"I did not sleep well," Charles explained with a smile. "I was afraid I should not wake up."
Turning his head, M. Rambert saw Thérèse and held out his hand.
"How do you do, my little Thérèse?" he exclaimed. "You have altered too since I saw you last. I left a little chit of a child, and now I behold a grown-up young lady. Well! I must be off at once to pay my respects to my dear old friend, your grandmother. All well at the château, eh?"
Thérèse shook hands warmly with M. Rambert and thanked him prettily.
"Grandmamma is very well; she told me to tell you to excuse her if she did not come to meet you, but her doctor says she must not get up very early."
"Of course your grandmamma is excused, my dear. Besides, I have to thank her for her kindness to Charles, and for the hospitality she is going to extend to me for a few days."
Meanwhile the train had gone on again, and now a porter came up to M. Rambert.
"Will you take your luggage with you, sir?"
Recalled to material things, Etienne Rambert contemplated his trunk which the porters had taken out of the luggage van.
"Good Lord!" he began, but Thérèse interrupted him.
"Grandmamma said she would send for your heavy luggage during the morning, and that you could take your valise and any small parcels with us in the brougham."
"What's that? Your grandmamma has taken the trouble to send her carriage?"
"It's a long way to Beaulieu, you know," Thérèse replied. "Ask Charles if it isn't. We came on foot and the walk would be too tiring for you after a whole night in the train."
The three had reached the station yard, and Thérèse stopped in surprise.
"Why, how's that?" she exclaimed; "the carriage is not here. And yet Jean was beginning to get it ready when we left the château."
M. Etienne Rambert was resting one hand on his son's shoulder, and contemplating him with an affectionate, all-embracing survey every now and then. He smiled at Thérèse.
"He may have been delayed, dear. I tell you what we will do. Since your grandmamma is going to send for my luggage there is no need for me to take my valise; we can leave everything in the cloak-room and start for the château on foot; if my memory serves me right — and it is a very good memory — there is only one road, so we shall meet Jean and can get into the carriage on the way."
A few minutes later all three set out on the road to Beaulieu. M. Rambert walked between the two young people; he had gallantly offered his arm to Thérèse, who was not a little proud of the attention, which proved to her mind that she was now regarded as a grown-up young lady. On the other side of his father Charles made answer to the incessant questions put to him.
M. Etienne Rambert enjoyed the walk in the quiet morning through the peaceful country-side. With a tender half-melancholy he recognised every turn in the road, every bit of scenery.
"Just fancy my coming back here at sixty years of age, with a great son of eighteen!" he said with a laugh. "And I remember as if it were yesterday the good times I have had at the château of Beaulieu. Mme. de Langrune and I will have plenty of memories to talk over. Gad! it must be quite forty years since I came this way, and yet I remember every bit of it. Say, Thérèse, isn't it the fact that we shall see the front of the château directly we have passed this little copse?"
"Quite true," the girl answered with a laugh. "You know the country very well, sir."
"Yes," said Etienne Rambert; "when one gets to my age, little Thérèse, one always does remember the happy days of one's youth; one remembers recent events much less distinctly. Most likely that means, my dear, that the human heart declines to grow old and refuses to preserve any but pictures of childhood."
For a few minutes M. Rambert remained silent, as if absorbed in somewhat melancholy reflections. But he soon recovered himself and shook off the tender sadness evoked in his mind by memories of the past.
"Why, the park enclosure has been altered," he exclaimed. "Here is a wall which used not to be here: there was only a hedge."
Thérèse laughed.
"I never knew the hedge," she said. "I have always seen the wall."
"Must we go on to the main gate?" M. Rambert asked, "or has your grandmamma had another gate made?"
"We are going in by the out-buildings," the girl answered; "then we shall hear why Jean did not come to meet us." She opened a little door half-hidden among the moss and ivy that clothed the wall surrounding the park, and making M. Rambert and Charles pass in before her, cried: "But Jean has gone with the brougham, for the horses are not in the stable. How was it we did not meet him?" Then she laughed. "Poor Jean! He is so muddle-headed! I would not mind betting he went to meet us at Saint-Jaury, as he does every morning to bring me home from church."
The little company, Etienne Rambert, Thérèse and Charles, were now approaching the château. Passing beneath Mme. de Langrune's windows Thérèse called merrily up to them.
"Here we are, grandmamma!"
There was no reply.
But at the window of an adjoining room appeared the figure of the steward, Dollon, making a gesture, as if asking for silence.
Thérèse, in advance of her guests, had proceeded but a few yards when Mme. de Langrune's old servant rushed down the stone flight of steps in front of the château, towards M. Rambert.
Dollon seemed distraught. Usually so respectful and so deferential in manner, he now seized M. Rambert by the arm, and imperiously waving Thérèse and Charles away, drew him aside.
"It is awful, sir," he exclaimed: "horrible: a fearful thing has happened. We have just found Mme. la Marquise dead — murdered — in her room!"
III
The Hunt for the Man
M. de Presles, the examining magistrate in charge of the Court at Brives, had just arrived at the château of Beaulieu, having been notified of the tragedy by the police sergeant stationed at Saint-Jaury. The magistrate was a young, fashionable, and rather aristocratic man of the world, whose grievance it was to be tied down to work that was mechanical rather than intellectual. He was essentially modern in his ideas, and his chief ambition was to get away as quickly as possible from the small provincial town to which he had been exiled by the changes and chances of promotion; he was sick of Brives, and now it occurred to him that a crime like this present one would give him an opportunity of displaying his gifts of intuition and deduction, prove his quality, and so might enable him to get another appointment. After Dollon had received him at the château, the magistrate had first of all made enquiry as to who was in the house at the time. From the information given him he was satisfied that it was unnecessary to subject either Thérèse or Charles Rambert to immediate examination, both of the young people being much too upset to be able to reply to serious questions, and both having been taken away to the house of the Baronne de Vibray. It was, also, clear that M. Rambert senior, who had only arrived after the crime, could not furnish any interesting information.
"Tell me exactly how you discovered the crime, M. Dollon," he said as, pale and trembling, the steward accompanied him along the corridor to the scene of the murder.
"I went this morning as usual, sir," the steward replied, "to say good morning to Mme. de Langrune and receive her orders for the day. I knocked at her door as I always did, but got no answer. I knocked louder, but still there was no answer. I don't know why I opened the door instead of going away; perhaps I had some kind