Wethermill looked at Hanaud with a certain defiance.
"For a fortnight."
Hanaud raised his eyebrows.
"You met her here?"
"Yes."
"In the rooms, I suppose? Not at the house of one of your
friends?"
"That is so," said Wethermill quietly. "A friend of mine who had
met her in Paris introduced me to her at my request."
Hanaud handed back the portrait and drew forward his chair nearer
to Wethermill. His face had grown friendly. He spoke with a tone
of respect.
"Monsieur, I know something of you. Our friend, Mr. Ricardo, told
me your history; I asked him for it when I saw you at his dinner.
You are of those about whom one does ask questions, and I know
that you are not a romantic boy, but who shall say that he is safe
from the appeal of beauty? I have seen women, monsieur, for whose
purity of soul I would myself have stood security, condemned for
complicity in brutal crimes on evidence that could not be
gainsaid; and I have known them turn foul-mouthed, and hideous to
look upon, the moment after their just sentence has been
pronounced." "No doubt, monsieur," said Wethermill, with perfect
quietude. "But Celia Harland is not one of those women."
"I do not now say that she is," said Hanaud. "But the Juge
d'lnstruction here has already sent to me to ask for my
assistance, and I refused. I replied that I was just a good
bourgeois enjoying his holiday. Still it is difficult quite to
forget one's profession. It was the Commissaire of Police who came
to me, and naturally I talked with him for a little while. The
case is dark, monsieur, I warn you."
"How dark?" asked Harry Wethermill.
"I will tell you," said Hanaud, drawing his chair still closer to
the young man. "Understand this in the first place. There was an
accomplice within the villa. Some one let the murderers in. There
is no sign of an entrance being forced; no lock was picked, there
is no mark of a thumb on any panel, no sign of a bolt being
forced. There was an accomplice within the house. We start from
that."
Wethermill nodded his head sullenly. Ricardo drew his chair up
towards the others. But Hanaud was not at that moment interested
in Ricardo.
"Well, then, let us see who there are in Mme. Dauvray's household.
The list is not a long one. It was Mme. Dauvray's habit to take
her luncheon and her dinner at the restaurants, and her maid was
all that she required to get ready her 'petit dejeuner' in the
morning and her 'sirop' at night. Let us take the members of the
household one by one. There is first the chauffeur, Henri
Servettaz. He was not at the villa last night. He came back to it
early this morning."