Chapter XXIV
Lydia went up to her bedroom to put away her clothes and found the maidmaking the bed.
"Oh, madame," said the girl, "I forgot to speak to you about a matter--Ihope madame will not be angry."
"I'm hardly likely to be angry on a morning like this," said Lydia.
"It is because of this matter," said the girl. She groped in her pocketand brought out a small shining object, and Lydia took it from her hand.
"This matter" was a tiny silver cross, so small that a five-franc piecewould have covered it easily. It was brightly polished and apparentlyhad seen service.
"When we took your bed, after the atrocious and mysterious happening,"said the maid rapidly, "this was found in the sheets. It was not thoughtthat it could possibly be madame's, because it was so poor, until thismorning when it was suggested that it might be a souvenir that madamevalues."
"You found it in the sheets?" asked Lydia in surprise.
"Yes, madame."
"It doesn't belong to me," said Lydia. "Perhaps it belongs to MadameCole-Mortimer. I will show it to her."
Mrs. Cole-Mortimer was a devout Catholic and it might easily be somecherished keep-sake of hers.
The girl carried the cross to the window; an "X" had been scrawled bysome sharp-pointed instrument at the junction of the bars. There was noother mark to identify the trinket.
She put the cross in her bag, and when she saw Mrs. Cole-Mortimer againshe forgot to ask her about it.
The car drove her into Nice alone. Jean did not feel inclined to makethe journey and Lydia rather enjoyed the solitude.
The isolation hospital was at the top of the hill and she found somedifficulty in obtaining admission at this hour. The arrival of the chiefmedical officer, however, saved her from making the journey in vain. Thereport he gave about the child was very satisfactory; the mother was inthe isolation ward.
"Can she be seen?"
"Yes, madame," said the urbane Frenchman in charge. "You understand, youwill not be able to get near her? It will be rather like interviewing aprisoner, for she will be behind one set of bars and you behindanother."
Lydia was taken to a room which was, she imagined, very much like a roomin which prisoners interviewed their distressed relations. There werenot exactly bars, but two large mesh nets of steel separated the visitorfrom the patient under observation. After a time a nun brought in thegardener's wife, a tall, gaunt woman, who was a native of Marseilles,and spoke the confusing patois of that city with great rapidity. It wassome time before Lydia could accustom her ear to the queer dialect.
Her boy was getting well, she said, but she herself was in terribletrouble. She had no money for the extra food she required. Her husbandwho was away in Paris when the child had been taken, had not troubled towrite to her. It was terrible being in a place amongst other fevercases, and she was certain that her days were numbered....
Lydia pushed a five-hundred franc note through the grating to the nun,to settle her material needs.
"And, oh, madame," wailed the gardener's wife, "my poor little boy haslost the gift of the Reverend Mother of San Surplice! His own crosswhich has been blessed by his holiness the Pope! It is because I lefthis cross in his little shirt that he is getting better, but now it islost and I am sure these thieving doctors have taken it."
"A cross?" said Lydia. "What sort of a cross?"
"It was a silver cross, madame; the value in money was nothing--it waspriceless. Little Xavier----"
"Xavier?" repeated Lydia, remembering the "X" on the trinket that hadbeen found in her bed. "Wait a moment, madame." She opened her bag andtook out the tiny silver symbol, and at the sight of it the woman burstinto a volley of joyful thanks.
"It is the same, the same, madame! It has a small 'X' which the ReverendMother scratched with her own blessed scissors!"
Lydia pushed the cross through the net and the nun handed it to thewoman.
"It is the same, it is the same!" she cried. "Oh, thank you, madame! Nowmy heart is glad...."
Lydia came out of the hospital and walked through the gardens by thedoctor's side. But she was not listening to what he was saying--her mindwas fully occupied with the mystery of the silver cross.
It was little Xavier's ... it had been tucked inside his bed when helay, as his mother thought, dying ... and it had been found in her bed!Then little Xavier had been in her bed! Her foot was on the step of thecar when it came to her--the meaning of that drenched couch and theempty bottle of peroxide. Xavier had been put there, and somebody whoknew that the bed was infected had so soaked it with water that shecould not sleep in it. But who? Old Jaggs!
She got into the car slowly, and went back to Cap Martin along theGrande Corniche.
Who had put the child there? He could not have walked from the cottage;that was impossible.
She was half-way home when she noticed a parcel lying on the floor ofthe car, and she let down the front window and spoke to the chauffeur.It was not Mordon, but a man whom she had hired with the car.
"It came from the hospital, madame," he said. "The porter asked me if Icame from Villa Casa. It was something sent to the hospital to bedisinfected. There was a charge of seven francs for the service, madame,and this I paid."
She nodded.
She picked up the parcel--it was addressed to "Mademoiselle JeanBriggerland" and bore the label of the hospital.
Lydia sat back in the car with her eyes closed, tired of turning overthis problem, yet determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Jean was out when she got back and she carried the parcel to her ownroom. She was trying to keep out of her mind the very possibility thatsuch a hideous crime could have been conceived as that which all theevidence indicated had been attempted. Very resolutely she refused tobelieve that such a thing could have happened. There must be someexplanation for the presence of the cross in her bed. Possibly it hadbeen found after the wet sheets had been taken to the servants' part ofthe house.
She rang the bell, and the maid who had given her the trinket came.
"Tell me," said Lydia, "where was this cross found?"
"In your bed, mademoiselle."
"But where? Was it before the clothing was removed from this room orafter?"
"It was before, madame," said the maid. "When the sheets were turnedback we found it lying exactly in the middle of the bed."
Lydia's heart sank.
"Thank you, that will do," she said. "I have found the owner of thecross and have restored it."
Should she tell Jean? Her first impulse was to take the girl into herconfidence, and reveal the state of her mind. Her second thought was toseek out old Jaggs, but where could he be found? He evidently livedsomewhere in Monte Carlo, but his name was hardly likely to be in thevisitors' list. She was still undecided when Marcus Stepney called totake her to lunch at the Cafe de Paris.
The whole thing was so amazingly improbable. It belonged to a world ofunreality, but then, she told herself, she also was living in an unrealworld, and had been so for weeks.