'One moment! Suppose her face was known to Mademoiselle Augustin, and fresh in the lady's mind, because she had seen Claudine Martel dead?'
Pouring out a glass of brandy, he regarded me thoughtfully.
'I see, Jeff. You are trying to tangle up our waxworks proprietress in a guilty knowledge of the murder? - Well, it is possible from several angles. We will discuss that point later. But, as to Mademoiselle Martel's being a member of the club, there was (secondly) the black mask we found in the passage beside her body. It obviously belonged to her.'
I sat up straight and said: 'What the devil! I distinctly heard you tell Inspector Durrand, and prove it by the mask, that it belonged to another woman!'
'Yes,' he said, chuckling - 'yes, I was forced to deceive you both in order to deceive the inspector. I was afraid for a moment he would see the ghastly and glaring flaw in my reasoning —'
'But why?'
'Deceive him? .. . Because, Jeff, Inspector Durrand is too much a man of action to be discreet. He believes that she was lured to the club, an innocent girl, and murdered during a brutal attack; that is what I want everybody to believe. If Durrand had known she was a member, he would instantly have called on her parents - her friends - everybody, and he would have told them all that fact. Result: they would either have flown into a terrific rage and kicked us all out of the house, or else slammed the door in our faces to begin with. In any event, we should have received no help or information whatever. ... As you may have noticed, I have not told either family that these deaths were connected, or that either girl had any connexion with the club.’
I shook my head. 'It's a damned intricate game.'
'It has to be! Otherwise, we shall get nowhere. A public scandal of this club, now, would blast our whole hope of getting at the truth. But about the mask: here was the weak point in the argument I put before the inspector. If you remember, the woman whose appearance I deduced from the indications could have been nobody else but the dead girl!
Small, dark complexion, brown hair worn long: why, it fitted perfectly, and there was the mask to prove it. But by sleight-of-hand reasoning I convinced Durrand'
'There was lipstick on the mask. You pointed out that the dead woman wore none.'
This time his chuckle became a roar of laughter. 'And yet you yourself picked up the lipstick she was carrying in her bag! Why, Jeff, surely you realize that her wearing no lipstick at the time of her death does not mean she never wore the mask. ... I grieve to think how easily Durrand swallowed it. On the contrary, all it means is that she had definitely worn the mask in the past, but did not have it on then.'
'The torn elastic?'
'Torn, my friend, by the murderer in his or her frantic search through her handbag. You see? She took the mask with her in her handbag when she left home that night. In all probability, the old-fashioned severity of the Martels prevented her from applying lipstick before she left; and then she forgot it. Definitely she was coming to the club. The final point to prove she was a member .. . Well, let us discuss the whole thing.'
He sat back, his finger-tips together, and stared out of the window.
'From the beginning, we know that the "lady in the brown hat", Gina Prevost, has been somehow concerned with the disappearance of Odette Duchene. Old Augustin saw her, you remember, following the Duchene girl down the stairs of the waxworks that afternoon, and mistook her for a ghost. We may also say that Claudine Martel was also concerned with this disappearance, for, considering her membership of the club and the facts we have heard about her behaviour on that night, there can be no other interpretation. I do not say that these two are necessarily implicated in the murder. On the contrary, I think I have an idea of how they are implicated. But they are afraid, Jeff - horribly afraid they may be implicated. So they arrange for a meeting, Gina Prevost and Claudine Martel, and on that night Claudine Martel is murdered.
'At twenty-five minutes to twelve, then, we have Mademoiselle Prevost waiting in front of the waxworks, where she is seen by the policeman. She is not only upset, but indecisive. Unquestionably she has arranged to meet her friend either (a) in the waxworks itself or (b) in the passage, for girls of that type would scarcely wait outside the passage door giving on to the Boulevard de Sebastopol - it's not a pleasant neighbourhood to loiter in doorways, you know. But what happens? Something has gone wrong, Jeff, and we do not need to look far in search of it. She reaches the museum at eleven thirty-five, but the museum is closed.
'Sheer chance has upset things. Sheer chance caused me to telephone Monsieur Augustin for an appointment, and sheer chance made him lock up his waxworks half an hour before its usual closing-time. On her arrival, Mademoiselle Prevost finds the gates shut and the museum dark. It has never happened before, and she does not know what to do. She hesitates. Undoubtedly she has accustomed herself to go in by way of the museum, and so she hesitates to enter by the door giving on to the Boulevard de Sebastopol.
'Claudine Martel has arrived before her. Whether or not she arrived also after the museum was closed, or whether she is accustomed to using the Boulevard de Sebastopol entrance, this we do not know. In any case, she clearly entered by the boulevard door. 'Why so?'
'She had no ticket, Jeff!' Bencolin leaned forward and slapped the arm of his chair impatiently. 'Surely you know that (if only for appearance's sake) each member of the club must buy a ticket for the waxworks when entering. But there was no museum ticket among her effects. Surely we can't be so mad as to suppose that the murderer might have stolen it, for why should he? He left her in the museum; he certainly tried to make no mystery of her presence there.'
'I see. Go on.'
'Therefore we have Mademoiselle Martel going in one door, and her friend waiting in the street before the waxworks. While each waits, and each wonders where the other is, we come to the significant points.
'The first significant point is this. Once inside that passage, there are three ways by which the murderer could have approached his victim. First, there is the door with the Bulldog lock, opening on to the street. Second, there is the door into the actual club itself, in the rear of the brick wall. Third, there is the door from the museum. Now this last door is significant; it has a spring lock, and can be opened only from inside the museum. It is used, but by people going one way only - viz., into the club. They never leave that way; they have no keys. And why? Because the club keeps late hours. After twelve, when the museum closes, they couldn't go tramping out through the waxworks, unbolting and unbarring that huge front door, and making it necessary for Mademoiselle Augustin to get up and lock it again every time somebody left! That in itself would be unpractical, to say nothing of the fact that it must surely be discovered by old Augustin, and stopped. You yourself have seen how anxious his daughter was to conceal it from him. ... No, no, Jeff! A person could enter by way of the museum; but that spring lock was always caught on the museum side, and the key thrown away; the exit was the boulevard door.
'Now, then. In determining which way the murderer approached his victim, we have these three doors. The murderer, you see, could have come by one of the first two -from the street or from inside the club. But,' said Bencolin, emphasizing each word by a tap on the chair arm - 'but if he came in either of those ways he could not possibly have carried the body into the waxworks. Do you see? The museum door being locked on the inside, he could not have opened it from the passage. Therefore, my friend, we see that the murderer must have crept upon her from inside the museum, by opening that door from the inside. .. . '