At this moment the commissaire arrived with a scribe. Notes were taken. The doctor who had come attested something.
"Natural death?"
"The most natural in the world."
And he pointed first to the bed and then to the writing-table.
"Sexual followed by cerebral excesses. These papers, perhaps, will give us an explanation."
Meanwhile the commissaire, who had opened a drawer, found a will that left everything to me; the doctor, happy to do nothing, stopped putting together the sheets of the manuscript.
"I do not dispute them with you. I have signed. I am off."
My rights were soon legally confirmed. Meanwhile I thought of the woman who had worn the white dress with yellow embroideries and put her feet in the slippers of blue morocco. I sought her and did not find her. Singular rumours went about, set on foot by the journalists. M. Sandy Rose had been strangled by a woman with whom he had spent the night. She had disappeared at dawn, taking money and jewels. I had no difficulty in exposing the absurdity of this hypothesis, firstly because we had noticed no trace of violence on the body of the defunct, and secondly because many precious stones, as well as a quantity of gold pieces, were found in the same drawer as the will, which was not locked.
Little by little there came to be silence concerning the story, and I was alone in sometimes thinking of it.
It is certain that Sandy Rose went home on Thursday morning, the 8th of February, about nine o'clock, accompanied by a woman. He took his letters: no letter or paper of earlier date was found in the Sunday packet. It is also certain that he went out with this woman about midday, and that they returned about eight, this time without speaking to the concierge, without answering her question: "Monsieur Sandy Rose, aren't you going to take your letters?" Finally, from that moment on, the concierge saw no one, neither Sandy Rose nor the lady, whose name she did not know, though, she says, she had noticed her light-coloured, almost white, dress; and adds,