27: Corinne’s Last Day

SIX weeks later, John Strickland was summoned for the twelfth time from his hotel to the prefecture.

“I announce to you that I need keep you here no longer,” said Monsieur Dauguignon. “This morning Hospel Roussencq died in the prison hospital at Marseilles. So all this terrible affair is at an end.”

He closed the cover of the dossier as he spoke and gave it a pat. He smiled at his visitor.

“Of course, there might be a charge made against you, Colonel Strickland, for carrying a pistol, and you are hereby found guilty and condemned to take an apéritif with me. But before we go forth to carry out your sentence, there is still a little word which must be said.”

He pointed to a chair by the side of his table and Strickland sat down.

“I have now traced Corinne’s movements upon that last day of her life. The mystery is solved, and it is not, as you no doubt suspected, a very pretty mystery. Corinne took your famous telegram with her to Marseilles. We cannot doubt it. When she went upstairs and shouted through the door that she would return by the last train, she packed the necessaries for a night away. That, too, we cannot doubt. She certainly travelled to Marseilles. She left her bag in the Terminus Hotel, and engaged a bedroom for the night. She returned to the station and took a return ticket for Nîmes, where she arrived at two forty-eight in the afternoon. At Nîmes, she bought a small black hat of the fashion which hides the eyes, a veil, and a dust-cloak to cover her dress. She returned to the station and again took a return ticket, this time to Pont d’Avignon. She reached Pont d’Avignon a little after seven. It is the small station at the end of the bridge on the opposite side of the river, and---I beg you to observe this---not more than a kilometre and a half from the Villa Laure. Corinne therefore had ample time for---let us be frank!---her treachery. She made the little changes in her dress and appearance between Nîmes and Pont d’Avignon. Certainly at the latter station no one recognised her. It was not yet dusk. The gates of the park would be open for another hour, or nearly another hour. She went quickly to the house and placed the telegram amongst her friend’s letters. And then---ah, and then---she makes the fatal step. She runs upstairs for some little thing which, in the hurry of the morning, she has forgotten---a lipstick, perhaps! Who shall say? She runs upstairs and finds her enemies already hidden in her room.”

Strickland nodded his head.

“Clutter and Roussencq must have been hiding in the park throughout the day until they saw their chance and slipped into the house.”

“No, sir,” Monsieur Dauguignon corrected him. “They came in a hired motor-car from Marseilles during the afternoon. They hid the car in an old unused outhouse, not far from where they scaled the wall. They had in the car a wicker-work basket with a padlock. It is not difficult to guess to what purpose that basket was to be put.”

“No,” said Strickland in a low voice.

The magistrate rose and from a cupboard took his hat and his stick.

“But as for Corinne, it is clear what her intention was. She would have caught the last train to Nîmes. From Nîmes she would have travelled through the early part of the night to Marseilles. First thing the next morning, she would have sent a telegram to the Villa Laure, saying that she had missed her train from Marseilles and was compelled to spend the night at the Terminus Hotel. It is not a pretty story.”

He held open the door with a bow. But Strickland paused upon the threshold.

“I ask a favour of you, monsieur,” he said. “I should not like that story to reach my wife.”

“A lady of so brave a loyalty has a claim upon our reverence,” cried Monsieur Dauguignon, and with a fine flourish of his cane he drew an imaginary line across the threshold. “It shall not be heard outside that frontier.”

THE END