# The Story Behind the Verdict/Chapter 9
### CHAPTER IX
#### LA VALLIÈRE AND HER PEARLS

The last thing that seemed possible when Keightley Wilbur left London, and freed himself finally from the nightmare of the Harry Maingaye and Stanley Dacre murders, from the Battersea Flat Case, and the suicide of the young Count Louis de Brissac, was that he should ever again concern himself with the history of hidden crime or the mystery of the verdicts of coroners' juries.
He travelled by the so-called train de luxe between London and Monte Carlo, suffering, but not gladly, the discomforts and deficiencies of that much advertised and greatly over-priced route; the limited accommodation and wretched washing arrangements, the dirt and continual luggage examinations, the jolting over the badly-laid lines, and the perspiring service of greasy food. Finally he found himself arriving at the most inconvenient hour of all the twenty-four, when everybody was either lounging in the hall of the Hôtel de Paris, watching the pigeons strutting before the café, or mounting the steps of the Casino in order to be in time for the opening of the private rooms. Keightley was unshaven and in need of his breakfast, a bath, a change of clothes. He had the idea that any of his friends or acquaintances who saw him in his present condition would have the decency to look the other way. His mother, for instance, was nowhere about.
But Georges Carpenter, the polyglot millionaire newspaper proprietor, rose up from his easy chair in the hall of the hotel, put out a hand like a manicured mutton-chop, and greeted him in a voice that had at least one more disadvantage than the proverbial bassoon.
"Ah! my friend, Mr. Keightley Wilbur. Now this is very pleasant, and I am glad to see you. You have come for a long stay?"
"Have I?" asked Keightly dryly.
"If Monsieur Wilbur stays as long as his friends desire it will be long, but not long enough."
"Thanks so much, but I must get my key."
"You will lunch with me at Aubanel's or the Ré?"
"My mother is here. I must see first what her plans are."
"Or dine?"
There was difficulty in shaking him off, and although Keightley surmounted it, his habitual agility of mind recognised immediately that the Georges Carpenter he used to know—for notwithstanding the difference in their ages they were old acquaintances—would not have needed so much diplomacy for the shunting. Carpenter was rich and influential, had hosts of friends, retainers, hangers-on; he had no need to seek company, because company sought him. This was an altered and less self-confident man. The explanation must wait, but it was one that no psychologist could afford to miss, however fatigued. Keightley Wilbur required an hour or so alone in his own room, with his bath and barber, valet and manicurist, before he allowed himself seriously to consider the matter. And then, for the coffee had only stimulated and not satisfied his appetite, lunch came next in his programme.
"Go and find out where my mother is lunching, and with whom," he told Kito. Kito came back with the expected report. "Madame is lunching alone, at what hour suits you. She has made no appointment."
"Order a table downstairs, a corner table. Say I'll be with her at one o'clock."
They met in the hall, clearer now of people. Through the glass doors they could see that the luncheon room was full. Keightley congratulated his mother at once on the success of her grey toilette and black hat, guessing correctly the French artist from whose atelier they had emanated. Then he questioned her as to how she had been amusing herself, and asked for all the Monte Carlo gossip. Christmas was really out of season at Monte Carlo, but the people who had villas at Beaulieu and Mentone, Cap d' Ail and Roquebrune, were many of them in residence, and Mrs. Wilbur told him she had had no difficulty in getting bridge. She told him also that she had motored to Cannes and lunched at the Golf Club, finding the Grand Duke surrounded with sycophants as usual, and playing worse golf than ever. She had heard a bon mot about one of the new favourites. Some one had asked who he was, and the answer came pat: "He made boots in Montreal, and he licks them here." Keightley, of course, said it was old. He heard, too, a wonderful story that had lasted two seasons about a stolen letter of credit presented with a forged signature. The man's wife was supposed to be the culprit, and an extraordinary complication had sprung up, incriminating an erotic Turk with an English wife, a lame American, and two Italian ladies. They discussed the English wife of the Turk. Keightley pitied and Mrs. Wilbur pretended to envy her.
Then, quite abruptly, à propos of nothing, helping himself to asparagus, and complaining they were serving mayonnaise instead of mousseline sauce, Keightley dropped his interrogation into the conversation.
"And Georges Carpenter? I see he's here. What do they say about him?"
"Georges Carpenter?"
"Yes."
"A big man who gambles to match?"
"As you say."
"Mr. Boyes was speaking of him yesterday. He pointed him out to me at the Sporting Club. He put the maximum en plein, and all round 34, and the number came up three times …"
"Boyes is the fellow who runs that green paper, isn't he? An able man who knows everything and says nothing. I suppose Devenish introduced him to you?"
"Yes, and he has been so kind."
"What did he tell you about Carpenter?"
"All about his wife; how sad her death was. Mr. Boyes says the man is completely altered."
"Remind me. Who was Carpenter's wife? There was a story, wasn't there? I believe I'm growing old, my memory is failing …"
"She was said to be the most beautiful woman in France. A Russian duke kept her at one time, and lavished amazing jewellery upon her. Among other things a necklace of pearls, the finest in the world, each one perfect and perfectly matched. It is supposed to be worth three hundred thousand pounds."
"Oh, yes, of course! I begin to remember. All Paris laughed when Georges Carpenter married her. She called herself 'La Vallière.' I saw her with him once in the Bois de Boulogne. From the red upholstered car gleamed the dead white face and green sphinx-eyes, scarlet painted lips, and a miraculous throat and curve … She isn't dead—surely she isn't dead?"
"Yes. Mr. Boyes said the story was in all the London papers, but I suppose we missed it. They were spending their honeymoon in a motor-houseboat on the Seine. One incredibly hot night, so Georges Carpenter told the jury, unable to sleep, his wife went on deck, dressed only in a crêpe-de-chine nightgown, but wearing the famous necklace of pearls, from which she was never parted. No one ever saw her again alive. When the houseboat servants woke in the morning she had mysteriously disappeared. The day afterwards the body, with the pearl necklace still round her neck, was picked up by some peasants on the banks of the river. Paris was very excited over the affair, and long journalistic reports appeared describing the pathetic finding of the beautiful corpse by the peasants and their reverent handling of it. There was an inquest, and the jury found that she must have fallen asleep, and either walked or fallen off the boat, which was in motion at the time."
"And what became of the necklace?"
"When her will was read, it was discovered she had left everything to her husband except the necklace. She desired it should never be removed from her neck, but buried with her."
"And was it?"
"Yes. Mr. Carpenter insisted; he was heartbroken at her death."
"You were very interested in all this?"
Keightley was curious to know what his mother thought of Georges Carpenter.
"Very. I think he is far the most interesting person here, in addition to being the biggest gambler, which, of course, attracts us all to watch him. He has a fine head."
"About as handsome as a bull-dog."
"He isn't all French."
"I believe his mother was an Englishwoman and his father a Moor; so perhaps that is not surprising.
"You don't really know him, do you?"
"Intimately. But I had forgotten his marriage until you reminded me, and about his houseboat. So he was heart-broken."
"I believe you know more about it than I do."
"No, I don't. Only about the man himself. He kept open house in Paris whilst I was living there. It was rather the thing to be seen with him: and at twenty-three one does 'the thing.' You must either follow the fashions or set them. I followed them then. Whether Georges was at home or not (or in bed, as he was the last time I dined there), his friends and the friends of his friends used to drop in and stay. He was a curious mixture of the Western and Oriental. There were more stories about him and women than there is time for the telling. He had already been divorced twice. I'm not sure it wasn't three times. … Have you finished? Won't you have a liqueur? What are you going to do—bridge, or a flutter?"
"I made no engagements."
"I thought you wouldn't. The new rooms are open, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes. I have your ticket."
"The weather is so beastly, or we might drive. Would you like to meet Carpenter? He has asked me to dine with him to-night, and I can easily arrange it."
"You must not mind about me, dear, nor let me interfere with your pleasures here."
"Absurd! Would you like to meet Carpenter?"
"Very much."
"Get a fourth then, will you? I'll order the food. Something young and flapperish: I want to relax my mind."
"Madame de Zippincourt is here with her girls. I'll ask one of them, or Marguerite Roades."
"The Zippincourt by preference. Marguerite is much too good to be amusing."
Georges Carpenter expressed himself charmed at the prospect of meeting the mother of his brilliant friend Mr. Keightley Wilbur. He transferred the pleasure of being host; but only upon the understanding that it was to be his turn next .
And the parti carré that took place in the restaurant of the Hôtel de Paris that evening under the immediate personal surveillance of Monsieur Fleury proved all that such a party should be.
Mrs. Wilbur, exquisitely dressed, cultured, fluent, easy, was entirely to Georges Carpenter's eclectic taste. He talked literature and chiffons equally well, explained the system by which he was already achieving a notable success, and promised to initiate her into the mysteries of roulette if she would honour him later by taking a seat beside him. As for Keightley, he lavished on the brilliant and youthful brunette beside him some quite new and valuable epigrams before he discovered that they were being wasted. Afterwards he went as far as circumstances permitted in the way of flirtation, and found himself met more than half-way. Madame de Zippincourt was practically a professional beauty, and her daughter had profited by example if not by precept.
After dinner they lounged in the hall for coffee; but half-past ten saw them already passing down the long official-guarded corridor that leads from the Hôtel de Paris to the Sporting Club. As Georges Carpenter entered the club with his party quite a little excitement was immediately manifest.
The croupiers at the trente-et-quarante table, who had been leisurely separating the six packs of cards, accelerated their pace, and the chef de parti watched with some anxiety to see what game the big punter would elect to play. The same interest was displayed at the two roulette tables. The room seemed to fill quickly with beautiful women in yet more beautiful clothes and men of every nationality in evening dress, many of them wearing orders. There is an extraordinary pretence of exclusiveness about this club, to which the greatest scoundrels in Europe can easily obtain admission with the gorgeously apparelled ladies of their choice, but where an ambassador's wife has been known to be refused, and an eminent scientist queried. The one wore glasses and plainly banded hair; the other, careless of clothes, committed the hopeless indiscretion of a ready-made tie. The proprietor wishes the place to attract by reason of its glitter; he has no other standard, and so is able to attain the simplicity of his ideal.
"What is it that you like best to play?" Georges Carpenter asked, and Mrs. Wilbur admitted to a partiality for the adventurousness of the little ball.
Georges Carpenter found her a seat and one for himself beside her. He flung a hundred-franc plaque on thirty-four. The ball whirred, clicked home in zero. Carpenter shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly as the piece was raked away, and settled down to play seriously,
Keightley, when he had restored the too flighty flapper to her beautiful mother, found himself taking what he called a psychological interest, not in Georges Carpenter's system, but in the man himself. He soon saw that vanity rather than greed was the predominant passion. Carpenter liked to have people watching his play, liked to be the centre of the crowd; he plunged not so much to win as to feel the sibilant suspense when the ball faltered and spurted and stopped. Trente, deux, rouge, pair and passe. This time he had eight thousand francs to receive, next time and the next and the next he lost everything. For an hour he staked maximums, winning and losing, but the latter more largely.
"It doesn't go to-night. There are nights when the table is perverse." He shrugged his shoulders, gathered together what money remained to him and rose.
"You had a bad time?" Keightley asked. Again he shrugged his huge shoulders.
"It comes and goes," he answered, as he passed to the trente-et-quarante table, and started again with his rouleaux of notes. Mrs. Wilbur, who only punted an occasional louis, soon tired of the gambling. Keightley, after he had seen her back to the lift, returned to continue his observations. He heard that Georges Carpenter had had the same ill-luck at the trente-et-quarante table as at the roulette.
"Not that it matters to him; he's as rich as Crœsus. He must draw at least forty thousand pounds a year from L'Après Midi." L'Après Midi was the title of the newspaper Carpenter ran in Paris.
"No one is ever as rich as poorer men suppose," Keightley answered sententiously to his informant, a young diplomat with a foxy face and receding chin, who went on:
"He has gone into the baccarat room now. Will you come? There's a chance of making a bit. Banque ouverte, you know. He's got the needle, and is playing it up."
"Has he been losing all the time?"
"Difficult to tell! At first he was supposed to have won a fortune; the last few days he has certainly dropped some, if not all of it."
At four that morning, after a mighty and prolonged duel between banker and punter, Georges Carpenter gave up the bank. At the beginning of the séance he had insisted that the place beside him should be reserved for "Madame," and this, too, was of interest to Keightley. "Madame," better known as "Blanchette," was a young Parisian with prominent cheek-bones, red-patched, and large, deep-set consumptive eyes. Her meagreness was exquisitely dressed, and one saw the bones of her neck and chest through chains of diamonds set à jour.
"She has rivères of emeralds and rubies, sapphires, everything but pearls. You never see her with a pearl of any sort, not even a ring. They say Carpenter can't bear the sight of a pearl since 'La Vallière' died," the young diplomat told Keightley. "A couple of hundred thousand pounds' worth, and buried with her! I call that a tragedy, a far greater tragedy than her death."
"You would," answered Keightley, as he moved away.
Keightley, Georges Carpenter, Blanchette, and a few other people left the club together. They talked in the lifts, as the custom is at gambling places, of the evening play and the varying luck. It was by the purest accident Keightley Wilbur heard Blanchette, in the confusion of a buzz of good-nights, say softly to Georges Carpenter:
"Everything is en train. You will telegraph in the morning."
"It seems there is no help for it." He shrugged his great shoulders. "I have done my best. Kismet; it is fate."
It will be remembered Georges Carpenter had insisted that he should be host to the Wilburs in revenge for the dinner at the Hôtel de Paris. Keightley had a letter early in the morning reminding him of this promise.
"Will you and your charming mother give me the pleasure of your company at Giro's this evening at eight o'clock?"
Georges Carpenter's dinner that night was made memorable, among other things, by the presence of the best Monte Carlo could boast in the way of beauty and fashion. Madame de Zippincourt and her daughters were there, Lady Drew and Lady Nairn, the two lovely Englishwomen who had come in that morning on Lord Nairn's yacht, a distinguished French poet, and Lord Evensleydale. The dinner was worthy of the occasion, including everything both in and out of season. And the host was worthy of his guests. He had known who to seat by whom in order to promote conversation, launching a word here and there that had the same effect as the sticks used abroad for restoring effervescence to champagne; forgot no one's taste, ignored no one's prejudices, was sufficiently brilliant to inspire the others and not sufficiently so to eclipse them. The central table in the famous restaurant was laden with exotic flowers. A bunch of long-stemmed red American Beauty roses had been provided for each of the ladies. Naturally this table was the cynosure of all eyes, and when one of the little uniformed page-boys of the Hôtel de Paris approached the host bearing a telegram on a silver salver many people besides his guests saw Georges Carpenter change colour as he read it, get up from his seat excitedly, resuming it, however, after a moment's pause. After that it seemed as if he played the part of host with difficulty, as if all the colour and sparkle had gone out of the entertainment.
When the ladies left for the cloak-room—for, of course, they were all going on to the Sporting Club—Georges Carpenter became communicative. Keightley was near him, and Mr. Boyes, the editor of the little Monte Carlo paper without which no one begins the day.
"I have had dreadful news." He seemed overwhelmed by it, unable to go on. "It cannot long be kept a secret." He showed the crushed-up telegram in his hand, and both men, reading, emitted an exclamation of shock or sympathy.
"I must go at once. The miscreants, the malefactors!" Georges Carpenter seemed beside himself with grief and shock. "You will explain, you will make my excuses, but they will understand."
Keightley and the editor of the Monte Carlo Gazette promised Carpenter that his guests should be duly informed of what had occurred, bade him regard nothing but his own convenience, assisted as far as they were able in covering his retreat. Carpenter said he must start for Paris that night, at once, that if need be he should charter a special train.
"An attempt has been made to rifle his wife's grave," Mr. Boyes explained to the guests. "Fortunately the thieves were disturbed before they had time to effect an entry, but the guardian of the cemetery saw the men, who fled at his approach. Mattocks or picks had been left behind, proving their felonious intent."
Later on, and when Keightley was talking to his mother for self-expression and not for publication, he said thoughtfully:
"Carpenter seemed most extraordinarily cut up about it. Could not have been more so if it had been a feat instead of a blunder. I wonder why I thought the thing didn't ring quite true, the grief and the shock and all the rest of it. Of course, he is a dramatic sort of chap. I seemed to smell the stage. …"
"You have naturally a suspicious mind," Mrs. Wilbur answered consolingly. "The poor thing's pearls were buried with her; I can't imagine anything more probable than that an attempt should have been made to get hold of them. All the papers said they were worth between two and three hundred thousand pounds."
"I had not forgotten."
"You know you are on holiday," she reminded him.
"This thing has begun to haunt me. There is drama in it, and surprise. Only last night Blanchette asked him if everything was en train. What was it that had to be en train? You don't want to go to the club, do you? I must talk. It is beautifully warm. Let us have coffee outside." And when it had been served, he went on:
"Listen, mater! Try and follow my mind. A year or so ago Georges Carpenter, who, by the way, has already had two wives, both of whom divorced him, falls passionately in love with the notorious 'La Vallière,' and makes himself the laughing-stock of Paris by marrying her. There are scenes, quarrels, jealousy. All Paris watches, and Blanchette, 'La Vallière's' dearest friend and companion, is hard put to keep the peace between them. Peace is patched up, and the three of them agree to spend the summer in a houseboat or yacht. Now, I've a little experience of my own—but we need not go into that. Anyway, La Vallière falls overboard, or is pushed overboard."
"Keightley, what are you saying? There was never any suggestion of such a thing."
She was almost indignant.
"Oh! yes, there were a good many suggestions that everybody heard except the coroner's jury. Boyes omitted to mention them to you, but he has been much less reticent with me. When La Vallière's will was opened, it was found she had left everything to Georges Carpenter, except the pearls. And the 'everything' proved to be debts, obligations. Thousands had passed through her hands, even hundreds of thousands. But these women grudge themselves nothing. The pearls were really La Vallière's fortune, and they were to be buried with her. Tout Paris chuckled, but left off chuckling to whisper and shrug when the dead woman's furs and jewellery, clothes and bibelots were put up to auction, and sold on public sale."
"You knew nothing of all this when you came here. Why, it was I who told you the story!"
"I know; but I remembered afterwards that it was not new to me. And since then I have been gathering information."
"Don't tell me any more of your suspicions; I really cannot bear it; he is such an admirable host, the most agreeable of men. You have not been up to my sitting-room, have you? It is absolutely crammed with flowers, and he sent me also marrons glacé. Don't try and find out things to Georges Carpenter's discredit." She shivered a little. "I want to forget everything that is dreadful."
"Poor old mater! I forgot." He was then silent quite a long time. Afterwards, until he took her back to the hotel and left her at her bedroom door, he talked of other things; gossipy, pleasant things that could not perturb her.
The French newspapers the next morning were full of the attempted outrage of La Vallière's grave. Blanchette, who remained in Monte Carlo and accessible, told Keightley that her nerves had given way entirely—that she was unable to sleep.
"They will not let her rest in her grave, my poor, poor friend! It is for the pearls: I told Georges so often that it was not safe … but he is sentimental, that big Georges!"
Keightley was deeply sympathetic, and felt it his duty that Blanchette should not have too many lonely hours. He sensed a mystery, though he could not define it. The few words he had overheard her whisper to Georges Carpenter, the man's change of demeanour, the surprise of the telegram and hasty departure for Paris titillated, without satisfying, Keightley Wilbur's appetite for mystery. That there was a story behind the verdict on La Vallière he had no longer a doubt, and ever it became more certain that it was a story he must learn. He had meant to take no more interest in such things, but his curiosity tortured him. That Blanchette held the clue to the mystery he had no doubt. Yet in the end he had to admit she withheld it successfully. She would dine with him, wine with him, accept his compliments and even more substantial tokens of his regard when the tables proved unkind. She would motor with him, lunch à deux at La Reserve in Beaulieu, even sup at the "Carlton" or the "Austria." But she shuddered at the mention of La Vallière's name; her exquisite sensibility was unable to bear any allusion to what had occurred upon the yacht, that "happy, happy time that ended so fearfully." She could not speak about it nor about the pearls, only upon the outrage to the grave was she voluble, trying apparently to elicit Keightley's opinion as to what would happen to the miscreants.
"They will be found—surely they will be found?" And she said vehemently and often that no punishment would be sufficient for them.
But they were not found. The Parisian papers were full of the desecration and the correspondence columns were choked with criticisms and condemnation of the Père la Chaise authorities; apparently the police were completely baffled. Georges Carpenter remained in Paris. To an experienced eye it became apparent that Blanchette was uneasy at his delay: also that her fine disregard of money, the lavishness of her expenditure, the insouciance with which she piled her plaques upon the red and the black wavered and diminished. Economy she did not understand, but she was no longer absolutely reckless. And often, too often it seemed, she spoke of his delay, queried its genesis, exhibiting her impatience.
"You care for him so much?" Keightley asked her curiously. She shrugged her shoulders.
"Mon ami, we must always care for millionaires."
"Is he a millionaire?" She looked at him, and he thought then her eyes were startled, that there was even fear in their dark depths.
"But, of course …"
"I did not know."
"Everybody knows," she said crossly.
"You think I might be able to raise a loan from him when he returns?" he asked carelessly, smiling. She took offence, said she did not understand his plaisanteries. Monsieur Carpenter could lend what he liked, it was no affair of hers.
A queer new light was thrown on the position by a paragraph that appeared without comment in the little green Monte Carlo newspaper:
"M. Georges Carpenter, fearing a second attempt on the grave of his wife—the 'Grave of the Pearls', to give it the colloquial title—has applied to the authorities for permission to remove and place in safe custody the treasure which has already proved so fatal an attraction."
When Georges Carpenter reappeared at Monte Carlo he was a little subdued in manner, his mourning even deeper than before, and he expressed to Keightley and Mr. Boyes at least an utter inability to talk of the "affair."
"It is dreadful, too dreadful, to think how nearly they had succeeded. The ruffians, the miscreants, who would not let her lie in her grave, the poor girl! But it will never happen again, it must never happen again. I have arranged——"
He could not finish nor tell them what he had arranged, he was too overcome by his feelings. It was, however, noticeable that he and Blanchette were no longer on the best of terms. They argued and disputed, almost in public, they seemed to exasperate each other as two partners in a confederation of crime. At least, that is the way Keightley explained it: he was never tired of watching them. Only when gambling could Georges Carpenter keep his grief at bay. And soon, very soon, he was gambling higher than before. Harpy-like, Blanchette sat or stood beside him, sullen, enraged, or voluble; he could neither evade nor elude her.
Keightley Wilbur, who had to talk, and to talk of what interested him, had only one topic—the Vallière pearls. His mother was his unwilling confidante. She thought she was to have had a holiday from horrors when she came abroad, but he scarcely left her time for her afternoon rubber.
"A millionaire might afford to let three hundred thousand pounds lie in a grave. A half-ruined gambler with an expensive mistress had to devise some other course." They were lunching at the Ré, and all he said was interspersed with culinary matter.
"Half-ruined gambler!"
"No less. Don't let your cotelettes get cold; there are soufflé potatoes and petits pois. You remember the failure of the Peruvian Discount Bank. Carpenter was up to his neck in that affair. Everybody knows his paper has been doing badly ever since. He has not lost less than a hundred thousand francs a day since we have been here. I've been watching. …"
"But what has all this to do with the rifling of his wife's grave? He was actually here when it happened. You let yourself be carried away."
"I don't. I go voluntarily. There are half a dozen stories in this story—tragedy, comedy, farce. If you miss these crêpes Suzettes you will regret them, not once, but all your life. I shan't go on if you don't eat. Eat and I'll talk. Did you ever think of reconstructing the crime—the French way, and not a bad one? La Vallière must have come on deck that night, after having discovered them together, her friend and her lover, after an unforgettable scene. Before that she had been suspicious, jealous. She was dying of consumption and had prepared her revenge—the revenge of which they knew nothing, neither false lover nor false friend. She was supposed to be rich, but of all the wealth she had had at her command only the pearls remained. And they were to be buried with her. Georges carried out her bequest: he had no choice: all Paris was looking on …"
"What do you call this?" Mrs. Wilbur was looking at the dish the waiter brought her.
"Crêpes Suzettes. Don't miss them, mater: they are a speciality of the house." But he could not be lured from his topic
"I see it all so clearly. Blanchette has been illuminatingly reticent, and her maid is enchanted with Kito. Have another crêpes Suzette. I'm glad they are not called crêpes Blanchette. I wonder why, by the way? The remark was an absurd one? Carpenter has been growing poorer and poorer all this year; Blanchette is little less extravagant than La Vallière. It was she who suggested the scheme—a woman's scheme, surely. The pearls must be recovered! The pickaxe, the attempted ravishment of the grave was necessary to the plot."
"But he was here," she said again.
"Even reputed millionaires need not do their own dirty work. And there was so little to be done. Not even to rifle a grave, only to make a few strokes with a pickaxe; to drop some tools."
"Keightley, you are really uncanny: you are spoiling my appetite."
"Mine is often shattered after an excellent lunch. But don't go." For she had risen. "Wait for coffee. I know you are longing to get to the Casino; but wait for coffee."
"You have curdled my blood."
"The coffee and a liqueur will put it right."
"I don't know what makes you think of such things."
"It is not difficult to commit homicide on a houseboat. Experto crede!"
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing. Another story. Come, will you believe all I have told you if the pearls are sold—sold quite soon? Not stored at a bank, as he says? He has secured a great blast of publicity for his announcement that he will put them in safe custody. But if he should sell them? What shall you say if he sells them?"
"I don't know. I don't know what to think or believe: you take me into such strange, violent worlds …"
"Poor mater! I seemed dragged into them myself."
Glancing at her, he saw she looked pale. Her pallor reminded him of the past, of all that she had done for him when Louis de Brissac committed suicide. He felt a sudden pang of remorse. His passionate curiosity about crime and criminals had disturbed, distracted both their lives—lives that should have been calm and serene, devoted to literature and art.
His mother's face reproached him. She had not enjoyed her lunch; and last night at dinner had been the same. They were to have had a holiday tgether, but this was no holiday for her.
It came upon him suddenly that she did not wish to listen, to hear any more of Georges Carpenter or La Vallière, of Blanchette or the pearls. He had never prided himself upon being a good son. With such a mother, who could be otherwise? But her face reproached him, and he knew, since she did not wish to listen, he must leave off talking.
"Pull yourself together, mater; you are looking tired, bored. You were right when you said this was to have been a holiday. I meant to wait, to watch, to enjoy talking about the raid to him, or to her; drawing them out, alarming them, soothing them, until, perhaps, I became their confidant. I meant to see their furtive faces, watch whilst their mutual passion turned to mutual hate, to see the play played out." The bill was brought to him, and he scanned it carelessly. "I don't know how they do it at the price! Ciro couldn't have given us better food. And we were so much quieter here." His douceur was large. "You understand, don't you? I am going to throw it up. We are going to get out of this place."
"The Ré?"
"Monte Carlo. I am going to take you back to the hotel now. Have everything packed."
"But, Keightley, this is nonsense." Her resistance was feeble. "I don't want you to sacrifice yourself, or your curiosity, to me. Go on watching if you want to. Find out what has become of the pearls. I am tired to-day; perhaps I was inattentive. But that was only the weather—the mistral is threatening." She was alarmed that she should have failed him, shown her distaste for what interested him. All the way to the hotel she remonstrated and demurred, said she did not wish to go away; she wished him to satisfy his curiosity.
"But I want to sacrifice myself and my curiosity. Don't balk me. I so seldom have a moral impulse. This is one, I am sure. I erase from my mind La Vallière, Blanchette, Carpenter, and the pearls. I am no longer Keightley Wilbur, the world-renowned criminal investigator. I am Keightley Wilbur, the devoted son. We are off to-day to Ventimiglia, to Nervi and Santa Margherita, to Florence, Venice, Capri. There are no crimes."
He carried through his project, overruling her faint, half-hearted objections. This—this was the price he would pay for what she had done for Louis de Brissac. Never, never would he know if Georges Carpenter sold the pearls, the pearls that were not safe in the grave where their owner had wished them to remain.
So he thought, reckoning without that one prime mover in affairs: coincidence, and the play of circumstance. Pleased with his self-sacrifice he alluded to it frequently, taking credit to himself as he acted as courier to the easiest and most appreciative of travelling companions.
The London season was well under way when Keightley Wilbur and his mother came back to Carlton House Terrace. They were in time for the second Drawing Room, but arrears of hospitality had to be made up: Mrs. Wilbur, at least, took her social duties seriously. Receptions, dinner parties and charity concerts followed in quick succession. Our English royalties were difficult to secure for private individuals this first year of the new reign, and a weakness for royalty was among Mrs. Wilbur's few failings. She compromised on foreign potentates, and few of the entertainments she gave were without the little line "to meet Prince and Princess Augstein," or "the Baroda of Hindoochoatan," or, as on the immediate occasion to be related, "to meet the Grand Duke Fedor and the Countess Morvay."
Keightley, of course, could not let the opportunity slip, and chaffed her about "Tartar Emetic," which moved her not in the least from her pleasurable anticipation of the event. Everybody who was anybody had accepted, there were twenty- four to dinner and a reception to follow. The house was decorated with black and yellow orchids, and the dinner-table a marvel of crystal and silver, laid in a background of St. Andrew's Cross carried out flatly in blue and white flowers.
The Grand Duke was tall, bearded, typical. He spoke English admirably, but what he said in the admirable English was overbearing, egotistic, lacking tact and discretion. So long as his charming morganatic wife and the other ladies remained at table there was, however, little in his behaviour to excite reprobation. He sat on the right hand of his hostess, and the exquisitely pretty woman on his other side bore with the practised equanimity of a Frenchwoman the jokes that were more coarse than humorous, the compliments, familiarities and methods to which many winters at Cannes had used her. For Cannes is almost a preserve of the Grand Duke, and he is suffered there, if not gladly, at least with toleration.
It was only after the ladies had left the table, when Keightly moved from his seat in order to take charge of his mother's principal guest, that Duke Fedor began to show his quality. The wine had pleased his palate, the cigars were Upmann Coronas, the little Frenchwoman had been both beautiful and amiable. It was perhaps not unnatural that the ducal tongue should run rather more loosely than ever an English dining-room permits. Keightley at first was rather inclined to encourage the talk. His taste was outraged, but that was nothing in comparison with the satisfaction of his prejudices. He pressed the famous Wilbur port that had been laid down by his grandfather, and presently, shooting a bow at a venture, brought down an unexpected quarry.
"Who was the most beautiful woman I ever met—the most beautiful?" The big face grew lustful under the shaded electric lights, through the smoke haze. "Ah, of that there can be no doubt. I have met many beauties in my day, but La Vallière!"
He passed his glass automatically decanterwards: words came from him, passionate, unprintable. One or two of the other guests exchanged glances, but, drunk or sober, a Grand Duke must not be gainsaid. He could call up the dead to garnish an after-dinner half-hour. If Keightley was shocked he did not show it. The name of La Vallière conjured up remembrances, curiosity. He leaned forward.
"La Vallière! Of course. And Blanchette, I knew her friend Blanchette."
"Pfui! Pfui for Blanchette!" The "pfui" represents more unprintable matter. The Grand Duke flicked the cigar ash with his over-jewelled finger. It was only then it flashed upon Keightley that this was the donor of the famous pearls. He grew excited. How was he to bring the conversation to the jewels, to the mystery of their fate, to Georges Carpenter, and the sequel of the story he once ached to hear, that he again ached to hear?
"You admired her? Hein! But you should have known her mistress. Mistress, yes. Blanchette was lady's maid to La Vallière. At first she was in the kitchen, before that in the gutter. That scélérat. Carpenter …!"
"Are you talking of Georges Carpenter?" interposed David Devenish. "Just as I left the office the news came in that he had shot himself."
Keightley made an exclamation, but the Grand Duke heard the news calmly.
"Shot himself? The best thing he could do. Carrion! He was carrion, that man."
"And what will become of the pearls—the famous pearls that he put into safe keeping?"
Keightley could not help it, the words seemed forced from him. Carpenter dead and the fate of the pearls undecided! Never now would he learn if he had guessed correctly, if his flair for crime had left him.
"The pearls—the pearls for the sake of which he murdered La Vallière, for the sake of which he and Blanchette made away with the most beautiful woman of the twentieth century? But, my friend, the pearls were no longer his. For such canaille as those two such pearls as these were not."
"You know what has become of them," Keightley asked quickly. The Duke gave that hoarse laugh of his.
"But who better? Look!"
And, looking, Keightley saw that in the Duke's dress-shirt there were three pearls, three resplendent and lustrous pearls of a size and shape transcending anything he had ever seen before. It would not have been Keightley if, at the same moment that he recognised their quality and was thrilled with his nearness to the secret he had pursued, he had not said to himself that in this season it was only a Grand Duke who could wear three studs in his shirt.
"These are three of the smallest: the others are again in my cabinet."
"Carpenter sold them back to you?"
Again the Duke laughed.
"I know not who sold them, only that I bought them."
"But so soon!"
"Her skin was like those pearls, warm and lustrous … at night-time by candle-light it would shine. …"
"Would you care to join the ladies? My mother has guests who look forward to the privilege of meeting you.'
But when the reception was over and the last guest had left, alone with his mother in that vast drawing-room, with its orange flowers and the black eagles, Keightley said:
"Are you entertaining any more Grand Dukes this season?"
"I am not sure. We might get Boris. It was a success, wasn't it? Fedor has a great charm, don't you think? Affable, and yet in some ways extraordinarily dignified. You liked him?"
"Immensely. But if you secure Boris, I should like you to let me know in time. There is most attractive salmon fishing in Norway."
"You didn't like him!" she exclaimed.
"Did you notice the studs he wore?"
"What woman could fail to notice them." Her fingers strayed to her own historic and beautiful necklace. "They were larger and more perfect than any of mine."
"They are the smallest from the famous La Vallière necklace."
"What!"
"They were not safe in her grave—not safe in the bank."
"Georges Carpenter sold them?"
"It seems so." Keightley yawned. "You should have heard your charming Grand Duke tell the story. Late, isn't it? I'm off to bed."
"But——"
"No, no, I can't talk any more to-night: I've exhausted my amiability."
"La Vallière's pearls! Georges Carpenter sold them!"
"Just so, or Blanchette. Good night. I feel a little tired."
"Then you were right?"
"Yes. But I'm tired of being always right."