“Ah, pardon, monsieur—there was one moment—the moment that you called me.”
“That is good, Bernier. I wanted to see if you remembered that.”
“But I was not away from my post more than an instant or two, and M. Darzac was in his room then. He did not leave it while I was gone. Ah! what a mystery!”
“How do you know that M. Darzac didn’t go out during those moments?”
“Why, because if he had done so, my wife, who was in the lodge, must have seen him! And then all would be explained and we would not be so puzzled, nor Madame either. Ah! must I say it to you over again? No one has entered that room except M. Darzac at five o’clock and you two at six, and no person got in between the time that M. Darzac went out and the time when he came in at night with Mme. Darzac. He was like you—he didn’t want to believe me. I swore it to him upon the corpse that lay before us!”
“Where was the corpse?”
“In M. Darzac’s bedroom.”
“It was really a dead body?”
“Oh, he was breathing still—I heard him.”
“Then it was not a corpse, Pere Bernier.”