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Updated: May 22, 2025
Our police system is, I think, a little more complete than yours in England. Helene Vauquier has served Mme. Dauvray for seven years. She has been the confidential friend rather than the maid. And mark this, M. Wethermill! During those seven years how many opportunities has she had of conniving at last night's crime? She was found chloroformed and bound.
She might have just turned out the pocket of an old dress. There was the sound of something heavy and inert falling with a dull crash upon the floor. A woman laughed, and again it was Helene Vauquier. "Which is the key of the safe?" asked Adele. And Helene Vauquier replied: "That one." Celia heard some one drop heavily into a chair. It was Wethermill, and he buried his face in his hands.
It was close upon half-past nine when the bell rang from the salon. Vauquier was sure of the hour, for the charwoman called her attention to the clock. "I found Mme. Dauvray, Mlle Celie, and another woman in the salon," continued Helene Vauquier. "Madame had let them in with her latchkey." "Ah, the other woman!" cried Besnard. "Had you seen her before?" "No, monsieur." "What was she like?"
He unbound her wrists and fingers, and Vauquier placed the writing-pad and the paper on the girl's knees. Her arms were still pinioned above the elbows; she could not raise her hands high enough to snatch the scarf from her lips. But with the pad held up to her she could write. "Where did she keep her jewels! Quick! Take the pencil and write," said Wethermill, holding her left wrist.
As she opened her lips Helene Vauquier swiftly forced a handkerchief in between the girl's teeth, and lifting the scarf from her shoulders wound it tightly twice across her mouth, binding her lips, and made it fast under the brim of her hat behind her head. Celia tried to scream; she could not utter a sound. She stared at Helene with incredulous, horror-stricken eyes.
Clearly he was hard put to it. For he seldom betrayed himself. She thought it time to strike. "Jewels which she keeps in the safe in her bedroom," she added. "Then why don't you ?" he began, and stopped. "I said that I too needed help," replied Helene, without a ruffle of her composure. It was nine o'clock at night. Helene Vauquier had come down to the Casino with a wrap for Mme. Dauvray.
The house had not been broken into. There was Mlle. Celie's record as Helene Vauquier gave it to us, and a record obviously true. There was the fact that she had got rid of Servettaz. There was the maid upstairs very ill from the chloroform. What more likely than that Mlle. Celie had arranged a seance, and then when the lights were out had admitted the murderer through that convenient glass door?"
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.
The presumption of guilt would fall upon her. There would be proof that she ran hurriedly from the room and sprang into a motor-car of her own free will. But, again, if that theory were true, then Helene Vauquier was the accomplice and not Mlle. Celie." "I follow that."
It was then that Helene Vauquier ventured humbly upon a suggestion. "Since madame has a friend coming here on Tuesday, perhaps that would be the best day for him to go. Madame would not be likely to take a long drive that afternoon." "No, indeed," replied Mme. Dauvray. "We shall all three dine together early in Aix and return here." "Then I will tell him he may go to-morrow," said Celia.
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