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Updated: June 21, 2025
Go upstairs to the servants' quarters and search Victoire's room again. That fool of an inspector may have missed something, just as he missed Victoire herself. Get on! Be smart!" Bonavent went off briskly. Guerchard paced up and down the room, scowling. "Really, I'm beginning to agree with you, M. Guerchard, that this Lupin is a remarkable man," said the Duke.
"Excuse me," said Guerchard suavely, "but I attach considerable importance to it. It seems to me to be our bounden duty to question her fully. One never knows from what quarter light may come." "Oh, well, since you make such a point of it," said M. Formery. "Inspector, ask Mademoiselle Kritchnoff to come here. Fetch her." The inspector left the room.
Charolais opened the door, and the two detectives went out of the room with the slinking air of whipped dogs. They went down the stairs in silence, slowly, reflectively; and Charolais let them out of the front door. As they went down the steps Dieusy said: "What a howler! Guerchard risks getting the sack for this!" "I told you so," said Bonavent. "A duke's a duke."
"You've two men at the back door, and two at the front, and a man in every room on the ground-floor?" "Yes, and I've got three men on every other floor," said Bonavent, in a tone of satisfaction. "And the house next door?" said Guerchard. "There are a dozen men in it," said Bonavent. "No communication between the two houses is possible any longer."
Then he came back slowly into the drawing-room and looked uneasily at the Duke. The Duke was sitting in his easy chair, smoking a cigarette with a listless air. Guerchard looked at him, and looked at him, almost as if he now saw him for the first time. "Well?" said the Duke, "have you sent that poor child off to prison?
You left Charmerace at eight o'clock; you were motoring all the night, and only got to Paris at six o'clock this morning." "Motoring all night, from eight o'clock to six!" muttered Guerchard under his breath. "Oh, that will be all right," said the Duke carelessly. "This interesting affair is to be over by midnight, isn't it?"
"You've hit it," said Guerchard, with a husky laugh. "By that well-known logical process, the process of elimination, we've excluded all methods of egress except the chimney." He paused, frowning, in some perplexity; and then he said uneasily: "What I don't like about it is that Victoire was set in the fireplace. I asked myself at once what was she doing there.
He was moving hastily to the door, when Guerchard said, in his husky, gentle voice, "I don't think there is any need to look for Victoire in the well." "But this scrap of cloth," said M. Formery, holding it out to him. "Yes, yes, that scrap of cloth," said Guerchard. And, turning to the Duke, he added, "Do you know if there's a dog or cat in the house, your Grace?
It was unnecessary that she should be drugged and set in the fireplace quite unnecessary." "It might have been to put off an examining magistrate," said the Duke. "Having found Victoire in the fireplace, M. Formery did not look for anything else." "Yes, it might have been that," said Guerchard slowly.
"It's quite military," said the Duke, putting the card into his waistcoat pocket. There came a knock at the door, and a tall, thin, bearded man came into the room. "Ah, Dieusy! At last! What news?" cried Guerchard. Dieusy saluted: "I've learnt that a motor-van was waiting outside the next house in the side street," he said. "At what time?" said Guerchard.
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