“It is impossible.” Madame Querterot spoke with refreshing conviction. “Absolutely impossible if you manage the canal affair with discretion. Consider. You walk innocently along a public path by the waterside, with a companion who, mon Dieu! is so maladroit as to stumble and to fall in. If anyone should be attracted by the splash, or she should scream and be heard, are you not doing your utmost to rescue her?—though, if possible, at a different place on the bank to the spot at which she displayed such unfortunate clumsiness—but that is a remote chance, for with proper care you will be able to manage so that the contretemps occurs at a point from which no noise will reach the ears of strangers.”
“I know where there’s a gap in the fence that runs along the park side of the canal,” Bert interrupted involuntarily.
“Mourning her loss,” Madame Querterot went on, “but silently, you understand, you continue your walk, and the world hears no more of Miss Barbara Turner. Even if her body is eventually found, there will be nothing on it which can be recognised as belonging to any particular person; and who would connect the wearer of the clothes I have provided with the fashionable young lady, who may, perchance, be missing from her home in Grosvenor Street? No one. I repeat, no one. With regard to Mrs. Vanderstein we are even more entirely beyond suspicion. In the first place nobody will even enter this house for some weeks at least. When they do so it is unlikely that the flower stand will be touched. Though the plants will be renewed there will be no occasion, as far as I can see, to disturb the soil to a regrettable depth. But admitting that luck may go against us and the body be discovered, it will not be identified. I cut off the initials that were embroidered on her chemise, and the rest of the clothing I will take home with me now, and burn before I start on my journey. And I have a still better idea for diverting any suspicion from us. Listen to this.”
And she expounded to Bert a plan, which made him open his eyes in unwilling admiration of the coolness and courage of the woman. Such a course as she proposed to adopt would have been entirely beyond his powers, and well he knew it; indeed at first sight it seemed to require an almost inhuman audacity to carry it out successfully. Her intention was to go to a large hotel at some French watering place, Boulogne or Dieppe for choice, and there to pass herself off as Mrs. Vanderstein for a day or two, not long enough for the Jewess’ friends to discover that she was there, but long enough to allow no doubt to exist of her having really been there when the fact should subsequently come to be known.
“I shall be far away by the time inquiries begin to reach to the other side of the channel,” she told Bert, “and the proprietor of the hotel will answer all questions to our satisfaction. I shall so contrive that it is not I who write my name in the visitors’ book. The manager will be so obliging as to do it for me when he hears that I have slightly injured my finger. But I shall not be feeling very well, I shall need repose after the journey. I think, yes, I think that I shall send for the doctor. When he is gone I shall give out that he has told me to keep to my room for a few days, and I shall therefore remain upstairs during the whole of my visit. When I leave I shall have established beyond doubt that the lady I impersonate was staying in the hotel when she was being sought in London, and after that she will be looked for abroad. Once the police have got the idea fixed in their stupid heads that Mrs. Vanderstein has left England, they may dig up her body as soon as they like, and I, for one, shall not feel a moment’s anxiety.”
“But,” objected the startled Bert, “the people at the hotel will describe you, and that will be a give away.”
“They will describe me,” said Madame Querterot airily, “or they will describe Mrs. Vanderstein. It will be the same thing. We are much alike, she and I. That is,” she added hastily, “we were much alike. In the matter of the colour of my hair, it is true, I must make a great sacrifice. But I have resolved to forget the value that not I alone have always attached to the golden hue of my chevelure, and to dye it black this same morning, before I start on my travels. You see that I shrink at nothing! I promise you that, with a dress such as the Vanderstein would have worn and a trifling alteration in my colouring, you yourself would have doubts as to who I am. There will be no risk to speak of, though it is worth a little to cover my retreat by a stratagem so masterly.”
With Bert’s aid the clothes belonging to the two ladies were folded and made into a tidy parcel, then with a few more words of advice, and a special recommendation never to come into the house without the precaution of wearing gloves—for she was deeply impressed with the dangers attendant on careless finger-prints—Madame Querterot said a hasty farewell, the early summer dawn being at hand, and in another moment the back door of the house had shut behind her vanishing figure.
Bert, left alone without the support of the woman’s ready resource and calm confidence, would have soon sunk again into despair if his time had not been too much occupied to admit of reflection. He was by now, besides, so tired and exhausted with the emotions he had undergone as to be incapable of coherent thought, and he was more than content to give his whole mind to carrying out the instructions he had received.
His first business was to get a brush from the cupboard under the stairs and to sweep and brush the floor of the hall, and the carpets of the stairs and drawing-room. He was awkward at the work, but made up in thoroughness what he lacked in skill. Little shining pieces of paste off Mrs. Vanderstein’s dress were scattered everywhere; he swept up quantities of them, but still some, better concealed than others, escaped his diligence.