At the Villa Rose (5 page)

"We will go round the house first," said Hanaud, and he turned along
the side of the villa and walked in the direction of the road. There
were four windows just above his head, of which three lighted the
salon, and the fourth a small writing-room behind it. Under these
windows there was no disturbance of the ground, and a careful
investigation showed conclusively that the only entrance used had been
the glass doors of the salon facing the drive. To that spot, then, they
returned. There were three sets of footmarks upon the soil. One set ran
in a distinct curve from the drive to the side of the door, and did not
cross the others.

"Those," said Hanaud, "are the footsteps of my intelligent friend,
Perrichet, who was careful not to disturb the ground."

Perrichet beamed all over his rosy face, and Besnard nodded at him with
condescending approval.

"But I wish, M. le Commissaire"—and Hanaud pointed to a blur of
marks—"that your other officers had been as intelligent. Look! These
run from the glass door to the drive, and, for all the use they are to
us, a harrow might have been dragged across them."

Besnard drew himself up.

"Not one of my officers has entered the room by way of this door. The
strictest orders were given and obeyed. The ground, as you see it, is
the ground as it was at twelve o'clock last night."

Hanaud's face grew thoughtful.

"Is that so?" he said, and he stooped to examine the second set of
marks. They were at the righthand side of the door. "A woman and a
man," he said. "But they are mere hints rather than prints. One might
almost think—" He rose up without finishing his sentence, and he
turned to the third set and a look of satisfaction gleamed upon his
face. "Ah! here is something more interesting," he said.

There were just three impressions; and, whereas the blurred marks were
at the side, these three pointed straight from the middle of the glass
doors to the drive. They were quite clearly defined, and all three were
the impressions made by a woman's small, arched, high-heeled shoe. The
position of the marks was at first sight a little peculiar. There was
one a good yard from the window, the impression of the right foot, and
the pressure of the sole of the shoe was more marked than that of the
heel. The second, the impression of the left foot, was not quite so far
from the first as the first was from the window, and here again the
heel was the more lightly defined. But there was this difference—the
mark of the toe, which was pointed in the first instance, was, in this,
broader and a trifle blurred. Close beside it the right foot was again
visible; only now the narrow heel was more clearly defined than the
ball of the foot. It had, indeed, sunk half an inch into the soft
ground. There were no further imprints. Indeed, these two were not
merely close together, they were close to the gravel of the drive and
on the very border of the grass.

Hanaud looked at the marks thoughtfully. Then he turned to the
Commissaire.

"Are there any shoes in the house which fit those marks?"

"Yes. We have tried the shoes of all the women—Celie Harland, the
maid, and even Mme. Dauvray. The only ones which fit at all are those
taken from Celie Harland's bedroom."

He called to an officer standing in the drive, and a pair of grey suede
shoes were brought to him from the hall.

"See, M. Hanaud, it is a pretty little foot which made those clear
impressions," he said, with a smile; "a foot arched and slender. Mme.
Dauvray's foot is short and square, the maid's broad and flat. Neither
Mme. Dauvray nor Helene Vauquier could have worn these shoes. They were
lying, one here, one there, upon the floor of Celie Harland's room, as
though she had kicked them off in a hurry. They are almost new, you
see. They have been worn once, perhaps, no more, and they fit with
absolute precision into those footmarks, except just at the toe of that
second one."

Hanaud took the shoes and, kneeling down, placed them one after the
other over the impressions. To Ricardo it was extraordinary how exactly
they covered up the marks and filled the indentations.

"I should say," said the Commissaire, "that Celie Harland went away
wearing a new pair of shoes made on the very same last as those."

As those she had left carelessly lying on the floor of her room for the
first person to notice, thought Ricardo! It seemed as if the girl had
gone out of her way to make the weight of evidence against her as heavy
as possible. Yet, after all, it was just through inattention to the
small details, so insignificant at the red moment of crime, so terribly
instructive the next day, that guilt was generally brought home.

Hanaud rose to his feet and handed the shoes back to the officer.

"Yes," he said, "so it seems. The shoemaker can help us here. I see the
shoes were made in Aix."

Besnard looked at the name stamped in gold letters upon the lining of
the shoes.

"I will have inquiries made," he said.

Hanaud nodded, took a measure from his pocket and measured the ground
between the window and the first footstep, and between the first
footstep and the other two.

"How tall is Mlle. Celie?" he asked, and he addressed the question to
Wethermill. It struck Ricardo as one of the strangest details in all
this strange affair that the detective should ask with confidence for
information which might help to bring Celia Harland to the guillotine
from the man who had staked his happiness upon her innocence.

"About five feet seven," he answered.

Hanaud replaced his measure in his pocket. He turned with a grave face
to Wethermill.

"I warned you fairly, didn't I?" he said.

Wethermill's white face twitched.

"Yes," he said. "I am not afraid." But there was more of anxiety in his
voice than there had been before.

Hanaud pointed solemnly to the ground.

"Read the story those footprints write in the mould there. A young and
active girl of about Mlle. Celie's height, and wearing a new pair of
Mlle. Celie's shoes, springs from that room where the murder was
committed, where the body of the murdered woman lies. She is running.
She is wearing a long gown. At the second step the hem of the gown
catches beneath the point of her shoe. She stumbles. To save herself
from falling she brings up the other foot sharply and stamps the heel
down into the ground. She recovers her balance. She steps on to the
drive. It is true the gravel here is hard and takes no mark, but you
will see that some of the mould which has clung to her shoes has
dropped off. She mounts into the motor-car with the man and the other
woman and drives off—some time between eleven and twelve."

"Between eleven and twelve? Is that sure?" asked Besnard.

"Certainly," replied Hanaud. "The gate is open at eleven, and Perrichet
closes it. It is open again at twelve. Therefore the murderers had not
gone before eleven. No; the gate was open for them to go, but they had
not gone. Else why should the gate again be open at midnight?"

Besnard nodded in assent, and suddenly Perrichet started forward, with
his eyes full of horror.

"Then, when I first closed the gate," he cried, "and came into the
garden and up to the house they were here—in that room? Oh, my God!"
He stared at the window, with his mouth open.

"I am afraid, my friend, that is so," said Hanaud gravely.

"But I knocked upon the wooden door, I tried the bolts; and they were
within—in the darkness within, holding their breath not three yards
from me."

He stood transfixed.

"That we shall see," said Hanaud.

He stepped in Perrichet's footsteps to the sill of the room. He
examined the green wooden doors which opened outwards, and the glass
doors which opened inwards, taking a magnifying-glass from his pocket.
He called Besnard to his side.

"See!" he said, pointing to the woodwork.

"Finger-marks!" asked Besnard eagerly.

"Yes; of hands in gloves," returned Hanaud. "We shall learn nothing
from these marks except that the assassins knew their trade."

Then he stooped down to the sill, where some traces of steps were
visible. He rose with a gesture of resignation.

"Rubber shoes," he said, and so stepped into the room, followed by
Wethermill and the others. They found themselves in a small recess
which was panelled with wood painted white, and here and there
delicately carved into festoons of flowers. The recess ended in an
arch, supported by two slender pillars, and on the inner side of the
arch thick curtains of pink silk were hung. These were drawn back
carelessly, and through the opening between them the party looked down
the length of the room beyond. They passed within.

Julius Ricardo pushed aside the curtains with a thrill of excitement.
He found himself standing within a small oblong room which was
prettily, even daintily, furnished. On his left, close by the recess,
was a small fireplace with the ashes of a burnt-out fire in the grate.
Beyond the grate a long settee covered in pink damask, with a crumpled
cushion at each end, stood a foot or two away from the wall, and beyond
the settee the door of the room opened into the hall. At the end a long
mirror was let into the panelling, and a writing-table stood by the
mirror. On the right were the three windows, and between the two
nearest to Mr. Ricardo was the switch of the electric light. A
chandelier hung from the ceiling, an electric lamp stood upon the
writing-table, a couple of electric candles on the mantel-shelf. A
round satinwood table stood under the windows, with three chairs about
it, of which one was overturned, one was placed with its back to the
electric switch, and the third on the opposite side facing it.

Ricardo could hardly believe that he stood actually upon the spot
where, within twelve hours, a cruel and sinister tragedy had taken
place. There was so little disorder. The three windows on his right
showed him the blue sunlit sky and a glimpse of flowers and trees;
behind him the glass doors stood open to the lawn, where birds piped
cheerfully and the trees murmured of summer. But he saw Hanaud stepping
quickly from place to place, with an extraordinary lightness of step
for so big a man, obviously engrossed, obviously reading here and there
some detail, some custom of the inhabitants of that room.

Ricardo leaned with careful artistry against the wall.

"Now, what has this room to say to me?" he asked importantly. Nobody
paid the slightest attention to his question, and it was just as well.
For the room had very little information to give him. He ran his eye
over the white Louis Seize furniture, the white panels of the wall, the
polished floor, the pink curtains. Even the delicate tracery of the
ceiling did not escape his scrutiny. Yet he saw nothing likely to help
him but an overturned chair and a couple of crushed cushions on a
settee. It was very annoying, all the more annoying because M. Hanaud
was so uncommonly busy. Hanaud looked carefully at the long settee and
the crumpled cushions, and he took out his measure and measured the
distance between the cushion at one end and the cushion at the other.
He examined the table, he measured the distance between the chairs. He
came to the fireplace and raked in the ashes of the burnt-out fire. But
Ricardo noticed a singular thing. In the midst of his search Hanaud's
eyes were always straying back to the settee, and always with a look of
extreme perplexity, as if he read there something, definitely
something, but something which he could not explain. Finally he went
back to it; he drew it farther away from the wall, and suddenly with a
little cry he stooped and went down on his knees. When he rose he was
holding some torn fragments of paper in his hand. He went over to the
writing-table and opened the blotting-book. Where it fell open there
were some sheets of note-paper, and one particular sheet of which half
had been torn off. He compared the pieces which he held with that torn
sheet, and seemed satisfied.

There was a rack for note-paper upon the table, and from it he took a
stiff card.

"Get me some gum or paste, and quickly," he said. His voice had become
brusque, the politeness had gone from his address. He carried the card
and the fragments of paper to the round table. There he sat down and,
with infinite patience, gummed the fragments on to the card, fitting
them together like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle.

The others over his shoulders could see spaced words, written in
pencil, taking shape as a sentence upon the card. Hanaud turned
abruptly in his seat toward Wethermill.

"You have, no doubt, a letter written by Mlle. Celie?"

Wethermill took his letter-case from his pocket and a letter out of the
case. He hesitated for a moment as he glanced over what was written.
The four sheets were covered. He folded back the letter, so that only
the two inner sheets were visible, and handed it to Hanaud. Hanaud
compared it with the handwriting upon the card.

"Look!" he said at length, and the three men gathered behind him. On
the card the gummed fragments of paper revealed a sentence:

"Je ne sais pas."

"'I do not know,'" said Ricardo; "now this is very important."

Beside the card Celia's letter to Wethermill was laid.

"What do you think?" asked Hanaud.

Besnard, the Commissaire of Police, bent over Hanaud's shoulder.

"There are strong resemblances," he said guardedly.

Ricardo was on the look-out for deep mysteries. Resemblances were not
enough for him; they were inadequate to the artistic needs of the
situation.

"Both were written by the same hand," he said definitely; "only in the
sentence written upon the card the handwriting is carefully disguised."

"Ah!" said the Commissaire, bending forward again. "Here is an idea!
Yes, yes, there are strong differences."