"I am searching out the details of an old murder in order to fathom the mystery of a new murder, or of a strange death, which I take to be a murder. Can you read English, Monsieur Drubarde?"
"I have a niece who can—a girl who was educated at a convent in Jersey. I am going to my country home this afternoon, and my niece can read anything you give me."
Mr. Heathcote took from his pocket-book the report of the inquest, cut out of the local papers, and pasted on slips of foolscap.
"If your niece will translate that report for you, I think you will understand the motive of my investigation," he said; and then bade Monsieur Drubarde good-morning.
He went down-stairs with the volume of reports under his arm, hailed a fly, and drove to the Hôtel de Bade, stopping on his way to engage a stall for that evening at the Comédie Française, the only recreation which he cared for in his present frame of mind. He had numerous acquaintances in Paris, but he did not care about seeing one of them just now, nor did he linger in the bright gay streets to mark the changes which a year had made in the aspect of that ever-varying city, as he would have done had his mind been free from care.
He had a sitting-room and bedroom on the second floor of the hotel, two nice little rooms opening into each other, and both overlooking the Boulevard; an outlook which on former occasions he had preferred to the monastic quiet of the courtyard, where there were no sounds but the splashing of the water with which the man-of-all-work sluiced the stone pavement at intervals of an hour or two on sultry summer afternoons, or the scream of a chambermaid arguing with a waiter, both talking as loud as if they had been communicating from the gate of Saint-Martin to the gate of Saint-Denis. To-day, with the report of the Prévol case open before him, Edward Heathcote could have found it in his heart to curse the Boulevard, with its roar and rattle, its incessant "ya-youp!" of coachmen on the point of running over passengers, and everlasting clamour of the lively Gaul. He would have preferred a hermit's cave, with never a sound but the sighing of the wind on the mountain-side.
Yes, here was the interrogation of the waiter at the Pavilion Henri Quatre.
"Do you remember a lady and gentleman who dined in a private room on the 6th of September?"
The waiter remembered perfectly. The lady was very pretty, the gentleman remarkably handsome, and with a distinguished air. They had a little girl with them. The gentleman ordered a private room and a little dinner, bien soigné. He was very particular about the champagne, and about the dessert. The
