“I rumble,” he said. “It is the luncheon gong.”
Mr. Ricardo bowed eagerly to Superintendent Maltby. “I shall be honoured if you will join us,” he exclaimed, but the Superintendent shook his head.
“I must go back to the Yard. There are other matters awaiting me.” He noticed the gloom gather on Hanaud’s face and hurriedly went on: “You may be assured that we shall not neglect the interesting points you have raised. Inspector Herbert will submit a full report, of which you shall have a copy at the corner house in Grosvenor Square.” Not by the twitch of a muscle did he express his pleasure in that unusual address. “And I think you should come with me to Mr. Horbury’s offices in King Street. At half-past three? Will you and Mr. Ricardo call for me just before the half-hour? Meanwhile, I’ll send out a call for Bryan Devisher, on the, chance that he will have something to tell us. And I hope to find all ready for us at the Yard, some particulars of Mrs. Horbury’s history.”
Hanaud’s face had been growing happier and happier, now that the file was not to be closed and put away upon its shelf.
“I thank you,” he said gratefully.
Maltby was carrying a key with a linen tab tied to it. He called the constable on duty at the gate.
“This is the charwoman’s key. You will be responsible for it, and Inspector Herbert will see that you are relieved. You will allow no one to enter the house without his or my leave.”
The constable saluted and took the key.
“No one, sir? Not even Mrs. Horbury?”
Hanaud gasped audibly.
“That woman! Above all, no,” he whispered, and Maltby took up the words at once.
“Above all, not Mrs. Horbury.”
The constable saluted again and retired to the gate. Maltby glanced curiously at the Frenchman.
“I thought that you were rather on her side,” he said.
And, for a moment, Hanaud hung in a suspense. Should he speak? Shouldn’t he? But he was effervescent. He simply had to.
“That woman!” he cried, and admiration was loud in his voice. “She is a oner! She is the goods! I tell you. She is out of the top of her drawers.”
“Really, really,” cried Mr. Ricardo, quite shocked.
“An idiom, my friend. I use him,” said Hanaud affably.
“Use him properly then,” Ricardo remonstrated. “She is out of the top drawer.”
“So I said, my friend,” Hanaud returned, he continued enthusiastically: “And how she lied! Mind you, she will give back the money of Monsieur Gravot, even if she starves. In the name of the Place Vendôme, I honour her for it. But how she lied to us! And with what aplumbing! The woman screamed, and she jumped out of bed half-awake and turned the key of her door and fainted. Did she? Oh, no, no!” and his face lost all its humour, and his voice all its excitement. “Oh, no, no,” he repeated in a whisper, and the lids of his eyes half closed, as though he were watching somewhere a long way off a scene of horror which nothing could prevent.
“I was looking very sharply, my Maltby, when you placed the long cardboard fan case down on the table in front of her. I think that already she knew what was in it. It was not surprise she betrayed. There was no staring up into your face to read what startling discovery you had made. No, she gazed at the case, she gathered herself, her feet pressed upon the ground, her hands gripping each other, to meet with nothing more than a shock of horror, a recoil of disgust, her second view of that brutal weapon. She pushed her chair back—yes, with the proper violence, and no doubt there was nature enough in the violence, but there was no surprise.”
Undoubtedly both Maltby and Herbert listened with discomfort. It was not merely that Hanaud’s words strengthened an unwelcome suspicion of their own. But through his heavy features there shone a light, even in his whispers there sounded an authority which could not but arrest their judgment.
“You think she knew already what the thing in the cardboard box was? What it had done?” cried Ricardo.
“I do,” Hanaud returned slowly. “I think that she was present when a great crime was committed—”
“By Horbury,” cried Maltby.
“By Devisher,” Mr. Ricardo amended.
“I don’t know,” said Hanaud.
“And, if she knew, why should she keep silent?” Maltby asked.
“Again, I don’t know,” Hanaud repeated.
But he was not abandoning his inspiration. If anything, it grew stronger. For he looked about him, and in that noonday sunlight, with the blackbirds and the thrushes calling from the garden, he suddenly shivered.
“I wish I knew,” he cried, a man in distress. “What happened here when even this house was silent, and nothing moved but the shadows on path and meadow and lawn, as the moon drenched the world in silver? Let me tell you what I—see. Her, Olivia Horbury, when the crime was done and the house empty, climbing the stairs to her room. It was not yet midnight—and all the long night to live through. She must go to bed, leave the light on to help the man who needs no more helping. She turns from one side to the other until—surely it is close on dawn?—suddenly the telephone rings through the house, shrill enough even to wake that sprawling figure in the room below. Did she look at her watch and note that the night was not half spent? And suddenly the telephone stops. Too abruptly, too quickly! Someone is in the house besides herself and the dead man. A friend? No! The murderer returned, not trusting her word, to make sure. To make sure by a second crime Imagine her panic, if you can? She sprang out of bed, she locked the door between her and death, and so fell fainting to the floor, to be awakened: hours afterwards by the screams, the banging upon the panels.”
He stopped and a silence followed upon his words. Maltby was the first to shake off the obsession, but he was troubled, none the less. Although he strove to speak lightly, his voice betrayed him. “Facts, Monsieur Hanaud! Facts we must cling to. Not imagination, however subtle.”
Hanaud answered with a smile. “Yes, facts, my dear Maltby, and a little imagination to interpret them. Imagination on a leash—he is the blind man’s dog.” He mounted into Mr Ricardo’s car and produced his blue packet of abominable cigarettes. “Just before half-past three, then!”
“Just before half-past three,” cried Maltby from the window of the police car, “and, my dear colleague, I shall hope for some more idioms from you in the course of the afternoon.”