“Did I say that Cécile Lenormand telephoned?” asked Barnett, looking
most surprised. “But that would be quite contrary to my own belief—and
to the truth!”
“Then what on earth do you mean?”
“Exactly what I say. The telephone call from Beauvray to Paris was made
by a woman maddened by jealousy and frustration, by a desire to
annihilate her rival in Louis Lenormand’s affections——”
“But that woman is Cécile Lenormand.”
“Not a bit of it! I can assure you she had nothing whatever to do with
the telephone call.”
“Then whom are you accusing?”
“The other woman!”
“But there were only two—Cécile Lenormand and Thérèse Saint-Prix.”
“Precisely, and since I am not accusing Cécile Lenormand, that means
that I do accuse....”
Barnett left the sentence unfinished. There was a horrified silence.
Here was a direct and totally unforeseen accusation! Thérèse
Saint-Prix, who was at this moment standing near the window, hesitated
for a long moment, pale and trembling. Suddenly she sprang over the low
balcony and down into the garden.
The doctor and a gendarme made to pursue her, but found themselves in
collision with Barnett, who was barring the way. The gendarme protested
hotly:
“But we shall have her escaping!”
“I think not,” said Barnett.
“You’re right,” said the doctor, appalled, “but I fear something
else—something ghastly!... Yes, look, look! She’s running towards the
stream ... towards the bridge where her father was killed.”
“What next?” came from Barnett with terrible calm.
He stood aside. The doctor and the gendarme were out of the window like
lightning, and he closed it behind them. Then, turning to the
magistrate, he said:
“Do you understand the whole business now, monsieur? Is it quite clear
to you? It was Thérèse Saint-Prix who, after trying vainly to rouse the
passion of Louis Lenormand beyond the passing fancy of a
flirtation—Thérèse Saint-Prix who, starved for years of all enjoyment
and luxury, was suddenly blinded by hatred of Cécile Lenormand. She was
too proud to believe that Louis Lenormand genuinely did not want her
love and was devoted to his wife. She thought that if once Cécile
Lenormand were out of the way, she would come into her own. So she
planned the appalling, cold-blooded murder of her rival, and—compassed
the death of her own father! In the night she sawed through the
bridge—there was no one to see her. So blinded was she by her passions
that next day, just before the tragedy would occur, she telephoned to
Louis Lenormand to tell him what she had done.
“Confronted by the utterly unexpected result of her strategy, she
immediately planned to throw the guilt on to Cécile Lenormand and so at
one stroke save herself and get her rival out of the way. It was with
this in view that she stole one of Cécile’s earrings and dropped it on
Sunday night into the ditch, and then told her tale of Cécile having
been jealous of the old professor. Then, here in this room, she was
struck with a more plausible idea altogether—she tried to get us all to
believe that the bridge had been sawed through with the object of
killing her and not her father at all!”
“How do you account for the boots and the saw?” asked the magistrate.
“The Lenormands and the Saint-Prix shared a tool-shed, their garden
implements were used in common.”
“How do you know all about Thérèse Saint-Prix?” asked Lenormand,
speaking for the first time.
“I helped him to find out,” said Cécile swiftly. “My dear, I realized
all along how you were placed in the matter, but my pride kept me from
speaking to you. I was afraid you would think I was being jealous, and
trying to find something to throw in your face because my parents tried
to prevent our marriage.”
“Then you forgive me?”
For answer she ran across the room to her husband, and her arms went
round his neck.
“But,” objected the magistrate, “that entry in the note-book of ‘the
last payment’—what did that mean?”
“Merely,” said Barnett, “that Professor Saint-Prix had told Louis
Lenormand that this was the last loan he would need, as his discovery
was on the verge of completion.”
“And that discovery——”
“Was something which would have revolutionized the dye industry.
Doubtless he was going eagerly up to the Villa Eméraude to show it to
his friend, and the stream washed it out of his dying grasp. What a
loss!”
“And where did Monsieur Lenormand drive that night?”
“He shall tell us himself.”
“I drove,” said the erstwhile prisoner, “into the country a little way.
I honestly could not say exactly where. I did so because it was very
hot and I couldn’t sleep. But no one could prove the truth of what I
say.”
At this point the gendarme came back, rather pale.
Barnett signed to him to speak.
“She is dead!” he faltered. “She threw herself down—there, where the
professor was killed! The doctor sent me to tell you.”
The magistrate looked grave.
“Perhaps, after all, it is for the best,” he said. “But for you,
monsieur,” he turned to Barnett, “there might have been a grave
miscarriage of justice.”
Béchoux stood awkwardly silent.
“Come, Béchoux,” said Barnett, clapping him on the shoulder, “let’s be
off and pack our things. I want to be back in the rue Laborde
to-night.”
“Well,” said Béchoux when they were alone together again, “I admit that
I do not see how you reconstructed the case so quickly.”
“Quite simple, my dear Béchoux—like all my little coups. What faith
that woman had in her husband!”
For a moment he was silent in admiration of his client.
“Still,” said Béchoux, “brilliant as you were, I fail to see where you
get anything out of this for yourself!”
Barnett’s gaze grew dreamy.
“That was a beautiful laboratory of the professor’s,” he said. “By the
way, Béchoux, do you happen to know the address of the biggest dye
concern in the country? I may be paying them a call in the near
future!”
Béchoux gave a curious gasp, rather like a slowly expiring balloon.
“Done me again!” he breathed. “Stolen the paper—the formula of the
secret process....”
Jim Barnett was moved to injured protest.
“Dear old chap,” he observed, “when it’s a question of rendering a
service to one’s fellow-men and to one’s country, what you designate as
theft becomes the sheerest heroism. It is the highest manifestation of
duty’s sacred fire, blazing within the breast of mere man.” He thumped
himself significantly on the chest. “And personally, when duty calls,
you will always find me ready, aye ready. Got that, Béchoux?”
But Béchoux was sunk in gloom.
“I wonder,” Barnett mused, “what they will call the new process? I
think a suitable name might be—but there, I won’t bore you with my
reflections, Béchoux. Only I can’t help feeling it would be rather
touching to take out a patent in the name of—Lupin!”