CHAPTER III
PERRICHET'S STORY
Perrichet was a young, thick-set man, with a red, fair face, and amoustache and hair so pale in colour that they were almost silver. Hecame into the room with an air of importance.
"Aha!" said Hanaud, with a malicious smile. "You went to bed late lastnight, my friend. Yet you were up early enough to read the newspaper.Well, I am to have the honour of being associated with you in thiscase."
Perrichet twirled his cap awkwardly and blushed.
"Monsieur is pleased to laugh at me," he said. "But it was not I whocalled myself intelligent. Though indeed I would like to be so, for thegood God knows I do not look it."
Hanaud clapped him on the shoulder.
"Then congratulate yourself! It is a great advantage to be intelligentand not to look it. We shall get on famously. Come!"
The four men descended the stairs, and as they walked towards the villaPerrichet related, concisely and clearly, his experience of the night.
"I passed the gate of the villa about half-past nine," he said. "Thegate was closed. Above the wall and bushes of the garden I saw a brightlight in the room upon the first floor which faces the road at thesouth-western comer of the villa. The lower windows I could not see.More than an hour afterwards I came back, and as I passed the villaagain I noticed that there was now no light in the room upon the firstfloor, but that the gate was open. I thereupon went into the garden,and, pulling the gate, let it swing to and latch. But it occurred to meas I did so that there might be visitors at the villa who had not yetleft, and for whom the gate had been set open. I accordingly followedthe drive which winds round to the front door. The front door is not onthe side of the villa which faces the road, but at the back. When Icame to the open space where the carriages turn, I saw that the housewas in complete darkness. There were wooden latticed doors to the longwindows on the ground floor, and these were closed. I tried one to makecertain, and found the fastenings secure. The other windows upon thatfloor were shuttered. No light gleamed anywhere. I then left thegarden, closing the gate behind me. I heard a clock strike the hour afew minutes afterwards, so that I can be sure of the time. It was noweleven o'clock. I came round a third time an hour after, and to myastonishment I found the gate once more open. I had left it closed andthe house shut up and dark. Now it stood open! I looked up to thewindows and I saw that in a room on the second floor, close beneath theroof, a light was burning brightly. That room had been dark an hourbefore. I stood and watched the light for a few minutes, thinking thatI should see it suddenly go out. But it did not: it burned quitesteadily. This light and the gate opened and reopened aroused mysuspicions. I went again into the garden, but this time with greatercaution. It was a clear night, and, although there was no moon, I couldsee without the aid of my lantern. I stole quietly along the drive.When I came round to the front door, I noticed immediately that theshutters of one of the ground-floor windows were swung back, and thatthe inside glass window which descended to the ground stood open. Thesight gave me a shock. Within the house those shutters had been opened.I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins and a chill crept along myspine. I thought of that solitary light burning steadily under theroof. I was convinced that something terrible had happened."
"Yes, yes. Quite so," said Hanaud. "Go on, my friend."
"The interior of the room gaped black," Perrichet resumed. "I crept upto the window at the side of the wall and flashed my lantern into theroom. The window, however, was in a recess which opened into the roomthrough an arch, and at each side of the arch curtains were draped. Thecurtains were not closed, but between them I could see nothing but astrip of the room. I stepped carefully in, taking heed not to walk onthe patch of grass before the window. The light of my lantern showed mea chair overturned upon the floor, and to my right, below the middleone of the three windows in the right-hand side wall, a woman lyinghuddled upon the floor. It was Mme. Dauvray. She was dressed. There wasa little mud upon her shoes, as though she had walked after the rainhad ceased. Monsieur will remember that two heavy showers fell lastevening between six and eight."
"Yes," said Hanaud, nodding his approval.
"She was quite dead. Her face was terribly swollen and black, and apiece of thin strong cord was knotted so tightly about her neck and hadsunk so deeply into her flesh that at first I did not see it. For Mme.Dauvray was stout."
"Then what did you do?" asked Hanaud.
"I went to the telephone which was in the hall and rang up the police.Then I crept upstairs very cautiously, trying the doors. I came upon noone until I reached the room under the roof where the light wasburning; there I found Helene Vauquier, the maid, snoring in bed in aterrible fashion."
The four men turned a bend in the road. A few paces away a knot ofpeople stood before a gate which a sergent-de-ville guarded.
"But here we are at the villa," said Hanaud.
They all looked up and, from a window at the corner upon the firstfloor a man looked out and drew in his head.
"That is M. Besnard, the Commissaire of our police in Aix," saidPerrichet.
"And the window from which he looked," said Hanaud, "must be the windowof that room in which you saw the bright light at half-past nine onyour first round?"
"Yes, m'sieur," said Perrichet; "that is the window."
They stopped at the gate. Perrichet spoke to the sergent-de-ville, whoat once held the gate open. The party passed into the garden of thevilla.