Arsène Lupin intervenes
made his way to the Villa Eméraude. Madame Lenormand received him in
her sitting-room, and for over an hour he remained talking with her.
Towards the end of the interview they moved into Louis Lenormand’s
study, and Béchoux, coming up the drive, could see through the open
window Barnett and Cécile Lenormand bending over an open desk together.
Barnett came out into the hall and greeted his friend as if the Villa
Eméraude was his own ancestral hall.
“Welcome, welcome, Béchoux. But I’m afraid you can’t see Madame
Lenormand. She’s feeling overtired already—a little hysterical—and she
must rest in view of her ordeal this afternoon. A charming woman; in
many ways a delightful woman——” He did not finish, but paused
thoughtfully.
Béchoux grunted. “I came up to find you,” he said, “to tell you a bit
of news.”
“What’s that?”
“We searched Louis Lenormand, and found on him a note-book in which he
made entries of payments made by him during the past six months or so.
One of these, dated three weeks ago, was for five thousand francs, paid
to ‘S,’ and against it was written ‘The last payment.’ Investigation
has shown that this amount was paid to Professor Saint-Prix. The case
is pretty black against Lenormand, Barnett, and I really should advise
you to quit now.”
But all Barnett answered was:
“I’m ready for a spot of lunch. Are you?”
The inquiry began at three o’clock. It was held in the narrow
dining-room of the Saint-Prix house. Louis Lenormand sat at one end,
between two gendarmes, never raising his eyes from the ground. The
magistrates and Béchoux conferred together in low tones. Doctor
Desportes gazed thoughtfully out of the window.
Barnett ushered in Madame Lenormand. She was very pale and leaned on
his arm for support. She took her seat in a low chair, looking all
around her with quick, nervous glances. Her husband seemed not to
observe her, so sunken was he in dejection.
Then Thérèse Saint-Prix entered the room. Her presence was like a
calming influence. She went over to Cécile Lenormand and laid a
compassionate hand on her shoulder, but the other started away
violently.
Almost immediately the examining magistrate began. He took the medical
evidence, which Doctor Desportes gave in even, colorless tones, clearly
establishing that the professor had been killed through his fall into
the stream.
After this came the questioning of Louis Lenormand.
“Did you take your car out late on Sunday night from the Paris garage?”
“I did.”
“Where did you drive?”
The prisoner was silent.
“Answer me!”
“I really forget.”
Béchoux gave Barnett a significant look.
“Did you pay Professor Saint-Prix large sums of money from time to
time?”
“I did.”
“For what reason?”
Louis Lenormand hesitated, and then replied haltingly:
“To assist him in his researches.”
Béchoux’s pitying contempt was unmistakable.
A small note-book was produced.
“This is yours?”
The prisoner assented.
“Here you have entered various payments made by you. There is one of
five thousand francs dated a month ago which says: ‘S. The last
payment.’ Was that a check paid to Professor Saint-Prix?”
“It was.”
“Won’t you tell us why you were being—blackmailed? Perhaps the
circumstances——” The magistrate seemed anxious to give Lenormand a
chance to defend himself.
“I have nothing to say.”
“Is it a fact that Professor Saint-Prix was in the habit of coming to
your house for a game of chess on Sunday afternoons?”
“Yes,” said the young man sullenly.
“Did you saw through the bridge?”
The prisoner was silent.
“You do not deny that these are your boots?” Béchoux produced them. The
prisoner looked slightly startled but made no protest.
“I submit,” said Béchoux, “that the case is clear.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Barnett, “there never was a clearer. As clear as
crystal—as a diamond—Béchoux, won’t you produce that little envelope I
entrusted to your care?”
With a premonition of disaster, Béchoux extracted the rather grubby
envelope from his inner pocket.
“Open it!” commanded Barnett.
He did so, and held up—a diamond earring!
Cécile Lenormand gave a little gasp. Her husband started up and then
sank back into his chair.
“Can anyone identify this little exhibit of jewelry?” Barnett asked the
assembly.
Doctor Desportes looked intensely worried. Poor man, his quiet life was
being rudely disturbed!
“Those earrings——” He paused. “They were given to Madame Lenormand by
her husband not very long ago!”
“Is that so?” Béchoux asked of Louis Lenormand.
The latter nodded.
Cécile had bowed her head in her hands. Thérèse reached out a pitying
hand to her, but she shook it off wildly.
“You have seen these earrings,” pursued Barnett, “but you can’t guess
where I found one of them. Inspector Béchoux will tell you, though. In
the mud by the stream, at the point where the body of Professor
Saint-Prix was found lying dead!”
“Can you tell us, madame,” inquired the magistrate of Cécile Lenormand,
“whether you were wearing those earrings on Sunday afternoon?”
Looking up, the young woman shook her head.
“I can’t—remember—when I last wore them!” she said in a confused
manner.
“You must forgive my asking you, madame, but you must tell us now
whether you left the Villa at any time during Saturday night.”
There was the merest hint of menace in the smooth tones. Louis
Lenormand’s mouth twitched painfully.
“I—I——” She looked from one face to another of those gathered in the
room. “Why, I believe I did. It was so hot.... I went out into the
garden for a little....”
“Was this before you retired for the night?”
“Yes—no—not exactly. I had gone to my room, but I had not undressed. I
had told my maid to go to bed. Then I felt oppressed by the heat and
went out into the garden through the French window of my boudoir.”
“So that no one heard you come or go?”
“No one, monsieur.”
“And, on Sunday afternoon, you were going to tea with Mademoiselle
Saint-Prix?”
“Yes.”
“At four o’clock?”
“That’s so——”
Thérèse Saint-Prix’s voice here interrupted gently, like a low-toned
bell.
“Don’t you remember, Cécile, the arrangement was that you should come
over soon after three to me, but that if you did not arrive by four, I
was to come up to the Villa? Why, I was just getting ready to come
when—when it happened. You see,” she turned to address the magistrate,
“we were going to make gardening plans together, but just lately Cécile
hasn’t been feeling too well, and she thought it possible that she
might not feel up to walking about the garden in the hot sun. So I was
quite prepared for her to stay resting in her boudoir that afternoon,
and then we would have had tea together there.”
“Is that true, madame?” asked the magistrate of Cécile Lenormand.
“I—I can’t remember. Perhaps that was the arrangement.”
“But—but——” Béchoux was stammering under the force of his discovery—“if
you, mademoiselle, had been just a few minutes quicker in getting ready
to go up to the Villa, you might yourself have been killed!”
“The question that presents itself,” said Barnett, in a level voice,
“is—for whom was the trap laid? Did Louis Lenormand lay it to kill
Professor Saint-Prix? We must remember that the old professor was
absent-minded, and was in the custom of going to play chess with his
neighbor on Sunday afternoon. Or, was the attack directed by Louis
Lenormand against his own wife? Or against Mademoiselle Saint-Prix?”
“Or,” said Béchoux, annoyed to find Barnett calmly taking the floor,
“did Madame Lenormand saw through the bridge because she guessed
Professor Saint-Prix would be coming that way? Remember what
Mademoiselle Saint-Prix has told us——”
Thérèse Saint-Prix was covered with confusion.
“I never meant you to take it that way,” she cried.
“Why, I only said Cécile sometimes appeared a little jealous of her
husband’s intimacy with my poor father. But that was nothing! Poor
darling, she was always jealous where Louis—Monsieur Lenormand—was
concerned. Why, she even at one time——” She broke off and was silent.
“She even what, mademoiselle?” asked the magistrate.
“Oh, it’s too silly. But at one time I used to wonder if she were not a
little jealous of me! I was giving Monsieur Lenormand lessons in
Russian—a language he was eager to learn—and so we were naturally
together a good deal. I even wondered if Cécile could be—could be
spying on us—she seemed so queer. But please don’t misunderstand me,
I’m not suggesting a thing against her.”
“But mademoiselle is right,” said Barnett gravely. “Madame Lenormand
had the most odd ideas concerning her husband and mademoiselle—almost
unbelievable. She imagined—I ask you!—that Mademoiselle Saint-Prix had
almost forced Monsieur Lenormand into having Russian lessons, in the
hope that she might thereby succeed in teaching him something besides
Russian! She had the absurd hallucination that she once saw her husband
kissing you, mademoiselle, in the little summer-house at the bottom of
the garden. And yet, and this is the most unbelievable part of all, she
never really doubted her husband—she believed that, like so many men,
he was capable of being superficially attracted without being guilty of
any serious infidelity. A trusting woman, one would say. But her
clemency hardly extended to her supposed rival.
“Now, on Sunday afternoon a woman telephoned from Beauvray to Louis
Lenormand at his mother’s flat and told him something terrible—so
terrible, in fact, as to bring him racing home in his car to try and
avert disaster. But he was too late. The tragedy had occurred. Only, it
was something quite different from what he had feared! To-day you have
before you a woman telling a vague, unsubstantiated story of having
wandered about on Saturday night in her garden—of having, perhaps,
asked her friend to come to tea instead of going to tea with her. And,
on the other hand, you must picture to yourselves a woman mad with
jealousy and fury—a woman telephoning in words of ice-cold rage—‘She
shall no longer come between us—she and she alone is the obstacle to
our love—it is because of her that you have turned a deaf ear to my
entreaties, but soon, soon the obstacle will be removed!’
“Gentlemen, which story are you going to believe?”
“There can be but one answer to that,” observed the magistrate, “if you
have proof of what you say. And much is explained if Cécile Lenormand
did indeed telephone to her husband in Paris that afternoon!”
“Did I say that Cécile Lenormand telephoned?” asked Barnett, looking
most surprised. “But that would be quite contrary to my own belief—and
to the truth!”
“Then what on earth do you mean?”
“Exactly what I say. The telephone call from Beauvray to Paris was made
by a woman maddened by jealousy and frustration, by a desire to
annihilate her rival in Louis Lenormand’s affections——”
“But that woman is Cécile Lenormand.”
“Not a bit of it! I can assure you she had nothing whatever to do with
the telephone call.”
“Then whom are you accusing?”
“The other woman!”
“But there were only two—Cécile Lenormand and Thérèse Saint-Prix.”
“Precisely, and since I am not accusing Cécile Lenormand, that means
that I do accuse....”
Barnett left the sentence unfinished. There was a horrified silence.
Here was a direct and totally unforeseen accusation! Thérèse
Saint-Prix, who was at this moment standing near the window, hesitated
for a long moment, pale and trembling. Suddenly she sprang over the low
balcony and down into the garden.
The doctor and a gendarme made to pursue her, but found themselves in
collision with Barnett, who was barring the way. The gendarme protested
hotly:
“But we shall have her escaping!”
“I think not,” said Barnett.
“You’re right,” said the doctor, appalled, “but I fear something