During this conversation we were walking down the lane towards the fork in the road where our car had halted earlier in the afternoon, and in another moment I realized that the Villa Marguerite, the home of the mysterious Madame Daubreuil, was the small house from which the beautiful girl had emerged.
‘She has lived here for many years,’ said the commissary nodding his head towards the house. ‘Very quietly, very unobtrusively. She seems to have no friends or relations other than the acquaintances she had made in Merlinville. She never refers to the past, nor to her husband. One does not even know if he is alive or dead. There is a mystery about her, you comprehend.’
I nodded, my interest growing.
‘And—the daughter?’ I ventured.
‘A truly beautiful young girl—modest, devout, all that she should be. One pities her, for, though she may know nothing of the past, a man who wants to ask her hand in marriage must necessarily inform himself, and then—’ The commissary shrugged his shoulders cynically.
‘But it would not be her fault!’ I cried, with rising indignation.
‘No. But what will you? A man is particular about his wife’s antecedents.’
I was prevented from further argument by our arrival at the door. M. Hautet rang the bell. A few minutes elapsed, and then we heard a footfall within, and the door was opened.
On the threshold stood my young goddess of that afternoon.
When she saw us, the colour left her cheeks, leaving her deathly white, and her eyes widened with apprehension. There was no doubt about it, she was afraid!
‘Mademoiselle Daubreuil,’ said M. Hautet, sweeping off his hat, ‘we regret infinitely to disturb you, but the exigencies of the Law, you comprehend? My compliments to madame your mother, and will she have the goodness to grant me a few moments’ interview?’
For a moment the girl stood motionless. Her left hand was pressed to her side, as though to still the sudden unconquerable agitation of her heart. But she mastered herself, and said in a low voice: ‘I will go and see. Please come inside.’
She entered a room on the left of the hall, and we heard the low murmur of her voice. And then another voice, much the same in timbre, but with a slightly harder inflection behind its mellow roundness, said: ‘But certainly. Ask them to enter.’
In another minute we were face to face with the mysterious Madame Daubreuil.
She was not nearly so tall as her daughter, and the rounded curves of her figure had all the grace of full maturity.
Her hair, again unlike her daughter’s, was dark, and parted in the middle in the Madonna style. Her eyes, half hidden by the drooping lids, were blue. Though very well preserved, she was certainly no longer young, but her charm was of the quality which is independent of age.
‘You wished to see me, monsieur?’ she asked.
‘Yes, madame.’ M. Hautet cleared his throat. ‘I am investigating the death of Monsieur Renauld. You have heard of it, no doubt?’
She bowed her head without speaking. Her expression did not change.
‘We came to ask you whether you can—er—throw any light upon the circumstances surrounding it?’
‘I?’ The surprise of her tone was excellent.
‘Yes, madame. We have reason to believe that you were in the habit of visiting the dead man at his villa in the evenings. Is that so?’
The colour rose in the lady’s pale cheeks, but she replied quietly: ‘I deny your right to ask me such a question!’
‘Madame, we are investigating a murder.’
‘Well, what of it? I had nothing to do with the murder;’
‘Madame, we do not say that for a moment. But you knew the dead man well. Did he ever confide in you as to any danger that threatened him?’
‘Never.’
‘Did he ever mention his life in Santiago, and any enemies he may have made there?’
‘No.’
‘Then you can give us no help at all?’
‘I fear not. I really do not see why you should come to me. Cannot his wife tell you what you want to know?’ Her voice held a slender inflection of irony.