Mr. Ricardo heard some one beside him draw a deep breath, and
turned. Wethermill stood at his elbow. A faint colour had come
back to his cheeks, his eyes were fixed intently upon Hanaud's
face.
"What do you think?" he asked; and Hanaud replied brusquely: "It's not my business to hold opinions, monsieur; my business is
to make sure."
There was one point, and only one, of which he had made every one
in that room sure. He had started confident. Here was a sordid
crime, easily understood. But in that room he had read something
which had troubled him, which had raised the sordid crime on to
some higher and perplexing level.
"Then M. Fleuriot after all might be right?" asked the Commissaire
timidly.
Hanaud stared at him for a second, then smiled.
"L'affaire Dreyfus?" he cried. "Oh la, la, la! No, but there is
something else."
What was that something? Ricardo asked himself. He looked once
more about the room. He did not find his answer, but he caught
sight of an ornament upon the wall which drove the question from
his mind. The ornament, if so it could be called, was a painted
tambourine with a bunch of bright ribbons tied to the rim; and it
was hung upon the wall between the settee and the fireplace at
about the height of a man's head. Of course it might be no more
than it seemed to be--a rather gaudy and vulgar toy, such as a
woman like Mme. Dauvray would be very likely to choose in order to
dress her walls. But it swept Ricardo's thoughts back of a sudden
to the concert-hall at Leamington and the apparatus of a
spiritualistic show. After all, he reflected triumphantly, Hanaud
had not noticed everything, and as he made the reflection Hanaud's
voice broke in to corroborate him.
"We have seen everything here; let us go upstairs," he said. "We
will first visit the room of Mlle. Celie. Then we will question
the maid, Helene Vauquier."
The four men, followed by Perrichet, passed out by the door into
the hall and mounted the stairs. Celia's room was in the southwest
angle of the villa, a bright and airy room, of which one window
overlooked the road, and two others, between which stood the
dressing-table, the garden. Behind the room a door led into a
little white-tiled bathroom. Some towels were tumbled upon the
floor beside the bath. In the bedroom a dark-grey frock of tussore
and a petticoat were flung carelessly on the bed; a big grey hat
of Ottoman silk was lying upon a chest of drawers in the recess of
a window; and upon a chair a little pile of fine linen and a pair
of grey silk stockings, which matched in shade the grey suede
shoes, were tossed in a heap.
"It was here that you saw the light at half-past nine?" Hanaud
said, turning to Perrichet.