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The old fellow stepped into the bed, and carefully took a slip from the plant Poirot had admired.
Poirot was profuse in his thanks, and Auguste departed to his barrow.
“You see?” said Poirot with a smile, as he bent over the bed to examine the indentation of the gardener’s hobnailed boot. “It is quite simple.”
“I did not realize—”
“That the foot would be inside the boot? You do not use your excellent mental capacities sufficiently. Well, what of the footmark?”
I examined the bed carefully.
“All the footmarks in the bed were made by the same boot,” I said at length after a careful study.
“You think so? Eh bien, I agree with you,” said Poirot.
He seemed quite uninterested, and as though he were thinking of something else.
“At any rate,” I remarked, “you will have one bee less in your bonnet now.”
“Mon Dieu! But what an idiom! What does it mean?”
“What I meant was that now you will give up your interest in these footmarks.”
But to my surprise Poirot shook his head.
“No, no, mon ami. At last I am on the right track. I am still in the dark, but, as I hinted just now to M. Bex, these footmarks are the most important and interesting things in the case! That poor Giraud—I should not be surprised if he took no notice of them whatever.”
At that moment, the front door opened, and M. Hautet and the commissary came down the steps.
“Ah, M. Poirot, we were coming to look for you,” said the magistrate. “It is getting late, but I wish to pay a visit to Madame Daubreuil. Without doubt she will be very much upset by M. Renauld’s death, and we may be fortunate enough to get a clue from her. The secret that he did not confide to his wife, it is possible that he may have told it to the woman whose love held him enslaved. We know where our Samsons are weak, don’t we?”
I admired the picturesqueness of M. Hautet’s language. I suspected that the examining magistrate was by now thoroughly enjoying his part in the mysterious drama.
“Is M. Giraud not going to accompany us?” asked Poirot.
“M. Giraud has shown clearly that he prefers to conduct the case in his own way,” said M. Hautet dryly. One could see easily enough that Giraud’s cavalier treatment of the examining magistrate had not prejudiced the latter in his favour. We said no more, but fell into line. Poirot walked with the examining magistrate, and the commissary and I followed a few paces behind.
“There is no doubt that Françoise’s story is substantially correct,” he remarked to me in a confidential tone. “I have been telephoning headquarters. It seems that three times in the last six weeks—that is to say since the arrival of M. Renauld at Merlinville—Madame Daubreuil has paid a large sum in notes into her banking account. Altogether the sum totals two hundred thousand francs!”
“Dear me,” I said, considering, “that must be something like four thousand pounds!”
“Precisely. Yes, there can be no doubt that he was absolutely infatuated. But it remains to be seen whether he confided his secret to her. The examining magistrate is hopeful, but I hardly share his views.”
During this conversation we were walking down the lane towards the fork in the road where our car had halted earlier in the afternoon, and in another moment I realized that the Villa Marguerite, the home of the mysterious Madame Daubreuil, was the small house from which the beautiful girl had emerged.
“She has lived here for many years,” said the commissary, nodding his head towards the house. “Very quietly, very unobtrusively. She seems to have no friends or relations other than the acquaintances she has made in Merlinville. She never refers to the past, nor to her husband. One does not even know if he is alive or dead. There is a mystery about her, you comprehend.” I nodded, my interest growing.
“And—the daughter?” I ventured.
“A truly beautiful young girl—modest, devout, all that she should be. One pities her, for, though she may know nothing of the past, a man who wants to ask her hand in marriage must necessarily inform himself, and then—” The commissary shrugged his shoulders cynically.
“But it would not be her fault!” I cried, with rising indignation.
“No. But what will you? A man is particular about his wife’s antecedents.”
I was prevented from further argument by our arrival at the door. M. Hautet rang the bell. A few minutes elapsed, and then we heard a footfall within, and the door was opened. On the threshold stood my young goddess of that afternoon. When she saw us, the colour left her cheeks, leaving her deathly white, and her eyes widened with apprehension. There was no doubt about it, she was afraid!
“Mademoiselle Daubreuil,” said M. Hautet, sweeping off his hat, “we regret infinitely to disturb you, but the exigencies of the Law—you comprehend? My compliments to Madame your mother, and will she have the goodness to grant me a few moments’ interview.”
For a moment the girl stood motionless. Her left hand was pressed to her side, as though to still the sudden unconquerable agitation of her heart. But she mastered herself, and said in a low voice:
“I will go and see. Please come inside.”
She entered a room on the left of the hall, and we heard the low murmur of her voice. And then another voice, much the same in timbre, but with a slightly harder inflection behind its mellow roundness said:
“But certainly. Ask them to enter.”
In another minute we were face to face with the mysterious Madame Daubreuil.
She was not nearly so tall as her daughter, and the rounded curves of her figure had all the grace of full maturity. Her hair, again unlike her daughter’s, was dark, and parted in the middle in the madonna style. Her eyes, half hidden by the drooping lids, were blue. There was a dimple in the round chin, and the half parted lips seemed always to hover on the verge of a mysterious smile. There was something almost exaggeratedly feminine about her, at once yielding and seductive. Though very well preserved, she was certainly no longer young, but her charm was of the quality which is independent of age.
Standing there, in her black dress with the fresh white collar and cuffs, her hands clasped together, she looked subtly appealing and helpless.
“You wished to see me, monsieur?” she asked.
“Yes, madame.” M. Hautet cleared his throat. “I am investigating the death of M. Renauld. You have heard of it, no doubt?”
She bowed her head without speaking. Her expression did not change.
“We came to ask you whether you can—er—throw any light upon the circumstances surrounding it?”
“I?” The surprise of her tone was excellent.
“Yes, madame. It would, perhaps, be better if we could speak to you alone.” He looked meaningly in the direction of the girl.
Madame Daubreuil turned to her.
“Marthe, dear—”
But the girl shook her head.
“No, maman, I will not go. I am not a child. I am twenty-two. I shall not go.”
Madame Daubreuil turned back to the examining magistrate.
“You see, monsieur.”
“I should prefer not to speak before Mademoiselle Daubreuil.”
“As my daughter says, she is not a child.”
For a moment the magistrate hesitated, baffled.
“Very well, madame,” he said at last. “Have