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Updated: June 23, 2025
Stratum lies under stratum, and in each we meet with evidence of more refined activity than in the last. It seems we have yet to go deeper." He took out his pipe and began to fill it. "Tell me about the interview with Madame de Staemer," he directed. I took a seat facing him, and he did not once interrupt me throughout my account of Inspector Aylesbury's examination of Madame.
He finally suggested, quite openly, that I had not come down from my room to the corridor in which Madame de Staemer was lying, but had actually been there at the time!" "In the corridor outside her room?" "Yes. He seemed to think that I had just come in from the door near the end of the east wing and beside the tower, which opens into the shrubbery." "That you had just come in?" I exclaimed.
Madame de Staemer threw her arm around Val Beverley, and hugged her so closely to her side that the girl's curly brown head was pressed against Madame's shoulder. Thus holding her, she sat rigidly upright, her strange, still eyes glaring across the room at Inspector Aylesbury.
I understood only too well; and recollecting the words spoken by Paul Harley that afternoon, respecting the Colonel's will to live, I became conscious of an uncomfortable sense of chill. If I had doubted that in so speaking he had been contemplating his own death, the behaviour of Madame de Staemer must have convinced me.
During this little scene I detected Val Beverley looking at me in a vaguely troubled way, and it was easy to guess that she was wondering what construction I should place upon it. However: "I am going into the town," declared Madame de Staemer, energetically. "Half the things ordered from Hartley's have never been sent." "Oh, Madame, please let me go," cried Val Beverley.
We dismounted in the stable-yard, and I noted two other saddle horses in the stalls, a pair of very clean-looking hunters, as well as two perfectly matched ponies, which, Jim informed me, Madame de Staemer sometimes drove in a chaise. Feeling vastly improved by the exercise, I walked around to the veranda, and through the drawing room to the hall.
That he should find in Madame a fascinating problem did not surprise me. She must have afforded tempting study for any psychologist. I could not fathom the nature of the kinship existing between herself and the Spanish colonel, for Madame de Staemer was French to her fingertips. Her expressions, her gestures, her whole outlook on life proclaimed the fashionable Parisienne.
We saw no more of the ladies until tea-time, and if a spirit of constraint had prevailed throughout luncheon, a veritable demon of unrest presided upon the terrace during tea. Madame de Staemer made apologies on behalf of the Colonel. He was prolonging his siesta, but he hoped to join us at dinner. "Is the Colonel's heart affected?" Harley asked.
Camber," I said, "but can you tell me in what way these two are related?" She looked up with her naive smile. "I can tell you, yes. A cousin of Senor Menendez married a sister of Madame de Staemer." "Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "a very remote kinship."
She remained rather pale, but smiled at me courageously. "Have they all gone, Mr. Knox?" she asked. "I have really been hiding. I suppose you knew?" "I suspected it," I said, smiling. "Yes, they are all gone. How is Madame de Staemer, now?" "She is quite calm. Curiously, almost uncannily calm. She is writing. Tell me, please, what does Mr. Harley think of Inspector Aylesbury's preposterous ideas?"
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