"But you had already guessed 'Geneva,'" said Ricardo. "At
luncheon, before the news came that the car was found, you had
guessed it."
"It was a shot," said Hanaud. "The absence of the car helped me to
make it. It is a large city and not very far away, a likely place
for people with the police at their heels to run to earth in. But
if the car had been discovered in the garage I should not have
made that shot. Even then I had no particular conviction about
Geneva. I really wished to see how Wethermill would take it. He
was wonderful."
"He sprang up."
"He betrayed nothing but surprise. You showed no less surprise
than he did, my good friend. What I was looking for was one glance
of fear. I did not get it."
"Yet you suspected him--even then you spoke of brains and
audacity. You told him enough to hinder him from communicating
with the red-haired woman in Geneva. You isolated him. Yes, you
suspected him."
"Let us take the case from the beginning. When you first came to
me, as I told you, the Commissaire had already been with me. There
was an interesting piece of evidence already in his possession.
Adolphe Ruel--who saw Wethermill and Vauquier together close by
the Casino and overheard that cry of Wethermill's, 'It is true: I
must have money!'--had already been with his story to the
Commissaire. I knew it when Harry Wethermill came into the room to
ask me to take up the case. That was a bold stroke, my friend. The
chances were a hundred to one that I should not interrupt my
holiday to take up a case because of your little dinner-party in
London. Indeed, I should not have interrupted it had I not known
Adolphe Ruel's story. As it was I could not resist. Wethermill's
very audacity charmed me. Oh yes, I felt that I must pit myself
against him. So few criminals have spirit, M. Ricardo. It is
deplorable how few. But Wethermill! See in what a fine position he
would have been if only I had refused. He himself had been the
first to call upon the first detective in France. And his
argument! He loved Mlle. Celie. Therefore she must be innocent!
How he stuck to it! People would have said, 'Love is blind,' and
all the more they would have suspected Mile. Celie. Yes, but they
love the blind lover. Therefore all the more would it have been
impossible for them to believe Harry Wethermill had any share in
that grim crime."
Mr. Ricardo drew his chair closer in to the table.
"I will confess to you," he said, "that I thought Mlle. Celie was
an accomplice."
"It is not surprising," said Hanaud. "Some one within the house
was an accomplice--we start with that fact. The house had not been
broken into. There was Mlle. Celie's record as Helene Vauquier
gave it to us, and a record obviously true. There was the fact
that she had got rid of Servettaz. There was the maid upstairs
very ill from the chloroform. What more likely than that Mlle.
Celie had arranged a seance, and then when the lights were out had
admitted the murderer through that convenient glass door?"