The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [5292]
"Now, Madame," said he, "you heard the shot fired last night?"
"I did."
"It woke you up?"
"I was already awake."
"Oh, I see: you were awake?"
"I was awake."
"Where did you think the sound came from?"
"From back yonder, beyond the east wing."
"Beyond the east wing?" muttered Inspector Aylesbury. "Now, let me see." He turned ponderously in his chair, gazing out of the windows. "We look out on the south here? You say the sound of the shot came from the east?"
"So it seemed to me."
"Oh." This piece of information seemed badly to puzzle him. "And what then?"
"I was so startled that I ran to the door before I remembered that I could not walk."
She glanced aside at me with a tired smile, and laid her hand upon my arm in an oddly caressing way, as if to say, "He is so stupid; I should not have expressed myself in that way."
Truly enough the Inspector misunderstood, for:
"I don't follow what you mean, Madame," he declared. "You say you forgot that you could not walk?"
"No, no, I expressed myself wrongly," Madame replied in a weary voice. "The fright, the terror, gave me strength to stagger to the door, and there I fell and swooned."
"Oh, I see. You speak of fright and terror. Were these caused by the sound of the shot?"
"For some reason my cousin believed himself to be in peril," explained Madame. "He went in dread of assassination, you understand? Very well, he caused me to feel this dread, also. When I heard the shot, something told me, something told me that--" she paused, and suddenly placing her hands before her face, added in a whisper--"that it had come."
Val Beverley was watching Madame de Staemer anxiously, and the fact that she was unfit to undergo further examination was so obvious that any other than an Inspector Aylesbury would have withdrawn. The latter, however, seemed now to be glued to his chair, and:
"Oh, I see," he said; "and now there's another point: Have you any idea what took Colonel Menendez out into the grounds last night?"
Madame de Staemer lowered her hands and gazed across at the speaker.
"What is that, Monsieur l'inspecteur?"
"Well, you don't think he might have gone out to talk to someone?"
"To someone? To what one?" demanded Madame, scornfully.
"Well, it isn't natural for a man to go walking about the garden at midnight, when he's unwell, is it? Not alone. But if there was a lady in the case he might go."
"A lady?" said Madame, softly. "Yes--continue."
"Well," resumed the Inspector, deceived by the soft voice, "the young lady sitting beside you was still wearing her evening dress when I arrived here last night. I found that out, although she didn't give me a chance to see her."
His words had an effect more dramatic than he could have foreseen.
Madame de Staemer threw her arm around Val Beverley, and hugged her so closely to her side that the girl's curly brown head was pressed against Madame's shoulder. Thus holding her, she sat rigidly upright, her strange, still eyes glaring across the room at Inspector Aylesbury. Her whole pose was instinct with challenge, with defiance, and in that moment I identified the illusive memory which the eyes of Madame so often had conjured up in my mind.
Once, years before, I had seen a wounded tigress standing over her cubs, a beautiful, fearless creature, blazing defiance with dying eyes upon those who had destroyed her, the mother-instinct supreme to the last; for as she fell to rise no more she had thrown her paw around the cowering cubs. It was not in shape, nor in colour, but in expression and in their stillness, that the eyes of Madame de Staemer resembled the eyes of the tigress.
"Oh, Madame, Madame," moaned the girl, "how dare he!"
"Ah!" Madame de Staemer raised her head yet higher, a royal gesture, that unmoving stare set upon the face of the discomfited