The de Bercy Affair

"Because after that evening there was no longer any need!"

Well, to the more experienced officials in court this explanation had an unusual sound, but to Winter, who slowly but surely was gathering the threads of the murder in the flat into his hands, it sounded like a sentence of death; and to Clarke, too, who had in his possession Rose de Bercy's diary taken from Pauline Dessaulx, it sounded so amazing, that he could scarce believe his ears.

However, the coroner nodded to Furneaux, and Furneaux turned to Osborne's solicitor, who suddenly resolved to ask no questions, so the dapper little man seated himself again at the table – much to the relief of the jury, who were impatient of any red herring drawn across the trail of evidence that led unmistakably to the millionaire.

Then, at last, appeared six witnesses who spoke, no longer against, but for Osborne. Four were International polo-players, and two were waiters at the Ritz Hotel, and all were positive that at the hour when Mrs. Bates saw her employer at home, they saw him elsewhere – or some among them saw him, and the others, without seeing him, knew that he was elsewhere.

Against this unassailable testimony was the obviously honest cabman, and Osborne's own housekeeper: and the jury, level-headed men, fully inclined to be just, though perhaps, in this instance, passionate and prejudiced, weighed it in their hearts.

But Furneaux, to suit his own purposes, had contrived that the tag of lace should come last; and with its mute appeal for vengeance everything in favor of Osborne was swept out of the bosom of His Majesty's lieges, and only wrath and abhorrence raged there.

Why, if he had actually killed Rose de Bercy, Osborne should carry about that incriminating bit of lace in his bag, no one seemed to stop to ask; but when the dreadful thing was held up before his eyes, the twelve good men and true looked at it and at each other, and a sort of shuddering abhorrence pervaded the court.

Even the Italian Antonio, who had contrived to be present as representing some obscure paper in Paris – the very man who had put the lace into the bag – shook his head over Osborne's guilt, being, as it were, carried out of himself by the vigor and rush of the mental hurricane which swept around him!

When Osborne, put into the box, repeated that the "celt" was really his, this candor now won no sympathy. When he said solemnly that the bit of lace had been secreted among his belongings by some unknown hand, the small company of men present in court despised him for so childish a lie.

His spirit, as he stood in that box, exposed to the animus of so many spirits, felt as if it was being hurried by a kind of magnetic gale to destruction; his fingers, his knees shivered, his voice cracked in his throat; he could not keep his eyes from being wild, his skin from being white, and in his heart his own stupefied conscience accused him of the sin that his brothers charged him with.

Though the jury soon ascertained from the coroner's injunctions what their verdict had to be, they still took twenty minutes to think of it. However, they knew well that the coroner had spoken to them under the suggestion of the police, who, no doubt, would conduct their own business best; so in the end they came in with the verdict of "willful murder committed by some person or persons unknown."

And now it was the turn of the mob to have their say. The vast crowd was kept in leash until they were vouchsafed just a glimpse of Osborne, in the midst of a mass of police guarding him, as he emerged from the court to his automobile. Then suddenly, as it were, the hoarse bellow of the storm opened to roar him out of the universe – an overpowering load of sound for one frail heart to bear without quailing.

But if Osborne's heart quailed, there was one heart there that did not quail, one smooth forehead that suddenly flushed and frowned in opposition to a world's current, and dared to think and feel alone.

As the mob yelped its execration, Rosalind Marsh cried a protest of "Shame, oh, shame!"

For now her woman's bosom smote her with ruth, and her compassion championed him, believed in him, refused to admit that he could have been so base. If she had been near him she would have raised her veil, and gazed into his face with a steady smile!

As she was about to enter the carriage that awaited her, someone said close behind her:

"Miss Marsh."

She looked round and saw a small man.

"You know me," he said – "Inspector Furneaux. We have even met and spoken together before – you remember the old man who traveled with you in the train from Tormouth? That was myself in another aspect."

His eyes smiled, though his voice was respectful, but Rosalind gave him the barest inch of condescension in a nod.

"Now, I wish to speak to you," he muttered hurriedly. "I cannot say when exactly – I am very occupied just now – but soon… To speak to you, I think, in your own interests – if I may. But I do not know your address."

Very coldly, hardly caring to try and understand his motive, she mentioned the house in Porchester Gardens. In another moment she was in her carriage.

When she reached home she saw in her mother's face just a shadow of inquiry as to where she had been driving during the forenoon; but Rosalind said not a word of the inquest. She was, indeed, very silent during the whole of that day and the next. She was restless and woefully uneasy. Through the night her head was full of strange thoughts, and she slept but little, in fitful moments of weariness. Her mother observed her with a quiet eye, pondering this unwonted distress in her heart, but said nothing.

On the third morning Rosalind was sitting in a rocking-chair, her head laid on the back, her eyes closed; and with a motion corresponding with the gentle to-and-fro motion of the chair her head moved wearily from side to side. This went on for some time; till suddenly she brought her hand to her forehead in a rather excited gesture, her eyes opened with the weak look of eyes dazzled with light, and she said aloud:

"Oh, I must!.."

Now she sprang up in a hurry, hastened to an escritoire, and dashed off a letter in a very scamper of haste.

At last, then, the floods had broken their gates, for this is what she wrote:

My dear, my dear, I was brutal to you that night at the sun-dial. But it was necessary, if I was to maintain the severity which I felt that your lack of frankness to me deserved. Inwardly there was a terribly weak spot, of which I was afraid; and if you had come after me when I left you, and had commanded me, or prayed me, or touched me, no doubt it would have been all up with me. Forgive me, then, if I seemed over harsh where, I'm afraid, I am disposed to be rather too infinitely lenient. At present, you see, I quite lack the self-restraint to keep from telling you that I am sorry for you… I was present at the inquest… Pity is like lightning; it fills, it burns up, it enlightens … see me here struck with it!.. You are not without a friend, one who knows you, judges you, and acquits you… If you want to come to me, come!.. I once thought well of a Mr. Glyn, but, like a flirt, will forget him, if Osborne is of the same manner, speaks with the same voice… My mother is usually good to me…

She enclosed it in a flurry of excitement, ran to the bell-rope, rang, and while waiting for a servant held the envelope in the manner of one who is on the very point of tearing a paper in two, but halts to see on which cheek the wind will hit. In the midst of this suspense of indecision the door opened; and now, straightway, she hastened to it, and got rid of the letter, saying rapidly in a dropped voice, confidentially:

"Pauline, put that in the pillar-box at once for me, will you?"

Another moment and she stood alone there, with a shocked and beating heart, the deed done, past recall now.

As for Pauline Dessaulx, she was half-way down the stairs when she chanced to look at the envelope. "Rupert Osborne, Esq." She started! Everything connected with that name was of infinite interest to her! But she had not dreamt that Miss Marsh knew it, save as everyone else knew it now, from public gossip and the papers.

She had never seen Rosalind Marsh, or her mother, till the day of their arrival from the country. It was but ten days earlier that she had become the servant of a Mrs. Prawser, a friend of Mrs. Marsh's, who kept a private boarding-house, being in reduced circumstances. Then, after but an interval of peace and security, the Marshes had come, and as she let them in, and they were being embraced by Mrs. Prawser, Inspector Clarke had appeared at the door, nearly striking her dead with agitation, and demanding of her the diary, which she had handed him.

Luckily, luckily, she had been wise enough before that to scratch out with many thick scratches of the pen the name that had been written by the actress before the initials C. E. F. in that passage where the words appeared: "If I am killed this night it will be by – or by C. E. F." But suppose she had not shown such sense and daring, what then? She shivered at the thought.

And a new problem now tortured her. Was it somehow owing to the fact that Miss Marsh knew Osborne that Inspector Clarke had come upon her at the moment of the two ladies' arrival? What was the relation between Miss Marsh and Osborne? What was in this letter? It might be well to see…

Undecided, Pauline stood on the stairs some seconds, letter in hand, all the high color fled from lips and cheeks, her breast rising and falling, no mere housemaid now, but a figure of anguish fit for an artist to sketch there in her suspense, a well-molded girl of perfect curves and graceful poise.

Then it struck her that Miss Marsh might be looking out of the window to watch her hurrying with the letter to the pillar-box a little way down the street, and at this thought she ran downstairs and out, hurried to the pillar-box, raised her arm with the letter, inserted it in the slot, drew it out swiftly and hiddenly again, slipped it into her pocket, and sped back to the house.

In her rooms half an hour later she steamed the envelope open, and read the avowal of another woman's passion and sympathy. It appeared, then, that Miss Marsh was now in love with Osborne? Well, that did not specially interest or concern her, Pauline. It was a good thing that Osborne had so soon forgotten cette salope, Rose de Bercy. She, Pauline, had conceived a fondness for Miss Marsh; she had detested her mistress, the dead actress. At the first chance she crept afresh into the street, and posted the letter in grim earnest. But an hour had been lost, an hour that meant a great deal in the workings of this tragedy of real life and, as a minor happening, some of the gum was dissolved off the flap of the envelope.

Inspector Furneaux, as he had promised after the inquest, called upon Rosalind during the afternoon. They had an interview of some length in Mrs. Prawser's drawing-room, which was otherwise untenanted. Furneaux spoke of the picturesqueness of Tormouth, but Rosalind's downright questioning forced him to speak of himself in the part of the decrepit Mr. Pugh, and why he had been there as such. He had gone to have a look at Osborne.

"Is his every step, then, spied on in this fashion?" asked Rosalind.

"No," answered Furneaux. "The truth is that I had had reason to think that the man was again playing the lover in that quarter – "

"Ah, playing," said Rosalind with quick sarcasm. "It is an insipid phrase for so serious an occupation. But what reason had you for thinking that he was playing in that particular mood?"

"The reason is immaterial… In fact, he had impressed on the back of a letter a name – I may tell you it was 'Rosalind' – and sent it off inadvertently – "

"Oh, poor fellow! Not so skilled a villain then, after all," she murmured.

"But the point was that, if this was so, it was clear to me that he could not be much good – I speak frankly – "

"Very, sir."

"And with a good meaning to you."

"Let us take it at that. It makes matters easier."

"Well, as I suspected, so I found. And – I was disgusted. I give you my assurance that he had professed to Mademoiselle de Bercy that he – loved her. He had, he had! And she, so pitifully handled, so butchered, was hardly yet cold in her grave. Even assuming his perfect innocence in that horrible drama, still, I must confess, I – I – was disgusted; I was put against the man forever. And I was more than disgusted with him, I was concerned for the lady whose inclinations such a weather-vane might win. I was concerned before I saw you; I was ten times more concerned afterwards. I travelled to town in the same compartment as you – I heard your voice – I enjoyed the privilege of breathing the same air as you and your charming mother. Hence – I am here."

Rosalind smiled. She found the detective's compliments almost nauseating, but she must ascertain his object.