What Dread Hand? (12 page)

‘With what wings,’ said the Duchess, ‘does an item of gossip fly to those little pink ears of yours!’ And she rang for her maid. ‘My cloak and a veil. I am going to the Opera, for the last act. Tell the nurse to take over the children; Mademoiselle Brune will accompany me.’

Madame Clara’s role seemed hardly so exacting as to account for her prostration in tears on the couch of her dressing-room. Astonishment revived her, however, when Madame la Duchesse de Marlaine was announced. ‘Madame! An honour!’

‘I will keep you only a moment, Madame. I came merely to ask you about the diamond you wore tonight. I wonder, is it by any chance for sale?’

‘For sale?’ cried Madame Clara, outraged. ‘For sale? This diamond, Madame, was given to me by a friend. A friend who is now—who is dead, Madame.’

‘And murdered at that?’ murmured the Duchess, sympathetically.

‘Very well—le Vicomte Coqauvin: I make no secret of it. He gave it to me—I forget just when,’ said Madame Clara casually. ‘Some time last week. I never saw him again; you find me desolated…’

‘At any rate, Madame, the pendant is not for sale?’

Madame Clara looked round the shoddy dressing-room and a gleam of longing lit her red-rimmed eyes. But she put her hand to her throat and held the diamond tight. ‘It is not for sale.’

The Duchess bowed to necessity. She rose. ‘A tragic business. His own pistol too, one hears.’

‘He kept it always on the table by his couch,’ ventured Mademoiselle Brune.

‘It wasn’t there last night,’ said the Duchess; and clapped her hand to her mouth and stared: and waited.

Madame Clara did not fail her. ‘Yes, it was,’ she said; and, stricken, stared back.

The governess did not immediately follow my lady from the dressing-room. A modest compliment upon Madame’s performance, a diffident hope that in the near future more prominent roles might reward so remarkable a talent—Madame Clara ground her fine teeth behind lips forced to complaisant smiling—a respectful farewell. Mademoiselle Brune was departing for England.

Madame Clara trusted Mademoiselle would be happy and waited with unconcealed impatience for her to go. What a gaffe, blurting it out before she could stop herself!—that it had been last night that she had been there, the very night of his murder. How fortunate that neither of them—the Duchess or the governess—had apparently noticed its significance! ‘Well, Mademoiselle, I will not keep you. Good wishes for your happiness.’

Alas, said Mademoiselle Brune, that one’s happiness these days should so much depend upon material things. The English were scornful of a poor governess’s dowry…

Madame Clara’s diamond reached the Duchess by hand the next evening as she sat among the ormolu and Sèvres in her exquisite salon, entertaining her cousin, la Princesse Charitée de Blanc. ‘A jewel I bought from some second-rate little singer. Poor Coqauvin left it to her—or so she says. What a shocking thing that was! With his own weapon too, I’m told.’

The Duchess’s children were present, in their best bibs and tuckers, to pay their respects to their cousin, Charitée, and accept a bedtime bon-bon; Mademoiselle Brune, of course, in attendance. And Mademoiselle in the excitement of the moment quite lost her head and forgetting in whose august presence she was, burst out, ‘They say it always lay on the table by his couch.’

‘It wasn’t there last night,’ said the Duchess.

‘Wasn’t it?’ said the Princess.

‘A dud?’ signalled the governess to Madame la Duchesse, over the royal head.

Or not? They discussed it later that night. ‘You had better visit her just the same,’ said the Duchess. ‘She will not refuse to see you: she is noted for her charity—so aptly named! Sound her out very carefully. If she has the diamond, she is bound to pay with it—she hasn’t a soul these days, poor dear, and her family jewels were all sold long ago…’

But the Princess had no diamond; trembled, turned pale, hardly troubled to deny a past affair with the dead man, but allowed the governess to depart unsatisfied. And the Duchess’s dear friend, Madame Romain, proved a failure also, and one or two more; but la Vicomtesse Lachasse came across with no trouble at all and la Comtesse du Jean and Madame de Gris… And at last a day came when the Duchess could say, weighing the glittering hoard in a hand already heavy with rings, ‘That is the last. Now I have them all—all seven of Don Juan’s “tears”. And you, Mademoiselle, half a dozen times their value in cash—no inconsiderable dowry for a poor little governess. You will be rich.’

‘I have earned it,’ said the governess, not without spirit.

‘Oh, certainly and I don’t grudge it to you. All I wanted was the seven “tears” and no suspicion attaching to myself of—’

‘—of blackmail,’ said the governess.

The Duchess stiffened a little. ‘That word on your lips, Mademoiselle, might well prove double-edged. And I see no cause for you to make yourself disagreeable. Our task is done, our partnership at an end. You have your money and may depart from the scene. And I have the seven diamond drops.’

‘And your revenge,’ said the governess.

Now the Duchess sat very still indeed—very still and remote. She said at last, and there was ice in her voice: ‘What do you mean?’

The little governess trembled but she stuck to her guns. Greed had grown rampant in her heart from the seeds which, but a brief few days ago, a slip of the tongue had implanted there. ‘I mean,’ she said, ‘that you wanted the seven jewels, not for what they mean to you but for what they meant to
them
—to his other women. They dared to compete with you for his favours, but the prizes shall not remain in their hands. And since you have bought them without concealment—“unaware” of course, of the reasons they were offered for sale—you may flaunt them round that white neck of yours for all to see.’

The Duchess laughed—if you could call it laughing. ‘Are you suggesting that
I
was a mistress of the Vicomte Coqauvin?’

And the governess laughed also—if you could call it laughing; and mimicked: ‘It wasn’t there last night,’ and clapped her hand to her mouth and stared in insolent imitation. ‘Poor fools!—so obsessed with their own slips that it never occurred to them to ask you, “How do
you
know?”’

‘The answer to that is simple: what I said was a trap.’

‘Not the first time,’ said the governess.

This time the Duchess really laughed. ‘My poor girl, you over-reach yourself. I was not conducting an affair with Monsieur Coqauvin.’

‘Then where did you get the seventh diamond?’ said the governess; and she pointed to the glittering drops in the Duchess’s hand. ‘Madame la Marquise, the opera singer, Mademoiselle Vivante, the Mesdames Lachasse, du Jean and de Gris. Six ladies, Madame—six diamonds. So where did you get the seventh?’

The Duchess, slowly, with a white forefinger, segregated a single stone. ‘It is true that I came by one of these without your assistance.’

‘No doubt,’ said Mademoiselle, all irony.

‘You have a vulgar mind,’ said the Duchess. ‘Well, that is your breeding, you cannot help it. But you are also obtuse; and an inference which you missed, my dear, I did not.’

‘At any rate,’ said the governess, holding out her hand, ‘I will have the stone—the seventh. This was a partnership—you to have the diamonds, I to have their price. Give it to me—and then, if you will, I will sell it back to you.’

‘But you believe that it was given to me by him.’

‘If it was,’ said the governess quickly, ‘you need not pay me for it.’

‘Dear me!’ said the Duchess. ‘You can set your traps unaided, I perceive.’ And she rose and went to her desk. ‘Very well then—honour among thieves. I will give you the same amount that I gave for each of the other stones.’

The governess accepted the money and stuffed it away in an inside skirt-pocket with a big roll of banknotes, all tied together with blue ribbon. ‘And now,’ said the Duchess, ‘the partnership is dissolved. You have your money. You may go.’

‘So I will,’ said the governess, ‘when I have the diamonds also.’ In her right hand, she now held a tiny pearl-handled gun.

The Duchess stood stock still. ‘What is this? Some threat?’ But now she looked more closely. ‘Isn’t that—?’

‘Yes,’ said the governess. ‘His gun—monogrammed with his initials. I found it in the secret drawer of your ladyship’s desk.’

‘You just happened to be borrowing a handkerchief, no doubt,’ said the Duchess.

‘I just happened to be looking for the gun that killed Monsieur Coqauvin.’

“Well, and now you have found it,’ said the Duchess, ‘and have not the wit to realise that it is empty. Its venom is spent.’

The governess glanced at the weapon in a hand that was now not quite so steady. She said: ‘How do you know?’

‘Who else should know?’ said the Duchess with a tinge of mockery.

The governess lowered her hand. ‘It makes no difference. I know what I know. I can still go to the police.’

‘Don’t trouble,’ said the Duchess. ‘The police are coming to you.’

‘To me?’ Every vestige of colour fled from the governess’s face, her greedy little hands began to tremble. ‘The police—?’

‘I sent for them an hour ago,’ said the Duchess. She glanced at the clock on the high marble mantelpiece. ‘I told them to come—about now. I thought we might need them—after I had observed that the pistol was gone.’ And she looked at the pretty little gleaming thing in its silver and mother-of-pearl. ‘Have you not heard of this Monsieur Bertillon, my child? He is employing a new method of police procedure. They can read from any shining object, who last handled it. And you, we both perceive, are the last to have handled le Vicomte Coqauvin’s gun. For the rest…’ She shrugged. ‘An employee in the house of la Duchesse de Marlaine—all preparations made to get out of the country—blackmail easily proved—’ The governess interrupted but she talked her resolutely down. ‘La Duchesse implicated? Ridiculous! Various ladies have offered her diamonds, declaring themselves urgently in of money; she naturally would not enquire into their reasons… Really!—what will the little governess think of next, to try to wriggle out of trouble. And as to the motive—for you, Mademoiselle, having murdered him…’ Again the cold voice over-rode the outcry of protest. ‘A meeting with Don Juan in the hall—as you yourself said before a witness the other day… But—(I am only suggesting what the police will deduce) you were not, after all, just walking across the hall. You were on your way out. He also. And as he turned away from the door, you followed him. For the rest—he was not very particular, all the world now knows that—any trash in petticoats would do. How many times, I wonder—the police will wonder—has the nurse been left in charge, while Mademoiselle, the governess, went off on a little shopping expedition?—at which, I dare say, she sold rather more than she bought.’

‘You don’t believe that!’ cried the governess.

‘Not a word of it, my dear. But the police will believe it. And as for taking money from him, you have taken it in worse circumstances by far—which money, by the way, you may as well hand back to me. I will see that it goes to a deserving charity.’ And she pulled the blubbering, frightened girl towards her, thrust a white hand into a bulging pocket and removed the roll of banknotes. ‘There! Now we are even, you and I: you and the rest of them, as you so perceptively surmise—and I.’ And she released her and gave her a thrust that sent her tumbling and stumbling to the door. ‘So get out, begone, quick, before the police get here! And take this weapon with you, drop it into the channel as you make what haste you may towards England and safety. And if you value your life, never let me set eyes on you again.’ She waited as the fleeing heels hammered across the marble floor, over the startled protests of the footmen without; and the great front door slammed. Then she rang the bell. ‘Has the governess departed?’

‘Rushed out of the house, my lady. But she has not taken her things.’

‘Have them bundled up and sent after her. Her fiancé is at an hotel somewhere—the nurse would know.’ As the man hesitated she said: ‘Yes?’

‘Are we to expect the police, my lady? The young woman said—’

‘The police?’ said the Duchess, innocently. ‘No—J haven’t sent for any police.’

The Princess de Blanc lived in a small house, furnished—shabbily these days—from ancient glories. Within an hour of the governess’s departure, the Duchess presented herself at the door. ‘Charitée, my dear, you are not looking at all well—so taut and strained.’ A gloved hand opened and a diamond tear glittered in the palm. ‘Could it perhaps be something to do with this?’

The Princess drew back. ‘It is yours, isn’t it?’ said the Duchess.

‘Mine?’

‘It had fallen upon the carpet, Charitée, beside the couch. It lay there—shining. It seemed to me,’ said the Duchess, staring down at it, ‘the only thing left alive in that room of death.’

The Princess put her hands to her face, swaying. She cried out: ‘Margeurite! That night—you came back?’

‘How could I “come back”?’ said the Duchess. ‘I had only just arrived. I came at midnight. We were—you may believe it or not—going innocently out to supper. You will have no trouble at all in believing that, after all, we did not go.’

The Princess interrupted her, stammering. ‘The—the gun—?’

The gun was still lying there on the table,’ said the Duchess, ‘and still warm to the touch. I brought it away with me, wrapped up in my handkerchief—you have heard of this Monsieur Bertillon and his “fingerprints”?’ She looked with pity at the shuddering woman before her. ‘Don’t be afraid. Fingerprints and all, I have got rid of the gun.’

But the Princess had pulled herself together a little. ‘Afraid? Why should I be afraid? What has all this to do with me? I do not deny—to you, Margeurite, at any rate—that he was my lover. But that does not mean that I was with him that night. Let alone that I—’

‘Hush, Charitée,’ said the Duchess. ‘You are safe, I tell you. Of course you were his mistress, and of course you were there that night; and of course you killed him. To each of his—women—he had given a souvenir, a diamond. You had no diamond. Therefore you are the one who left the diamond behind.’ And she held it out again, the shining tear, lying in the palm of her hand.