The Emperor's Snuff-Box Page 9

The analytical side of his mind registered: Strong thyroid type. Imaginative. Easily suggestible. Good-natured and generous, perhaps too much so for her own good. Intensely loyal to any person who has shown her a kindness. Yes: this woman might very well commit murder, if sufficiently impelled. And Dermot found this a disturbing thought, which struck and stabbed through the tough hide he had been building round his own emotions for twenty years.

  He watched her as she sat in the big tan-upholstered easy-chair. He watched her fingers clenching and uncurling on the arms of it. He watched the delicate face, lips pinched together, and the small nerve that throbbed in her neck. A little wrinkle in her forehead seemed to poise a desperate question. He watched the gray eyes move from Toby to Janice, then from Janice to Helena and Uncle Ben, and back to Toby again.

  And Dermot thought: this woman is going to tell a lie.

  “No!” cried Eve; and her body stiffened as though she had made a decision. “We didn’t see anybody. Or anything.”

  “We,” said Toby, and struck his hand on the top of the mantelpiece. “‘We’ didn’t see anything!”

  M. Goron silenced him with a look.

  “Yet it appears,” he pursued, with a dangerous blandness, “that madame witnessed something. Was Sir Maurice dead?”

  “Yes!”

  “You could see him clearly?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then how does madame know,” said the prefect suavely, “that it was ‘just after’ he had been killed?”

  “I don’t, of course.” Eve spoke after a slight pause. The gray eyes looked straight back at M. Goron; her breast rose and fell slowly. “I mean, I only assume it must have been.”

  “Continue, please,” breathed M. Goron, and flicked his fingers in the air.

  “Poor Helena came in and began screaming. This time I ordered Ned out, and I meant it.”

  “Oh? Madame had not meant it before?”

  “I had! I tell you I had! Only this time, I mean, it was so serious that he knew he had to go. Before he went, I got back that key from him and put it in the pocket of my pajamas. On his way down, he …” Here she appeared to realize the grotesqueness, almost the absurdity, of what she had to tell.

  “On the way down, he slipped on the stairs and hurt his nose.”

  “His nose?” repeated M. Goron.

  “Yes. It bled. I touched him, and that was how I got some blood on my hand and splashed on my clothes. This blood that you’ve been fussing over so much was really Ned Atwood’s blood.”

  “Indeed, madame?”

  “You don’t have to ask me! Ask Ned! He may not be all he should be, but at least he’ll be decent enough to confirm every word I say when you put me in a position like this.”

  “Will he, madame?”

  Again Eve nodded violently. She cast a quick glance of entreaty and appeal at the persons who stood round her. This woman was beginning to cloud Dermot Kinross’s judgment. It was uncanny and damnable. He had never before felt quite like this in his life. Yet the coldly reasoning part of his brain told him that Eve—except at the one point where she had hesitated—was speaking the truth.

  “Concerning M. Atwood,” the prefect went on. “You tell me that he ‘slipped on the stairs and hurt his nose.’ Was there no other injury?”

  “No other injury? I don’t understand?”

  “He did not hurt—for example—his head?”

  Eve frowned. “I can’t say. He might very well have done. That is a high, steep staircase, and he took a most terrible tumble. I couldn’t see what happened in the dark. But the blood at least was from his nose.”

  M. Goron smiled in a faint and far-away manner, like one who has expected this.

  “Continue, dear madame!”

  “I let him out by the back door….”

  “Why the back door?”

  “Because the street outside was full of policemen. He went away. And that was when it happened. The back door of my house has a spring lock. While I was standing there, the wind blew the door shut and I was locked out.”

  After a slight pause, during which the members of the Lawes family slowly directed curious glances at each other, Helena spoke on a note of gentle remonstrance. Helena wheezed a little.

  “Surely, my dear, you must be mistaken?” she demanded. “The wind blew your door shut? Don’t you remember?”

  “There wasn’t a breath of wind that whole night,” interposed Janice. “We talked about it while we were at the theatre.”

  “I—I know.”

  “Then, my dear!” protested Helena.

  “I mean, I thought of that too. It only occurred to me afterwards, when I was trying to think of some possible explanation, that somebody might have—well, might have deliberately pushed it shut.”

  “Oho?” said M. Goron. “Who?”

  “Yvette. My maid.” Eve clenched her hands and almost writhed in the chair. “Why does she detest me so much?”

  M. Goron’s eyebrows travelled still higher.

  “Let me understand you, madame. You are accusing Yvette Latour of deliberately shutting the door from inside and locking you out?”

  “I swear to all of you that I don’t know what I’m suggesting! I’m trying as hard as I can to find out what might have happened.”

  “And so are we, madame. Continue this interesting recital. You are in the back garden…?”

  “Don’t you see? I was locked out! I couldn’t get in.”

  “Couldn’t get in? Sacred name! Madame had only to knock at the door or ring at the bell, surely?”

  “Which would have roused the servants, and that’s what I didn’t want. I couldn’t endure the idea of waking up Yvette….”

  “Who had just, it appears, woken herself up and for some reason locked madame out. I beg of you,” added M. Goron, making hollow-sounding noises of sympathy, “that you will not upset yourself. I do not seek to trap or trick madame. I only try to establish … shall we say? … the truth as she tells it.”

  “But that’s all there is!”

  “All?”

  “I remembered that I had a key to the front door in the pocket of my pajamas. I slipped round to the front, and got in. That’s how I came to lose my sash; I can’t even remember yet where I lost it, but I noticed it was gone when I was—well, washing myself.”

  “Ah!”

  “I suppose you must have found it, too?”

  “Yes, madame. Forgive me for directing attention to it; but there is one small matter which this story does not explain. I refer to the chip of agate found entangled in the lace of madame’s dressing gown.”

  Eve spoke quietly.

  “I don’t know anything about it. You must please believe me when I say that.” She pressed her hands over her eyes, and took them away again. She spoke with a passionate sincerity which must have impressed her listeners. “This is the first time I’ve heard anything about it! I can almost swear it wasn’t there when I came back to the house. Because, as I told you, I took off the negligée to wash. I can only think that somebody must have put it there afterwards.”

  “Put it there,” observed M. Goron: a statement rather than a question.

  Eve started to laugh. She looked incredulously from one face to another.

  “But you surely can’t be thinking of me as a murderer?”

  “In candor, madame, this fantastic idea has been suggested.”

  “But I can … don’t you see? I can prove every word I say is true!”

  “How, madame?” inquired the prefect, and began to tap his well-manicured fingers on the little table beside his chair.

  Eve appealed to the others.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you about it before, because I didn’t want to tell you about Ned being in my room.”

  “That’s understandable enough,” observed Janice in a colorless voice.

  “But this,”—Eve spread out her hands,—“this is so utterly ridiculous that I can’t even think what to say to it. It’s like being waked up in t
he middle of the night and accused of killing somebody you never even heard of. I should be frightened to death, if I didn’t know I could prove what I say.”

  “I must distress madame by repeating my question,” said M. Goron. “How is this to be proved?”

  “By Ned Atwood, of course!”

  “Ah,” said the prefect of police.

  His movements were very deliberate. He lifted the lapel of his coat to sniff at the white rose in the buttonhole. His eyes were fixed at a neutral point on the floor. He made a slight gesture. But his face betrayed nothing except a heavy frown.

  “Tell me, madame. You have had all week, I believe, to consider this story of yours?”

  “I haven’t considered anything! This is the first time I’ve heard of all these things. I’m telling you the truth!”

  M. Goron lifted his eyes.

  “Has madame, perhaps, seen M. Atwood at any time during this week?”

  “No, certainly not!”

  “Are you still in love with him, Eve?” Janice asked in a low voice. “Are you still in love with him?”

  “No, dear, of course not,” Helena interposed soothingly.

  “Thank you very much,” said Eve. She looked at Toby. “Do I have to tell you that? I loathe and detest him. I never despised anybody so much in my life. I never want to set eyes on him again.”

  “It is unlikely, I think,” observed M. Goron softly, “that madame ever will see him again.”

  They all swung round. M. Goron, who had again fallen to a study of the floor, raised his eyes once more.

  “Surely madame knows that M. Atwood is in no condition to verify her story, even if he wished to do so?” M. Goron’s voice sharpened. “Surely madame knows that M. Atwood has been lying at the Donjon Hotel, suffering from concussion of the brain?”

  It was perhaps ten seconds before Eve rose to her feet, pushing herself up out of the deep chair. She stared back at the prefect. She was wearing, Dermot noticed for the first time, a gray silk blouse and black skirt. It contrasted with her pink-and-white complexion, with the wide-set gray eyes. But Dermot—who seemed to himself to be conscious of every nerve in her body and every thought in her head—felt a new emotion.

  Hitherto, he guessed, these accusations had been no more than a poor, ironic joke. Now, suddenly, she saw it differently. She saw where the whole thing might lead. It couldn’t be leading there, and yet it was. She saw the imminence of danger, deadly danger, flowing from every bland gesture of the prefect and every temperate word he spoke.

  “Concussion of …” she began.

  M. Goron nodded.

  “A week ago, at half-past one in the morning,” he continued, “M. Atwood walked into the foyer of the Donjon. In the elevator, going up to his room, he collapsed.”

  Eve pressed her hands to her temples.

  “But that was when he left me! It was dark. I couldn’t see. He must have hit his head when he …” After a pause she added: “Poor old Ned!”

  Toby Lawes struck his fist on top of the mantelpiece.

  A faintly satiric smile marred the politeness of M. Goron’s face.

  “Unfortunately,” he pursued, “M. Atwood retained consciousness long enough to explain that he had been knocked over by a car in the street, and struck his head against the curbstone. That was his final word.”

  Here M. Goron drew one finger across in the air, as though delicately underlining a point.

  “You understand, M. Atwood will probably not testify to anything now. He is not expected to recover.”

  X

  M. GORON LOOKED DOUBTFUL.

  “I should not perhaps have told you that,” he added. “Yes. I have been indiscreet. It is not customary to be so frank with the accused before their arrest….”

  “Arrest?” screamed Eve.

  “I must warn you to expect it, madame.”

  Emotion had reached too high a pitch. The others could confine themselves to speaking French no longer.

  “They can’t do that,” wheezed Helena, with tears in her eyes. Her lower lip was thrust out defiantly. “Not to a British subject, they can’t. Poor Maurice was one of the Consul’s greatest friends. All the same, Eve —”

  “It does take a bit of explaining,” Janice cried in bewilderment. “The chip off that snuff-box, I mean. And why you didn’t call out for help, if you were really afraid of this Mr. Atwood. That’s what I should have done.”

  Toby kicked moodily at the fender.

  “What beats me,” he muttered, “is that the fellow was actually in the room when I telephoned.”

  Uncle Ben said nothing. He was seldom inclined to say anything. Uncle Ben was the man who worked with his hands, who could repair a car or whittle a toy boat or paper a wall against any professional. He remained by the tea wagon, smoking his pipe. Occasionally he would give Eve the ghost of an encouraging smile, but his mild eye looked worried and he continued to shake his head.

  “With regard,” M. Goron continued in English, “to this question of restraining Mrs. Neill under arrest…”

  “One moment,” said Dermot.

  All were startled when he spoke.

  They had never seen, or at least never noticed him, where he sat in the darkish corner by the piano. Now Eve’s eyes rested on him fully. For a second he felt a twinge of that old panic and self-consciousness he had once known when he thought he must go through life without half a face. It was a relic of evil days. It was a relic of days when he had realized that mental suffering is the worst suffering on this earth, and had chosen his profession accordingly.

  M. Goron jumped up.

  “Ah, my God!” the prefect said dramatically. “I am forgetting! My friend! I deeply apologize if I am impolite against you. But in this excitement…”

  Here the prefect swept out his hand.

  “I would wish to present my friend Dr. Kinross, from England. These are the peoples I have told you of. Milady Lawes. The brother, the daughter, the son. And Madame Neill. How do you do? You do well, I trust? Yes.”

  Toby Lawes froze.

  “You’re English?” he demanded.

  “Yes,” smiled Dermot. “I’m English. But please don’t let it worry you.”

  “I thought you were one of Goron’s people,” said Toby, with a sense of grievance asserting itself. “Damn it all, we were talking.” He glanced round. “I mean, pretty freely!”

  “Oh, what does it matter?” said Janice.

  “I’m very sorry,” Dermot apologized. “My only excuse for intruding on you now is that —”

  “I ask him,” explained M. Goron. “In private he is a great doctor who practice in Vimpole Street. In public he has, to my knowledge, capture three big criminals. Once because a coat is buttoned wrong and once because he notices the way a person speak. Things of the mind, you see. So I ask him here —”

  Dermot looked straight at Eve.

  “Because my friend M. Goron,” he said, “has some doubt about the value of the evidence against Mrs. Neill.”

  “My friend!” cried the prefect, with angry reproachfulness.

  “Isn’t that so?”

  “It is not necessarily so,” answered M. Goron, in a highly sinister tone, “any longer.”

  “But my real reason for coming, and hoping I might be of service, is that I was once acquainted with your husband….”

  “You knew Maurice?” cried Helena, as Dermot looked at her.

  “Yes. In the old days, when I was doing prison work. He was very much interested in prison reform.”

  Helena wagged her head. Though bewildered at having an unexpected guest, she bounced up from her chair and tried to make him welcome. But the strain of the last week had evidently been too much. And, as usual when someone mentioned Maurice’s name, there was another blink of tears in her eyes.

  “Maurice,” she said, “was more than just ‘interested.’ He used to study the people in those prisons, the convicts I mean, and know all about them. Even if they didn’t know about him. Because
, you see, he helped them and didn’t want any credit for it.” Her tone grew petulant. “Oh, dear, what am I saying? It won’t do any good to keep on thinking about that, will it?”

  “Dr. Kinross,” observed Janice in a small, clear voice.

  “Yes?”

  “Do they honestly mean all this talk about arresting Eve?”

  “I hope not,” Dermot said evenly.

  “You hope not? Why?”

  “Because in that case I should have to fight my old friend M. Goron from here to Llandudno.”

  “Since you’ve heard Eve’s story, whether we like it or not, what do you think of it? Do you believe it?”

  “Yes.”

  M. Goron’s face was a study in polite rage. But he did not comment. The ease of Dermot’s personality seemed to spread round them, drawing the wires from their nerves and making them feel easier in spite of themselves.

  “It’s not been easy to listen to this,” observed Toby. “It’s not been easy for us at all.”

  “Of course not. But has it occurred to you,” said Dermot, “that it may have been rather embarrassing for Mrs. Neill too?”

  “Having a stranger here,” said Toby. “After all, damn it!”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

  Toby appeared to be struggling. “I didn’t exactly say I wanted you to go,” he growled. His good-humored face seemed tortured with doubt and discontent. “This is all too sudden! It’s not the kind of thing to spring on a chap when he comes home from work. But you ought to know about these things, oughtn’t you. Come to think of it, I know a chap who met you once. Do you think… that is…?”

  Dermot carefully refrained from looking at Eve.

  She needed help. Sick with fright and uncertainty, she was standing beside the chair, her hands clasped together, trying to make Toby meet her eye. It needed no psychologist to tell that all she wanted was a word of reassurance from him. And she was not getting that word. An obscure anger crawled through Dermot Kinross as he saw it.

  “Do you want me to speak frankly?” he asked.

  Perhaps, in his heart of hearts, Toby didn’t; but his gesture implied assent.

  “Well,” smiled Dermot, “I think you ought to make up your mind.”

  “Make up my mind?”