Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 3, 2025
"I had not followed my suggestion to its conclusion," he admitted humbly. "No," said Hanaud. "But I ask myself in sober earnest, 'Was there a seance held in the salon last night? Did the tambourine rattle in the darkness on the wall?" "But if Helene Vauquier's story is all untrue?" cried Wethermill, again in exasperation. "Patience, my friend. Her story was not all untrue.
"Then I found an interesting piece of evidence with regard to the strange woman who came: I picked up a long red hair a very important piece of evidence about which I thought it best to say nothing at all. It was not Mlle. Celie's hair, which is fair; nor Vauquier's, which is black; nor Mme. Dauvray's, which is dyed brown; nor the charwoman's, which is grey. It was, therefore, the visitor's.
She would have begged for death upon her knees rather than suffer this horror. She felt Vauquier's fingers lingering with a dreadful caressing touch upon her shoulders and about her throat. She was within an ace of the torture, the disfigurement, and she knew it. She could not pray for mercy. She could only lie quite still, as she was bidden, trying to control the shuddering of her limbs and body.
Celie's hair, which is fair; nor Mme. Dauvray's, which is dyed brown; nor Helene Vauquier's, which is black; nor the charwoman's, which, as I have taken the trouble to find out, is grey. It is therefore from the head of our unknown woman. And I will tell you more. This woman with the red hair she is in Geneva." A startled exclamation burst from Ricardo. Harry Wethermill sat slowly down.
He looked up in perplexity and saw that Hanaud was watching his investigations with a smile of amusement. "When M. Ricardo has put that away," he said, "we will hear what Helene Vauquier has to tell us." He passed out of the door last, and, locking it, placed the key in his pocket. "Helene Vauquier's room is, I think, upstairs," he said. And he moved towards the staircase.
"Did she go, before the murder, to join a lover? Or after it? At some time, you will remember, according to Vauquier's story, she must have run upstairs to fetch her coat. Was the murder committed during the interval when she was upstairs? Was the salon dark when she came down again? Did she run through it quickly, eagerly, noticing nothing amiss?
At the bottom she turned and said to me: "'Remember, Helene, you can go to bed. That was it monsieur." And now violently the rancour of Helene Vauquier's feelings burst out once more. "For her the fine clothes, the pleasure, and the happiness. For me I could go to bed!" Hanaud looked again at the description which Helene Vauquier had written out, and read it through carefully.
And what it was that the little salon on the first morning had to tell to you? And why Celia Harland ran from the glass doors across the grass to the motor-car and again from the carriage into the house on the lake? Why she did not resist yesterday evening? Why she did not cry for help? How much of Helene Vauquier's evidence was true and how much false?
Celie. But I should not have guessed it at the time." "Nor could I at the time," said Hanaud. "I kept my open mind about Helene Vauquier; but I locked the door and took the key. Then we went and heard Vauquier's story. The story was clever, because so much of it was obviously, indisputably true. The account of the seances, of Mme.
"Why should I seek her so often if I did not care?" And to this question Helene Vauquier smiled a quiet, slow, confidential smile. "What does monsieur want of Mme. Dauvray?" she asked. And the question was her answer. Wethermill stood silent. Then he said abruptly: "Nothing, of course; nothing." And he walked away. But the smile remained on Helene Vauquier's face. What did they all want of Mme.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking