"You haven't told me yet what—happened to Thérèse."
He hesitated, then replied:
"She fell,—from the narrow stone ledge beside the end of the balcony, on the second story. The wistaria is all torn away where she clutched at it to save herself. She broke her neck."
There was no shadow of a doubt that this theory was correct. Dr. Bousquet, who arrived in half an hour, declared that death must have occurred about four or five hours earlier. Therefore Thérèse must have waited till there seemed the least likelihood of her being seen or heard, then at perhaps two o'clock in the morning had crept out of her window and along the balcony, which ended a dozen feet from Roger's room. From thence on there was merely a decorative stone ledge, barely four inches wide. The closed window of the bedroom came first, its projecting sill offering something to cling to, but on each side of this was a space where the only support was the creeper on the wall. It was a perilous undertaking. In some fashion she had evidently made her way along the ledge. Roger did not yet know whether the accident had occurred on the journey to the bathroom or from it; he would not know for certain until the water in the Evian bottle was submitted to an analysis. All that one could tell was the spot where she had slipped and fallen, which was the first of the two dangerous places, almost immediately over the front steps. The wistaria to which she had clung was broken away in several spots, a whole spray of it fluttered loose from the wall. Here it was that she must have lost her balance. Her head had struck one of the ornamental stone baskets of fruit, after which it seemed that her body had ricochetted, her head doubling under her.
The broken bottle-neck caused the little doctor complete mystification. He scented some painful secret, though without venturing anywhere near the facts of the case. Roger refrained from enlightening him, not yet able to discuss the affair with a stranger, although knowing that in all probability the coroner would drag out a certain amount of the truth at the inquest. Ultimately, of course, it would be impossible to hush the matter up, since he had every intention of prosecuting Sartorius to the full extent of the law, and the man's guilt could not be established without implicating the dead woman.
By noon there was nothing more that could be done for the immediate moment. The police had been notified, the inquest set for the day after to-morrow. A warrant had been sworn out for the arrest of Sartorius, who was not to be found. There was reason to believe he had visited his residence in the Route de Grasse after leaving the Villa Firenze, but so far no one appeared to have any knowledge of his subsequent movements. His car was missing, which provided a likely clue. It seemed wholly improbable that he would long succeed in evading arrest; a foreigner of his unusual appearance presented an easy target. Yet Roger felt some degree of astonishment that he should think of disappearing. It argued a hopeless flaw in his defences.
Early in the afternoon Esther and Miss Clifford left La Californie in charge of Bousquet and descended by car to Cannes itself, where they took up their quarters in a comfortable and quiet hotel. Esther was promptly put to bed again. She was still too weak to sit up, and looked extremely ill. As yet she knew nothing of the catastrophe that had overtaken Lady Clifford, for the doctor thought her unequal to the strain of a fresh excitement. New surroundings and complete rest were now what she required to restore her, but even so it might be weeks before she was entirely herself. Although Bousquet had no idea of the reasons responsible for her present state beyond the fairly obvious effects of the morphia, he rightly surmised that her nervous system had sustained a severe shock. He saw, too, that while in the villa she had been the prey of some obscure but almost paralysing fear. Directly she was removed from the atmosphere of the Cliffords' house she began to be calmer.
At three o'clock Roger accompanied a small deputation of the police to Sartorius's house. In the main bedroom they found considerable disorder—drawers pulled out and their contents strewn about, various signs of hasty leave-taking, though how much of this was due to the doctor's own departure and how much to Holliday's was difficult to determine, as the two men had occupied the same room. However, under the bed was a small steamer trunk and a brown leather dressing-bag, both locked, and both initialled E. R. The trunk bore the label of a White Star liner, a Paris hotel, and the Carlton Hotel, Cannes. These pieces of luggage were the first bits of evidence to confirm the truth of Esther's story. In the laboratory above further confirmation awaited the investigators. Roger caught his breath as he stood in the open doorway and took in the corroborative details.
The hanging lamp was shattered as well as several panes of the skylight. On the table lay an overturned chair, the floor was littered with fragments of a glass jar mixed with a crystalline substance. Knotted to an iron bracket was the end of a ragged rope of crimson material, which disappeared through the open section of the skylight. The whole party gazed for some minutes in silence, making their own deductions. Then the chief retreated a pace or two and peered into the alcove.
"Regardez!" he said, pointing a significant finger at the narrow camp-bed with its tumbled army blanket.