The triumph went out of his voice. He rose to his feet and, bowing to Betty with an unaffected stateliness and respect, he handed her back the photographs.
"Mademoiselle, I am very sorry," he said. "It is clear that you and your friend have lived amongst difficulties which we did not suspect. And, for the secret, I shall do what I can."
Jim quite forgave him the snub which had been administered to him for the excellence of his manner towards Betty. He had a hope even that now he would forswear his creed, so that the secret might still be kept and the young sentinels receive their reward for their close watch. But Hanaud sat down again in his chair, and once more turned towards Ann Upcott. He meant to go on then. He would not leave well alone. Jim was all the more disappointed, because he could not but realise that the case was more and more clearly building itself from something unsubstantial into something solid, from a conjecture to an argument—this case against some one.
CHAPTER TEN: The Clock upon the Cabinet
Ann Upcott's story was in the light of this new disclosure intelligible enough. Standing in the darkness, she had heard, as she thought, Mrs. Harlowe in one of her violent outbreaks. Then with a sense of relief she had understood that Jeanne Baudin the nurse was with Mrs. Harlowe, controlling and restraining her and finally administering some sedative. She had heard the outcries diminish and cease and a final whisper from the nurse to her patient or even perhaps to herself, "That will do now." Then she had turned and fled, taking care to attract no attention to herself. Real cowardice had nothing to do with her flight. The crisis was over. Her intervention, which before would only have been a provocation to a wilder outburst on the part of Mrs. Harlowe, was now altogether without excuse. It would once more have aroused the invalid, and next day would have added to the discomfort and awkwardness of life in the Maison Crenelle. For Mrs. Harlowe sober would have known that Ann had been a witness of one more of her dreadful exhibitions. The best thing which Ann could do, she did, given that her interpretation of the scene was the true one. She ran noiselessly back in the darkness to her room.
"Yes," said Hanaud. "But you believe now that your interpretation was not correct. You believe now that whilst you stood in the darkness with the door open and the light beyond, Madame Harlowe was being murdered, coldly and cruelly murdered a few feet away from you."
Ann Upcott shivered from head to foot.
"I don't want to believe it," she cried. "It's too horrible."
"You believe now that the one who whispered 'That will do now,' was not Jeanne Baudin," Hanaud insisted, "but some unknown person, and that the whisper was uttered after murder had been done to a third person in that room."