The Emperor's Snuff-Box

by John Dickson Carr

  Dermot frowned.

  “Which,” he asked, “is Madame Neill’s house?”

  “We are standing beside it.” M. Goron reached out his malacca stick and touched the high gray wall on his left. “And, of course, the house directly across the road is the Villa Bonheur.”

  Dermot turned to look.

  Square and sedate and white-faced was the Villa Bonheur, with a grimy, red tiled roof. Its own wall cut off your view of the ground floor windows. On the floor above were six windows, two to a room. It was at the center two—the only full-length windows on that floor, which had a filigree-railed balcony outside them—that Dermot and M. Goron looked. The gray painted steel shutters were uncompromisingly closed.

  “It would interest me very much,” Dermot said, “to see the inside of that study.”

  “My dear doctor! Nothing is easier.” M. Goron gestured over his shoulder, towards Eve’s house. His agitation had increased. “But if we are to see Madame Neill now?”

  Dermot paid no attention.

  “Was it Sir Maurice’s habit,” he asked, “to sit up there in the evenings with the curtains drawn back from the windows?”

  “I believe so. The weather was very hot.”

  “Then surely the murderer ran a devil of a risk?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of being seen,”—Dermot pointed,—“from an upper window of any of these other houses on this side of the street.”

  “No, I do not think so.”

  “Why not?”

  M. Goron shrugged his well-tailored shoulders.

  “The season in our fine city,” he said, “is nearly over. Few of these villas are now occupied. You notice how deserted the whole street seems?”

  “Well?”

  “Certainly the villa on each side of Madame Neill’s house is vacant. Rest assured, we made inquiries until we were blue in the face. The only person who might possibly have seen something was Madame Neill herself. But, even if by any remote chance Madame Neill were not the assassin, still she would be unable to help us. It appears that she has what you would call a mania for keeping the curtains closed on her own windows.”

  Dermot pulled the brim of his hat down on his forehead.

  “My friend,” he said, “I don’t like your evidence.”

  “Oho?”

  “For instance, the motive assigned to Madame Neill is rubbish. Let me show you.”

  But he got no further. M. Goron, gripped by a profound interest, had peered left and right to make sure they were not overheard. Catching sight of a figure striding towards them along the pavement from the direction of the Boulevard du Casino, M. Goron seized his companion’s arm. He impelled Dermot through the gateway in the wall round Eve’s villa, and closed the gate afterwards.

  “Monsieur,” he hissed, “there is M. Horatio Lawes himself, coming with a purposeful walk and doubtless intent on seeing Madame Neill too. If we are to do any good with her, we must get there first.”

  “But —”

  “I beg of you, don’t stop to look at M. Lawes! He is, heaven knows, ordinary enough. Forward, and ring at the door.”

  It was unnecessary to ring at the door. They had hardly reached the first of the two stone steps leading up to it, when the door was abruptly opened in their faces.

  Their presence, evidently, was an equal surprise to the persons inside. A kind of squeal came from the semi-dark interior. Two women stood on the threshold, one with her hand on the knob of the door.

  The first of the two women, Dermot thought, must obviously be Yvette Latour. She was a broad, heavy woman, strongly featured and dark-haired, yet so self-effacing that she seemed to blend with the interior of the hall. In her face, surprise was succeeded by a flash of malicious satisfaction which kindled the little black eyes and then dwindled to stolidity. But it was the presence of the other woman, a girl in her twenties, which made M. Goron’s eyebrows rise nearly to the hair line.

  “Tiens?” he intoned, sweeping off his hat and letting his voice rise to a hollow register. “Tiens, tiens, tiens?”

  “I beg monsieur’s pardon,” intoned Yvette.

  “Not at all, not at all!”

  “This is my sister, monsieur,” said Yvette smoothly. “She was just leaving.”

  “A’voir, dearie,” said the girl.

  “A’voir, baby,” replied Yvette, with a real warmth of affection. “Be good. My regards to our mama.”

  And the girl came sweeping out.

  It was easy to see the family likeness. But there all resemblance to Yvette ended.

  This girl was slim, she was smartly dressed in very good taste, she was demure, she was—in that one word—chic. Her large dark eyes regarded them with that glance of frank appraisal, combined with a pouting laugh of the mouth and a joyous sense of well-being, which only a Frenchwoman can get away with. She seemed to twinkle with impudence at the same time that she demurely eluded you. The perfume she wore (there was perhaps a little too much of it) spread round her as she came floating down the two steps.

  “Mademoiselle Prue,” observed M. Goron, with formal gallantry.

  “Monsieur,” said the girl respectfully. She ducked him a kind of curtsy. Then she was gone down the path.

  “We are looking,” the prefect said to Yvette, “for Madame Neill.”

  “Then I regret, M. Goron, that you will have to go opposite. Madame Neill is taking tea with the Lawes family.”

  “I thank you, mademoiselle.”

  “Not at all, monsieur!”

  Yvette kept her expression of stolid politeness. But, just before the door closed, there flashed across her face an expression Dermot was unable to read. It might have been mockery. M. Goron stood staring at the closed door, tapping the head of his stick against his teeth, before he replaced his hat.

  “Tiens?” he muttered. “My friend, I have a feeling that —”

  “Yes?”

  “That this little episode ought to mean something. But I don’t know what.”

  “I have the same feeling,” Dermot admitted.

  “Those two were plotting something. I could smell it. Such are the instincts we develop. But beyond that I should not care to venture a guess.”

  “You know the girl?”

  “Mademoiselle Prue? Oh, yes.”

  “Is she…”

  “Respectable, were you going to say?” M. Goron suddenly chuckled. “Tiens, that is the first question you English always ask!” But he considered the question with some care, his head on one side. “Yes, so far as I know she is as respectable as need be. She owns a flower shop in the rue de la Harpe. Not far, by the way, from the antique shop of my friend M. Veille.”

  “That’s the dealer who sold the snuff-box to Sir Maurice Lawes?”

  “Yes. But was not paid for it.” Again the prefect hesitated. “But this,” he complained, making a tolerably hideous face, “achieves us nothing. We cannot stop to debate the evidence of why Mademoiselle Prue should call on her sister, or even why the devil she shouldn’t. We came here to see Madame Neill. It will be much simpler if we go across the street and discover what Madame Neill has to say herself.”

  They found out soon enough.

  The front garden of the Villa Bonheur was a trim grass plot behind a brick wall. The front door was closed. But the long windows immediately to the right of it stood wide open. At past six o’clock in the evening, shadows were gathering across that garden; the drawing room beyond showed dusky. But it was as charged with emotion as though with electricity. As M. Goron pushed open the gate, they heard a voice issuing from the drawing room. It was a young girl’s voice, speaking in English. Dermot imagined Janice Lawes’s vibrant personality as clearly as though he could see her.

  “Go on!” the voice urged.

  “I—I can’t,” said another woman’s voice after a pause.

  “Don’t look like that! And don’t stop,” begged Janice, “just because Toby’s come barging in!”

  “Look here,” interposed a
heavy male voice, speaking with evident bewilderment, “what is all this?”

  “Toby, my dear, I’ve been trying to tell you!”

  “I’ve had a hard day at the office. None of you women ever seem to appreciate that. And the poor old governor didn’t leave his affairs in any too good shape. I’m not in the mood for games.”

  “Games?” echoed Janice.

  “Yes, games! Let a fellow alone, can’t you?”

  “On the night Daddy was killed,” said Janice, “Eve was out of her house and came back all covered with blood. She was carrying a key to our front door. There was a chip of agate from the snuff-box stuck in the lace of her dressing robe.”

  Beckoning to his companion, M. Goron stepped noiselessly across the firm grass and peered in at the nearer window.

  The long drawing room was much cluttered with furniture. Its floor glimmered, a pale lake that seemed lighter than the sky. This was a comfortable room, a lived-in room of many ashtrays and possessions put down to be picked up again. A golden-brown spaniel slumbered by the tea wagon. The easy-chairs upholstered in some rough tan material, the white marble mantelpiece, the bowl of blue-and-flame asters on a side table, made faint color against dusk. But the sombrely dressed people here seemed little more than shadows, except for the living entity of their faces.

  From M. Goron’s descriptions, it was easy for Dermot to pick out Helena Lawes, and Benjamin Phillips sitting by the tea wagon with an empty pipe in his mouth. Janice sat in a low chair with her back to the windows.

  Eve Neill could not be seen at all, since Toby Lawes was in the way. Toby, wearing a sober gray suit with a correct black mourning band round the sleeve, stood by the fireplace. His face bore a slightly foolish expression, and one hand was raised as though to shade his eyes.

  He stared uncomprehendingly from Janice to his mother, and back again. Even his small mustache seemed eloquent. Then his voice went high.

  “For God’s sake, what are you talking about?”

  “Of course, Toby,” Helena said hesitantly, “there’s an explanation.”

  “Explanation?”

  “Yes. It was all because of Mr. Atwood, Eve’s husband.”

  “Oh?” said Toby.

  Even in the midst of his evident shock at what must have been incomprehensible words, Toby’s eyebrows went up. There was a slight pause before that monosyllable came floating out on the evening air. It was repressed and self-contained. Yet to an attentive ear it was full of meaning, poisoned with jealousy.

  “I say, mother.” Toby moistened his lips. “You might remember that the fellow isn’t married to Eve any longer.”

  “But he wouldn’t remember it, Eve says,” put in Janice. “He came back to La Bandelette.”

  “Yes. I’d heard he was back.” Toby spoke mechanically. Then he took away the hand that shaded his eyes; and he made what was, for him, an almost wild gesture. “What I want to know is, what is all this about… about….”

  “Mr. Atwood,” replied Janice, “broke into Eve’s house on the night Daddy died.”

  “Broke into it?”

  “That is, he had a key he’d kept from other days when he lived there. He came upstairs after she was undressed.”

  Toby stood rigid.

  So far as it could be read in the gloom, his expression remained a blank. He took one step backwards, bumping into the mantelpiece and groping before he recovered himself. He started to glance round towards Eve, but apparently thought better of it.

  “Go on,” he said huskily.

  “But it’s not my story,” said Janice. “Ask Eve herself. She’ll tell you. Eve, you’ve got to go on! Don’t let Toby worry you! Just tell us about it as though Toby weren’t here at all.”

  M. Aristide Goron, prefect of police of La Bandelette, uttered a low growl deep in his throat. He drew a deep breath. His round, bland face smoothed itself out into affable lines. He threw back his shoulders, and removed his hat. Stepping forward briskly, so that his footfalls clacked on the polished hardwood, he swept into the drawing room.

  “And as though you did not find me here either, Madame Neill,” he said.

  IX

  TEN MINUTES LATER M. Goron was sitting in a chair and leaning forward with catlike attention, prompting her. He had begun the examination, with a flourish, in English. Then he had got excited, tangled himself up in long incomprehensible sentences, and finally flowed straight into French.

  “Yes, madame?” he queried, with the effect of prodding her gently with one finger. “And then?”

  “What else can I say?” cried Eve.

  “M. Atwood,” said the prefect, “crept upstairs with this key. Good! He attempted to,”—M. Goron cleared his throat,—“overcome you. Eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “This, of course, was against your will?”

  “Of course!”

  “Understood!” M. Goron soothed her. “And then, madame?”

  “I begged him please to be decent and go away and not make a scene, because Sir Maurice Lawes was sitting across here in the room opposite.”

  “And then?”

  “He started to pull back the curtains, to see whether Sir Maurice was still sitting up in the study. I turned out the light —”

  “You turned out the light?”

  “Yes, certainly!”

  M. Goron frowned. “Forgive my obtuseness, madame. But surely that was an extraordinary way of discouraging M. Atwood’s attentions?”

  “I tell you, I didn’t want Sir Maurice to know!”

  M. Goron pondered this.

  “Then madame admits,” he suggested, “that it was the fear of discovery which caused madame to be… shall we say … obdurate?”

  “No, no, no!”

  Twilight was deepening in the long drawing room. The various members of the Lawes family sat or stood like wax figures. Their faces held little expression, or at least little expression that could be read. Toby remained by the fireplace, now turned towards it and holding out his hands automatically towards a fire which did not exist.

  The prefect of police did not bully or threaten. His expression remained worried. M. Goron, a man and a Frenchman, was merely trying in all honesty to understand a situation which baffled him.

  “You feared this man Atwood?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  “Yet you did not attempt to call out to Sir Maurice, even though he was within sight and hearing?”

  “I tell you, I couldn’t!”

  “Par example, what was Sir Maurice doing then?”

  “He was sitting,” answered Eve, recalling a scene which by now had been impressed on her mind with unbearable vividness, “he was sitting at his desk, holding up a magnifying glass to look at something. There was —”

  “Yes, madame?”

  She had intended to add, “There was somebody with him.” But, in front of the Lawes family, and considering what this might imply, it stuck in her throat. Again her imagination saw the old man’s lips moving, the magnifying glass, and the shadow hovering behind.

  “There was the snuff-box,” she substituted weakly. “He was looking at it.”

  “At what time was this, madame?”

  “I—I don’t remember!”

  “And then?”

  “Ned came over towards me. I fought him off. I begged him not to wake the servants.” Eve was pouring out the truth, every word of it; yet, at that last sentence, the faces of her auditors altered slightly. “Don’t you see? I didn’t want the servants to learn about it either. Then the telephone rang.”

  “Ah!” said M. Goron with satisfaction. “In that case, it should be easy to establish the time.” He craned round. “I think it was at just one o’clock, M. Lawes, that you telephoned to madame?”

  Toby nodded. But he was paying no attention to this. He spoke casually to Eve.

  “Then all the time you were speaking to me,” Toby said, “that fellow was actually in your room?”

  “I’m sorry, dear! I tried to keep i
t from you!”

  “Yes,” agreed Janice, sitting motionless in the low chair. “You did.”

  “Standing beside you,” muttered Toby. “Sitting beside you. Maybe even …” He made a gesture. “You sounded so calm, too. As though it didn’t matter a damn. As though you’d just waked up in the middle of the night, and couldn’t think of a thing but me.”

  “Continue, if you please,” interrupted M. Goron.

  “After that,” said Eve, “I ordered him out. Still he wouldn’t go. He said he wasn’t going to allow me to make a mistake.”

  “Meaning what, madame?”

  “He thought I oughtn’t to marry Toby. And he thought he could make people think things about me, things that weren’t true, if he leaned out of the window and shouted across to Sir Maurice that he was in my bedroom. Ned goes completely mad when he gets an idea like that. He went to the window. I ran after him. But, when we looked out…”

  Eve turned up the palms of her hands. To Dermot Kinross, to Aristide Goron, to anyone with a sensitiveness to atmospheres, the ensuing pause seemed definitely sinister.

  It was full of small noises. Helena Lawes, her hand at her breast, gave a tiny cough. Benjamin Phillips, who had been carefully filling his pipe, now struck a match for it; the little snap and rasp was like a comment before the flame curled up. Janice remained motionless, her wide and innocent brown eyes seeming slowly to realize what this might mean. But it was Toby who spoke.

  “You looked out of the window?” he demanded.

  Eve nodded violently.

  “When?”

  “Just after …”

  She needed to say no more than that. Little whispering voices struck across at her. It was as though those low voices dared not speak loudly, lest they spring an ambush or raise ghosts.

  “You didn’t see —?” began Helena.

  “Anybody?” prompted Janice.

  “Anything?” mumbled Uncle Ben.

  Sitting quietly in a corner where nobody noticed him, his chin in his fist and his eyes never leaving Eve Neill, Dermot fixed his mind with a painful intensity on the meaning that might underlie her halting, unconvincing story.