The Waxworks Murder

She said, 'I am ready to go to Monsieur Bencolin and swear that I saw my friend Galant stab the Duchene girl.'

'And did you?'

'No.' A dull vindictive monosyllable. She walked over slowly; I had again the fancy of a grim-faced priestess. Every muscle in her body seemed to be tight. 'But,' she added, 'I guarantee to make a good story of it.'

'I don't know that it will be necessary. And - this sudden dropping of caution ? You keep insisting that you fear your father will...'

'Not any longer. He knows.'

I swung my legs off the chaise-longue, sat up, and looked at her. The room swam a bit; little hammers began to pound at the base of my eyes, and my head seemed to be rising towards the ceiling in long spiralling motions.

'He knows,' she repeated. 'There's an end to concealment. I can figure in the papers as well as anybody. And I think I shall enjoy it.'

'Who told him?'

'I think he has suspected some time. But I have him' - she pressed her finger and thumb together contemptuously - 'like that. Besides, I am going to see Galant in a condemned cell if it costs everything.'

The suppressed fury in her voice made me wonder whether there had ever been anything between these two. But I kept silent while she went on: 'Then I end my career as a slave. I will travel. I will have jewels, and rooms in a hotel overlooking the sea, and - and gentlemen, like yourself, to pay me compliments. And there will be one of them, like yourself, whom I can't rule. ... But first,' she amended, smiling dangerously, 'I will settle things.'

'You mean,' I said, 'you are willing to help the police with everything you know?'

'Yes. I will swear I saw Galant —'

'And I tell you again it won't be necessary to perjure yourself! With the evidence of Mademoiselle Prevost and myself, we have him. You can help us much more,' I insisted, trying to hold her gaze, 'by telling the truth.'

'About what?'

'By telling everything you know for a fact. Bencolin is convinced that you saw the murderer of Claudine Martel.'

Her eyes opened wide. 'So you still don't believe me! I insist —'

'Oh, not knowing it was the murderer, necessarily! But he believes that the murderer walked into the waxworks last night before your father closed up; that he was hidden there. Moreover, that the murderer was a member of the club, whom you knew. Do you know how you can help us most? Simply by telling what club members came in that way last night.'

She stared at me uncomprehending!)', her eyebrows rising. Then she laughed; she sat down with a swashbuckling air, and shook me by the shoulder.

'Do you mean,' she cried — 'do you mean that the great Bencolin - the infallible, the great lord of logic - do you mean that he has been so thoroughly fooled? Tiens! this is too good!'

'Stop laughing! What do you mean - fooled?'

I twisted her round to face me. Her eyes, still hard and mocking, ran over my face.

'Just that! If the murderer was a member of the club, he didn't come in that night through the waxworks. I saw everybody who did come in all day, and, my dear boy, there were no members among them. Tiens! but your face is funny ! Did you think he was always right? Why, I could have told you all this long ago.'

I hardly heard her laughter. A whole edifice of theory, spires and towers and pinnacles, had been reared on that assumption; now, suddenly, the blocks seemed to come down with a roar. In an instant, if this were true, the whole of it became wreckage.

'Listen,' she said, disengaging her shoulder. 'I think I should make a better detective than any of you. And I can tell you —'

'Wait! The murderer couldn't have come any way except in through that waxworks! The whole arrangement of doors ...'

Again she laughed. 'My dear boy, I am not saying the murderer didn't come that way. Through the waxworks, I grant you. But you are wrong in looking for a member of the club. And now I can tell you two things.'

'Well?'

She put her hands on her lips, breathing deeply. Her face was flushed with triumph, and the lids drooped over her eyes.

'This much, then, which the whole Paris force doesn't seem to have uncovered,' she told me. 'First - I know where the weapon is hidden.'

What!'

'And second,' she went on, imperturbably, 'I know that the crime was almost certainly committed by a woman.'

A Dead Man Pushes Open a Window

This thing was getting to be too much for me. I felt as a certain celebrated wanderer in a topsy-turvy land must have felt when the whole court of justice dissolved and rained down in a shower of playing-cards. Nonsense sounded like sense, and sense like nonsense.

'Ah, well,' I said, resignedly, after a long pause - 'ah, well!...'

She inquired with the utmost politeness: 'It surprises you?'

'Damn you! are you joking?'

'Not in the least,' she assured me, patting her hair. 'After that detective's cheap tricks last night, I am sorry I could not have told him first. However, I shall reserve that pleasure.'

'Now, first of all,' I said, desperately - 'first of all, you say you have found the weapon ?'

‘I know where it is, yes. I haven't disturbed it. Tell me - by the way, what is your name? - -' She broke off.

'My name is Marie. What were you saying?'

'Tell me, didn't the police search every inch of the waxworks, and the passage, and everywhere else, without finding it?'

'Yes, yes, go on! Your triumph is delicious. I know, but —‘

'But they failed, Monsieur Marie, because they neglected an ancient rule. The knife was right in front of them all the time; so they didn't see it. Now, did you go down into the Gallery of Horrors?'

'Yes. Just before I discovered the body.'

'Did you notice that masterly tableau just at the foot of the stairs? I mean the stabbing of Marat. Marat lies halfway out of his bathtub, the knife in his chest, blood streaming from it. Well, my dear boy, some of that blood was real.'

'You mean - - ?'

'I mean,' she said, composedly, 'that the killer went down into that room. She removed the knife from the wax chest of Marat. When papa built that figure he used the longest, sharpest, deadliest knife he could find; wax never dulled its edge, it was sheathed from dirt and rust, and it could easily be pulled out. When the killer had finished with her work, she replaced it in Marat's chest. The police looked at it last night, and hundreds of people have looked at it to-day, but nobody noticed.'

I saw again that grisy tableau in the cellar, as I had seen it the night before, and remarked its hideous realism. And then I remembered another thing, which caused me very heartily to curse myself. It was right there - there, in front of Marat - that I had heard something dripping. Later I had attributed it to the figure of the satyr, where the body was; but with the slightest grain of sense I should have realized I could not have heard blood drip from such a distance. It came from the Marat tableau all the time. . ..

'Well,' I demanded, 'how did you notice it?'

'Ah! So I am again to be under suspicion? (Give me a cigarette, will you?) No, no; I could not avoid noticing. Monsieur Marie, I have lived in that waxworks all my life. If a single button is out of place on any of the figures, I know it....'

'Yes?'

'When I looked through this morning, I saw a dozen small changes. Marat's writing-board had been pushed a quarter of an inch to the left. Somebody had brushed past Charlotte Corday's skirt and ruffled a fold. Most of all - the dagger was not quite buried to the hilt in his wax chest, and a few spots beside the tub were not painted blood.'