“I am here,” said M. Popeau quietly, “because a sad thing befell this lady, Miss Fairfield, to-day on her way to the English Church service. She is staying in a villa called La Solitude, some way above Monte Carlo, and, wandering a little way off the path, she suddenly came across a dead body! Of course, it gave her a terrible shock.”
To Lily’s astonishment, M. Bouton did not look surprised.
“Very sad,” he murmured. “The matter will have my very earnest attention. If Mademoiselle will give me a few particulars as to the locality where she made this painful discovery I will see to the matter at once. Would you kindly come this way?”
He opened the door, and passed on, in front of them, into a room built out at the back of the house. It was obviously his own study.
“Here is the plan of our Principality,” he observed, and Lily, glancing up, saw that a huge map covered one entire side of the room.
“Will you point out the exact spot where you made your sad discovery?” went on M. Bouton, handing her a long, light stick.
Lily stared anxiously up at the map, but she had no bump of locality on her pretty head.
M. Popeau took the thin stick from her hand. He laid the point lightly on the map, and pushed it up and up and up!
“Here is La Solitude,” he said at last, “so now we shall be able to find the exact place.”
“Ah, yes,” said M. Bouton. “La Solitude belongs to Count Antonio Polda. He and the Countess are nice, quiet people, almost the only people in Monaco with whom I have never had any trouble! It is my impression that somewhere about the fourteenth century a Grimaldi married a Polda—so the Count is distantly related to our sovereign.”