At the Villa Rose ih-1

by A. E. W. Mason

  Once more Helene’s voice broke upon the words. But Hanaud poured her out a glass of water and held it to her lips. Helene drank it eagerly.

  "There, that is better, is it not?" he said.

  "Yes, monsieur," said Helene Vauquier, recovering herself. "Sometimes, too," she resumed, "messages from the spirits would flutter down in writing on the table."

  "In writing?" exclaimed Hanaud quickly.

  "Yes; answers to questions. Mlle. Celie had them ready. Oh, but she was of an address altogether surprising."

  "I see," said Hanaud slowly; and he added, "But sometimes, I suppose, the questions were questions which Mlle. Celie could not answer?"

  "Sometimes," Helene Vauquier admitted, "when visitors were present. When Mme. Dauvray was alone-well, she was an ignorant woman, and any answer would serve. But it was not so when there were visitors whom Mlle. Celie did not know, or only knew slightly. These visitors might be putting questions to test her, of which they knew the answers, while Mlle. Celie did not."

  "Exactly," said Hanaud. "What happened then?"

  All who were listening understood to what point he was leading Helene Vauquier. All waited intently for her answer.

  She smiled.

  "It was all one to Mlle. Celie."

  "She was prepared with an escape from the difficulty?"

  "Perfectly prepared."

  Hanaud looked puzzled.

  "I can think of no way out of it except the one," and he looked round to the Commissaire and to Ricardo as though he would inquire of them how many ways they had discovered. "I can think of no escape except that a message in writing should flutter down from the spirit appealed to saying frankly," and Hanaud shrugged his shoulders, "'I do not know.'"

  "Oh no no, monsieur," replied Helene Vauquier in pity for Hanaud’s misconception, "I see that you are not in the habit of attending seances. It would never do for a spirit to admit that it did not know. At once its authority would be gone, and with it Mlle. Celie’s as well. But on the other hand, for inscrutable reasons the spirit might not be allowed to answer."

  "I understand," said Hanaud, meekly accepting the correction. "The spirit might reply that it was forbidden to answer, but never that it did not know."

  "No, never that," [agreed] Helene. So it seemed that Hanaud must look elsewhere for the explanation of that sentence. "I do not know." Helene continued: "Oh, Mlle. Celie-it was not easy to baffle her, I can tell you. She carried a lace scarf which she could drape about her head, and in a moment she would be, in the dim light, an old, old woman, with a voice so altered that no one could know it. Indeed, you said rightly, monsieur-she was clever."

  To all who listened Helene Vauquier’s story carried its conviction. Mme. Dauvray rose vividly before their minds as a living woman. Celie’s trickeries were so glibly described that they could hardly have been invented, and certainly not by this poor peasant-woman whose lips so bravely struggled with Medici, and Montespan, and the names of the other great ladies. How, indeed, should she know of them at all? She could never have had the inspiration to concoct the most convincing item of her story-the queer craze of Mme. Dauvray for an interview with Mme. de Montespan. These details were assuredly the truth.

  Ricardo, indeed, knew them to be true. Had he not himself seen the girl in her black velvet dress shut up in a cabinet, and a great lady of the past dimly appear in the darkness? Moreover, Helene Vauquier’s jealousy was so natural and inevitable a thing. Her confession of it corroborated all her story.

  "Well, then," said Hanaud, "we come to last night. There was a seance held in the salon last night."

  "No, monsieur," said Vauquier, shaking her head; "there was no seance last night."

  "But already you have said-" interrupted the Commissaire; and Hanaud held up his hand.

  "Let her speak, my friend."

  "Yes, monsieur shall hear," said Vauquier.

  It appeared that at five o’clock in the afternoon Mme. Dauvray and Mlle. Celie prepared to leave the house on foot. It was their custom to walk down at this hour to the Villa des Fleurs, pass an hour or so there, dine in a restaurant, and return to the Rooms to spend the evening. On this occasion, however, Mme. Dauvray informed Helene that they should be back early and bring with them a friend who was interested in, but entirely sceptical of, spiritualistic manifestations. "But we shall convince her tonight, Celie," she said confidently; and the two women then went out. Shortly before eight Helene closed the shutters both of the upstair and the downstair windows and of the glass doors into the garden, and returned to the kitchen, which was at the back of the house-that is, on the side facing the road. There had been a fall of rain at seven which had lasted for the greater part of the hour, and soon after she had shut the windows the rain fell again in a heavy shower, and Helene, knowing that madame felt the chill, lighted a small fire in the salon. The shower lasted until nearly nine, when it ceased altogether and the night cleared up.

  It was close upon half-past nine when the bell rang from the salon. Vauquier was sure of the hour, for the charwoman called her attention to the clock.

  "I found Mme. Dauvray, Mlle Celie, and another woman in the salon," continued Helene Vauquier.

  "Madame had let them in with her latchkey."

  "Ah, the other woman!" cried Besnard. "Had you seen her before?"

  "No, monsieur."

  "What was she like?"

  "She was sallow, with black hair and bright eyes like beads. She was short and about forty-five years old, though it is difficult to judge of these things. I noticed her hands, for she was taking her gloves off, and they seemed to me to be unusually muscular for a woman."

  "Ah!" cried Louis Besnard. "That is important."

  "Mme. Dauvray was, as she always was before a seance, in a feverish flutter. 'You will help Mlle. Celie to dress, Helene, and be very quick,' she said; and with an extraordinary longing she added, 'Perhaps we shall see her tonight.' Her, you understand, was Mme. de Montespan." And she turned to the stranger and said, "You will believe, Adele, after tonight."

  "Adele!" said the Commissaire wisely. "Then Adele was the strange woman’s name?"

  "Perhaps," said Hanaud dryly.

  Helene Vauquier reflected.

  "I think Adele was the name," she said in a more doubtful tone. "It sounded like Adele."

  The irrepressible Mr. Ricardo was impelled to intervene.

  "What Monsieur Hanaud means," he explained, with the pleasant air of a man happy to illuminate the dark intelligence of a child, "is that Adele was probably a pseudonym."

  Hanaud turned to him with a savage grin.

  "Now that is sure to help her!" he cried. "A pseudonym! Helene Vauquier is sure to understand that simple and elementary word. How bright this M. Ricardo is! Where shall we find a new pin more bright? I ask you," and he spread out his hands in a despairing admiration.

  Mr. Ricardo flushed red, but he answered never a word. He must endure gibes and humiliations like a schoolboy in a class. His one constant fear was lest he should be turned out of the room. The Commissaire diverted wrath from him however.

  "What he means by pseudonym," he said to Helene Vauquier, explaining Mr. Ricardo to her as Mr. Ricardo had presumed to explain Hanaud, "is a false name. Adele may have been, nay, probably was, a false name adopted by this strange woman."

  "Adele, I think, was the name used," replied Helene, the doubt in her voice diminishing as she searched her memory. "I am almost sure."

  "Well, we will call her Adele," said Hanaud impatiently. "What does it matter? Go on, Mademoiselle Vauquier."

  "The lady sat upright and squarely upon the edge of a chair, with a sort of defiance, as though she was determined nothing should convince her, and she laughed incredulously."

  Here, again, all who heard were able vividly to conjure up the scene-the defiant sceptic sitting squarely on the edge of her chair, removing her gloves from her muscular hands; the excited Mme. Dauvray, so absorbed in the determination to convince; and Mlle. Celie runnin
g from the room to put on the black gown which would not be visible in the dim light.

  "Whilst I took off mademoiselle’s dress," Vauquier continued, "she said: 'When I have gone down to the salon you can go to bed, Helene. Mme. Adele'-yes, it was Adele-'will be fetched by a friend in a motorcar, and I can let her out and fasten the door again. So if you hear the car you will know that it has come for her.'"

  "Oh, she said that!" said Hanaud quickly.

  "Yes, monsieur."

  Hanaud looked gloomily towards Wethermill. Then he exchanged a sharp glance with the Commissaire, and moved his shoulders in an almost imperceptible shrug. But Mr. Ricardo saw it, and construed it into one word. He imagined a jury uttering the word "Guilty."

  Helene Vauquier saw the movement too.

  "Do not condemn her too quickly, monsieur," she, said, with an impulse of remorse. "And not upon my words. For, as I say, I-hated her."

  Hanaud nodded reassuringly, and she resumed:

  "I was surprised, and I asked mademoiselle what she would do without her confederate. But she laughed, and said there would be no difficulty. That is partly why I think there was no seance held last night. Monsieur, there was a note in her voice that evening which I did not as yet understand. Mademoiselle then took her bath while I laid out her black dress and the slippers with the soft, noiseless soles. And now I tell you why I am sure there was no seance last night-why Mlle. Celie never meant there should be one."

  "Yes, let us hear that," said Hanaud curiously, and leaning forward with his hands upon his knees.

  "You have here, monsieur, a description of how mademoiselle was dressed when she went away." Helene Vauquier picked up a sheet of paper from the table at her side. "I wrote it out at the request of M. le Commissaire." She handed the paper to Hanaud, who glanced through it as she continued. "Well, except for the white lace coat, monsieur, I dressed Mlle. Celie just in that way. She would have none of her plain black robe. No, Mlle. Celie must wear her fine new evening frock of pale reseda-green chiffon over soft clinging satin, which set off her fair beauty so prettily. It left her white arms and shoulders bare, and it had a long train, and it rustled as she moved. And with that she must put on her pale green silk stockings, her new little satin slippers to match, with the large paste buckles-and a sash of green satin looped through another glittering buckle at the side of the waist, with long ends loosely knotted together at the knee. I must tie her fair hair with a silver ribbon, and pin upon her curls a large hat of reseda green with a golden-brown ostrich feather drooping behind. I warned mademoiselle that there was a tiny fire burning in the salon. Even with the fire-screen in front of it there would still be a little light upon the floor, and the glittering buckles on her feet would betray her, even if the rustle of her dress did not. But she said she would kick her slippers off. Ah, gentlemen, it is, after all, not so that one dresses for a seance," she cried, shaking her head. "But it is just so-is it not?-that one dresses to go to meet a lover."

  The suggestion startled every one who heard it. It fairly took Mr. Ricardo’s breath away. Wethermill stepped forward with a cry of revolt. The Commissaire exclaimed, admiringly, "But here is an idea!" Even Hanaud sat back in his chair, though his expression lost nothing of its impassivity, and his eyes never moved from Helene Vauquier’s face.

  "Listen!" she continued, "I will tell you what I think. It was my habit to put out some sirop and lemonade and some little cakes in the dining-room, which, as you know, is at the other side of the house across the hall. I think it possible, messieurs, that while Mlle. Celie was changing her dress Mme. Dauvray and the stranger, Adele, went into the dining-room. I know that Mlle. Celie, as soon as she was dressed, ran downstairs to the salon. Well, then, suppose Mlle. Celie had a lover waiting with whom she meant to run away. She hurries through the empty salon, opens the glass doors, and is gone, leaving the doors open. And the thief, an accomplice of Adele, finds the doors open and hides himself in the salon until Mme. Dauvray returns from the dining-room. You see, that leaves Mlle. Celie innocent."

  Vauquier leaned forward eagerly, her white face flushing. There was a moment’s silence, and then Hanaud said:

  "That is all very well, Mlle. Vauquier. But it does not account for the lace coat in which the girl went away. She must have returned to her room to fetch that after you had gone to bed."

  Helene Vauquier leaned back with an air of disappointment.

  "That is true. I had forgotten the coat. I did not like Mlle. Celie, but I am not wicked-"

  "Nor for the fact that the sirop and the lemonade had not been touched in the dining-room," said the Commissaire, interrupting her.

  Again the disappointment overspread Vauquier’s face.

  "Is that so?" she asked. "I did not know-I have been kept a prisoner here."

  The Commissaire cut her short with a cry of satisfaction.

  "Listen! listen!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Here is a theory which accounts for all, which combines Vauquier’s idea with ours, and Vauquier’s idea is, I think, very just, up to a point. Suppose, M. Hanaud, that the girl was going to meet her lover, but the lover is the murderer. Then all becomes clear. She does not run away to him; she opens the door for him and lets him in."

  Both Hanaud and Ricardo stole a glance at Wethermill. How did he take the theory? Wethermill was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed, his face white and contorted with a spasm of pain. But he had the air of a man silently enduring an outrage rather than struck down by the conviction that the woman he loved was worthless.

  "It is not for me to say, monsieur," Helene Vauquier continued. "I only tell you what I know. I am a woman, and it would be very difficult for a girl who was eagerly expecting her lover so to act that another woman would not know it. However uncultivated and ignorant the other woman was, that at all events she would know. The knowledge would spread to her of itself, without a word. Consider, gentlemen!" And suddenly Helene Vauquier smiled. "A young girl tingling with excitement from head to foot, eager that her beauty just at this moment should be more fresh, more sweet than ever it was, careful that her dress should set it exquisitely off. Imagine it! Her lips ready for the kiss! Oh, how should another woman not know? I saw Mlle. Celie, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright. Never had she looked so lovely. The pale-green hat upon her fair head heavy with its curls! From head to foot she looked herself over, and then she sighed-she sighed with pleasure because she looked so pretty. That was Mlle. Celie last night, monsieur. She gathered up her train, took her long white gloves in the other hand, and ran down the stairs, her heels clicking on the wood, her buckles glittering. At the bottom she turned and said to me:"

  "'Remember, Helene, you can go to bed.' That was it monsieur."

  And now violently the rancour of Helene Vauquier’s feelings burst out once more.

  "For her the fine clothes, the pleasure, and the happiness. For me-I could go to bed!"

  Hanaud looked again at the description which Helene Vauquier had written out, and read it through carefully. Then he asked a question, of which Ricardo did not quite see the drift.

  "So," he said, "when this morning you suggested to Monsieur the Commissaire that it would be advisable for you to go through Mlle. Celie’s wardrobe, you found that nothing more had been taken away except the white lace coat?"