An hour or so later Madame Darnier, the widow of the murdered man, called at the prefecture in answer to a hurried summons. As someone must break the terrible news to her, the Man in Grey undertook the task, speaking as sympathetically and as gently as he could. She was a delicate-looking woman, still in the prime of life, and with justified pretensions to good looks. She took the news badly, for, as she explained later when she was calmer, she had been devoted to her husband and he to her, and they had only been married five years. She had no children, she said, in answer to the secret agent's kindly inquiries, and her dear husband's death left her practically without means of support. The assurance that His Majesty's Minister of Police would provide generously for the widow of a man who had died in the service of the State gave her some small measure of comfort, and when she finally took her leave, she appeared, if not more consoled, at any rate more tranquil.

Madame Darnier had been unable to furnish the police with any clue which might guide them in their investigations. She was quite sure that her husband had no enemies, and whilst she had been aware that his work often entailed grave personal risks, she knew nothing about the work itself, nor, in this case, had he told her anything beyond the fact that he was going to Paris and would be absent about ten days. She repudiated with indignation the suggestion that he had been travelling in the company of some woman unknown to herself, and of her own accord threw out the suggestion that some of those méchant Chouans—knowing her husband's connection with the police—had not scrupled to slay him.

III

The Château de Trévargan, situated upon a lonely piece of coast midway between the mouths of the Orne and the Dives and about ten or a dozen miles from Caen, had remained one of the beauty spots of the neighbourhood. Though its owners had emigrated at the outbreak of the Revolution and their domain had become the property of the State, it had been bought nominally by a man named Leclerc, who had been the Marquis's agent, and who held it thenceforward and administered it with unswerving loyalty, in the name of his former master. Leclerc with his wife and family had settled down in the château, and together they looked after the house, the park and the estate during the Marquis's prolonged absence abroad. They always appeared plentifully supplied with money, which no doubt came to them through one of the many agencies in Jersey, and when M. le Marquis returned to France some five years ago he found his house in perfect order; and it is supposed that he rewarded his faithful steward generously, for the latter retired with his family to a little estate close by, where they continued to live in undiminished affluence.

M. le Marquis de Trévargan had obviously not brought a fortune back from exile; nevertheless, he and Madame la Marquise kept up a good deal of style at the château. They also went to Paris and made their obeisance to the Emperor at Versailles, and hitherto not the slightest suspicion of disloyalty to the new régime had attached to them.

The discovery of the outrageous plot against the life of the Emperor during the latter's visit to Caen the previous month, had left the Trévargans unscathed, even though close upon a score of their personal friends were implicated in the affair. It was only three weeks later that M. le Marquis learned that the one foolish letter he had written in the whole course of his cautious career had fallen into the hands of the police. He had written to his friend the Comte de Romorantin, urging him to keep aloof from the conspirators until he was sure that the Corsican had really been sent to Hades.

"Madame la Marquise and myself do not intend to appear at Caen until we know for certain that the coup has been successful. We have done our share in the matter of providing funds, but we prefer to let Blue-Heart, White-Beak and the other ruffians do the work for us. We shall be ready to proclaim His Majesty King Louis XVIII in the Hôtel de Ville as soon as we know that all fear of failure or discovery is at an end. I entreat you to do likewise and to destroy this letter as soon as read."

Unfortunately, M. de Romorantin had not destroyed the letter. He had it in his pocket at the very moment when the police made the raid on the house in the Rue aux Juifs and arrested the Chouan conspirators red-handed. The letter was seized, together with every other paper which happened to be in the possession of the prisoners, and it was that same highly compromising letter which Hippolyte Darnier was taking to Paris when he died so mysteriously in the private room of the "Cheval Blanc" at Mézidon.

Investigation at the château on the day following the discovery of the plot had led to no result. M. le Marquis watched with lofty indifference and disdain the turning over of his private papers and belongings by the heedless hands of the police. Except for that one letter, he had never committed an indiscretion or written an unguarded word in his life. But there was the letter! And it was this very search which, coming as a bolt from the blue, had assured him that he was no longer immune from suspicion.

The day following the death of Hippolyte Darnier, M. le Marquis de Trévargan received another visit from the police, this time in the person of M. Carteret, the commissary, whom he knew personally, and who came accompanied by a small, insignificant-looking personage dressed in grey. Once more, secure in the knowledge that nothing that could in any way compromise him existed inside his château, the Marquis received his visitors with condescending hauteur.