The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [190]
Trent, who had followed her movements and gesticulations with deepening gravity, nodded his head. 'I see exactly how it was now,' he said. 'Thank you, Celestine. So Mr Manderson was supposed to be still in his room while your mistress was getting up, and dressing, and having breakfast in her boudoir?'
'Oui, monsieur.'
'Nobody missed him, in fact,' remarked Trent. 'Well, Celestine, I am very much obliged to you.' He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.
'It is nothing, monsieur,' said Celestine, as she crossed the small room. 'I hope that monsieur will catch the assassin of Monsieur Manderson. But I not regret him too much,' she added with sudden and amazing violence, turning round with her hand on the knob of the outer door. She set her teeth with an audible sound, and the colour rose in her small dark face. English departed from her. 'Je ne le regrette pas du tout, du tout!' she cried with a flood of words. 'Madame--ah! je me jetterais au leu pour madame--une femme si charmante, si adorable! Mais un homme comme monsieur--maussade, boudeur, impassible! Ah, non!- -de ma vie! J'en avais par-dessus la tete, de monsieur! Ah! vrai! Est-ce insupportable, tout de meme, qu'il existe des types comme ca? Je vous jure que-- '
'Finissez ce chahut, Celestine!' Trent broke in sharply. Celestine's tirade had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush. 'En voila une scene! C'est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ca, mademoiselle. Du reste, c'est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! Have some common sense! If the inspector downstairs heard you saying that kind of thing, you would get into trouble. And don't wave your fists about so much; you might hit something. You seem,' he went on more pleasantly, as Celestine grew calmer under his authoritative eye, 'to be even more glad than other people that Mr Manderson is out of the way. I could almost suspect, Celestine, that Mr Manderson did not take as much notice of you as you thought necessary and right.'
'A peine s'il m'avait regarde!' Celestine answered simply.
'Ca, c'est un comble!' observed Trent. 'You are a nice young woman for a small tea-party, I don't think. A star upon your birthday burned, whose fierce, serene, red, pulseless planet never yearned in heaven, Celestine. Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are a beauty!'
Celestine took this as a scarcely expected compliment. The surprise restored her balance. With a sudden flash of her eyes and teeth at Trent over her shoulder, the lady's maid opened the door and swiftly disappeared.
Trent, left alone in the little bedroom, relieved his mind with two forcible descriptive terms in Celestine's language, and turned to his problem. He took the pair of shoes which he had already examined, and placed them on one of the two chairs in the room, then seated himself on the other opposite to this. With his hands in his pockets he sat with eyes fixed upon those two dumb witnesses. Now and then he whistled, almost inaudibly, a few bars. It was very still in the room. A subdued twittering came from the trees through the open window. From time to time a breeze rustled in the leaves of the thick creeper about the sill. But the man in the room, his face grown hard and sombre now with his thoughts, never moved.
So he sat for the space of half an hour. Then he rose quickly to his feet. He replaced the shoes on their shelf with care, and stepped out upon the landing.
Two bedroom doors faced him on the other side of the passage. He opened that which was immediately opposite, and entered a bedroom by no means austerely tidy. Some sticks and fishing-rods