I felt uneasy. A clock ticked, and the chair squeaked on. I felt that I should associate that room forever with the smell of cooking potatoes. Mile Augustin asked no questions ; her whole body was stiff and her fingers moved mechanically. The forces of some outburst were trembling and gathering round the blue-striped shirt she mended. Drinking a glass of brandy with Chaumont, I saw that his eyes were fixed on her, too. ... Several times her father started to speak, but we all remained silent and uncomfortable.
Bencolin returned to the room.
'Mademoiselle,' he said, ‘I want to ask —'
'Marie!' her father broke out in an agonized voice. 'I couldn't tell you! It's murder. It's —'
'Please be quiet,' said Bencolin. ‘I want to ask mademoiselle, when you turned on the lights in the museum tonight.'
She did not spar by demanding to know what he meant. She put down the sewing with steady hands, and said: 'Shortly after papa had gone to see you.'
'What lights did you put on ?'
‘I turned on the switch which controls those in the centre of the main grotto and the staircase to the cellars.' 'Why did you do this?'
She regarded him placidly, without interest. 'It was a perfectly natural action. I thought I heard somebody moving about in the museum.'
'You are not a nervous woman, I take it?'
'No.' Not a smile, not a curl of the lip; though all nervousness, you knew, was with her a subject for contempt.
'Did you go to investigate?'
'I did. ... ' As he continued to look at her with raised eyebrows, she went on: 'I looked through the main grotto, where I thought I heard the noise, but there was nothing. I was mistaken.'
'You did not go down the staircase?'
'I did not.'
'How long did you keep the lights on ?'
'I am not sure. Five minutes, possibly more. Now will you explain to me' - she spoke out very sharply, and half raised herself in the chair - 'what is the meaning of this talk of murder?'
'A girl,' Bencolin told her slowly, 'a certain Mademoiselle Claudine Martel, has been murdered. Her body was placed in the arms of the satyr at the turn of the staircase. ... '
Old Augustin was plucking at Bencolin's sleeve. His bald head, with the two absurd tufts of white hair behind the ears, was cocked up at Bencolin's like a dog's. The reddish eyes widened and shrank beseechingly.
'Please, monsieur! Please! She knows nothing of this - -!'
'Old fool !' the girl snapped. 'Stay out of this. I will handle them.'
He subsided, stroking his white moustache and whiskers with an expression of pride in his daughter, but begging her forgiveness. Her eyes challenged Bencolin again.
'Well, mademoiselle? Is the name Claudine Martel familiar to you ?'
'Monsieur, are you under the impression that I know the names, as well as the faces, of all the casual visitors to this place?'
Bencolin leaned forward. 'What makes you think Mademoiselle Martel might have been a visitor to this place?'
'You say,' the other responded grimly, 'that she is here.’
'She was murdered in the passage behind this house, communicating with the street,' said Bencolin. 'She probably never visited the museum in her life.'
'Ah! - Well, in that case,' the girl shrugged, reaching for her sewing again, 'the museum can be left out of it. Eh?'
Bencolin took out a cigar. He appeared to be considering this last remark of hers, a wrinkle between his brows. Marie Augustin applied herself again to the sewing, and she was smiling as though she had won a difficult passage at arms.
'Mademoiselle,' the detective said thoughtfully. 'I am going to ask you, in a moment, to step out and look at the body in question. .. . But my mind goes back to a conversation we had earlier this evening.'
'Yes?’
'A conversation concerning Mademoiselle Odette Duchene, the young lady we found murdered in the Seine.'
Again she put down the sewing. 'Ah, zut!' she cried, striking the table. 'Is there never to be any peace? I have told you all I know about that.'
'Captain Chaumont, if I remember correctly, asked you for a description of Mademoiselle Duchene. Whether due to a faulty memory or some other cause, your description was incorrect.'
'I have told you! I must have been mistaken. I must have been thinking of something else - somebody else — '
Bencolin finished lighting his cigar and flourished the match.
'Ah, precisely! Precisely, mademoiselle! You were thinking of somebody else. I do not think you ever saw Mademoiselle Duchene. You were called on suddenly for a description. So you took the risk; you spoke very rapidly, and obviously described somebody else who was in your mind. That is what causes me to wonder —'
'Well?'
'to wonder,5 Bencolin went on, thoughtfully, 'why that image was at the back of your brain in the first place. To wonder, in short, why you gave us so exact a description of Mademoiselle Claudine Martel.'
How a Certain Myth Came to Life
Bencolin had scored. You could see it in the slight droop of her lip, the holding of her breath, the fixed expression of her eyes, momentarily, while her agile brain sought for loopholes. Then she laughed.
'Why, monsieur, I don't follow you! The description I gave you might have fitted anybody —'
'Ah! You admit, then, that you never saw Mademoiselle Duchene?'
'I admit nothing! ... As I was saying, my description would fit a thousand women —' 'Only one of them lies dead here.'
'and the fact, the coincidence, that Mademoiselle
Martel happens to look something like the person I described, is nothing more than a coincidence.'
'Softly!' urged Bencolin, making an admonitory gesture with his cigar. 'How do you know what Mademoiselle Martel looks like, mademoiselle? You haven't seen her yet.'
Her face was red and angry. Not, you felt, because of any accusation against her, but because Bencolin had tripped her up. Anybody who was a little faster than she at verbal rapier-play would infuriate her. Again she tossed back the long bobbed hair from her cars, smoothing it behind them with savage gestures.
'Don't you think,' she suggested frigidly, 'you have tried your lawyer's tricks on me long enough? I've had enough!'
Bencolin shook his head in a paternal fashion which irritated her the more. He beamed. 'No, but, really, mademoiselle! There arc other questions to be discussed. I cannot let you off so easily.'
'As a policeman you have that privilege.'
'Exactly. Well, then. I think we must admit, offhand, that the deaths of Odette Duchene and Claudette Martel were connected - very closely connected. But now we come to a third lady, a more enigmatic figure than either one of them. She seems to haunt this place. I refer to a woman whose face nobody has seen, but who appears to wear a fur neckpiece and a brown hat. To-night, in speaking of the matter, your father advanced an interesting theory ... '
'O Holy Mother!’ she snarled. 'Have you been listening to that dotard's nonsense? Speak up, papa! Did you tell them-all that?'
The old man straightened up with curious dignity. He said: 'Marie, I am your father. I tried to tell them what I thought was the truth,'
For the first time that night the cold common-sense whiteness of her face was warmed by an expression of tenderness. Stepping over softly, she put her arm around his shoulders.
'Listen, papa,' she murmured, searching his face; 'listen. You are tired. Go and lie down. Rest yourself. These gentlemen won't need to talk with you any longer. I can tell them what they want to know.'
She shot a glance at us, and Bencolin nodded.
'Well,' the old man said, hesitantly - 'well - if you don't mind. It's been a great shock. A great shock. I don't know when I've been so upset. ..." He made a vague gesture. 'Forty-two years,' he continued, his voice rising, 'forty-two years, and we have a name. A name means a lot to me. Yes....'