' ... And by the living God,' Bencolin suddenly snapped, 'he is going to be judged by the standards he applied to his daughter.
'You know the Martels, Captain. Jeff has met them. A lonely man and a deaf woman, with pride buttoned up around them. They live in a great gloomy house, with few-friends except old men who remember the Third Empire, and no diversions. Dominoes for a gambler!
'They have a daughter who grows up hating all this. She is far from their generation; she loathes their stuffy dining-rooms, their formal meals, their stiff receptions, their whole embalmed world. It is not enough for her that Disraeli took tea on that lawn with Napoleon the Third when her father was a boy. It is not enough for her that not the slightest scandal was ever breathed in connexion with any member of her family. She wants to dance all night at the Chateau de Madrid, and see the dawn come up over the Bois. She wants to drink queer concoctions in bars decorated like a plumber's nightmare; to drive fast cars, experiment with lovers, and have a flat of her own. And - she discovers that they do not watch her. Once outside her own home, she may do as she likes so long as they never discover it.'
He paused. His eyes moved slowly over towards Mademoiselle Augustin, and he seemed to be keeping back a smile. He shrugged.
'Well - we can understand it, can we not? She seizes at anything new which comes her way. They do not guard her allowance. They do not supervise her friends, except in her own home. She is obliged to live two separate lives. And, gradually, as she contrasts this glittering outside world with her own home, she grows even more dissatisfied. Where before she had merely hated restraint, now she comes to hate everything for which her family stands. She rages within herself. They are so placid, so stodgy, so maddeningly strait-laced ; and she hates them for this.
'She has a friend, Mademoiselle Prevost, who shares her ideas. Say, rather, that these ideas were first nourished by Mademoiselle Martel. Together they see a friend of theirs, Mademoiselle Duchene, growing up much in the tradition they were supposed to have followed.. ..'
He made a slight gesture.
'Do I need to explain further events which led up to the tragedy? For Monsieur Chaumont's information, we need only say that Odette Duchene was lured here - never mind how! - and that she died. But Colonel Martel! Ah, that's different. How did he learn about what his daughter was doing and had done ? ... I will tell you, because the colonel told me.
'Her activities were good blackmail material for Etienne Galant. Galant waited until he had much to tell, for which a family might readily pay hush money. Then he went to her father.
'Of course, all this happened some time before the Odette Duchene episode - even before Claudine Martel conceived the idea of making game of her. I can imagine Galant sitting in Monsieur Martel's library, and telling, in that deprecating way, certain things....
'What happened ? What sudden black horror took hold of his host then? For many years he has sat there alone with his ghosts. He remembers the day when men fought duels because of the slightest slur on a woman's name. He looks round at those rows of books, he feels solidly under him his ancient house, and he tries to understand what his red-nosed guest is telling him. And he cannot understand. This daughter .. .
'His only thought is - blankness. Did he have Galant thrown out of the house? Did he want to batter the smug face and smash that red nose to a bloody sponge? Did his whole universe come down with a crash and roar? I don't think so. I think he only rose, possibly pale and a little more rigid, and told his butler to show Galant to the door. And then I can imagine him sitting alone at his table, patiently building up houses of dominoes, while the clock went on chiming through the night.
'It cannot be believed. It buzzes in his brain like a mosquito; he slaps at it, tells himself it means nothing, and yet that insane whir keeps on in his ears. And such thoughts would be dangerous, even deadly, to a man who spends all his time alone. The ghosts come round again. They prod him with the reminiscence of each Martel. He cannot speak to his wife; he cannot speak to anybody - least of all, Claudine.
'Oh, he does not yet think of murder! But I fancy him walking in his melancholy gardens as autumn comes on and the leaves fall, with his gold-headed stick biting into the ground; and this poisonous droning keeps on in his ears. ... And what happens?3
The crackle of a coal in the grate made me jump slightly. Bencolin was gripping the arms of his chair.
'Why, I should have guessed it long ago! Claudine Martel prepares her trap for Odette Duchene. We know what happened. We know that Galant actually stabbed the girl, when she had tripped and fallen from the window. But Claudine Martel thought that it was the fall, with a fractured skull -perhaps rightly! - which had killed her friend, and she knew that she was responsible.
'Her poor little vicious cosmos is wrenched apart. She no longer feels that she is the gay, cynical adventuress who can seize at any pleasure because pleasure is the chief end of life. She goes home that night sick and frozen with terror. She goes home - as children do.
'She creeps up that great staircase in the moonlight. She can think of nothing but that the police, big men with insignia on their caps, and harsh hands, are after her. She has defiled her household gods. She has emitted a last puerile screech at the things she hates; and, in uttering it, she has caused the death of an inoffensive girl who never did anybody the least harm. Did she see Odette Duchene's face in the moonlight? I don't know. But her mother was awake. Her mother came into the room and tried in a clumsy way to find out what was the matter.
'So what happens? She does not dare tell anybody. Yet she must have a confidante, she must talk of this horror, or go mad. So, in a low voice, she speaks there in the darkness, with her mother's arm round her . .. she speaks to a deaf woman! She knows that her mother is not hearing the confession; but it is a comfort to clutch somebody and pour it out. All of it. All the things come rushing back over her, while her mother pats her, and babies her soothingly, and does not hear a single word !
'Yet another person has been attracted by this hysteria.
Her father, still trying to understand, still bothered to madness by these voices whispering in his brain, overhears.'
Chaumont uttered a groan. It trembled in the silent room, but nobody looked at him, nobody could for a moment understand what he felt. We were all thinking of an old man standing in the moonlight, rigid....
'Had he been sitting in his library, patiently piling up dominoes and listening to the clock? Had he been sitting with an old book, and an old glass of wine - knowing that he must not doubt a Martel by even suspecting Claudine, and yet still hearing the voices ? Before that, he could doubt. Now he can be sure. He hears the story of the club, he hears that his daughter is not merely one who has hurt her name with a scandal. It is not alone that she has caused the death of a harmless girl. She is, instead, only a kind of procuress, a kind of brothel-keeper. She is mean, and vicious, above all.
'I do not need to trace it. Colonel Martel has offered to supply us with a statement. Still, I do not think he considered - considered, that is, as a definite plan - the killing of his daughter. He might have felt an impulse to walk into that room and strangle her on her bed in the moonlight. But the coldness of his fury keeps him numb. I think he sat until dawn looking at the window.
'Then the next night... he hears the telephone conversation. He knows that these two girls, his daughter and Gina Prevost, will meet at the club again. They must have news; they must know what Galant has done with the body; they must be assured that they are safe. So, punctually at nine-thirty he puts on his great cape and takes up his gold-headed stick to go out as he has done for forty years - as though he were going to the home of his friend to play cards. But he does not go, this time.