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Allack and MYSTERY
MURDER IN A
WALLED
TOWN



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(VI V S T E R. Y
MURDER IN A
WALLED TOWN
The Private Memoirs of
Wayne Armitage

Boston and New York
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
tElje jfttoetsftie Press Cambrtbge
1934
*


COPYRIGHT, 1934, BY KATHERINE WOODS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
The Riverside Press


TO
EDITH HUNTINGTON SNOW
WHO SHARES WITH ME THE CHARMING SECRET
OF THE REAL NEYRONNES





v- 7- e
NOTE
All the characters in this story are imaginary. And I
hope that the scene is sufficiently disguised as to be un-
recognizable. With the exception of one great historic
event, that picturesque and delightful village on its hill-
top has known no form of battle, murder, or sudden
death, so far as I have been able to discover, for at least
three hundred years. Since the end of the Wars of Re-
ligion, I feel sure that nothing but the French Revolution
has disturbed its calm. And, like the narrator of my
story, I hope to go back to it, and find it still unspoiled.
K. W.
HOtel du Roy Rene"
Aix-en-Provencb
March, 1934





CONTENTS
I. I COME TO NEYRONNES
II. I GREET OTHER REFUGEES
III. I OVERHEAR A CONVERSATION
IV. I MEET HORACE BRAYE
V. CHRISTINE GOES ON A HOLIDAY
VI. I SOLVE A MYSTERY
VII. CHRISTINE COMES BACK
VIII. Mrs. Wilde MAKES A GIFT
IX. I LEARN THE SECRET OF THE RUINS
X. I RETURN A HANDKERCHIEF
XI. We Hear TESTIMONY
XII. I EXPLAIN TO A FRENCHMAN
XIII. A FRENCHMAN EXPLAINS TO ME
XIV. MRS. BRAYE COMES TO DINNER
XV. A WITNESS IS LATE
XVI. WE WAIT FOR ROSALIE
XVII. THE DETECTIVE THINKS ALOUD
XVIII. WE PLAN TO GO HOME
XIX. JOHN SHERRILL DISSENTS
XX. WE LEARN OF A DISCOVERY
XXI. WE HEAR THE WHOLE STORY
134
142
161
177
188
203
221
233
252
262
268
278


WAYNE
ARMITAGE
ELINOR
SHERRILL
HORACE
BRAYE
CHRISTINE
WILDE
MARGARET
HAMILTON
JOHN
SHERRILL
ROSALIE
BRAYE
LAVATORY
LAVATORY
BATH
HENRI DE
BRASSAC
UNAINISHED ROOM
PAUL
MAC NEIL
ATTIC
MAID
STORAGE
2ND SLEEPING FLOOR
IST SLEEPING FLOOR
STOVE &
SERVING
ROOM
LOUNGE
STREET
GARDEN
LAVA.
TORY
BANQUET & GAME ROOM
STORAGE
GROUND FLOOR
PAVILLON ANNEXE
Auberge de Vieux Neyronnes


Murder in a Walled Town
CHAPTER I
I COME TO NEYRONNES
People say a great deal, I've noticed, about large events
that result from small causes: a woman rushes back to be
sure she has turned off the hot water, and misses the train
that is swept off the bridge in the flood — that sort of
thing. Life and conversation are full of it. But it seems
to me that the resultance of small events from large
causes is just as interesting — only 'small' and 'large'
are not really the words I mean. What I am thinking of
is the momentous, indeed the all-important, personal
consequences which may spring from broad impersonal
movements, situations, affairs. It was this kind of thing
which happened to us all, that summer at Neyronnes.
On the nineteenth of April, 1933, the United States of
America went off the gold standard. And because of that
incident in international finance, life and death and
romance and mystery and tragedy and renewal came to a
group of ordinary individuals in a small village in central
France. Because our country 'went off gold,' our
strangely assorted group of Americans gathered at Ney-
ronnes in the first place. Because we came there and
stayed there, all our lives were changed and for some
among us life ended; but hope and happiness came to
others — new happiness and new hope. In the long run


2
Murder in a Walled Town
that curious story of Neyronnes is a good story, a story
that 'comes out well.' Christine, thank God.^is happy.
It seems to me that that is all that really matters, but of
course I know that my point of view is completely biased
where Christine is concerned! And I am really thinking
of everyone when I say that the story ends well. Jus-
tice triumphed: of that I do feel convinced, for all the
strangeness and the dreadfulness of what happened to
us there.
But of course at the beginning no one could have
guessed that there was going to be a story at Neyronnes
at all....
I was on the high seas when the United States went off
the gold standard. In that, I was like Monsieur Herriot:
he was voyaging westbound on the Ile-de-France and
I was on my way to Europe on the Paris, and the
ships passed and saluted somewhere toward the middle
of the Atlantic. But unlike Monsieur Herriot, I didn't
take the matter of the gold standard itself very seri-
ously.
As a matter of fact, I was thinking very busily about
other things. I was on my way to Geneva to do a bit of
research work at the International Labor Office, and of
course I just went ahead. My job is teaching history, but
I have always been interested in labor matters, and when
this chance came my way I had jumped at it, naturally.
And I was so interested in everything that was going on
there — in the Labor Office, and the League, and Geneva
itself — that it just didn't occur to me to think of inter-
national finance in any personal way. In spite of the fact
that I teach history, I haven't traveled much abroad, and
foreign exchange was just foreign exchange: if the Swiss
franc was twenty-three cents instead of twenty, it didn't


I Come to Neyronnes 3
mean a lot to me. ' But by June the dollar was really
dropping.
Long before the nineteenth of April, I had planned a
summer's holiday: I was going to France, and England,
and maybe Italy, too. I had worked out what a trip ought
to cost, and I thought I could manage it. And what I
wanted to see, what I wanted to learn about, was the real
country. I knew Paris, and London, fairly well; but what
I had a yearning to become acquainted with was the pro-
vincial towns, and the villages, and the long stretches of
road between the trees and hedgerows; I wanted to see
terraces, and vineyards, and arcades, and ancient tumble-
down houses, and little old narrow winding streets; I
wanted to feast my eyes on feudal castles, and mediaeval
abbeys, and Gothic churches, and to watch the country
people gathering in the little towns on market-day. I
wanted a lot...
I had been teaching history in a boys' school near
Philadelphia; I hadn't had much money, ever; and what
with paying back what I had had to borrow to get
through college, and taking care of my mother through
several years of invalidism, I had never had anything
extra: I had never been able to see the things I had been
teaching about. Now my mother was dead. My debts
were paid. I had had this bit of a job at Geneva, with
two months added to my time off from school and my
steamship fare paid one way: when I finished the job I
was through, on my own, free, for the rest of the summer.
But when the dollar began to show that it was dropping,
I had to reconstruct my ideas: it looked as if I should
have to go straight back home...
Well, I didn't want to do that. I had already bought
my return ticket, tourist, with American dollars in Amer-


4
Murder in a Walled Town
ica. But I didn't want to use it right away. I didn't want
to give up my hoped-for glimpse of the 'real country' in
foreign lands.
And then, all of a sudden, I thought of Neyronnes, and
remembered what an artist friend had told me about it.
One of the most picturesque places in France, he had
said. Unspoiled. Cheap. No Americans there, no Eng-
lish. A tiny walled village on a hill, with a good little inn
where you could live for only a little over a dollar a day.
And study. He said it was absolutely quiet, remote from
the tourist trails and from all the currents of modern
life, and nothing ever happened to disturb you or inter-
rupt your work, for weeks on end.
I realized that I should have to give up the summer's
travel that I had planned, but I could still have an inter-
esting European holiday, quiet, unusual, 'real.' I cashed
a good deal of money in French francs, before the dol-
lar should drop farther, and I crossed the border into
France.
On a map of Europe, or even a map of France, it
doesn't look to be a long distance from Geneva to Ney-
ronnes, because Neyronnes (although of course it isn't
on any map smaller than the large-scale Michelin) is not
far from the center of France. But central France is a
pretty big locality. And when I talk of it, I am no more
definite than that about the whereabouts of this little
walled village of ours. I love Neyronnes, and I want to
go back to it and find it still unspoiled. It is all that my
painter friend told me — all that and more; but although
murder couldn't spoil it, tourists could. Not from me —
nor yet from Christine — are any tourists going to find
out where it is! And all that I need say here about its
situation is just that I had to change cars a lot, and wan-


I Come to Neyronnes 5
der around in a surprising fashion over the map of
France, before I ever got to the place at all.
Finally I decided to spend the night in the nearest city
and go out in the morning by a fairly early train. Not
that there was a train to Neyronnes itself. The railroad
station was at a little town in the valley, several miles
away. But I had a leisurely breakfast, trying to get used
to the French way of doing things and not to feel guiltily
lazy over having breakfast in bed; and then I picked up
my old Gladstone and got into a third-class compartment
on a little train and traveled along — still in the utmost
leisure, as if the train were just having a pleasant stroll
— for some time; and when I got out at the station of
Jeanniot, I was ready to walk.
Here was I, then, on a beautiful June morning, with
my bag in my hand and francs in my pocket to a tune
somewhat less gay and affluent than the rhythm of
twenty-five to the dollar, and I was stepping out of the
railroad station into Jeanniot's Place de la Gare. Here
was I, Wayne Armitage, not many years out of college
and as poor as a church mouse, knowing perfectly well
that with the dollar falling I ought to be going home and
absolutely determined to do nothing of the kind.
As I went out past the exit barrier, it occurred to me
that I'd better ask the way to Neyronnes; and then —
this seems ridiculous, but it's true — it burst upon me
for the first time that I knew almost no French! I simply
hadn't realized it before. I'd got along with English
everywhere, without any trouble... Well, now I was in
the country — the 'real country' that I had always
wanted to see and learn about. I should just have to use
what brains I had and what French I could remember.
There Was a man with an automobile, near me at the


6
Murder in a Walled Town
curb, and a man with a donkey-cart. I felt less shy of the
carter, and I went up to him and waved my hand toward
the right.
'Neyronnes?' I said inquiringly. 'L&?'
The carter's gesture embraced all the landscape to the
left, and he shook his head with emphasis.
'Pareecy!' he replied; and then, before I could puzzle
out what that was, he poured forth a torrent of direc-
tions, of which, not unnaturally, I could understand not
one word.
'Houp-la!' cried the man in the automobile. He got
out of his car and approached me, and from the moment
my eye fell upon that jovial, friendly countenance I
liked that man. He was young, and good-looking, and
broad-shouldered, and gay; he had a big hearty voice and
a big hearty laugh, and I felt as if he might once have
been a famous college athlete, if he had been an Ameri-
can. He came up to me now, and addressed me in slow,
bookish, perfect English — the English of a man who has
studied it conscientiously and successfully, but has never
spoken it much.
'I am going to Neyronnes,' he said. 'You will come
with me?' And he picked up my bag, set it in the tonneau
of his sedan, and waved his arm in a broad gesture to in-
dicate my place beside him in the car. 'I live in Ney-
ronnes,' he explained, as I tried to thank him for his kind-
ness. 'My father has been interested in the restoration.
I,' he added simply, 'I keep the inn. If you wish to stay
at the inn, my wife and I shall be most happy to receive
you. If you do not wish to stay, we shall be glad to help
you to see Neyronnes in the time at your disposal.'
It was a formal speech, but he made it with unconsid-
ered ease; and it gave me my first experience of the per-


I Come to Neyronnes 7
feet naturalness of French courtesy — although I real-
ized then as later that my host, whose father had been
'interested in the restoration' of the old citS, was no
ordinary hotel-keeper! Of course I told him that I was
planning to stay at the inn, and was delighted at the
prospect. And so I rode like a prince into Neyronnes.
We hopped out of Jeanniot and turned from the high-
way into a byroad that wound around between hedge-
rows. There was nothing spectacular about it, but it had
charm — a gentle country scene. Then we swung around
at the foot of a little hill, and my host pointed upward:
there were the crumbling thirteenth-century ramparts,
there was the broad grassy space that had once been the
Lists where tournaments were held, there was the church-
tower.
We turned away, lost sight of the citadel, seemed to
pass it by, swung back again, and suddenly began to
climb steeply, and then passed through a narrow old
arched gate. We were in a space between fortress walls
now, and the narrow road, still steeply mounting, turned
sharply at a right angle within that enclosure. On our
left was the doorway of an ancient church built into the
fortifications. On our right, touching the ramparts, was
the wall of a house with beautiful Renaissance windows,
a house that had been a very noble dwelling centuries ago.
Straight ahead of us the road narrowed still more to go
under a portcullis and through a tower which formed,
with its two pointed arches, the double inner gate of the
enceinte. And just inside that was another Renaissance
house, with windows more beautiful still.
The whole thing made the most picturesque scene that
my eyes had ever fallen upon. And it was all so real. All
the medieval history that I had ever studied and taught


8
Murder in a Walled Town
had come to life before me. Here was the Europe I had
come to see Brinton Elliott, my painter friend, had
told me that this fortress-village was almost a 'little
Carcassonne'; like the peasant in the song, I never have
seen Carcassonne; but as we drove through the triple
gate of Neyronnes I felt that I need ask no more of per-
fection. This was enough.
And I was so fascinated, so absorbed, as the little vil-
lage street stretched its short length before me between
ancient tumble-down cottage walls, that I never saw a
plain and prosaic building on my left, just beyond the
little gardened space near the church that surrounded
the tiny community's monument to its war dead. It
was a building larger than the others, scarcely more than
two hundred years old, not at all quaint, and in perfect
repair. I saw it, as it happened, soon enough. And of
course I did not know that Christine Wilde was standing
in one of the upper windows of that plain building, telling
her mother that Monsieur Delande seemed to be bringing
a new guest to the inn....
The car made its way slowly down the little street,
honking as it approached a corner where it seemed to my
unaccustomed eye that no turn could possibly be made.
But my host swung quickly and easily around the curve
and into an even narrower bit of road under the over-
hanging beamed facade of an extraordinarily fine four-
teenth-century dwelling-house. And then, as we entered
the Place des Halles of Neyronnes, I knew that my en-
thusiasm at the gate had been only a dim foretaste of the
rapture which awaited me here. I have come to know
since that, although mediaeval town gates are no great
rarity in France, such a place as that of Neyronnes is
almost unique. At the time I just felt that this was too
good to be true.


I Come to Neyronnes 9
In the center of a broad cobbled square rose an enor-
mous linden tree, outspreading its perfectly proportioned
branches to form a thick canopy of protection as well
as shade. Rustic chairs and tables looked homelike and
inviting under the tree, but they were not what held my
attention. On the opposite side of the square, as we
turned into it, was an ancient crooked building with a
wide beamed gallery' like a veranda, and across a little
cobbled alleyway from this engaging structure was a
beautiful thirteenth-century house, perfect with its beams,
its corbels, its small-paned windows, even the vines that
grew in profusion about the entrance, and the girl in
white lace cap and fichu who was leaning against the
lintel of the door. At right angles, and farther back, was
a smaller, plainer building, also beamed; and next to it
stood another good old dwelling-house, with vines and a
sundial; the narrow street by which we had entered ran
along the side of this house. Behind us, too, was a row of
three or four picturesque ancient houses, at the architec-
tural details of which I did not then glance. Only on the
fourth side of the Place was there any intrusion of the
commonplace; and even here the heavy stone houses were
not new, although the hand of 'modernization' in the
way of doors and windows had not been arrested in time,
and the buildings had probably never been as fine archi-
tecturally as their neighbors.
And yet, I felt then, and I have never ceased to feel,
that the more or less ordinary quality of the fourth side
of the broad Place at Neyronnes gave its own cachet
of reality to the whole extraordinary scene: this was no
show-piece, but the central square of a village where
people lived; these houses were their homes, their shops,
the inn, the museum. And later, as we visitors used to


10
Murder in a Walled Town
sit, according to our custom, in the roomy gallery under
the overhanging upper story of the building that was the
museum, we scarcely saw the 'modern' houses at all.
We looked out at the Place, and the streets and paths
which came into it, and the roofs of other buildings where
the roads sloped downhill, and everything that we saw
was picturesque to the point of being theatrical. Even
to the movements of the peasants crossing the square
with an occasional donkey, the old women and children
who came to get water at the fountain in the corner
farthest from us, the whole scene was like the stage at
some fascinating play.
My host, whom I now knew as Monsieur Delande,
drove around the square and stopped his car in front
of the charming thirteenth-century building, which, to
my astonishment and delight, I saw to be the inn. The
girl with the white fichu had disappeared, and in a mo-
ment a buxom and very pretty young woman appeared
in her stead. She was plump and smiling, like her hus-
band, but what with him was heartiness became with
her an unswerving calm; I never saw Madame Delande
ruffled or harassed; neither she nor her husband ever
looked tired. And yet, how hard they worked! And how
much they had to try them, that summer when the United
States went off the gold standard and a miscellaneous
bunch of American tourists sought cheap living under
their ancient hospitable roof!
Monsieur took out my bag. He drove his car into the
mediaeval building at one side, which was, I now saw,
the inn's garage. The girl with the fichu came back, and
it was explained to me that the single rooms with hot and
cold running water were in the pavillon annexe, a few
steps back, near the church, and that she would escort me


I Come to Neyronnes 11
there. It was also explained to me that if I stayed eight
days or longer the rate for room and board complete
would be thirty francs a day. And when I had signified my
assent to all this, the girl with the fichu picked up my old
Gladstone as easily as if it had been a woman's overnight
bag and led me up another street, no wider than an alley,
that wound between some fine old houses and the ruins
of other fine old houses and then in a few yards came out
somewhat surprisingly on the other little place, just in-
side the gate.
Here, facing the gate and the war memorial, and at
right angles to the back of the church and the funny
little Mairie, was the pavillon annexe. It was the plain,
large, unromantic structure, probably of the early eigh-
teenth century, which I had not noticed when we came in.
Nothing could have looked less like my idea of a pavillon
than this solid rectangular building; but it looked, as it
was, comfortable. With its heavy walls within and with-
out, it looked quiet, too.
The front door opened directly into a big uncarpeted
room that had some good furniture in it, a center table
with writing-materials, and on one side, under a window,
a phonograph. The stairs led up from this room, and we
climbed two flights. The maid showed me into a small,
simple, neat, and not uninviting bedroom, set down my
bag, and opened the shutters of the two windows. And
even as she went out of the door I hurried to the front
window and stood there for a long time looking at the
view. Then, with the conscious deliberation born of deep
satisfaction, I began to unpack....
This was what I had been longing to find. It was
genuine. It was interesting. It was peaceful. It was
cheap. Here I would stay, and read, and study, and take


12
Murder in a Walled Town
long walks, and enjoy a real vacation, in solitude. It
came over me suddenly that I had never had a 'real va-
cation,' in that sense, in my life. There had always been
some worry, some burden, some distraction, the intrusion
of some troublesome event. Here there was nothing. In
spite of the fall of the dollar, there was nothing to worry
me now, in this fascinating mediaeval village where I
could live in sufficient modern comfort for thirty francs
a day!
I went back to the window, and looked out at the for-
tress gate, and the old church, and the ancient stone
cottage with its outside flight of steps, across the way.
Beyond the gate-tower other hillocks raised their soft
green heights above the valley, and far away the distant
mountains marked the horizon with their hazy blue rim.
Peaceful...
And as I stood there drinking in the charm and restful-
ness of it all, a big automobile came from the direction
of the inn, turned sharply into the little place, and stopped
under my window, at the pavillon door. I looked at it
idly; but I have the American's instinctive — I fear,
irremediable — interest in motor cars: I had never been
able to own one, but I had long ago learned to drive; and
when I see an automobile I know, without stopping to
think how, what kind of car it is. I had a queer little
feeling, now, that my peace was threatened, that my
remoteness was somehow broken in upon. It was a
Packard car that was standing under my window in
Neyronnes.
Of course I told myself at once that it was silly to be
disturbed by that: an American make of car was no sign
of the presence of Americans! A great many French
people had American automobiles. Besides, Elliott had


I Come to Neyronnes 13
told me that Swiss travelers sometimes came to Ney-
ronnes, and of course Switzerland teemed with American
motor cars. I repeated to myself that there was no sense
in being afraid that my solitude would be sacrificed to the
presence of my fellow-countrymen. And just at that
moment a girl stepped out of the car, a girl who was un-
mistakably American, and whose appearance filled me,
astonishingly, with delight instead of a selfish dismay.
She was tall, and slender, and young, and very pretty.
Soft hair caught the sunshine in golden lights in its masses
of chestnut brown, and waved in graceful natural curls on
a beautifully modeled sunburnt neck. Strong sunburnt
arms were as firm and able-looking as they were well-
formed and comely in her sleeveless dress of burnt-orange
stuff. From the curve of her head to the line of her per-
fect ankles and her slender feet, every contour was lovely.
And she was as unconscious as Queen Victoria, standing
there.
I don't know exactly why I was so sure she was Ameri-
can: it may have been her ankles, and her feet in those
well-cut sport shoes; it may have been her air of inde-
pendence, along with competence and charm; when I
looked more closely at her face, as she continued to
stand there at the doorstep, I saw that her expression
held none of the carefree happiness one likes to associate
with pretty and well-to-do young American girls. Her
big brown eyes troubled me: they not only looked anxious,
smitten with a chronic anxiety; they looked somehow
unnatural, as if she were trapped or caged. Independent,
yes, in a sense. But not the happiest sense. Independent
by nature, but certainly not free.
She just stood there quietly, for several minutes, while
the engine of the car purred in its opulent quietness be-


14
Murder in a Walled Town
hind her. Then she spoke, raising her voice just a little
to reach someone in the house.
'Aren't you ready?' she asked. 'Do you want any
help?'
On the floor below me a window opened, and out of it
came a voice. 'Oh, I've changed my mind,' it said. It
was a woman's voice, and it continued: 'I don't want to
go, after all. We couldn't get back in time for lunch.'
'But I thought you wanted to lunch at a restaurant,'
the girl said. 'And we had made the appointment at the
hairdresser's.'
'Well, I've changed my mind. Go and unmake the ap-
pointment. And will you tell Monsieur Delande that I
cannot eat Scrivisses with all that pepper in the sauce? I
simply will not stay here if I can't get the food I want.
But I feel tired. I don't want to take that long drive to
the city. Put the car away.' *
The girl half-turned, hesitated an instant, quickly
turned back.
'I might go anyway,' she said. 'I might take Miss
Hamilton. She'd like it.'
'And leave me to lunch here alone? Good Heavens,
Christine, are you crazy? Anyhow, you've got to talk to
Monsieur Delande about the food. Besides, Miss Hamil-
ton is going to play Russian bank with me right after
lunch. She couldn't go to the city and get back in time.
You know I need someone to put me to sleep: she could
not go, possibly. As for your going without me — I never
heard of such a thing! You put the car away this minute,
and then telephone to the hairdresser that I'm not com-
ing. Then I think it wouldn't be a bad thing if you did
my hair yourself, with that dry-shampoo stuff. Hurry
up.'


I Come to Neyronnes 15
'All right, mother,' the girl said, in an amiable, matter-
of-course fashion, and turned toward the automobile
again. But before she got into her luxurious equipage
she walked around the engine and looked at it, not lift-
ing the hood, but just regarding the front of the car;
and the thing that I saw in her face was tenderness. It
made me think of Lindbergh's 'We.' But it made me
think of more than that. She was alone here, this girl
Christine, with a selfish pig of a mother, and all she really
had to love was her car.
And it did not occur to me to lament, now, that the
solitude of Neyronnes was non-existent, and that there
would be at least three English-speaking females living
in the same house with me and chattering all over the
place. It is quite true, and I confess it without shame,
that at that moment and from that moment I had for-
gotten all about solitude, in thinking of the strange look
in a girl's eyes — eyes brown and wide and unnaturally
bright, set far apart below a broad forehead in a lovely
pale face. If she had been happy, she would have been
very beautiful, this girl Christine. As it was, she was a
troubling creature: there was something about her that,
in this first glimpse certainly, I could not understand.


CHAPTER II
I GREET OTHER REFUGEES
By the time I had finished unpacking, had filled in the
police blank which took the place of hotel registration,
and had written a note to Geneva to have my box of
books sent on to me here, it was after twelve o'clock.
Except for Christine's appearance under my window,
there had been nothing to molest the quiet of the morn-
ing: a few cars had passed, some low French voices had
sounded undisturbingly from outside, there had been a
few barely audible movements within the house. At
noon the bells in the church-tower rang, with a deep,
musical note, and in the fields out beyond the ramparts
I could indistinctly see people moving about.
Shortly before half-past twelve I locked the door of
my room behind me and walked down the street and
around the sharp corner under the handsome fourteenth-
century mansion, and so into the Place. Madame my
hostess was sitting at a table in front of the inn door,
and although she spoke no English she made me under-
stand, as I approached her, that I might have luncheon
either in the house or on the veranda opposite, which
she called the galerie. I chose the galerie, and she said,
'Tout de suite,' and signaled to the maid. And I went
into the veranda and waited while my table was being set.
It was not a veranda at all, but a broad space, as wide
as a good-sized American porch, under the built-out
upper story of a six-hundred-year-old house. The floor
was of hard pebbled dirt, and on the outside, between


I Greet Other Refugees 17
the supporting pillars, a wall had been built up knee-
high and set with bright geraniums in pots. Nasturtiums
grew in a bed along the veranda, and vines clambered
up the side of the house, with its plaster wall and old
red beams. Sitting in the wicker chairs of the galerie,
behind that flowered proscenium, it was exactly as if
one looked out from a box at a play!
But when I went in to have my luncheon, there was
no one there. A table laid for one guest only stood at
the far end, next to the house wall. My own table was
being set near the end closest to the entrance, which
was the end closest to the door of the inn. And I was
well along in my hors d'ceuvres before the occupant of
the second table appeared.
I was thinking about the girl Christine, and not un-
naturally I was wondering whether I should see her at
lunch, and also how long it would be before, in the eti-
quette which obtains among traveling fellow-country-
men, I might venture to introduce myself to her, when
I heard a little scuffle on the dirt floor quite near me;
and, looking around hastily, I saw a dog. If I had been
surprised by the sight of the opulent Packard car and
the lovely American girl in the simple fastnesses of
Neyronnes, I was scarcely less surprised by this dog.
For I had never seen a dog quite like him; I had rarely
seen so noble a dog before.
His body was built much like an Irish terrier's, al-
though a little larger, but his hair was not rough and
reddish, but almost silky, and blue-black. He had a
'boxed jaw' and a handsome squared beard, and about
midway in his long and shapely head his eyes looked
out upon the world with an expression of deep thought-
fulness and the kindliest good-will. He had none of an


18 Murder in a Walled Town
Irish terrier's look of pugnacity nor a Scotty's air of
impenetrable reserve nor the curious childlike attrac-
tiveness of a Sealyham, nor was he big and powerful
like an Airedale; but he seemed to me to possess the
most admirable charms of all these breeds; and he was
far more beautiful than any of them. I like dogs, and
I've known a good many, but this one was new to me.
In any case, however, I was his firm friend at first sight.
He stopped, looked at me, wagged his tail, and ap-
proached closer. From around the curve of the cobbled
ruelle someone spoke to him.
'Fergus,' said a woman's voice, 'you must remember
that not everyone likes dogs.'
'I do,' I said, and jumped to my feet as the dog's
mistress came into the galerie.
As I recall my instantaneous recognition of Miss
Hamilton's voice as American — the natural instantane-
ous recognition of any American voice — I am conscious
of a little wave of irritation over the so frequent im-
plication that an 'American' voice is a voice which is
uncultivated or harsh or drawling or in some way neces-
sarily ugly. Many American voices are unpleasing, I
know, just as many English voices are unpleasing; but
the English language as spoken by an American of cul-
tivation and good breeding is certainly as fair-sounding
a thing as the English language can be; it was such a
voice that I heard speaking now. The girl Christine
and her mother had clear and well-modulated and at-
tractive voices, too, even though the older woman's
tones broke into such peevish notes. But Miss Hamil-
ton's voice was really beautiful, and I expected to see
a very personable, not to say impressive, individual
come into the galerie in the wake of the handsome dog.


I Greet Other Refugees 19
What I saw was a middle-aged woman of average
height, insignificant features and coloring, tired gray
eyes, dressed in an old-fashioned jacket suit that was
actually ragged. Naturally I did not observe many de-
tails about her in that first moment, but even then I
noticed that her coat was threadbare and had been
darned. And even in that first quarter-hour I felt,
rather than saw, that she was completely indifferent to
her shabbiness. I had never seen an American woman
who looked so poor, and I had never seen any human
being who seemed more of an aristocrat.
She answered my somewhat impulsive remark.
'I'm glad you like dogs,' she said, 'but you mustn't
let Fergus and me interrupt your luncheon. Sit down.'
I continued to stand, and patted the dog's head.
'Won't you let me introduce myself?' I asked. And
at that she smiled.
'They can't pronounce your name,' she told me, 'but
I already know something about you. You are an Ameri-
can. You have just come from Switzerland. You like
Neyronnes. You are'goingtto stay awhile. Aurelie has
told me all that already. Aurelie is the plump maid.
She has also told me that you are tris gentil and that
she hopes Mrs. Wilde and Miss Wilde and I will find
you sympathique.' She laughed. 'You didn't expect to
meet any other Americans here, did you?'
'Well, no,' I admitted. And she chuckled again.
'If you will have your table moved up to the other
end, near mine,' she suggested, 'I will tell you about us
while you eat your luncheon — while we eat our luncheon,
I should say.'
Whereupon, naturally, I picked up my little table
and moved it myself. The waitress (there were only


20
Murder in a Walled Town
two maidservants in constant attendance at the Auberge
de Vieux Neyronnes, and this was the other one) brought
my neighbor's hors d'omvres and rearranged my couvert.
The dog stretched himself out beside his mistress's
chair; and our tables were close enough together for
conversation but not close enough to feel crowded. I
thought it a pleasant arrangement.
'My name,' said my neighbor, 'is Margaret Hamil-
ton. I fancy that I am perhaps a very little less than
twice your age, and I come from New York. My carte
d'identiU declares that I am a woman without profession.'
'My name,' I responded, in the same Arabian-Nights
fashion, 'is Wayne Armitage. I am twenty-seven years
old, and I teach history in a boys' school in Paoli, Penn-
sylvania.'
'Ah,' she remarked, 'you are a little older than you
look. But in the Middle Ages I might well have been
your mother. As your history will have taught you,
we married young in those days.'
Her directness, and her little air of impersonal amuse-
ment, robbed this speech of any challenge to gallantry,
and she did not wait, indeed, for any reply. She changed
the subject, and went right on:
'Your compatriots in Neyronnes number three at
present. All females. All stuck.'
'Stuck?' I echoed. And she chuckled again. I was
beginning to realize that amusement was never far from
those gray eyes that looked so tired beneath her lined
forehead and her graying drab-brown hair. And when
she talked in her odd, gay, individual fashion, her mouth,
which in repose was merely nondescript, became some-
how almost fascinating, so alive was it, so alive did her
whole face become.


I Greet Other Refugees 21
'Stuck,'she repeated. 'Stranded. How are the mighty
fallen — I mean the mighty dollars, my child. They are
dropping to a new low...'
'Oh!' I cried, in sudden understanding. 'That's why
I'm here, too!'
'I thought,' said Miss Hamilton, 'that that was pos-
sible.' And the tiny wrinkles played about her eyes and
mouth as mirthfully as if they had been dimples, as
mirthfully as if she had been carefree, and pretty, and
young. Here was someone, certainly, who could con-
template the fall of the dollar, even the fact of being
'stranded,' with genuine amusement.
And then she held her hand aloft for a moment in the
consumption of an olive, and I saw, more clearly than
I had yet seen it, the fringiness about her cuff. I saw,
too, that at the elbow the sleeve of her jacket would
soon be worn through completely where it was already
darned. I felt a little embarrassed all of a sudden, and,
as so often happens in such cases, I took refuge in talking
about myself. I told her about my stay in Geneva,
and my hopes for a summer's traveling, and my selection of
Neyronnes as a haven when the dollar went down; and
she was sympathetic, and serious.
'You couldn't have made a better choice,' she assured
me. 'I know France pretty well, and I don't know any
place where you could get more real reward for so little
money — in the kind of reality you want. Neyronnes
is a perfectly fascinating spot; I come here often. And
the inn is admirable: it is well-kept and comfortable,
and the food is delicious. The Delandes are very nice
people, and very kind. You'll love Neyronnes, I know,
and everything about it. And, speaking of food, here
come the Scrivisscs.'


22
Murder in a Walled Town
It was my introduction to those craw-dads of the
mountain streams of France, which are served in so
many different ways according to the specialty of the
region, and I found them very tasty. But at the moment
I did not give this pitce de rSsistance the attention it de-
served. The appearance of the Scrivisses made me think
of Christine's mother, and I found myself wondering,
for the sake of Christine's peace of mind, whether they
would be peppery. Mine were. And my new neighbor
noticed that, too.
'They have two ways of doing the Scrivisses here,' she
said. 'This way uses a lot of pepper. But if there is too
much for your individual taste, all you have to do is to
say so, and the next time yours will be cooked with less
seasoning. Almost all Mrs. Wilde's food is cooked
specially for her. Mrs. Wilde,' she added, 'is an invalid.'
I thought of the Packard.
'Stranded, too?' I asked.
'Oh, yes,' Miss Hamilton answered easily. 'The
Wildes are stranded, too. The Wildes are "absolutely
broke." If there is one thing that this crise has probably
taught you already, Mr. Armitage, it is that there are
marked degrees to absolute "broke-ness."'
Her voice was whimsical, but it was kind as well. I
confess that for the moment I did not feel quite sure
what she was talking about. All I could think of to say
was that it must be very hard to be worried about money
when one was ill.
'Yes,' she said, 'it must be. Mrs. Wilde is a very
pathetic woman. I am hoping,' she went on, in her
lovely voice, 'that your being here will pep her up a bit.'
What I felt was a quick resentment at being expected
to pep up Mrs. Wilde. From what I had heard of her


I Greet Other Refugees 23
conversation, from what it had told me of her attitude
toward her child and her neighbors, I wished only to
give Mrs. Wilde a good hard slap — and since that was
manifestly impossible, a good cold shoulder. But of
course I could see that she was pathetic: an invalid, in
exile, suffering, suddenly poor...
'I had hoped,' Miss Hamilton continued, 'that Fergus
would entertain her. But unfortunately she isn't inter-
ested in dogs.'
At the sound of his name, Fergus looked up and yawned
pleasantly. And as I agreed that it was indeed unfortu-
nate for anyone not to be interested in canines, I took
the liberty of asking what kind of dog Fergus was.
'A Kerry blue terrier,' his mistress answered. 'I got
him in England five years ago. I'll spare you the list of
his ancestors' and relations' championships, and just
tell you at once that he himself has never been shown.
He is simply my pet dog, and a good one — though he's a
trifle big to live in one room in a hotel. When I got
him my life was — er — less confined. But,' she added
cheerfully, without a pause, 'he is very adaptable. He
is always well-behaved, and I think he is happy.'
Well, I thought to myself, Miss Hamilton loved her
dog. The girl Christine loved her car. And Christine's
mother? Christine's mother loved nothing in the world
but Mrs. Wilde, I was already prepared to guess.
A few cars were driving one by one into the Place,
coming by the narrow street which was the only en-
trance for vehicles, circling the big linden, parking on
the grass plot by the fourth side of the square, and de-
positing their passengers to go into the house for luncheon
or pause under the tree for apSritifs.
. 'Neyronnes is famous among the French, although


24
Murder in a Walled Town
very few foreigners know about it,' Miss Hamilton re-
marked. 'There are often a good many people here on
Saturday and Sunday, and after the fourteenth of July —
or rather, beginning with the fourteenth of July — there
is a real "summer season," and the auberge is usually
full. But now it is very quiet: nobody at the inn except
us poor Americans. We have some interesting resident
neighbors, though. That beautiful house on the corner,
as you come into the Place, is the summer home of a
very charming countess who was born near here. It is
the realest restoration I have ever seen — if only they
could have done Carcassonne like that! And on the
chemin de ronde'
She broke off suddenly. Christine Wilde came out
of the inn, brilliant in her orange dress against the shad-
owy interior, and crossed the cobbles and the galerie,
swiftly, to our tables.
'Miss Hamilton,' she began, without apology, 'mother
says, will you please come and play Russian bank with
her just as soon as you finish your luncheon?'
'Certainly,' said Miss Hamilton, and rose at once.
'Is she ready now? I'll come right away. May I present
Mr. Armitage? Miss Wilde will tell you more about
Neyronnes, Mr. Armitage. I was just beginning, Chris-
tine, with some of the handsome houses on the chemin de
ronde.'
'Oh.' Miss Wilde's monosyllable sounded absent-
minded, and, I thought, none too pleased. Miss Hamilton
went into the inn, with her dog at her heels, and Christine
sat down abruptly.
'Miss Hamilton is awfully nice. She is so kind to
mother,' she said. 'My mother,' she added,'is an invalid.
And naturally she gets a trifle bored in a quiet little


I Greet Other Refugees 25
place like this. She will be glad to meet you, I am
sure, Mr. — what is your name? Oh, Armitage? Thank
you. As I was saying, Mr. Armitage, I am sure she
will be glad to meet you. It will give her a new interest.'
I felt, this time, quite definitely annoyed. It was not
that I was unwilling to be kind to a chance acquaintance
who was so unfortunate as to be an invalid. It was that
both Miss Hamilton and Christine spoke as if enter-
taining Mrs. Wilde would naturally constitute my first
and keenest desire...
Had I come to a walled village in the middle of France
to give a new interest to a selfish sick woman, I asked
myself? I'd be hanged if I had! And I was about to
change the subject as pointedly as politeness would
allow, when I caught again the troubled look in the
girl's bright eyes.
'I shall be very glad to meet your mother,' I said,
instead. And Christine answered as if that were a matter
of course.
'Oh, yes,' she said, 'everyone is. My mother is very
charming, Mr. Armitage. Everyone adores her.'
I though of the conversation I had overheard.
'Perhaps she will let me keep her company some-
times when you are out in your car,' I ventured. But
at that Christine looked puzzled.
'Out in the car?' she echoed. 'But I don't go out in
the car without my mother, except for little errands,
and they never take long. It is quite true,' she added
weightily, 'that mother doesn't care much for going on
little drives herself, so we don't use the car a great
deal. But of course I never take it out for pleasure unless
my mother goes along.'
'Well,' I began, knowing that what I wanted to say


26
Murder in a Walled Town
sounded silly, but feeling that Christine's entertain-
ment was almost as important as her mother's, and de-
termined to put my oar in somehow,'I confess that when
I saw that big car of yours, and saw that you drove it,
I was seized with the feverish hope that you might be
so kind as to show me a little of the country — with
Miss Hamilton, if your mother didn't feel like going,
too...'
'Oh, no!' cried Christine. Then, showing a little
normal embarrassment on the heels of this almost
automatic reaction, she gave a rather awkward little
laugh. 'Please excuse me. I didn't mean to be rude.
Of course I see your point of view. But of course I
couldn't go for a drive without my mother, and, as I
told you, she doesn't enjoy motoring very much. Mother
doesn't like me to take Miss Hamilton, even when I go
on an errand,' she added in a matter-of-course fashion,
'because, you see, that leaves her quite alone, and that
is so hard for her.'
I gave up.
'If there is any way in which I can be of service to
your mother, I shall be very glad,' I lied, and I was
rewarded by a hint of real friendliness in Christine's
absent-minded smile.
But, needless to say, I was not enjoying this conversa-
tion! I was glad to welcome another interruption. This
was the appearance of Miss Hamilton once more in
the doorway, and with her a radiant vision: a woman
whose age might have been anywhere from twenty-five
to forty or so, whose chestnut-brown hair waved back
beautifully from a broad, low, unlined forehead, whose
cheeks and lips were barely touched with make-up that
was applied with an artist's hand, and whose exquisitely


I Greet Other Refugees 27
smart blue frock brought out deep and lovely tones in
her gray-blue eyes. French, of course, I said to myself —
frankly glad to see anyone so vivid and attractive, for
as a companionable neighbor Christine had proved a
disappointment — a French fellow-boarder, and a very
charming one... And then the newcomer spoke one word.
'Christine,' she said.
And as I got to my feet I actually stumbled in my
astonishment. That was the voice that had spoken from
the window. This was Christine's invalid mother...
She came into the galerie, followed by Miss Hamilton —
who, it is unnecessary to point out, looked more than
ever shabby and middle-aged and insignificant — and
by Miss Hamilton's handsome dog. And although she
had spoken to her daughter, it was toward me that she
advanced, and to me that she held out her hand, while
her face lighted up with the most cordial and animated
of smiles.
'I am so glad to meet you, Mr. Armitage,' she said.
'I introduce myself, you see, and I welcome you to
Neyronnes. I have just been hearing about you from
our other compatriot' — she indicated Miss Hamilton
with an affable gesture — 'and I am sure you will agree
with me that we must all be friends together, we for-
gotten Americans.' She paused rather dramatically, and
Miss Hamilton gave a deprecatory chuckle.
'Oh, come now,' she interposed. 'It isn't so bad as
that — "forgotten Americans..."'
Mrs. Wilde raised her hand and let it fall again, both
to command silence and to emphasize her pronouncement,
'Oh, yes, it is!' she declared. 'We are all forgotten
Americans together, Mr. Armitage. It may not be so
bad for you — you are a man. But the rest of us are


28 Murder in a Walled Town
forgotten women, Mr. Armitage, forsaken and stranded
by that mad Democratic administration, in this beastly
country that defaults on its debts.'
Miss Hamilton had ceased to chuckle. Her face was
set in rather hard lines, and as I glanced at her standing
there behind the radiant vision that was Christine Wilde's
mother, I was surprised to note that her cheeks were
flushed, and that she looked as if she were having a
hard time to disguise her feelings. It came over me for
the first time — and I remembered it later — that self-
control, for Margaret Hamilton, was not so easy as she
made it appear.
'Don't let us begin with controversial subjects,' she
said very quietly. 'I am sure that Mr. Armitage doesn't
want to plunge into an international argument before he
has been in France twenty-four hours. And you know
that I don't agree with your feeling on either of those
points, Mrs. Wilde.' She smiled now, gaily again. 'Let's
keep the peace,' she concluded. And Mrs. Wilde smiled
too.
'Oh, I always want to keep the peace,' she averred.
'I am a most good-natured woman, Mr. Armitage, and
absolutely unbiased in my judgments. But I really must
warn you, in the most good-natured way, that Miss
Hamilton is positively pro-French; I tell her it is nothing
short of unpatriotic. But I will tell you right in front of
her that I never allow her wrong ideas to stand in the
way of our friendship. I always make a point of looking
at both sides of a question, myself. Don't you think
that is best, Mr. Armitage? Indeed, as I sometimes say
to my little girl, I don't know how I could endure my
sad life if I hadn't cultivated the power to see other
people's points ot view. And I want to tell you that


I Greet Other Refugees 29
I am very fond of Miss Hamilton, even if she does stand
up for Roosevelt and actually like the French1'
I really felt very much embarrassed, and rather put
upon; and I decided that the best way for me to receive
this silly speech was to treat it as a joke. All the same,
I wasn't going back on my convictions — nor yet on
Miss Hamilton. So I laughed, and said, 'So do I,' as
lightly and as firmly as I could. And then I added, 'And
I hope that you will be generous enough to like me, in
spite of my opinions, too. Are you,' I went on, before
she could interrupt me, 'staying long in Neyronnes?'
'I fear so,' she said. 'I am the prisoner of poverty. I
am absolutely broke. I am one of the victims of this
terrible depression, Mr. Armitage. I am staying for some
weeks at Neyronnes because the inn is cheap. Of course
it is not at all what my little girl and I are used to, as
I am sure you understand. But my little girl is happy
wherever I am — she is one of those fortunate children
whose mother can be a real companion to her, Mr.
Armitage. Don't you feel sorry for children whose
mothers cannot share their youth? When my little girl
says that her mother is her best friend, I know that she
is telling the simple truth. And of course that makes it
easy for her to endure life in this place. But it is not so
easy for me, Mr. Armitage. If I were not naturally
unselfish and uncomplaining, I really do not know how
I could stand my misfortunes — I really do not know...'
She went on and on. Her voice flowed like some un-
ceasing stream of bright, hard, molten metal. It had no
softness in it. I had the feeling that it had almost no
sense. And of course it had become apparent to me that
Mrs. Wilde was as far from being 'absolutely broke' as
she was from being unselfish and uncomplaining.


30
Murder in a Walled Town
As I set down even this much of our conversation, I
realize that it may seem altogether trivial and irrelevant.
But it is not that, really. For in those first chatty ex-
changes we all learned a good deal about each other,
became fairly well acquainted. And I do want, if I can,
to present some picture of us first comers as we were at
Neyronnes on my first day there, before anyone had
any inkling of tragedy. For when tragedy came it en-
gulfed all four of us — Mrs. Wilde, so utterly selfish, so
obvious; Margaret Hamilton, who seemed not to be
selfish, and who was certainly very far from obvious;
the girl Christine, whose youth was being crushed out of
existence by her mother's steam-roller egotism; and even
the innocent and puzzled stranger that was myself...


CHAPTER III
I OVERHEAR A CONVERSATION
Naturally enough, I took a dislike to Mrs. Wilde, with
her smart clothes and her well-cared-for complexion
and her 'animated' ways. Self-conscious, self-righteous,
self-centered, absolutely self-absorbed, she seemed never
to give a thought to her daughter, or to anyone else.
Christine existed merely, one would have concluded, to
wait upon her mother, and to flatter her at the same
time; and the real tragedy of the situation lay in the
fact that Christine seemed long ago to have reached
that conclusion herself. Even Miss Hamilton seemed to
me to exaggerate Mrs. Wilde's helplessness and pathos,
the necessity for being 'kind' to her, for indulging her
constantly.
I was forced to admit to myself that Mrs. Wilde had a
certain attractiveness; no one could deny that she was
'easy to look at'; and she had a kind of vividness, along
with her self-assurance, which gave her naturally the
center of the stage. If she had not been such an egotist,
she might have been really charming, I thought, in a
superficial sort of way. But I did not find her pathetic:
I found her detestable. She was worse than a steam-
roller. She was a vampire.
But, mercifully, she troubled me very little. The
worst of my selfish fears were not realized: I was not
called upon to supply Christine's mother with a new in-
terest, nor even to pep her up. We got acquainted with
each other, as I have said, in the middle of my first day


32
Murder in a Walled Town
at Neyronnes. But when Mrs. Wilde and Miss Hamilton
went off to play Russian bank, and Christine announced
that she was going to oil the car, I was left to myself,
and I continued to be left to myself through the next
few days. I strolled out, that afternoon, to 'poke about*
in Neyronnes, and I had a magnificent time. When I
came back to the Place, at half-past four or so, Christine,
in overalls and a jumper, was coming out of the garage,
and she laughed in a girl's gay, unself-conscious fashion
as she held out grimy hands for me to see.
'I've just finished,' she said. 'It's only the little five-
hundred-mile oiling, but it's a dirty job. I love it,' she
added. 'Don't you like to get good and dirty, fussing
around a car?' And when I admitted that I didn't
share that ideal of pleasure, she said, quite simply and
naturally, 'I adore it. It makes me feel so free.'
This, certainly, was a different Christine. This was
the real one, a thoroughly normal human being... I
should have liked to go on talking with her now — an
oil-stained girl in overalls — but she remarked immedi-
ately that she must go and clean up, and she slipped
into the side door of the inn and disappeared.
There were several unexpected passages and ways in
and out, around that auberge at Neyronnes. I took the
more obvious route, by the curving ruelle, and I did not
meet Christine, nor see or hear her in the pavilion.
And the days that followed were quiet and charming.
I almost always met Miss Hamilton at mealtimes, and
we chatted pleasantly on subjects that were usually
completely impersonal. The Wildes ate in the picturesque
low-ceilinged room that was the salle a manger of the
inn, and I saw them very little and spoke with them
scarcely at all.


I Overhear a Conversation 33
A good many French people came and went during
the daytime, and three days after my arrival a scholarly-
looking man with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor
in his buttonhole came to stay. He drove up in a small
roadster, before luncheon, and settled himself in one of
the first-floor rooms of the pavillon. Miss Hamilton
told me that his name was Henri de Brassac, and that
he was very particular about having a room on the
garden side of the house — not on the street.
'So Madame has put him in the double room next to
the Wildes,' she said. 'It's a big quiet room, under the
unfinished part of the second story, and they have taken
out the other bed: I hope that he is paying an extra
price for a double room and staying an extra long time.
It seems that the single rooms on the second floor, the
only single rooms that would have suited him, are both
engaged from tomorrow. As a matter of fact,' she added,
'it will be much quieter for Mrs. Wilde to have just
one man next to her, unless he turns out to be noisy.
He doesn't look noisy, does he?'
He didn't. He looked, and was, almost completely
silent. Miss Hamilton, with her perfect French and
her friendly manners, exchanged a few formal sentences
with him on the day after his arrival. But although
polite he was certainly not gregarious. Mrs. Wilde
ignored him. I think she was prepared automatically
to dislike whoever had the room next to hers. She and
Christine had the biggest room in the hotel, an enormous
chamber with two windows on the garden and one on
the street, and to the moment of the Frenchman's ad-
vent they had been alone on the first floor.
And yet, on one of my first nights at Neyronnes, I
could have sworn that I heard sounds in or near the


34 Murder in a Walled Town
empty storage-loft on that floor, in the middle of the night.
There was a glorious full moon, and I had taken to
strolling around Neyronnes fairly late, to get the effect
of the walls and the gates and the old buildings in the
moonlight. On this particular evening there was a
party of some sort in the main building of the inn, and
there were a good many people moving about the little
citadel. But along about half-past ten it suddenly came
on to rain; there was a scattering of the party's guests
and a sudden procession of cars out of the village; and I,
having been down on the hillside, well below the ram-
parts, had a steep run to get home.
As I passed the kitchen, I saw both the maids cleaning
up after the party, and, as I looked up at the windows
of the pavillon, I happened to notice that they were
all dark. From the street there was a side door into
an ancient building which adjoined the pavillon and
was used as a sort of storage annex to it, and I had al-
ready learned to use this as an entrance to the pavillon
garden — one could go straight through a stone-flagged
room where the garden furniture was stored, and out
another door into the garden itself. And I remembered
Miss Hamilton's telling me that there were stairs from
the ground-floor up to a somewhat neglected storage-
room on the first story of the ancient annex, and that
there a door had been cut in the house wall into the
first-floor corridor of the pavillon itself. The room occu-
pied by the maid Aurdlie also opened out of this storage-
room in the older house.
By the time I approached the pavillon, it was raining
so hard that I wished I knew how to find that sheltered
short-cut. But it seemed best not to risk explorations
in the darkness, so I went along the street side of the


I Overhear a Conversation 35
house as usual and around to the front door. I looked up
and saw that the Wildes' room was unlighted. Inside,
even the hall light had been turned out — that surprised
me — and I had the feeling that everyone in the building
was sound asleep. But as I climbed the first flight of
stairs, I thought I heard the sound of someone, or
something, moving at the back end of the house.
It seemed to me that there was a person there who was
trying not to make a sound, and who was almost, but
not quite, succeeding. At the head of the stairs I stopped
and listened, but the slight noise had ceased. I walked
down to the door that led into the older building, and
stood still. There was no longer any sound of movement,
but it seemed to me that I heard heavy, troubled breath-
ing somewhere. I almost tried the door in the house
wall, or the doors of the nearest bedrooms. But after
all, I told myself, there was nothing alarming in these
sounds — neither the actual suggestion of a marauder
nor anything that might be taken as an appeal for help —
and this was a hotel...
Besides, the maid Aur6lie would have had plenty of
time to come in by the back way from the kitchen,
and these were just the kind of sounds that she would
make if she were out of breath from hurry and trying
not to disturb anyone — I did not realize, then, how
thick those walls were! I decided that I should only
make myself look foolish if I tried to butt in anywhere,
and I went back along the hall and up the stairs toward
my room. I am not afraid of burglars or of ghosts, but
I do hate to look absurd! I felt more sure of myself
when, as I passed Miss Hamilton's door on the way to
my own, I heard the dog Fergus give a low growl. And
I went to my room and went to sleep.


36 Murder in a Walled Town
But the next day I did go to the trouble of finding out
that there had been no extra guest in the inn that night.
And Miss Hamilton happened to mention that Aurelie
had complained of having been kept working in the
kitchen until after midnight. I ended up by reminding
myself that a stranger could not feel called upon to
explain every sound he might think he heard in a hotel
at night, especially if the hotel were an old and oddly
planned building, as this one was.
And then the next day, on a morning which had
dawned fresh and lovely after rain, as it often did at
Neyronnes, the Frenchman Henri de Brassac came.
And on the afternoon of the day after that, we welcomed
the Sherrills. I never mentioned to anyone the sounds
of the night. And in a few days I was ready to admit
that I must have imagined them.
The arrival of the Sherrills was pleasantly dramatic.
It was Friday, always a quiet day at Neyronnes, and I
had taken a notion to have tea under the linden tree
and had asked Miss Hamilton to join me. Miss Hamilton
continued to be a good deal of a mystery to me, moving
like a princess in her complete unconsciousness of her
poverty-stricken appearance, and giving out so much
information on the subject of everything and everybody
except herself. I enjoyed talking with Miss Hamilton,
and I had told myself that I wanted to talk with her
further about Neyronnes — the history, or legend, of
the grim towered structure, for example, that was known
as the prison-house.
But as we sat down to our agreeable little English
tea, I realized that the subject I truly wished to discuss
was Christine Wilde. I had seen her very little, and
thought about her a great deal. I was terribly puzzled


I Overhear a Conversation 37
and distressed about her. Not Miss Hamilton's own
untold story, not the picturesqueness nor the past of
Neyronne's, held my imagination as did this lovely
caged bird of a girl...
'How long has Mrs. Wilde been an invalid?' I asked
abruptly and without apology.
And somewhat to my surprise Miss Hamilton answered,
'I don't know.'
'I never saw the Wildes until eight weeks ago,' she
went on. 'During the last two summers I have spent a
good deal of time at Neyronnes, and just after I got
here this spring Mrs. Wilde and her daughter came.
Mrs. Wilde was very much upset about her financial
losses, and then the fall of the dollar on top of that.
She said the state of her health was such that she did
not want to take the long journey to America, so she
was looking for some place where she could live cheaply
in France. It seems obvious, too, that she has lived so
long in Europe that she has got out of touch with things
in the United States, and she seems to have no friends
or family there now. She is one of those passionately
patriotic expatriates who is always bragging about her
own country and hating the country she's in; but that,'
Miss Hamilton commented, 'is just a type. One is al-
ways stubbing one's toe on them in France. Mrs. Wilde
seems to have been in poor health for some years. So
far as I have gathered, she is the widow of a naval officer.
Christine, it seems, was taken out of school four years
ago, when her father died — she was sixteen then —
and she has been wandering about Europe with her
mother ever since. They both speak four foreign lan-
guages fluently, and they are well acquainted with every
fashionable health resort on the continent of Europe.


38 Murder in a Walled Town
They don't go to England, because they don't like the
climate. Now, you see, they are economizing.'
'But Christine1' I ejaculated. 'How frightfully rough
on her! The poor child seems'
I never got the words out, about what Christine seemed;
and perhaps it was just as well. At that moment a small
motor car came into the square, and a woman's voice
cried out, above the gentle sound of the engine,
'But, John, this isn't possible!'
The car came to a standstill behind Miss Hamilton,
and I could see what she could not — an exceedingly
charming woman, dark-haired, youngish, and very much
alive, who put her head out of the car window and looked
about her, without moving, otherwise, at all.
'There is no such thing!' she cried, again. 'We're
dreaming it!'
The Kerry blue terrier, who had been lying quietly,
as usual, at Miss Hamilton's feet, jumped up, surpris-
ingly, and made an almost puppyish dash toward the
strange automobile. And,
'Why, here's a dog like Fergus!' the charming young
woman said.
Miss Hamilton sprang from her chair, turned around,
and flung herself toward the newcomers as rapturously
as had Fergus himself. The young woman jumped out
of the car. A man's voice cried,
'Hullo! Hullo! Hullo!'
'It is Margot!' the strange young woman exclaimed,
and threw her arms around Miss Hamilton's neck.
'It is Elinor!' Miss Hamilton laughed, and there was
a personal happiness in her lovely voice that I had not
heard there before. 'How do you do, John?' she went on,
and the man got out of the automobile and shook hands


I Overhear a Conversation 39
with her, less impulsively, but with a pleasure that was
just as plain to see.
He was a tall, spare, dark-eyed man, who looked dis-
tinguished without looking conspicuous, and I was in-
stantly glad to see him. And, from that first moment
of their arrival, the Sherrills were good for us all.
It was good for Miss Hamilton to be with her old
friends — friends of the days when she had not been
shabby, when there had been no incongruity in her
possession of a magnificent thoroughbred dog, when
her hair had not begun to turn gray. It was good for
me to have another English-speaking man to talk with.
And it was the Sherrills who succeeded in providing
Christine with a little holiday. What Mrs. Wilde would
never have thought of granting to Christine's own re-
quest, what she would have refused to concede to Miss
Hamilton's pleading or to my argument, she gave read-
ily enough to the first suggestion from the well-known
novelist John Sherrill and his exquisite wife: she let
them take Christine with them to Tournus and Cluny.
But I am getting ahead of my story... What Mrs.
Sherrill said next was that Neyronnes seemed incredible.
And Miss Hamilton answered, 'Why, of course,
Elinor, that is what everyone says!'
Then I was introduced to the strangers, and the suit-
cases were dumped out on the cobbles, and Madame
and Monsieur came out to greet their new guests, and
the smart little coupe was driven into the garage. But
when Madame asked if the newcomers wished to go to
their rooms, Mrs. Sherrill, whose French was as perfect
as Miss Hamilton's own, declared that she didn't want
ever to leave the Place des Halles, and couldn't they
just have tea?


40
Murder in a Walled Town
And Mr. Sherrill said, in English,
'We've engaged our rooms ahead, so why bother?'
So we all sat down together and fresh tea came, and
we really had an awfully good time. Henri de Brassac
strolled past us, coming up the steep path from the
Lower Gate and the Promenade des Lices, but he did
not speak to us, and I thought he looked bored at the
sight of more Americans. The Sherrills explained that
they had arrived on the De Grasse ten days ago, and
had driven by easy stages to Neyronnes, where they in-
tended to stay awhile.
'We had planned this summer in France and Italy,
and when the country went off the gold standard we
made up our minds to come anyway, and just stay put
somewhere,' Elinor Sherrill said. 'John knew about
Neyronnes, so here we are. Isn't it heavenly?'
She was younger than Miss Hamilton, and far, far
more prosperous. Even in these last years of upheaval,
life had been fairly easy for Elinor Sherrill, I guessed,
where Margaret Hamilton had found it hard. But it
was clear that these three Americans had come, originally,
from the same stratum of American life: they were very
different as individuals, but, as the saying is, they spoke
the same language. And I was more pleased than I can
say that they seemed to accept me as a real neighbor,
almost as one of themselves. I wished that Christine
might be having tea with us, away from her selfish, silly,
impossible mother. But with that one cloud upon my
contentment, I was well satisfied with our partie carrle.
And when the Sherrills met Christine, that evening,
they liked her. And I could see almost at once that they
were planning something that would give her a bit of a
breathing-spell.


I Overhear a Conversation 41
Before they had it, however, I had an embarrassing
experience. I was the unwilling auditor, that very even-
ing, of a conversation which, later, I would have given
anything I possessed not to have heard...
It was simple enough, the incident. I was making
one of my evening prowls about Neyronnes, and I sat
down, as often, on the grass below the drop of the ruined
outer rampart, near the arch of the Lower Gate. The
Promenade des Lices lay between the gate and the
crumbling outer wall, and often of an evening young
men and maidens walked about there, or sat and held
each other's hands on the bench near the gate itself.
Although I knew I couldn't be seen, I never moved or
paid any attention when people passed by or stopped
near where I was sitting. Even if they talked to each
other, I couldn't understand a word they said.
So, that evening, I didn't feel troubled when I caught
the approach of light footsteps in the Lices behind me,
although the hour was a little advanced for the home-
keeping folk of Neyronnes to be wandering about.
And when I recognized the voices of the speakers, it
was too late for me to move. They were sitting on the
bench just behind me. I was sheltered only by a bit
of vine-grown wall. If I had stood up, or even tried
to crawl away, I should have been seen; and it seemed
to me important that the speakers should not know that
even the first sentence had been overheard. Better to
stay where I was, I told myself, and hope that they
would move away, or change the subject, soon.
'So, you see, clothes don't matter any more, Elinor,'
Margaret Hamilton's beautiful voice sounded clearly in
my ear. 'When one is quite desperate, as I am, one just
keeps one's mind on essentials, and gets along as best
one can from day to day.'


42
Murder in a Walled Town
'Oh, Margot, dear — desperate!' cried Mrs. Sherrill;
and Miss Hamilton went on, evenly:
'That's what it seems to me. I have an annuity of
seven hundred dollars a year. That is all there is left,
except a very small amount of cash on hand from the
sale of the last of my bonds, and that is going fast.
Everything else is gone. I don't know where it went.
I wish to Heaven I'd spent it. If I had wasted my sub-
stance on riotous living, I should have some extra-
special fun to remember, presumably. But it's all just
gone, swallowed up, disappeared. The bank says that in
time a little may come back on some of it, but that
doesn't seem to me to be a very practical hope — it
isn't a hope that the bank is willing to take any risks on,
certainly.
'And you see, Elinor,' Miss Hamilton added, 'when
you are forty-five years T>Id, and prematurely gray, and
not very strong, and have no profession and no business
experience of any sort, you can't exactly hope to get a
remunerative job. I haven't any rich relations who
will remember me in their wills, either,' she continued,
speaking for the first time a little bitterly, 'much less
help me now. I haven't even any home to go to. The
good old days are gone. I'm just finished, done for,
Elinor, unless something turns up; funny, how one finds
oneself waiting for something to turn up — and of course
nothing ever does. But — well, one gets along as best
one can. What was it young Jolyon said — "To be
kind and keep one's end up, what else is there?" That's
the way I feel. And it does me a lot of good to see you
and John, Elinor, dear. I hope you'll stay awhile.'
'I think we shall,' said Mrs. Sherrill. But she did not
allow herself to be led away from the subject in hand.


I Overhear a Conversation 43
'Margot—I can't bear the thought of your "waiting
for something to turn up." Isn't there anything we
can do?'
'No, darling,' Miss Hamilton declared firmly, 'there
isn't. I thank you with all my heart, Elinor. And I
will promise you this: if I lose my seven hundred dollars
a year and there is absolutely nothing between me and
the bread-line, I'll come to you before I think of jump-
ing into the river. But short of that, I'm not going to
borrow money I could never pay back, and I'm not
going to sponge on my friends, especially when they are
hard hit themselves, as I know you and John are, though
you are both such good sports you never say so. No,
Elinor, theft or murder seems more self-respecting than
that. And I've got to keep my self-respect,' she added.
'It's almost all I have left.'
'Self-respect and courage,' said Mrs. Sherrill softly.
'I think you have a good deal, Margot. But that won't
feed or clothe you, worse luck. And, tell me, too — if
you stay here month after month in a remote little
place like this, doesn't the monotony and loneliness get
on your nerves?'
'No, curiously enough, it really doesn't. I enjoy look-
ing on, you know. There's a good deal to look on at
even in a little place like this. And I love Neyronnes
itself, and the walks I take; I never get tired of it, truly.
So far, too, I've been able to get hold of a good many
books — lucky I read French, isn't it? And, you know,
Elinor, I've been pretty busy this last month just
trying to be nice to that poor Mrs. Wilde and her daugh-
ter. I am sorry for her — for them both. One is glad
to do what one can.'
'I suppose so.' Mrs. Sherrill was apparently not much


MURDER IN A WALLED TOWN
interested in Mrs. Wilde. Then, to my surprise, she
added, 'I like that American boy, the young teacher
who's stranded here.'
'Yes, he's nice,' Miss Hamilton agreed pleasantly.
'Well, I certainly do hope that you and John will be
able to endure our quiet life for a few weeks. Courage,
mes vieux...'
'Courage' - Elinor Sherrill repeated the word in
English.
""Courage is but a word; and yet, of words,
The only sentinel of permanence..."
That is just you, Margot.'
'Thank you,' Miss Hamilton responded, 'but —
"permanence": I'm not so sure, Elinor. What troubles
me most about this — this turning upside down of all my
world — is the effect it has on my mind and spirit, on the
real me, you know.... I never thought of myself as de-
pendent on money – I could get along on very little,
I know, if I could just be fairly sure of firm ground under
my feet. But this complete upheaval - it does queer
things to me: it almost frightens me; sometimes I feel
as if I understood the strangest depths of life, the strang-
est impulses. A sense of desperation seems to sweep
away everything, somehow — not only material luxuries,
material necessities, but one's sense of values, almost
one's sense of right and wrong...' She broke off sud-
denly, and when she spoke again it was in a different
tone. "Thank you for quoting Galsworthy to me, and
for believing in me, Elinor. That helps — you don't
know how it helps. I keep saying that I won't be downed
by material things — you give me courage to say it
again...


I Overhear a Conversation 45
She had risen from the bench, and I heard their light
steps fade away up the hill as they walked back toward
the village. I sat still for a long time on the grass below
the rampart, thinking that I ought to try to forget the
personal revelations I had heard, and knowing that I
never could — that I really did not want to. At that
moment, I felt glad to have got a better understanding
of Miss Hamilton.


CHAPTER IV
I MEET HORACE BRAYE
The Sherrills asked Miss Hamilton to share a table
with them in the galerie, and I was glad to see that they
always had wine for luncheon and dinner, and that
Mr. Sherrill always filled Miss Hamilton's glass. I
drank the red wine of the country, myself, and it was
only five francs a bottle. But Miss Hamilton had not
been having wine, and I guessed that she liked it —
that it was one of the amenities she had been used to.
I had of course realized that Miss Hamilton had been
accustomed to 'better days' — to far better days than I,
for instance, had ever known. And for all her beautiful
patrician dignity, I had guessed that she did not find
poverty easy. As for the Sherrills, they had been forced
to a new economy, too, and from being relatively rich
they had now become relatively poor; but they never
talked about it. The only person who talked about
poverty was Mrs. Wilde.
In no conversation, however brief, did she neglect to
mention the fact — or, I should say, the fiction — that
she was 'broke.' And yet, that did not prevent her
speaking scornfully of people who were actually poor.
She even made a condescending reference, once or twice,
to the Sherrills' little Chevrolet, although she was enough
of an intellectual snob to treat the Sherrills with great
respect as a rule. To me, she paid little attention; after
her first affable greeting she seemed to have dismissed
me as of no account; and after that short exchange of a
few words at the garage door, her daughter and I had


I Meet Horace Bra ye 47
no personal conversation whatever. Yet the Sherrills,
like Miss Hamilton, were always considerate to Mrs.
Wilde and her invalidism, and it did sometimes happen
that we all had coffee together in the galerie. That
was what we were doing on Saturday evening, and the
rest of us sat silent and peaceful while Mrs. Wilde prattled
of herself and her misfortunes and her opinions and her
poverty.
After an afternoon given over to many rural sight-
seers, Neyronnes and its Place des Halles were quiet
in the long evening twilight. And I, for one, was willing
to let Mrs. Wilde talk on, so long as I might be allowed
just to watch the scene before me. A woman drove a
donkey-cart across the Place. Two little girls came in
from one of the corner ruelles with a pot of milk be-
tween them, and carried it cautiously across the cobbles
to one of the more beautiful of the mediaeval houses
on the other side of the square.
The big Place could be entered only at the corners:
only one of these corner pathways was wide enough
for a motor car, and only one other, the steep descent
to the Lower Gate, would admit the passage of even a
small donkey-cart. Peasants and villagers moved very
slowly to and fro. And the whole scene, in the gently
fading light, against the background of the noble old
houses, was, as Mrs. Sherrill had said, 'incredible.' I
even forgot to feel anxious about Christine Wilde: and
I allowed myself to think that she, too, was enjoying
this quiet immemorial pageant. To her mother, I simply
was not listening; I think that no one was. Our peace
was broken only by the arrival of a motor car. It was
an enormous Lincoln, and it got around the corner and
into the Place with some difficulty.


48
Murder in a Walled Town
John Sherrill groaned. 'Here,' he announced, 'comes
another American family who crossed by the French Line.'
'With a car like that, they won't stay in Neyronnes,'
his wife murmured comfortingly.
But Mrs. Wilde fairly shrieked in admiration. 'Why,
Mr. Sherrill, you're just like Sherlock Holmes! How
do you know?'
He chuckled. 'You do me too much honor, dear
Madame Watson,' he said. 'I know they are Ameri-
cans because they have the A.A.A. badge on their car.
I know — or I guess — that they crossed on the French
Line because they have the license letter and series
number that the French Line gives you when you drive
out of Havre. And I hope that Elinor is right and that
they are too prosperous for Neyronnes. I don't like
their looks.'
Neither did I. The car had stopped in front of the
inn now, and we could plainly see the man and woman
who were its only occupants. And when the man opened
his mouth and spoke, we liked him still less.
But to say that he spoke is to make an under-state-
ment. He was purple with anger and exhaustion, and
he bellowed.
'God damn this place!' he roared. 'Why don't they
tear down those good-for-nothing houses and make a
decent road!'
'Oh, Horace,' wailed a timid voice from this person's
companion, 'that would cost an awful lot of money.
Don't you suppose they're just too poor?'
He was a bull-like individual, and this remark was a
red rag. I jumped at once to the conclusion that re-
marks from his life's comrade often were.
'Poor!' he ejaculated. 'Poorl The French? My God,


I Meet Horace Bra ye 49
you poor fish, the French are the only people on earth
who have any money left, the bloodsuckers! And now
that we've got to this God-forsaken place up this damned
hill, I'll bet they'll hold us up for our last cent for a
room with a bath, damn them...'
What with rage and fatigue, he snorted as he bellowed.
But his speech, of which we could hear every word,
affected his different listeners quite differently.
Margaret Hamilton gave an irrepressible little giggle
and whispered, 'There isn't a room with a bath in the
place, thank Heaven!'
Mrs. Wilde, on the other side of me, said, quite audibly,
'Oh, the poor man! What will they do?'
Mrs. Sherrill, Christine, and I all sat silent. But as
Madame Delande appeared in the doorway and smiled
her most gracious hospitality upon the newcomers, John
Sherrill got up and walked very quickly to the car,
from which the bull-like personage was now preparing
to descend.
'How do you do?' he said, and his voice and manner
were models of the most urbane affability. 'Monsieur
Delande, who speaks English perfectly, happens to be
away at this moment. May your fellow-countrymen
welcome you?'
If the big man's rage had been funny, the complete
and sudden transformation in his mood was funnier
still. His wrath fell from him on the instant. From
being tired and nervous and angry he became not only
amiable, but definitely friendly, and positively content.
His smile spread across his broad countenance with a
joviality that was almost benign.
'Well, Heaven be praised!' he pealed forth his thanks-
giving. 'Americans! We are in luck!'


50
Murder in a Walled Town
He did not even glance toward Madame his hostess,
but addressed John Sherrill again: 'Nobody here who
speaks English, eh? Well, I say, can you talk their silly
lingo? Will you ask this dame how much she'll rob me
of for a double room and a bath?' He turned toward
the group of us in the galerie and winked broadly. 'She'll
rob me all right. You can be sure of that. And how!
Europe expects every American to pay double — how's
that for a wisecrack?'
He was in high good-humor now. Miss Hamilton
looked at him with the first expression of scorn and dis-
like that I had ever seen on her kind, plain face. But
Mrs. Wilde laughed sympathetically, and called out, in
a voice which she could make very sweet when, as now,
she wanted to:
'It's a perfect shame, but there are*no private baths
in this hotel.'
'There are no double rooms free at this moment,'
added Miss Hamilton; and her voice was not sweet.
John Sherrill spoke in a low tone to Madame, anil
turned back to the strangers.
'This is a simple country inn and it has no private
baths,' he confirmed the bad news. 'And it happens
that at present the double rooms with running water
are all taken. Madame has a room with one large bed,
for twenty francs. Or, if that won't do, there is an-
other, smaller, room adjoining, which you can have, as
well. The smaller room usually rents for fifteen francs;
but since no double room is free, Madame will let you
have the two single rooms for thirty francs, which is
the price of one room with two beds.'
The man grunted. 'No bath,'he growled. 'My God,
you'd have thought that all the Americans coming to


I Meet Horace Braye 51
Europe in the last ten years would have taught these
people a little civilization...'
'No private bath,' Mr. Sherrill answered with perfect
gravity, 'but hot and cold running water in each room,
and a very good modern bathroom in the house. You
can have baths for four francs apiece.' He smiled. 'I
don't have to ask Madame Delande that.' John Sherrill
was getting some fun out of this stranger, I could see...
The woman in the car had not spoken, or moved, dur-
ing this colloquy. She was leaving all the negotiations
to her husband, and with his last growl he quieted down.
I think that all would have gone well if the Frenchman,
Henri de Brassac, who had been having a solitary
liqueur under the linden tree, had not suddenly got up
and walked, directly in everybody's line of vision,
across the square.
Mrs. Wilde rose with the determination of one seized
with a great idea. She was a little 'outside herself,' I
think, with the exciting arrival of rich Americans whom
she thought she could impress. She really had been
bored in Neyronnes!
'If you really want a double room, I don't see why
you shouldn't have one,' she said. 'That Frenchman
has a big double room, and I don't believe he's paying
any thirty francs for it, what's more. He ought to be
willing to take a single room, and not inconvenience
other people. I'm going to ask him.' She smiled coyly.
'You know a Frenchman will do anything for a pretty
woman,' she added. And before anyone could stop her
she had stepped out into the Place.
Mrs. Wilde was undeniably a pretty woman. She
was a woman of the world. She spoke French like a
native, and she had lived in France and in half a dozen


52
Murder in a Walled Town
other countries of Europe. She made her undoubtedly
astounding request of Monsieur de Brassac in a low
voice and with a really charming manner. And the
scholarly-looking Frenchman refused it politely but
firmly, and in the English language.
'I regret infinitely that I cannot oblige Madame and
her friends,' he said. 'I have come to Neyronnes to
spend some weeks in literary work, and I have chosen
my quiet room on the garden with great care. It is the
only one which meets my needs, and I am sorry that it
is impossible for me to surrender it to Madame's com-
patriots.'
He bowed low, and walked away. Mrs. Wilde turned
back to us almost at a run, and her face was scarlet.
Christine looked stricken and sick. Miss Hamilton, the
only one among us who could be said to be on any terms
of familiarity with the Wildes, evidently thought that a
little gay brusqueness would best ease the situation.
'I guess maybe it serves you right, my dear,' she said
lightly. 'He's a stubborn gent, isn't he?'
'He's an utter bounder,' Mrs. Wilde declared; and
seemed to feel better.
'Well, never mind, mother,' Christine murmured
weakly, but she was interrupted.
'Of all the dirty brutes!' the American arrival began.
'I'll be damned if I'll stay here and give up a room I
want to a filthy foreigner!'
A wail sounded from the big car. 'Oh, Horace, I'm
so tired! I don't want to go on tonight. And you know
you like it much better when we can get two rooms next
to each other — usually there aren't any, or else you say
they cost too much. Do let's stay, now we're here. I
think it's kind of a pretty place — and here are all these


I Meet Horace Bra ye 53
nice people from home to talk to.' The voice ceased
suddenly to wail and became practical. 'Besides, it's
Saturday night, and we've got to stay somewhere until
the banks open..."
'Rosalie!' cried Horace. 'Haven't you any money?'
'Oh, Horace, no!' The voice was plaintive again.
'I know you told me to get some in Die-john while you
were having the car oiled, but I forgot. I forgot you
hadn't any either. We've got to stay somewhere until
Monday, Horace.'
I all but feared for Rosalie's life at that moment.
But I did not know Horace. Instead of cuffing his wife
over the head, as I had half-expected, or swearing at
her, as I had felt sure he would, Horace burst into a
roar of laughter. It was good-natured laughter. It was
patronizing and affable. It was the laughter of a man
satisfied with himself, contentedly indulgent toward the
inbecilities of his spouse, and willing to be at peace
with life.
'You poor simp'' he roared, in tones of delight. 'I
expect you are tired, after working your brain so hard.
Of course we'll stay, you boob. We'll have two rooms
when we can get them without busting a bank, and
we'll have baths in a public tub at four francs a throw.
Now let's everybody have a highball and drink damna-
tion to all Frenchmen1'
With an enormous flourish and a really amusing bur-
lesque of Henri de Brassac's ceremonious bow, he handed
his wife out of the car, while John Sherrill told Madame
Delande that the newcomers would stay until Monday
and that the maids could take the luggage to their rooms.
'Oh, Horace,' cried Rosalie gratefully, 'I think this
is lovely t'


54
Murder in a Walled Town
She advanced toward the galerie, a small blonde
woman whose modish clothes did not make her appear-
ance quite smart, and whose well-cut features did not
make her face quite pretty. But if her blue eyes and
Cupid's-bow mouth showed no intellect and not much
character, they did seem to bear witness to a lazy good-
nature, an easy-going amiability that would not grudge
good-fortune to others as long as life was pleasant for
herself. And her social sense, at this moment, rose to
what she thought was expected of her.
'I am so glad to find other Americans in this out-of-
the-way little place,' she said, in a voice that was high-
pitched and babyish, but not unpleasing, now that it
had ceased to wail. 'I am going to introduce my husband
and myself right away, and I hope you'll all do the same.
My husband is Mr. Horace Braye, and I am Mrs. Braye,
and we would like you all to have a nice little drink
with us.'
We did introduce ourselves, while Mr. Braye guided
his huge car not unskillfully into the garage, and when
he came out his wife introduced us all over again. I
noticed that he treated each of us to rather a hard look,
as if he were in the habit of fixing people's faces in his
memory, and when he came to Mrs. Wilde the hardness
sharpened for an instant, as if he thought he might have
seen her somewhere before. But Mrs. Wilde gave no
sign of recognition, and Mr. Braye seemed to realize
that he had made a mistake. Watching him, I had the
impression that he was not so stupid as he seemed; that
against another background he would show more brains
and more individuality than I had given him credit for.
As a matter of fact, this bumptious American was a
type quite new to me. I had heard that some of my


I Meet Horace Bra ye 55
pupils had bumptious parents, but I had never met
them. I had read about Americans of this sort, but I
had never seen any, and I was inclined to think that
they didn't really exist. To the end, Horace Braye did
seem a little incredible to me. But Miss Hamilton and
the Sherrills, who had traveled so much more than I,
assured me that this big bounder was not at all the only
one of his kind.
One met them, they said, on big transatlantic liners
(sometimes on small ones, too),vand at tourist hotels
all over Europe. One disliked them. One was heartily
ashamed of them. They gave the United States a bad
name, wherever they went. But sometimes they were
genuinely well-meaning, for all their ignorance and in-
tolerance and vulgarity and bad manners and braggart
jingoism. They were almost always 'good fellows,' and
occasionally they were honestly generous and kind.
With Horace Braye, one could not, as yet, say...
Certainly he was insistent in his hospitality about
those drinks. We none of us wanted them. But when
pressed, Mrs. Wilde accepted a Grand Marnier and
Christine chose mere lemonade and Miss Hamilton had
a Vieille Cure, while I followed the Sherrills' example
and took a Benedictine. Mr. and Mrs. Braye stuck to
their demand for highballs.
'But I won't drink damnation to Frenchmen, Mr.
Braye,' said Miss Hamilton. 'Why spoil a good drink
with ugly sentiments? Let's drink a friendly toast to
happiness at Neyronnes...'
A friendly toast to happiness at Neyronnes... I can
see her now, and I can hear her voice with its high-bred
haunting loveliness which no human being would ever
forget, and again I feel that little sense of wonder that


56
Murder in a Walled Town
she should have chosen to propose just that toast, just then.
'A friendly toast to happiness at Neyronnes...' But
except for her own old associates, Margaret Hamilton
felt no friendliness toward these people, nor was she a
woman who was hoping for happiness for herself or be-
lieving in it much for others. A queer shiver gripped my
heart, in the strangest way.
And yet any stranger looking at us would have thought
that we were all 'good fellows' together. I am sure
that that is what Henri de Brassac did think, for in-
stance, as he strolled again across the Place. And Horace
Braye's next remark was certainly not fraught with
tragic portent: it was almost unbelievably ludicrous.
'When I get a chance to open the case I've got in my
car, I'll give you all a drink that is a drink,' he said.
'I don't trust these foreign concoctions. Slops, most
of them. No, sir, when I travel I take my good American
liquor along!'
'What!' cried Mrs. Sherrill. 'Whatever do you mean?'
And Horace beamed at her proudly.
'What I say,' he replied. 'I stocked up in New York,
with my own bootlegger. Had a special case made, to
go on the back of the car — it looks like a trunk, but it
isn't — and everything's O. K. I carry my own bar with
me wherever I go. And I'm telling you — it's the only
way to do, if you can afford it.'
He looked around at us, like a schoolboy showing off.
And then a faint cloud seemed to brush across his
contentment, and he added, hastily: 'I don't want you
to think I'm a hard drinker. I'm not. I don't go in
for boozing. Not me. But when I do drink, I like to
know what I'm drinking. You can't feel sure of this
foreign stuff.'


I Meet Horace Bra ye 57
'Can you feel sure of American stuff?' asked John
Sherrill, with a solemnity that matched Horace's own.
'Until Prohibition is repealed, there will be no liquor
control or inspection at home.' He had struck just the
right note to draw Horace out.
'Well, it's good home stuff,' said that simple home-
lover comfortably. 'When I have good home stuff I
know where I'm at. None of these thieving foreigners
for me, not if I can help it. You never know what they've
got up their sleeve — some new scheme to rob Ameri-
cans, most likely. It's bad enough to have to eat their
messy food, I'll say. But the Maddam here, she likes it.
She's even got a sort of soft spot in her heart for these
Frenchies. She thinks they're cute,' and Horace's laugh
boomed loud and hearty in the quiet of the Place. 'And
what I say is, a man's got to please his better half.'
He winked broadly at John Sherrill. 'You know how
that is, I'll bet! She wanted to come to France,' he added.
'That's the only reason old Horace left the good old
U.S.A. She wanted to get some Paris clothes, right
where they grew, though God knows why. She had
this notion about our driving the car ourselves, too.
And she made me come on a French ship, what's more —
that Shamplane, we crossed on. She got it all worked
out to go to Italy, too, and go home on one of those
swell Dago liners. But I says, Friend wife, I says,
there are limits even to what old sap Horace will do
for you.'
Rosalie giggled. The rest of us were spellbound.
Horace's highball had apparently tapped bottomless
reservoirs of small-talk.
'I says, No, sir. Not for me. I've had enough. We're
going home. And not on any Dago liner, you can bet


58
Murder in a Walled Town
your bottom dollar while you've got any dollars left
to bet. We're going straight to Mar-sails and we're
going home on a good American boat, you bet. We're
going back to where a dollar's a dollar, just as quick as
an American ship'll take us there.
'Besides,' added Horace, stimulated now by his high-
ball to what was obviously the repetition of his favorite
creation in the way of a joke, '1 said to Rosalie, I don't
mind taking a ship that's named the Sham-plane, be-
cause a real plane might be too dangerous; but I'll be
damned if I cross the ocean on any boat that calls itself
the Wrecks!'
Rosalie's giggle rippled more loudly across the quiet
evening.
'Do you get it?' she demanded. 'He means that new
ship that everybody's crossing on, the fastest one, the
Rex, and ship-wrecks. Isn't he cute? But he's so cute
I tell him I'm afraid he's too smart for most people —
so I always hurry up and explain. But now,' she cooed,
'he can't rush me away for two days. We've got to stay
here over Sunday, until the banks open somewhere,
because we have no money. And I'm glad. I think it's
lovely here, with people to talk to, and all.'
'I'm glad you've come, too,' said Mrs. Wilde graciously.
'You know, Mrs. Braye, I am not used to staying in a
small place like this, and I do get so bored. Ordinarily,
I go to Biarritz, or Aix-les-Bains, or Carlsbad, or
Merano, or some place where there is some life, and
where even a wretched invalid like myself can find
diversion. But now I am absolutely broke, so I am
staying here.'
Horace Braye turned to her sharply. 'You don't
look broke,' he said, and even through his effort at gal-


I Meet Horace Braye 59
lantry his manner had suddenly become that of the
watchful business man. 'You look like a million dollars,
I'll say. What's put you in the red?'
Mrs. Wilde sighed prettily. 'Oh, this terrible depres-
sion,' she answered. 'I am glad I don't look poor, Mr.
Braye — I always feel that to look our best is a duty
we owe to those around us — but indeed I am all but
penniless. My dividends are away down, one of my
banks has failed completely, and now comes this awful
inflation. I don't understand it at all — I am only a
poor sick forgotten woman'
But Horace interrupted her rather rudely.
'Oh, everything'll be all right,' he said. 'You can't
down the good old U.S.A. We'll show these Europeans
what's what, yet — they may think we're busted, but
they can't put one over on us! I expect you'll be on
Easy Street again before you know it, Mrs. Wilde, and
you'll forget you ever were worried. What was this
bank that failed?'
'The Marquette Trust Company of St. Louis. I
thought it was one of the best banks in the country, but
they said it had got into wrong hands.'
'Yeah, that does happen.' Horace shrugged his big
shoulders. 'But I expect you'll get all yours back. I
don't know that particular bank myself—I've never
been in St. Louis, except passing through: I'm from
New York, and I guess pretty nearly everybody in that
burg knows old Horace Braye — but lots of these bank
failures are just matters of readjustment. The thing for
you to do, Mrs. Wilde, is not to worry — kind of take
it in your stride, if you get me. Well, now, Rosalie,
what about looking at those rooms of ours?'
I had not spoken a word through all these cross*


60
Murder in a Walled Town
currents of stupid conversation: I was stricken to silence
in disappointment and resentment. Neyronnes — this
ancient, romantic, unique Neyronnes, this tiny village
on its hill — to be ruined by the intrusion of people like
these! To be sure, I already disliked Mrs. Wilde. But
even Mrs. Wilde had a certain urbanity, and her voice
did not slam and bang and boom all over the place.
Besides, Mrs. Wilde had a way of taking color from
the people around her; and against the background of the
Sherrills' charm and good-breeding and Miss Hamil-
ton's unobtrusive poise, she became fairly inoffen-
sive, even in her silliness; and I personally was will-
ing to put up with Christine's mother for Christine's
sake. But now Mrs. Wilde would probably take her
tone from the newcomers — especially after having been
humiliated at the Frenchman's hands — and would, so
to speak, make herself one of them. Well, I tried to
comfort myself, it was only for the week-end. That
great ape and his brainless wife would be gone in a few
days...
But that thought did not bring the solace that it
should, and my malaise went deeper than mere sulks.
The darkness was falling now, and I turned and looked
at Christine, who was sitting beside me, silent and re-
laxed, her hands folded in her lap. And I had the strang-
est impulse, not in sentimentality nor romantic emotion,
but in a kind of protectiveness, to reach out and lay my
own hand over hers. I didn't do it; but I had to exercise
a definite force of will to stop myself.
But out of the shadows on the other side of Christine
Wilde's chair, Elinor Sherrill stretched out her hand
with just such a gesture as I should have wanted mine
to be, and laid it on the girl's two hands clasped in her


61
lap. Here was protectiveness, understanding, tender-
"You are going with us to Cluny,' said Mrs. Sherrill,
in a matter-of-fact tone of friendly kindness. “We have
asked your mother, and she says you may.'


CHAPTER V
CHRISTINE GOES ON A HOLIDAY
Some spirit of sheer contrariness moved me to escort the
new arrivals to their rooms, which were on the first floor
of the pavillon annexe, opposite the Wildes' huge cham-
ber. They were attractive rooms, with gay blue-and-
white wall-paper which was also used prettily to cover
the wooden screens around the stationary washstands,
and the pattern of which was almost duplicated in the
chintz of window curtains and bed-coverings. The front
room, which was just under mine, was the larger of the
two, and I was amused to see that Horace Braye settled
himself in this as a matter of course, and left the small
room, which had only one window and no view at all, to
his wife.
He grumbled a little over the discovery that there were
no bells to connect with the main house. But as the maid
Aurelie was waiting to see to the baths and take the
breakfast order, he was able to make himself comfortable
without much cause for complaint. I went on upstairs
to my own bedroom, turned on the light, picked up a
book, and then decided that I could not stay indoors and
started out again. By this time I had adopted what
seemed to be the general custom of leaving my door un-
locked.
| I started toward the stairs, and then — being restless
— I took a sudden notion to explore the unfinished part
of the house and look for that connecting 'back way' in
from the village street. On the long June evening the


Christine Goes on a Holiday
63
darkness had almost fallen, but not quite. I paused at
the head of the stairs, outside John Sherrill's bedroom —
the Sherrills were still over on the Place, with the Wildes
and Miss Hamilton — and took a casual look at the door
of the unfinished room. Then I opened the door. And I
drew back with a queer little catch at my heart, from
something that was certainly shock, and seemed almost
like dread. I had been thinking of an 'unfinished room'
in terms of reasonably new houses, in America...
But this house was two centuries old. This room had
once been lived in — lived in a hundred years ago, per-
haps, and left since to neglect. On the east side — the
street side — the windows were barred with heavy shut-
ters of solid wood, but on the west side, toward the gar-
den, the small dusty panes stood uncovered — uncov-
ered save by dirt and cobwebs, through which the dim
light entered crazily to fall upon the festoons of spider
webs hanging from the ceilings, filling all the corners,
making strange draperies around the baseboard to the un-
planed floor. The walls were plastered white, and at some
time within recent years someone had traced plans in blue
crayon, to show how the wide space could be cut into
rooms and finished, as on the floor below. Now, against
the dead whiteness, these blue lines seemed eerie in them-
selves. And below the white walls spiders crawled slug-
gishly, or scampered, in the dust. No description, no
listing of what was to be seen in it, can give any explana-
tion of the ghostliness, the gruesomeness, of that room.
But I had come upon a tour of exploration. And across
the vast and haunted expanse of that unfinished room
was another door. As I write this, in the bright daylight,
with sunshine and living trees and chintz-curtained win-
dows about me, it seems strange to set down the fact


64
Murder in a Walled Town
that I needed determination to cross that room; but
need it I did! A huge spider ran across the floor in front
of me. Another, smaller but somehow more hateful in
his deliberate voluptuous blood-thirstiness, made a slow
and greedy movement toward a fly caught in his web. I
stepped firmly forward, crossed the space in front of me,
and opened the door.
There was nothing there but darkness, a clutter of
old boards, the top of a rickety stair, a roof-beam that
came down almost to my head. And I realized suddenly
what I ought to have known before — that this upper
space in the still older house, beyond the unfinished room
in the pavillon, was merely an attic. The storage-room,
the door that could easily be used from the old house to
our annex, the passageway, was on the floor below. There
was no need for anyone to enter that ghostly chamber;
apparently — I looked back across the unfinished room
and saw the solitary and conspicuous marks of my foot-
steps in the dust — apparently no one ever did.
i I went back the way I had come and walked sedately
down the front stairs and out the front door.
It was absurd that I should feel a little shaken! In ex-
cuse, I reminded myself that I had been nervous and ir-
ritated to start with. But I felt in no mood, now, to meet
my fellow-lodgers. And I did not go back to the central
square and the lighted inn and the broad-beamed galerie.
I did not even walk in that direction, down the village
street. It was from this street that one turned off to
swing around the narrow roadway into the Place. Or
one could keep on it as the road sloped downhill, and so
come out near the Lower Gate and the Promenade des
Lices, or go on still farther and eventually circle back to
the church and the Upper Gate.


Christine Goes on a Holiday
65
For this was the chemin de ronde of ancient Neyronnes,
the passage inside the double line of ramparts, on which
the finest houses of the village had their entrances, to
back up, on the other side, above the broad Lices and the
far-flung open view. Neyronnes was very small, and on
its little hill-top it was almost perfectly circular. I set
out on the chemin de ronde in the other direction: I turned
past the old-time Governor's mansion, near the Upper
Gate, swung along a curving roadway lined with walled
gardens and mediaeval dwellings, and drew near, soon, to
the grim and mysterious prison-house where witches had
been tortured in the fifteenth century.
The prison-house had been restored, and made into a
really fine residence: it had good 'crossing' windows on
the chemin de ronde, and above the inner rampart on the
other side its gardens descended the steep hill in well-
arranged terraces. But the regulations that governed all
reconstruction at Neyronnes had forbidden the cutting
of windows in the tower itself, or the widening of the
narrow openings in the outer wall of the ancient structure;
so, although it was extremely interesting and in some
ways beautiful, it was somewhat lacking in light and
livableness. It seemed more like a museum than a
dwelling; and perhaps it held too much of its old sug-
gestion: that was certainly true now, when it was not
occupied...
I stopped near the ancient well — bottomless, people
said — on the triangular grassy space where other village
pathways ran into the chemin de ronde. There was a
short-cut, here, back to the Place des Halles and the inn,
but I did not take it. I stood still for a few moments, and
then went on down the road: I was not far from the Lower
Gate now, and in this spot the tumble-down houses and


Christine Goes on a Holiday 67
until daylight. And I had better ask a few questions be-
fore I began!
Moreover, I remembered, it was Saturday night, the
time when the largest number of visitors came to Ney-
ronnes. And I had already learned not to be astonished
at the appearance of visitors who spoke English! The
fall of the dollar was bringing a strange assortment of
my own compatriots, certainly, to this supposedly un-
known spot! I suspected that economy even had some-
thing to do with the Brayes' choice of a route and their
decision to do without a chauffeur. It was likely enough
that this mysterious voice merely marked the arrival
of another 'gold-stranded' American. If he resembled the
latest comer, Heaven forbid! Normal exasperation over
Horace Braye brought respite to my wool-gatherings as I
walked on down to the Lower Gate.
But the respite was brief. For as I sat there on the grass
with my back against the outer rampart, and tried to col-
lect my thoughts sensibly, all my fear for Christine swept
over me again, a stronger flood than before. And after
a little while I rose up wearily and started back toward
my room.
Even now, I did not want to go by the Place and the
lighted windows of the Auberge de Vieux Neyronnes. I
stumbled back over the cobbles by the way I had come.
And as I went I heard once more the curious sing-song
voice, slower now, tired, mumbling. I hastened my steps.
If only I could catch a word! And I did catch a word.
One. There seemed to be a new beginning to the sing-
song. Then, suddenly, on an intake of breath, an upward
inflection, the voice stopped, with a strange deep sigh.
But I heard the last word, distinctly. It was the word
cherubim...


68
Murder in a Walled Town
I felt too tired, myself, to think, or puzzle, or worry.
There was something odd and unnatural here. But I
could not make it out. Not now. I waited a little, but
the voice did not speak again. There was no sound of
movement, anywhere. I went back to my room and went
to bed.
But the night was not restful. I could not get to sleep
for a long time. And when I did finally drop off into an
unhappy slumber, I had a horrible dream. I dreamed that
I heard Christine calling for help, calling as if she had a
gag in her mouth and could not make an articulate
sound. But I heard her. I knew that she was in the un-
finished room; and although the door was locked on the
inside, as I had known that it would be, I battered it down
and forced my way in. And there, in my dream, was
Christine, tied in some way beneath one of those dim
haunted windows, while an enormous spider made its
slow, voluptuous, blood-thirsty way toward her. It was
as large as a man. It was a man. As I watched, the spider
turned into Horace Braye, stretching out hands of de-
struction toward Christine. And as I tried to reach her
first and could not, I saw something in my dream that
seemed to me more horrible still. Quite close to Chris-
tine, white, expressionless, unmoving, Margaret Ham-
ilton was standing. And she was making not the slight-
est effort to help.
... It was a dreadful dream, the kind of dream from
which one wakes in sweating terror, torn in the wretched
throes of formless suspicion and antipathy. Certainly,
when the morning came, I felt the sharp injustice of
such a sleeper's vision of kind, plain, courageous Miss
Hamilton, and the incongruity of such a monstrous pre-


Christine Goes on a Holiday
69
sentment of that jovial bounder Horace Braye. It was
Christine's own mother, I reminded myself in the sane
clarity of the daylight, whose vampire-like egotism
brought an actual danger of stunting her daughter's
development and injuring her life. Margaret Hamilton,
for all the shortness of their acquaintance, seemed to be a
real friend. And Horace Braye, with his puns and his
xenophobia, was a mere passing stranger whose selfishness
was not villainous and not likely seriously to incon-
venience anyone except his wife. And as, glad to get up
early in the bright morning, I sauntered out the towered
Upper Gate and into the grassy Lices, I felt the pleasure
of a return to frank, give-and-take normal life again
when I saw Miss Hamilton ahead of me, with her dog.
And the sight was a pretty one. A herd of five goats
was eating its luxurious way up the broad promenade,
and, like all the goats of Neyronnes, they were handsome
specimens, and as clean and well-cared-for as house pets.
Fergus was making mischievous efforts to tease them a
little, bounding up close to them and then backing
quickly away. But the sportiveness of a terrier could not
disturb these creatures' immemorial calm. One by one,
as he approached them, raised its solemn bearded face
and stared at him with its long eyes, then returned plac-
idly to cropping the grass. Only one, a pure-white kid
among his brown and fawn-colored elders, expressed any
feeling, and that was not of fear or of annoyance, but of
mere curiosity: he found Fergus mysterious and fas-
cinating.
It was natural enough, I think, that this scene should
have helped to soothe my unrest and chase away the
cobwebs — the literal memory of cobwebs — of my bad
night. Already, too, there was cheerful movement about


70
Murder in a Walled Town
the little walled village, people coming in from the valley
and the farms to the neighborliness of early Mass, sight-
seers and picnickers arriving, as they always did on Sun-
day, to see Neyronnes, and to see it again and again.
Everything seemed so bright and enjoyable that I could
even almost forget, or explain away, the man who had
chanted strange words in English in the darkness, and
ended on a sobbing sigh...
'Did you know we were going to have a children's ban-
quet in the Place?' Miss Hamilton asked, as I came up
with her and we walked on together. She, too, seemed to
be in a gay mood. Every year, she told me, sixty or
seventy boys and girls from a near-by school came in big
char-a-bancs, with their teachers, to spend a day at Ney-
ronnes. Tables were set for them under the linden tree,
and after they had eaten a bounteous repast they had
songs and a few speeches. It was great fun.
'They come partly to work up their mediaeval history,'
she remarked. 'You'd better tag along, and see how it's
done. You will enjoy it, and so shall I. And Mrs. Wilde
will stay in her room and not be bothered much. But
this tiny village is going to be thronged with French
country people until sundown, and what do you suppose
Horace will do?'
'He's got a car,' I grunted. And Miss Hamilton clapped
her hands — a signal which brought Fergus quickly to
heel.
'Fine!' she said. 'Let's send him off for the day.
Where shall it be? To Macon to eat? To Aix-les-Bains
or Vichy to see the great world? To Lyon? To Geneva?
To Le Puy? To Bourges? No, they'd never look at a
cathedral, those two. To the chateau of Jacques Cceur
and a fifty-franc lunch, at Roanne?'


Christine Goes on a Holiday
71
'All those places are tremendously far away,' I ob-
jected. But I had caught my neighbor's gay mood, and I
joined in her laugh.
'Every place is tremendously far away from Ney-
ronnes, thank God,' she said. 'But that hasn't saved us
from Horace's visitation. What's a car like that for?
I am sure,' she went on, 'that Horace's car has at least
sixteen cylinders and a taxable horsepower of forty-eight
and an easy loping speed of a hundred miles an hour.
And if he can't run over to Vichy and show his wife the
sights, what, I ask you again, is his car for? Is it only
to lacerate us with his presence, and not offer us any re-
lief? The Sherrills and Christine,' she added, 'are going
to Tournus and Cluny today.'
'Oh,' I responded, rather blankly, 'I thought it was
later on.
'No, they decided last night that they would go today
if the weather was good and Mrs. Wilde was well enough
to be left. I have just been in to see Mrs. Wilde and she
seems to feel exceptionally husky; so all is well. They will
start before lunch, and they plan to get back tomorrow
evening: it's a long distance, you know. Mrs. Wilde
has said they may take her car, so Christine will drive;
and she will enjoy that.'
'Well, I hope we can get rid of Horace and Rosalie,'
I said.
And, somewhat to my surprise, we did. Egged on, I
think, by Mrs. Wilde's references to the cosmopolitan
world of fashion with which she was familiar and Mrs.
Braye was not, our latest arrivals did elect to go to Aix-
les-Bains for the day. They left at a very early hour —
for Aix-les-Bains is far from Neyronnes — and we knew
that they could not get back, before evening. The Sher-


72
MURDER IN A WALLED TOWN
rills delayed their departure for the pleasure of seeing the
children pile happily into the Place, but before eleven
they were ready to set out.
'By the way, Armitage, our car is standing idle,' John
Sherrill said to me. “Why don't you take Miss Hamilton
out to see the country a bit, this afternoon or tomorrow,
or both?'
Christine had not yet come from the pavillon, but Miss
Hamilton was there; and she shook her head as she
smiled.
'Thank you so much. I should love it,' she said. “But
Christine's being away will leave her mother lonely, and
I know she will be depending on me for company.'
'She might go too,' I suggested. And Miss Hamilton
raised her eyebrows as she twisted her face into a funny
little grin.
'In a Chevrolet?' she said. “With all due respect to
your natty little car, John
The sentence went unfinished as Christine and her
mother came down the little ruelle into the square. Chris-
tine had a small bag in one hand, and the other arm was
around her mother's shoulders. They made a sweet and
sentimental picture, the tall fresh athletic girl, walking
along with her pretty, and always bright and animated,
young mother, in such an attitude of protection and ten-
derness - sweet if one had not known that Mrs. Wilde
was almost monstrous in her self-absorption, and that
her daughter's devoted abnegation was too complete to
be right or fair. As it was, one could only be glad that
Christine was going to have a holiday, even for thirty
hours or so. How long was it, I wondered, since she had
left her mother for as long a time as that, since she had
even slept in a room alone?


Christine Goes on a Holiday 73
But she never spent any time with her mother again.
Before Christine returned from her little outing, Mrs.
Wilde was found dead in her room, with a hypodermic
syringe that had contained morphine lying empty on
the table beside her bed. I jumped to the obvious con-
clusion; and I was wrong.


CHAPTER VI
I SOLVE A MYSTERY
It seems more than a little strange to remember that
during the time directly preceding the discovery of her
death, I did not give a thought to Mrs. Wilde. And
when Miss Hamilton found her body, my first feeling
was a double sense of relief: a great and immediate re-
lief, I confess it, that Christine was free; and, in the sec-
ond place, relief that she was away from Neyronnes at
this moment. It never occurred to me that Mrs. Wilde
might have been murdered. I took it for granted that
she had been a drug-addict, and that she had died as
drug-addicts, poor wretches, often do. But I was glad
that her daughter was not there...
It was the merest chance, I thought, that she was not
there. For it was on the second night after Christine's
departure that her mother died. The Brayes were still
with us: they had returned from Aix-les-Bains Sunday
evening and on Monday they had discovered that while
the exchange was so uncertain they could not cash their
letter of credit in the little Jeanniot bank; so willy-nilly
they decided to stay until Tuesday or Wednesday while
they waited for money to come from the nearest big town.
Then on Monday the weather turned threatening, and
John Sherrill telephoned from Cluny that they had de-
cided to spend the night there, and would be back in
Neyronnes some time the next day. Mrs. Wilde left the
door open when she went into the telephone room, and I
was just outside. I could hear her somewhat petulant


I Solve a Mystery
75
assent to what John Sherrill was evidently presenting to
her as a matter of course. He did not ask her permission
for the extension of Christine's holiday: he made a courte-
ous inquiry, I could guess, as to the state of her health,
and then he told her their plans; and although her voice
was fretful, she did not forbid the delay, nor did she ask
to speak to her daughter on the telephone.
Miss Hamilton's prediction as to the claims upon her
own time proved to be correct. That otherwise unoccu-
pied voyager was pressed into Mrs. Wilde's service for
all her waking hours. She played cards with her, talked
to her, read to her, arranged her meals and sat at her
table, ran her errands, did her mending, and even rubbed
tonic into her hair. In everything but sleeping in Mrs.
Wilde's room, she was apparently taking Christine's
place. All the rest of that Sunday, while the children
trooped happily all over Neyronnes, and hordes of coun-
try people drove up for luncheon and gouter and dinner,
and the prettily costumed servants rushed competently
hither and yon, I had no speech with either Miss Hamil-
ton or Mrs. Wilde. The only one of my fellow-boarders
with whom I exchanged a word was Henri de Brassac.
He was out and about all day, watching the children,
looking on at the movement of the crowds — although
not talking to anyone — and as I paused once in a walk
across the Place toward the end of the afternoon, he sud-
denly came up and joined me.
'It is a pretty sight, is it not?' he remarked surprisingly,
in his perfect English. 'I believe that Monsieur appre-
ciates our Neyronnes.'
'Oh, yes, I do!' I cried, with emphasis, and wondered
if I sounded like a gushing schoolgirl. This grave, firm,
self-contained Frenchman made me feel gauche and self-


76
Murder in a Walled Town
conscious; and yet I was enormously glad to be able to
speak even four words to a Frenchman about Neyronnes.
Conversation with the Braye couple, here in this lovely
spot, left a bad taste in my mouth; and really Mrs.
Wilde was almost as bad. My thought of Christine was
wholly personal and greatly troubled — and I never had
a chance to talk with her, anyway. Miss Hamilton and
the Sherrills were, I was bold enough to put it, my 'own
kind' of people, but they were almost too much my own
kind. In their way they were typical Americans (as the
Brayes, I was sure, were not!), and talking with them was
like talking with friends and neighbors at home. Mon-
sieur and Madame Delande, on the other hand, hardly
counted: they lived here; they kept the inn; this was all
in the day's work. In talking with a French fellow-visitor,
in Neyronnes, about Neyronnes, I did get a new and dis-
tinct satisfaction. I even went so far as to tell him that I
was interested in mediaeval history.
And he was exceedingly affable, indeed almost friendly.
One might have said that he was trying to make up for
his rudeness of the day before, but I did not think that.
I did not think he had any feeling of having been rude.
But I did flatter myself that he was paying me a very
real compliment, that he was differentiating between me
and Horace Braye, for instance, and that he was welcom-
ing me to his country because I was really interested in
the treasure France had to give to the world.
Not unnaturally, then, I told him that Mr. and Mrs.
Sherrill had gone to see Cluny and Tournus, with Miss
Wilde.
'Ah,' he said, 'Miss Wilde? I should not have thought
that Madame Wilde or her daughter would be interested
in Cluny or Tournus.'


I Solve a Mystery
77
'Mrs. Wilde is not. But I think that Miss Wilde may
be,' I assured him, with what I realized was a rather
ridiculous earnestness.
And I realized something else, too: Henri de Brassac
seemed to have acquired quite distinct opinions about
us in a very short time. He must have overheard a good
deal of conversation which we, in our stupidity, had
taken for granted that he could not understand. And it
was with some witless idea of doing justice to Christine
that I added:
'I think Miss Wilde has never had a chance.'
'One can believe that.' He smiled lightly; and then
his smile deepened and became quizzical. 'Then Madame
Wilde is alone for a few days?'
'Until tomorrow evening. But Miss Hamilton is
staying with her all day,' I answered.
'Ah,' the Frenchman said again reflectively, 'Miss
Hamilton. She is kind, that lady. Why should she be so
kind to this Madame Wilde? She is the good neighbor,
n'est ce pas? And she is very intelligent.'
It was my turn to smile. 'She is very intelligent,' I
echoed. 'She loves Neyronnes.'
'Ah,' Monsieur de Brassac repeated, 'then I shall have
great pleasure in talking with her, also.'
He left me with one of his courtly bows. And I find
it a little curious, now, to recall that conversation.
There is something bizarre, too, in the remembrance of
how Miss Hamilton and I tried vainly to stave off one of
Horace Braye's puns when he returned from Aix-les-
Bains that evening and said that he hadn't enjoyed his
lunch.
'You should have eaten at Belley,' Miss Hamilton told
him, and realized too late the possibility of wise-cracking


78
Murder in a Walled Town
in the name of Brillat-Savarin's birthplace and the con-
tinuing fame of its food! Horace's pun we were obliged to
endure.
And it seems strange that up to the very moment of
the discovery of Mrs. Wilde's body, I was concerning my-
self with what I had come to call, in my own thoughts,
'the mystery of Neyronnes.' The mystery of Neyronnes,
indeed! Within half an hour of my solving it, how un-
important, even in its pathos, had that little mystery
come to be!
As I was left almost completely to myself over Sunday
and Monday, I hoped that I should be able to find out the
secret of the unknown man who was hiding himself some-
where — as I reasoned — in the tumble-town labyrinth
of the ancient houses of Neyronnes. There were a good
many of these houses, buildings that had been 'too far
gone' for restoration when a group of public-spirited
citizens set themselves to the task of'saving Neyronnes'
a number of years ago. The best dwellings on the chemin
de ronde had been repaired, as private residences, at that
time. The thirteenth-century house on the Place had
been reconstructed, furnished to suit its period, made
comfortable, and equipped as an inn. The old beamed
structure with the galerie was an excellent local museum.
The Place des Halles had been entirely restored, as had
the fortified church in the ramparts; and the gates and
the walls had been so repaired that there was no danger
of further demolition at the hands of time. The village
had been placed under the protection of the Ministry of
Beaux Arts, and all the stones of Neyronnes were periodi-
cally inspected, to make sure that every wall was stand-
ing safely.
But on the narrow byways in the interior of the village


I Solve a Mystery 79
there were many old walls to which nothing else had been
done: here and there one could see a bit of good fenestra-
tion, the remains of a cornice, occasionally a niche, even
a tourelle; goats lived in the best of these ancient sheds;
most of them were mere roofless walls. Inhabited houses
jostled the ruins, but there were at least a dozen mediaeval
buildings that were wholly deserted. Not even children's
play enlivened those sad walls, and weeds grew in minia-
ture jungles in their enclosures. It was in this labyrinth
that I had heard the voice in the night.
That tangled mass of masonry, which constituted the
'poor quarter' of the little village, was only a stone's
throw from the inn by the short-cuts. And it might be,
I told myself, that an English-speaking stranger was
boarding in one of the cheaper cottages. I could find
out about that at once! So I began by asking Miss Ham-
ilton, when I caught a moment of her attention on Mon-
day, whether she knew of any such person in Neyronnes.
She looked at me blankly. 'Why, no,' she said, and
added: 'What possesses you to go prowling around at
night, in those dark alleyways? You'll meet the ghosts
of Neyronnes, if you don't look out — or the rats.'
And that was all the satisfaction I got out of Miss
Hamilton. I decided to do my investigating on my own
and not ask any more questions. For deep in my heart
I felt anxious: was there a maniac hiding here?
But Sunday had been wholly unproductive, and Mon-
day almost completely so. I seemed always to be running
into village people; and I did not want my purpose to be
known. I was rewarded by finding an overgrown hole in
the ground, which may well have been the entrance to an
important subterranean passageway in the old days when
Neyronnes was frequently besieged by warring feudato-


80
Murder in a Walled Town
ries or by the King himself. But of the twentieth century
I discovered nothing, and I was keenly disappointed.
Then on Monday evening I heard the voice again.
It was about eleven o'clock, and the sky had clouded
over so that the night was quite black. I have no electric
flashlight, but I could make my way about by the slight
illumination of the street lanterns, and I sauntered easily
enough down past the old prison-house and along by a
few lighted cottages. As before, I had just passed the
grassy triangle with the ancient well when I caught once
more the sound of English rhythms in a sort of chant.
But the husky voice was stronger now. The speech was
slower. As I stepped nearer I had no difficulty in under-
standing the words. And this is what came distinctly to
my ear:
'"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea."
'But I don't like the rest of it. I don't get much kick
out of Coleridge, really. Here goes something with a bet-
ter swing, once again:
"'Thus said the Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim,
Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:
'Lo! Earth has passed away
On the smoke of Judgment Day.
That Our word may be established shall We gather up the
sea?"'
'That moves! Now for the best verse:
'"Sun, Wind, and Cloud shall fail not from the face of it,
Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free;


I Solve a Mystery 81
And the ships shall go abroad
To the Glory of the Lord
Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their
sea!"'
There was a moment's pause, and then the voice went
on, slower, and sadder: '"Gave them back their sea..."
Ah, IV
"'I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's
shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking.'"
I listened, there in the summer darkness, while every
word of Masefield's beautiful 'Sea Fever' sounded from
the otherwise silent ruins of the ancient houses of Ney-
ronnes. And even as the poem was beautiful, so its recita-
tion was beautiful, too. I knew now, of course, how it was
that I had heard that strange word cherubim two nights
before: this man who was pouring forth English poetry
amid these fallen walls had begun Kipling's 'Last Chan-
tey' and had stopped at the end of the first line. I re-
membered the suddenness of that sighing break, on its
upward inflection, as if he were, on the instant, too tired
to go on. And he was tired now. But his husky voice had
exquisite intonations, a moving depth. And here alone
in the darkness he was reciting poetry because he loved
it. It was not often that one heard the English language
like that...
He was silent for a while when he had finished the
Masefield poem, and I stood where I was, afraid to move
for fear of making my presence known, and anxious now,
above all things, not to be discovered. For a matter of


82 Murder in a Walled Town
some minutes there was not a sound. Then the voice
began again, and the old familiar words were the last I
should have expected to hear:
'"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past"'
He went on to the final couplet, but his voice grew
slower and more tired.
1" But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end."'
I knew as he finished the last line that the Shakespeare
sonnet had closed his recitations for the evening. I
crouched down against a shadowing wall and stayed
there for at least half an hour. But no other sound came
from anywhere around me. It was midnight or after
when I finally slipped noiselessly back by the short-cut
to the market-place, and from there to the pavillon and
my room.
The threatened rain began to fall as I got into bed, and
I thought with a sick dismay of the man in the ruins. I
even had a wild idea of going out to look for him, to make
sure he was all right. But he surely must have some kind
of adequate shelter, I reasoned; and he probably would-
n't take kindly to a stranger's interference. It was cer-
tainly no objection to getting wet that kept me in my
own comfortable room, but my natural curse of shyness,
the fear of butting in. And of course, without his voice
to guide me, I probably could not have found him, in the
dark. I tried to go to sleep, and I succeeded with re-
markable promptitude. And although once I was
awakened, unprecedentedly, by a loud and ugly growl
from Fergus, who slept with his mistress in the small bed-


I Solve a Mystery 83
room next to mine, I had a good night on the whole.
When the dog's growl disturbed my sleep, it was still
raining. But when I finally awoke, at seven or there-
abouts, the day was fresh and clear and beautiful, and I
jumped quickly out of bed, went over to the inn to get
my breakfast, and decided to set forth in search of our
mysterious English-speaking neighbor at once.
In the bright sunshine of that June morning I walked
around the ancient Governor's dwelling, down the chemin
de ronde, and as far as the prison-house. And there I
stopped. In the shadow of that dark tower a broad stain
lay black upon the cobbles. And I did not need to look
twice to see that it was blood.
It was no mere scattering of drops of blood, such as
might have come from the wound of some animal. It was
a great pool, and it was fresh. No such animal as might
have been housed within the walls of Neyronnes could
have lost as much blood as that, and continued to live, I
guessed. Could someone have killed a dog or a goat in
the street of the village? I looked at the spreading stain,
and shuddered. And as I continued to look, I saw that
drops of blood led away, a trail marked upon the cobble-
stones, from that central stain on down the roadway.
Past the green patch with its old well, I followed, and
into the labyrinth of ruins; so into a tumble-down shed
in the midst of that labyrinth, on the inside of the narrow,
curving street. The trail was clear, and I went where it
led me...
This pile of broken walls offered more shelter than
most. There was a real roof over nearly all of it. Several
windows, on the east and north sides, had been rudely
shuttered, and thus were effectively closed. And since
the door by which I entered was low and narrow, the re-


84
Murder in a Walled Town
suit was to make the inside very dark, especially to one
coming from the brightness outside. I could not see, now,
the bloodstains which had led me to the door of this hut.
But in the most sheltered corner I could make out a camp
bed, and a man lying upon it, motionless.
I had a cold sense of dread, for an instant, of what I
should find as I drew nearer. But the man was alive.
With another step I could hear the sound of his labored
breathing. And then he spoke to me.
'Ah,' he said, and his words were forced out with diffi-
culty, 'I'm — glad — you've — come..."
. 'I've come to help you,' I said. And making my way
to the nearest of the boarded windows, I was relieved to
find that its rude covering was a shutter: I jerked it open
and the eastern sunshine poured into the hut. On the
simple but adequate bed the man was lying apparently
as he had fallen when he stumbled into his refuge only a
short time before; but in the torrential rain of the night
the shelter of that refuge had failed him. The whole
place seemed almost flooded. The man's clothing was
soaking wet and his body was shaking. And there was
blood all about: on the bed, on his coat, his sleeves, on the
long white hand that was stretched out toward me; there
was blood on his face, at his mouth. I knew, now, what
had happened. This was a sick man; and he had had a
hemorrhage. He had been drenched with the rain through
that long night, in this wretched, inadequate shelter.
He had gone out on the street with the first sunshine. He
had been stricken in front of the prison-house, and he had
crawled back to his hut, where he lay racked with a
chill, able only to murmur feebly that he was glad I had
come...
But on the instant his last force deserted him. My


I Solve a Mystery
85
idea, naturally, was to get him to the house, to a warm
bed, dry clothes, good care. But by the time I had crossed
the hut, he was incapable of movement. As he heard my
voice, apparently he had fainted. *
I tried to lift him, but although he was light he was
tall, and I could not manage the awkwardness of that
weight alone. I went out into the village street, but no
one was in sight who could give me any assistance. I
was frightened now, afraid that the man would die be-
fore I was able to help him. If I had seen any of the vil-
lagers — the schoolmaster, the laundress, even the seam-
stress — I should have asked aid in taking him to what-
ever house was nearest: I could have made myself under-
stood enough for that. But the roadway stared vacantly
at me in the early morning, and only one thought came
to me — Margaret Hamilton: Margaret Hamilton, who
was kind to sick people, who knew her way about, who
would tell me what to do...
I rushed back to the inn by that blessed short-cut, and
as I turned into the Place I saw Miss Hamilton just com-
ing out of the main door of the auberge. I did not see that
Monsieur and Madame Delande were just behind her. I
did not look at her face. I ran across the square as fast
as the rough cobbles would let me, and when I got as far
as the galerie, I called to her:
. 'Please send someone, quick! There's a man very ill,
down there in the ruins. I need help — right away!'
But Miss Hamilton did not answer me. She did not
seem to hear me. She looked at me with a strange wild
stare in a dead-white face, and cried out:
'Mrs. Wilde is dead. She took an overdose of morphine.
I've just found her body.
'I found her body,' she repeated. 'She took an over-
dose of morphine.'


CHAPTER VII
CHRISTINE COMES BACK
Even then, my thought stayed with the man in the ruins.
Mrs. Wilde was dead. But this man was alive — he had
been alive when I left him — and he would die unless
help came soon. Miss Hamilton was useless. I realized
that the Delandes and the inn staff had enough to think
of and to do. It was Henri de Brassac, at this moment
walking sedately and unconcernedly around the corner of
the ruelle toward the galerie, upon whom I called for aid;
and it was Henri de Brassac and I who lifted the sick man
and carried him as gently as we could up the sloping,
curving roadway to the pavillon annexe. I was about to
take him to my own room — I couldn't at the moment
think of anything better to do — when Monsieur de
Brassac stopped me.
'There is a small room opposite mine,' he said. 'I do
not know if it is prepared for use, but it is unoccupied;
and these rooms are never kept locked. We will give that
room to our invalid.' And when for the first time it oc-
curred to me to wonder how I was going to pay for the
luxury of entertaining a sick man, the Frenchman must
have sensed my thought at once, for he said:
'We need not worry about the costs.' He smiled at me,
and his smile, though friendly, seemed again a bit quizzi-
cal. 'The little franc keeps its same little value, so far,' he
reminded me. 'I shall be glad to undertake the responsi-
bility of this sick lad.'
And I felt my heart warming toward this foreigner,


Christine Comes Back 87
who could be so frigidly remote and then become so
sympathetic and so kind. We found the little bedroom
in complete readiness for a visitor, and although it was
cell-like in its narrowness and its simplicity, it was per-
fectly comfortable, and of course spotlessly clean.
I ran up to my room to get a pair of pajamas, and I was
conscious of a shudder as I passed Mrs. Wilde's closed
door. It looked, of course, just as usual; but there was a
square of white linen lying on the floor near the corner;
it must have been with some queer instinct of orderliness
in the presence of death that I picked it up and thrust it
into my pocket, bending over just an instant and then
hurrying on up the stairs.
When I came back, Monsieur de Brassac was busy
undressing the stranger and getting him ready for bed,
and he did nearly all the work. He was very quick and
very gentle. The sick man was half-conscious now, and
had surrendered himself to our ministrations in dazed
contentment. We had him in bed in a very few minutes,
and the Frenchman said, 'I will get the doctor.'
I tried to thank him, and I did manage to stammer out
something about his skill. But he stopped me with a
shrug and a gesture.
'I was in the war,' he said briefly, and repeated, 'Now
I will get the doctor.'
He was gone before I realized that he probably did not
yet know about Mrs. Wilde's death...
As for myself, I did not know what I ought to do. The
man on the bed tossed about a little. He still shivered,
and he had a fever. He coughed badly now, but there
had been no return of the hemorrhage. I knew, of course,
that he was very ill, and I did not think that I ought to
leave him. He was a young man, not over my own age, I


88
Murder in a Walled Town
guessed, with a thin ravaged face and a body that was
like a fleshless wooden toy, so thin and bony was it. He
looked, I thought, like a person of gentleness and refine-
ment; of fastidiousness, but not, perhaps, of much
strength of any kind; a beauty-loving, futile person, who
had been ill for a long time. Tuberculosis, of course —
and at this point in my reflections Monsieur de Brassac
came back. His face had become very stern, and he had
brought a strange man with him.
'I found the doctor already here,' he said. 'The gen-
darmes, too, are at the inn bureau. I have just learned
what has happened. We must all report to the gendarmes
at once.'
I wrenched myself away from my ponderings over the
sick man — what he had been doing, hidden there in the
mediaeval ruins of Neyronnes — and pulled my thought
back to the situation at the inn. Mrs. Wilde was dead.
Christine was free from the bonds that had held her spirit
and her too-sensitive young mind. Her mother had been
a drug-addict, and now she was dead. And Christine,
mercifully, was away at the moment. Now we must all
go and make routine reports to the police, before Chris-
tine got back.
Monsieur de Brassac and I left the doctor with the sick
man, and went over to the main building of the auberge...
In the big low-ceilinged room that served so pictur-
esquely as cafe and extra dining-room — the room into
which the front door directly opened — a serious-looking
young man in the uniform of the Gendarmerie Nationale
was sitting at one of the long oak tables, while his col-
league stood near-by and eyed us all as we came in. The
Brayes, Horace blustering and Rosalie scared, were
seated near the door, and Miss Hamilton was talking in


Christine Comes Back 89
low tones with Monsieur and Madame Delande. Miss
Hamilton's face was still ashen, and she looked as if she
could not shake the horror of her discovery from her
mind, or her eyes. Monsieur de Brassac went straight up
to her, and spoke, in French which even I could under-
stand.
'Won't you have a glass of port?' he asked, and when
she had smiled a grateful acceptance he repeated his invi-
tation to the two police officers. They very courteously
declined, but Monsieur de Brassac's hospitality was un-
daunted.
'Perhaps afterward?' he said; and quite a pleasant
human expression came into the face of the man at the
table, before he turned to Miss Hamilton and politely and
solemnly requested that she tell her story as a whole.
She spoke in French, but so slowly and clearly that I
could make it out with little difficulty.
'I went with Mrs. Wilde to her room, about ten o'clock
last night,' she began. 'That was the time she usually
retired, and in her daughter's absence I wanted to see if
she needed any help. She seemed to be feeling fairly well,
but a little nervous — I thought she was perhaps a little
upset by the prospect of spending a second night alone,
and I offered to stay with her. But she told me that she
was really all right, said good-night to me pleasantly, and,
so to speak, sent me away.'
'Did you see a hypodermic syringe, or any evidence of
the use of morphine, in Madame Wilde's room?'
'No. I have never seen any such things in Mrs. Wilde's
possession, nor any evidence which would lead me to
think that she was addicted to drugs. I supposed that
she must take some sort of medicine, since her health is
so poor; and I knew that she had an alcohol lamp to heat


90 MURDER IN A WALLED TOWN
water. That could have been used to sterilize a syringe,
of course, but I never thought of that specific purpose.
Naturally, I have never looked into the cupboards, or
any place in Mrs. Wilde's room where such things as
medicines would be kept. I went to my room last eve-
ning, after saying good-night, read a while, then went to
bed and to sleep.
‘One moment, please,' the policeman interrupted. 'Do
you happen to know whether Madame Wilde locked her
door when you left her?'
Curiously, Miss Hamilton hesitated. I had the feeling
that there was something in her mind of which she was
not sure that she wanted to speak, that she was pausing
to decide what, or how much, to say.
'No,' she answered, speaking more slowly than before.
'I mean - I happen to know that Mrs. Wilde did not
lock her door. That is - she told me that she was going
to leave the door unlocked, as she had done the night
before.'
‘Was that to save herself the trouble of getting out of
bed to turn the key?'.
'No,' said Miss Hamilton again, and she spoke with
more sureness now. 'No, she left the door unlocked so
that I could come in if she called.'
The policeman frowned. “But would you have heard
her if she had called?' he asked.
'No, I don't think I should,' Miss Hamilton answered.
‘Not unless she had opened the door, and even then
called rather loudly. I suppose she thought I might per-
haps want to look in during the night and see if she was
all right...'
'And did you?'
'No.'


Christine Comes Back 91
'She had not actually asked you to go in during the
night?'
'No.'
'But she had explained that she was leaving the door
unlocked so that you could?'
'Yes.'
'And if you had gone in you would have seen the empty
syringe on the table?'
'I — suppose so.'
'Since Madame Wilde had so carefully concealed any
evidence of the use of drugs, that seems odd,' said the
police officer.
'Yes,' Miss Hamilton admitted wearily, 'it seems odd.'
'But in cases of drug^addiction,' remarked the gen-
darme sententiously, 'one expects oddities. Continue, if
you please, Mademoiselle. You slept well?'
'Very well. I did not hear any sound outside my room,
but once in the night I was disturbed by my dog. How-
ever, I went to sleep again almost immediately, and I
think I slept until morning. About eight o'clock, as I was
having my breakfast, the maid Aur61ie came to my room
and said that Mrs. Wilde did not answer her knock, and
would I tell her what I thought she ought to do? I knew
that Mrs. Wilde liked her meals to be served promptly,
so I told the maid to knock again, more loudly.'
Monsieur de Brassac, sitting beside me, had very
kindly taken it upon himself to translate the gendarme's
speeches for me. He acted as my interpreter now when
an inquiry was made as to whether Mrs. Wilde's break-
fast was usually brought without being rung for.
'Necessarily,' Miss Hamilton explained. 'There are
no bells in the rooms in the annexe, and we always leave
our breakfast order to be filled at some stated hour.


92
Murder in a Walled Town
Mrs. Wilde and her daughter always had their coffee
and rolls taken to them at eight o'clock, and, as I said,
Mrs. Wilde was very particular about having it on time.
This morning Aurelie went back, as I had suggested,
and knocked again. She pounded, in fact, so loudly
that I could hear her on the floor above, with my door
shut. Then she came back to me and said that she
couldn't hear any sound in Mrs. Wilde's room at all.
'I said I would go into the room, but before I got
downstairs I heard Mr. Braye come out of his room,
which is directly opposite Mrs. Wilde's. By this time
Aurelie was downstairs again and standing in front of
Mrs. Wilde's door. And I had got to the top of the stairs
myself as Aurelie spoke to Mr. Braye and tried to make
him understand that she could not wake Mrs. Wilde.
Aurelie was frightened by this time. Mr. Braye tried
the door, and it wouldn't open. As I came down the
stairs he bent down and looked into the keyhole — you
understand, these doors have big old-fashioned keys:
they are not patent locks.
'"That's funny," he said to me. "She's locked the
door and taken out the key."
'"Then Aurelie had better get the master-key and
open the door," I said. "I am afraid Mrs. Wilde may be
ill."
'So Aurelie ran to get the master-key. Just then Mrs.
Braye came out of her room, which is down the hall,
and just under mine, and said something about their
breakfast's not coming, and I told her about the delay.
She said then probably they had better go over to the
inn and get their breakfast there, and Mr. Braye said
he thought so, too. But before they actually started,
Aurelie came back, and Madame Delande was with


Christine Comes Back 93
her, with the key. Mr. and Mrs. Braye went immediately,
without stopping to say anything at all. And as I had
known Mrs. Wilde better than anyone else did, and
thought that if she were ill she would rather see me first,
I was the one who took the master-key and opened the
door.
'She was lying in her bed. There was an empty
hypodermic syringe on a saucer on her night-table,
within reach of her hand. There was a little phial on
the saucer, too. Its top had been broken off, and it was
empty. There was no bottle marked morphine, but I
— I suppose I just tried to put two and two together —
I guessed it was that.'
'Your conjecture was correct,' said the gendarme,
'but you did not actually know?'
'No,' Miss Hamilton replied; and she looked, now,
as if she were almost at the end of her endurance, 'I
didn't actually know. But I saw at once that she was
dead. She — she had the appearance of being quite at
peace. I — I was greatly shocked, upset. Madame
Delande stayed with me while Aurelie ran for Monsieur.
It just so happened that the doctor Montard was in
the village, and he came at once.'
That ended what had plainly been an extremely
difficult ordeal for Miss Hamilton. The doctor had come
meanwhile from the pavillon, and gave in detail evidence
with which most of his hearers were probably already
familiar. Again, Henri de Brassac acted as my unofficial
interpreter.
Mrs. Wilde, the doctor reported, cautiously, pending
the autopsy, had probably died from a lethal dose of
morphine. There were marks on her body that showed
the use of a hypodermic syringe. Yes, he thought


96
Murder in a Walled Town
attention to it, which must have been hard for Horace
to bear. The money lay on the table where he had thrown
it, and Monsieur and Madame Delande looked merely
scornful and aloof. Horace sat down, snorting, and the
gendarme at the table looked around at us, politely but
with a little air of relief, as if he were glad to let us go
now.
'1 thank you for your courtesy, Messieurs et Mesdames,'
he said. 'And now before you go I will just look at
your identity cards, to keep my records straight.'
Automatically Miss Hamilton opened her purse and
Monsieur de Brassac took something out of his breast-
pocket. I saw what looked like little notebooks bound
in lavender paper, as they handed them over to the
police officer and he nodded, opened them, jotted down
a word or two in his book, and handed them back.
'Identity cards!' Vaguely I remembered hearing of
such things. But I had none...
I felt helpless and confused, when Monsieur Delande's
kind, hearty voice spoke behind me. 'Do not worry,
Monsieur Armitage,' and then to the gendarme:
'Monsieur Armitage est en passage settlement: il est
arrivS de GSneve il y a quinze jours.'
I do not know much French, to be sure, but I could
understand that and be grateful for it. And the gendarme
smiled upon me with real good-humor, although he
took no pains to disguise his pity for a foreigner who was
only passing through France and had not been there
long enough to require a carte d'identitS.
'Then Monsieur will have the kindness to show me
his passport,' he said. And having attended to whatever
formality was needed in examining that document, he
turned to Mr. and Mrs. Braye.


Christine Comes Back 97
Horace's face was purple. 'I haven't got your damned
identity card,' he roared, 'and if you don't like it you
can lump it, that's all I've got to say. I haven't got an
identity card, and what's more I don't intend to get
one. I'm an American citizen, and you can go to hell!'
The gendarme did not wait for a translation of this
speech.
'Then Monsieur will have the kindness to show me
his passport,' he said. And Horace handed out his pass-
port and swore.
The police officer looked at this familiar piece of
identification. He turned over its pages and looked it
through. Then he laid it down, and addressed Mr.
Braye very slowly and distinctly.
'I see that you debarked at Le Havre on the sixth
of April,' he said. 'It is now the twentieth of June, and
it seems that you have not been out of France in that
time. Under the law you should have provided yourself
with an identity card to become operative at least two
weeks ago, Monsieur.'
Horace began to bluster, but the police officer went
on: 'I am obliged to ask you to remain here until you
have paid your fine and put yourself in accord with the
regulations. And now Monsieur will have the kindness
to show me the papers in regard to his car.'
'They are in my room,' said Mr. Braye. And to my
surprise he spoke without profanity or abuse. The gen-
darme bowed.
'Monsieur will understand,' he said, 'that all France
asks of foreigners is obedience to the laws of France.
My friend will accompany Monsieur while he gets his
papers.'
And Horace went back with the other policeman to


Christine Comes Back 99
were not innocent of malice. But the gendarme's face
was fixed in an expression of politeness and gravity.
'Monsieur is mistaken,' he said. 'The laisser passer
cannot be issued for more than sixty days, and it can
on no account be renewed. Beginning with the seventh
day of May, Monsieur must pay the taxe trimestriel,
which for a car so powerful as that of Monsieur' — he
consulted Horace's papers again — 'is at a rate which
amounts to more than ten francs a day. Moreover, as
Monsieur is in contravention, he must take the matter
up with the proper authorities. You would not be per-
mitted, Monsieur, in any case, to pay your tax to me;
the taxe trimestriel must be paid to the Bureau des
Contributions Indirectes.'
'Oh, my God,' groaned Horace, at the mere sound of
this speech. When it was explained to him, he became
more indignant than ever.
'You bloodsuckers!' he ejaculated. 'You give me a
pain in the neck! What right have you got to pile all
these taxes on foreigners, I'd like to know? I'm an
American. So I've got to have your damned identity
card, and I've got to pay a tax on my car, and the Lord
knows what else. I'm sick of this business of robbing
strangers. You bet Europe'll never see me again! My
God, I'd rather be in Sing Sing, in America!'
I caught, at this, a rather pitiful little gasp from Rosa-
lie, as if she thought Horace's rage was going beyond a
joke. But she was the only person who seemed at all
moved. From what I had heard of the excitability of the
French temperament, I found myself looking for some
fireworks to answer this explosion. But none came. With
the exception of Horace Braye himself, everyone was ab-
solutely calm, and absolutely solemn.


100
Murder in a Walled Town
And calmly and solemnly, at this eloquent climax to
Mr. Braye's oration, Henri de Brassac addressed first the
gendarme with permission to speak, and then Mr. Braye.
He spoke, of course, in perfect English.
'It is a little matter of misunderstanding,' he said, with
the utmost suavity, 'and the gendarme will permit me to
explain. There is no discrimination against foreigners,
Monsieur. As the gendarme has already intimated, the
French Government asks of you merely what it asks of
every Frenchman: to be the possessor of the carte d'iden-
tity which is the guaranty of your registration in the coun-
try, and to pay the regular government tax on your
automobile. The laisser passer, at ten francs a day, for
any car, is a special convenience for foreigners; when
your laisser passer expires, or in any case at the end of
sixty days, you become subject to the ruling which applies
to all French residents, and your car is taxed according
to its horse-power.'1 His smile, guiltless of malice now,
was really charming. 'It is not the fault of France, Mon-
sieur, that you are rich enough to have a forty-horse-
power automobile.'
Horace's great voice boomed forth with a great laugh.
Once again his cherished sense of humor downed his
rage.
'I'll say it isn't!' he bellowed, and having thus deliv-
ered a crushing retort, he was wholly pleased with himself
again, while his wife giggled dutifully. 'But all the same,
I'm asking you,' he added, 'what are these fellows picking
on me for? Are they investigating a mysterious death, or
are they trying to find out whether I owe ten cents to the
1 To avoid misunderstanding, it may be pointed out here that the
circulation tax on automobiles, long operative in France, was re-
placed in the 1934 budget bill by a new tax on gasoline. Author.


Christine Comes Back 101
French Government? Why don't they go about their
business? Look here, Mister Brasstacks, or whatever
your name is, that's just what we mean when we say that
you people over on this side are inefficient. You've got
brains. We don't deny that. Now if you just went in for
real efficiency, you'd get somewhere.'
'Where the United States is now, perhaps,' Monsieur
de Brassac remarked mildly; and before any reply was
possible, continued:'Be that as it may, Monsieur Braye,
we must, as you might say, remain with our lamb chops.
This is not a comparison of American and European
business methods, but a police inquiry. And it is a part
of that inquiry to have clear records of all the persons
who may possibly be involved.'
'I am not involved,' Horace flashed at him quickly.
'What do you think I am, a dope-smuggler?'
Monsieur de Brassac ignored the latter part of this re-
mark, but he said:
'You tried the door, did you not? You leaned over and
looked in the keyhole. It was you who first_pointed out
that there was no key in the lock.'
'Well, what business is that of yours? Who's conduct-
ing this dumb-bell inquiry, anyhow? It seems to me
you're damned interested'
Horace was getting ugly again. Monsieur de Brassac,
unperturbed, shrugged his shoulders, and the gendarme
re-entered the conversation and told Mr. Braye that he
would be obliged to remain in Neyronnes, and that he
would not be allowed to use his car, until the complica-
tions over his papers had been cleared up.
I suppose that this pronouncement would have been
followed by more abuse, but at this moment came the
interruption that I had been dreading for the last half-


102 Murder in a Walled Town
hour. An automobile horn, with the sound of which at
least five of us assembled there were familiar, gave its
warning at the corner. And a few seconds later, as we
waited, Christine Wilde swung her big Packard into the
Place.


Mrs. Wilde Makes a Gift 105
it seemed so — so depressing. It seemed like an old per-
son's disease, too, and my mother was not old, and she
did not like to be associated with any ideas of growing old.
She was young, and charming; and the doctor was keep-
ing the trouble checked. He gave her insulin.'
Elinor Sherrill, sitting beside Christine, made a very
slight movement, but no one else stirred and no one spoke.
Of course we all knew what was coming, and we sat there
and dreaded it. But there was nothing anyone could
do...
'Miss Wilde,' said the police officer, 'was your mother
in the habit of taking drugs?'
But Christine did not look shocked. She looked merely
puzzled.
'Drugs?' she repeated. 'I told you. The doctor gave
her insulin.'
'That is not what I mean,' said the gendarme. 'You
must forgive me, Miss Wilde, but it is my duty to make
my report as conclusive as possible. Was your mother
addicted to habit-forming drugs, to narcotics — specifi-
cally, to morphine?'
'What?' cried Christine. She sprang from her chair
and stood facing the police officer in a sort of white pas-
sion, which, for an instant, could find no further word to
say. She looked around the room, looked at us all. 'Mor-
phine?' she repeated. 'Did my mother die from mor-
phine?'
I thought I understood the horror in her face and
voice, but I was very far from guessing the truth, quite
unprepared for what was to follow.
'I thought, from what Miss Hamilton told me, it
was a heart attack,' Christine said. 'If it was mor-
phine'


106
Murder in a Walled Town
Her voice broke off dramatically, and then she seemed
to be gathering all her strength for what she must think
out, for what she must say.
'My mother never touched morphine. She never
could take it. She had an idiosyncrasy, the doctor said —
all opiates were a deadly poison to her.' She swayed a
little as she stood there, but she went on and finished
her statement.
'If my mother died from morphine poisoning,' she
said, 'someone meant her to die.'
...She staggered, and almost fell, but she did not
faint. It was poor, insignificant Rosalie Braye who
fainted; and as she was easily the least important person
there, no one paid much attention to her, except Madame
Delande, who somehow got her out of the room and saw
that she was taken care of. Poor Rosalie; she was al-
ways inept, always feckless, the kind of person whom
nobody ever took into account. Now she just fainted,
and no one took any notice. But Christine's astonishing
accusation had changed the entire nature of the inquiry.
Moreover, we were sitting in the public dining-room of
an inn and it was lunch-time — the Auberge de Vieux
Neyronnes had its own proper business to transact.
The police investigation was abruptly adjourned, and
we were all directed not to leave the village and to hold
ourselves in readiness for the continuation of the inquiry
when the juge d'instruction — a French local magistrate,
I gathered — should so decide.
Christine made one further remark before the police
left the room, a mere emphatic repetition of what she had
already said.
'If you think that my mother was a drug-addict, you


Mrs. Wilde Makes a Gift 107
are very much mistaken,' she declared. '1 know beyond
a shadow of a doubt that she was not. But I cannot
ask you simply to take my word for that. I am going
to telephone at once to my mother's physician in Lau-
sanne and ask him to give you his evidence. I will ask
him to come here to-morrow morning, if possible. And
now may I go to — may I go to my room?'
She went to look at her mother's body, and Margaret
Hamilton and Elinor Sherrill went with her. John
Sherrill and I followed them, and one of the policemen
accompanied us. The other stayed behind to talk with
Horace Braye — poor Monsieur Delande being still
held in service as interpreter. Horace, I learned later,
was required to drive his car, with the gendarme in it,
to the headquarters at Jeanniot, and there to leave the
automobile pending the regularization of his papers....
When we reached the Wildes' room in the pavillon
annexe, we found that two other policemen were on
guard there and had been all morning. And I realized
for the first time that since the instant when Miss Hamil-
ton, Madame Delande, and the maid opened the locked
door with the pass-key, there had been no moment when
at least two persons had not been with the body in that
room. I learned, too, that there had been an examination
for finger-prints. Had these non-committal gendarmes
suspected from the first that the case might not be so
simple as it seemed or had all this been mere routine?
I did not know then, and I was never to know. My own
opinion at this stage was that Mrs. Wilde must have com-
mitted suicide. Menaced with the progress of an all but
hopeless disease, seriously worried about money — the
6uicide theory seemed natural enough...
It was a dreadful afternoon. It was dreadful because


108
Murder in a Walled Town
of Christine's suffering and the necessary and heart-
sickening inconvenience to which she was put. Her
mother's body was taken away at once for post-mortem
examination, and she was told that the room must be
sealed, and that she must, therefore, go somewhere else
immediately. The gendarme stayed with her while she
pulled a few dresses and a coat off the closet hooks,
snatched up some shoes and a hat.
'I'm ready now,' she said. 'The hotel is almost full,
but there's a little room I think I can have.'
'Oh, no, Christine,' Miss Hamilton broke in very
gently, 'there is someone there now. Mr. Armitage,' she
added, 'has found Paul MacNeil and brought him to
the inn.'
Christine turned suddenly to me, where I was standing
in the doorway waiting to see if I could not be of some
use. And to my astonishment she smiled, a very sad
smile, but a very human one. For the first time in the
two weeks since I had heard her voice outside my win-
dow on the day of my arrival, Christine Wilde looked
at me as if I were a real person like herself, a real ac-
quaintance, almost a friend.
And in the light of that smile I saw clearly for the
first time what had been true since that day and would
be true for all the rest of my life — that in my heart
the sun rose and set, and the clouds scudded across the
sky or piled up their storm threats, and the stars sang
in their courses, for Christine Wilde and for Christine
Wilde only. To bring her happiness, to save her sorrow,
to serve her and belong to her all my life, to watch her
face and listen to her voice and to win her smile, and to
hold her in my arms against the twilight and be her
comrade forever — that was all I wanted, so long as


Mrs. Wilde Makes a Gift
109
my life should last. And this, I told myself with a
kind of wonder, this was what love was: this consecra-
tion, this curious uplifting, this sudden inexplicable
joy and this intolerable pain...
I tried to smile back at Christine, but to my shame
I felt near to tears. Her face was so kind, however, it
showed no consciousness of my shortcomings.
'You brought Paul to the inn?' she echoed. 'Oh, I
am glad.'
For me that was piling mystery on mystery. But this
was no time to be even mildly interested in that.
'You had better take my room,' Miss Hamilton
added. 'I can easily move to the other house.'
'Oh, no,' said Elinor Sherrill. 'It will be much better,
Margot, if Christine takes my room. John's is quite
large enough for two beds. And I have been here so
short a time, it will be much easier for me to move the
few things I've unpacked. Then no one will be made
uncomfortable.'
'All right,' Miss Hamilton agreed, and Christine
thanked Mrs. Sherrill and said, yes, that was what she
would do. So they changed their rooms, and Christine
moved up to my corridor with the Sherrills and Miss
Hamilton, so that the Brayes and Monsieur de Brassac
were left to occupy the first floor beside the sealed door,
with the sick man as neighbor.
Everything was settled within half an hour, and al-
though the afternoon had already set in, we tried now
to eat some luncheon. To our surprise we succeeded.
Even Christine ate a little, I was glad to see. And Miss
Hamilton seemed to have recovered something of her
poise, although she was still white and haggard. We
were all sitting at luncheon together — the Sherrills,


110
Murder in a Walled Town
Miss Hamilton, Christine, and I — when word was
brought to Christine that the Lausanne call had come
through, and she went into the little back room where
the telephone was installed. *
She was gone a long time, and when she came back
she looked stronger and more sure of herself. All she
said was, 'Dr. Lavigne will be here tomorrow morning.'
But I had the feeling, as I had begun to have it, in less
degree, when she spoke of the morphine, that she was
somehow becoming, herself, the master of the situation.
And that brought relief and comfort to my heart.
I had seen Christine Wilde, at the beginning, as a girl
who was completely dominated by an unscrupulously
self-absorbed mother; a girl of bright mind and quick
reactions, whose spirit was caged, whose individuality
was crushed, whose intellect was in grave danger of
being stunted. Except in foreign languages, she had
had very little education, as I understood that term.
Her whole energy and thought were concentrated on
the care of an utterly selfish, semi-invalid mother, with
the one sole outlet of driving, and looking after, a
motor car.
There are invalids and invalids, as I knew better than
most: my own mother had been almost completely bed-
ridden for years before her death, and life with her opened
windows on wide horizons not only of courage and high-
spirited self-forgetfulness, but of beauty and interest
and intellectual resource. But that was not the kind of
invalid that Mrs. Wilde had been.
With her, all windows that opened outward were
closed and barred. And for her daughter, lovely and
kind and helpless and imprisoned, I had feared actual
arrest of mental development. Only once had I felt


Mrs. Wilde Makes a Gift 113
improbable that she should have taken her own life. She
was not of the temperament for suicide, he said; and she
had talked constantly with him about plans for the
future.
'But I have asked Mr. Williamson to come with in-
formation of another kind,' Christine added. 'Mr. Wil-
liamson has been my mother's lawyer, and mine, all my
life. He knows all about our affairs, everything that my
mother never told me. I felt that I must find out at once,
you see, how I stood. So far as I know, I am entirely
alone in the world. But I have never even known the
terms of my mother's will — I mean, I have known only a
little about how she was leaving her money, and nothing
about how much she had to leave. As you heard me say
yesterday, I have never known what our income was,
much less the principal. I have asked Mr. Williamson to
come and tell me.'
She looked around at us, a little wistfully. 'You are
all my friends here,' she went on, 'and I have no family,
or even any neighbors. I should like Mr. Williamson to
tell you about my affairs, too — I have asked him to tell
me in your presence...'
It was a little formal. It was very practical. It was
wholly businesslike. And it seemed to me like a dream.
For I was not used to money, or to talk about money in
large terms; and the lawyer's explanation had a kind of
unreality to my unaccustomed mind. He talked of in-
vestments, of interest and dividends, of stocks and bonds,
of losses and depreciations and residues and hopes of
amelioration. I did not understand it all. I even found
it hard to listen to it. But he caught my attention in a
torturing grip when he began to speak of these matters in
their immediately personal aspect.


Mrs. Wilde MAKES A GIFT 115
a year throughout her lifetime, to my friend Margaret
Joyce Hamilton...”
Behind me sounded a long, strange wail, as if despair
itself cried out from depths that only the desperate knew.
And in the next instant I was staring at a threadbare coat
sleeve, where the shabby middle-aged spinster had fallen
unconscious on the dirt floor.


CHAPTER IX
I LEARN THE SECRET OF THE RUINS
At a signal from Christine the Swiss doctor helped
John Sherrill and me to get Miss Hamilton to her room,
and the lawyer came tagging along after us. I had a
horrible sensation that he had determined, as long as
he should be in Neyronnes, not to let Miss Hamilton
out of his sight. But he did not obtrude his presence.
He merely followed us, with his precise little trot that
might have amused me under happier circumstances.
The doctor and Mr. and Mrs. Sherrill went into the
bedroom, and the rest of us stood at the door or in
the hall. And a trivial thing happened which seemed
to me rather curious. As the unconscious woman was
laid on her bed, she came to herself again, opened her
eyes, and looked about her; and what she said, in a
voice that was beautiful even in its extreme weakness,
was:
'Doctor — will you please look at Paul MacNeil?'
Mercifully, at that moment of returning consciousness,
Miss Hamilton had not remembered the situation which
she must face for herself. And that recollection was
postponed a little further, I hoped, when Christine spoke
from the doorway in an even and matter-of-course tone:
'Yes, doctor, we shall be very glad if you will ex-
amine Mr. MacNeil while you are here. He is in the
inn, very ill. I will tell you about him.'
'Presently,' said the physician.
And with that as our dismissal, we all, except the


I Learn the Secret of the Ruins 117
doctor himself and Elinor Sherrill, turned and trooped
down the narrow stairs — to walk into Horace Braye
as he emerged from his room on the first floor. Christine
headed our little procession, of which the lawyer Wil-
liamson brought up the rear.
And at sight of Christine Mr. Braye stopped in the
hallway, blocking our path directly at her mother's
door. He held out his hand.
'I have not yet had an opportunity to offer you
my condolences, Miss Wilde,' he said. 'Permit me to
express the deep sympathy of myself and my wife in
your bereavement.'
The bounder! The unspeakable bounder! I could
have sworn that he was deriving immense pleasure for
the chance to be oratorical, to show off. And if I could
have smitten him to earth with one blow I should hap-
pily have done so. What I did instead was foolish
enough, in all conscience; for it merely brought more
annoyance to Christine and moved Horace to rage.
'This is hardly the time to make a speech, Mr. Braye,'
I broke in.
And although I knew that nothing made a man more
angry than a public reproof to his manners — especially
from the young and inexperienced, as well as poverty-
stricken, person that I knew myself to be — I was
surprised by the ugliness of Horace's face in its con-
tortion of fury.
'Mind your own business, you damned pup,' he
said to me. And of course I realized that I had acted
like a silly child! My own behavior was no better than
Horace's.
Christine's voice fell very gratefully on my ears.
'Thank you, Mr. Braye,' she said, and took his still


118 MURDER IN A WALLED TOWN
outstretched hand. Please thank Mrs. Braye for me,
too. But, as Mr. Armitage says, I can't talk about
those things now.'
She smiled at him with faultless impersonal polite-
ness, and as he backed awkwardly into his room, she
turned and smiled comfortingly, bless her heart, at me.
She knew what an utter fool I was, I said to myself,
and she was willing to forgive me.
No one spoke again as we went down the stairs and
out into the small place opposite the war memorial.
But after we had turned into the village street, on
our way back to the inn, and had passed under the
Brayes' windows, the lawyer addressed Christine.
'Who is that man?' he asked.
'His name is Horace Braye,' she answered. “That is
all I know about him.'
'Do you know that?' the lawyer insisted. And Chris-
tine shook her head.
'I only know that that is what he calls himself,'
she admitted. 'I haven't seen his passport.'
'I have,' I put in. 'His name is Horace Braye, unless
his passport is false.'
"That wouldn't be likely,' said Mr. Williamson, 'but
it seems queer.'
'What seems queer?' Christine asked.
Just that his face seems familiar to me and his name
is not. I can't place him. I have no recollection of
ever having met anyone called Horace Braye. But I
have a distinct conviction that somewhere, fleetingly,
in the United States, I have seen that man. Did your
mother know him, Christine?'
“No,' she answered, quite positively, 'I am sure she
did not. She had never heard his name and she had


I Learn the Secret of the Ruins 119
never, so far as she was able to remember, seen his
face. She didn't know his wife, either. The reason I
am so sure,' she added, 'is that on the evening the
Brayes came, and he first spoke to us, Mr. Braye looked
at mother as if he thought he might have seen her
before; and she spoke of it afterward to me, and said
he must have been mistaken, because he was a com-
plete stranger to her. And mother had a very good
memory for faces.'
'I should say that it was not entirely reliable,' the
lawyer objected, in his precise way. 'Your mother re-
membered people whom she met socially, even people
with whom she chatted casually in hotels. But unless
there was some such personal interest as that, I should
not consider her memory for faces altogether dependable.'
'Well, we have certainly never met the Brayes socially!'
said Christine. 'And I am quite sure that / have never
seen him before. I don't like Mr. Braye, and I should
not have forgotten him. I dare say he might have seen
mother somewhere in the United States long ago: he
would be more apt to remember her than she would
him,' she added, colloquially but none the less em-
phatically.
'He does remember faces, I'll wager,' John Sherrill
remarked. 'He has that look in his eye — gives you a
quick hard glance when he meets you, and stores notes
away in his head, for future reference.
'Since you are interested in Horace Braye, Mr. Wil-
liamson,' he continued, 'we had better tell you that
he has been providing our comic relief here in Neyronnes
since Saturday evening. He has his American bootleg
bar with him, and he thinks all foreigners are robbers,
and he doesn't see why the old houses of Neyronnes


120 MURDER IN A WALLED TOWN
aren't torn down to widen the road — you know the
type. He is one of those coarse, clownish, ill-tempered,
incredibly ignorant American bounders that you read
about, and that occasionally you do actually meet.
Foreigners hate them, of course; but no foreigner could
possibly hate them with the concentrated fury of aver-
sion which they inspire in their suffering fellow-Ameri-
cans — their squirming fellow-Americans, I might say.
Horace is one of those king-fishes, and we laugh at him
and loathe him and wonder what offensive imbecility
he is going to bring forth next. But all the same, Mr.
Williamson, Horace is no imbecile. I think he knows
his own stuff, and I think he has pretty keen brains,
of his own kind. When he asked Mrs. Wilde about
her finances, he knew what he was talking about.'
'Oh,' ejaculated the lawyer. 'So he asked Mrs. Wilde
about her finances? What did he ask?'
'He asked her how she had lost so much money,
and when she said a bank had failed, he asked what
bank.'
And did she tell him?'
"Of course she told him,' said Christine, 'and then
he told her to cheer up, everything would be all right,
and pretty soon he and his wife went to their rooms.'
'Oh,' remarked the lawyer again, this time with an
air of rounding up the subject. 'Now tell me, Chris-
tine,' he began again, after a brief pause, 'it has never
been made quite clear to me — how long have you and
your mother known this Miss Hamilton?'
‘About two months,' Christine answered. 'She was
here when we came in April, and mother was feeling
particularly wretched. She was tired from the trip,
and when the country went off gold she was so terribly


I LEARN THE SECRET OF THE RUINS 121
upset. Miss Hamilton was very kind, right from the
beginning. Mother told her how worried she was...'
'I,' put in John Sherrill, very clearly and firmly,
have known Margaret Hamilton for many years, Mr.
Williamson. And although naturally I have not had
a chance to ask her permission, I think I may take it
upon myself to say that I am prepared to represent
her legally. I am a member of the New York Bar, al-
though I have not practiced for some time.'
This was news to me, and I felt heartily thankful
to think about Miss Hamilton. But whatever she
might or might not have done, it was clear that she
needed a lawyer as well as a friend. Mr. Williamson
made a formal little bow — exactly the kind of bow
one would have expected from hearing him speak and
seeing him walk on the cobblestones.
'Ah, I am glad of that, Mr. Sherrill,' he said. “That
is quite regular, and as it should be. We will talk of
this, privately, in detail.'
'We will, indeed. And I may add that I think it is
a very good thing we are both here.' John Sherrill,
too, had an air of dismissing the subject.
But I was not surprised when, as we got back to
the galerie, he said to me, 'Try to persuade Christine
to have some tea, Armitage, or a glass of port. I'm
inviting Mr. Williamson to go for a little walk.'
‘Thank you,' said Christine. 'I shall be glad to have
tea with Mr. Armitage, right away.
She waited while I ordered the tea, and the others
walked slowly across the Place and down the hill to-
ward the rampart promenade. Then she said:
'I want to talk to you. I- I feel that I can talk to


122
Murder in a Walled Town
you now. Mr. Armitage, I am so terribly worried about
Miss Hamilton. I can see that Mr. Williamson suspects
her of having killed my mother. That is so horrible —
I can't even think about it. I knew that my mother
was leaving her some money — I don't know whether
she knew or not — I never thought of it this way. I
can't believe such a terrible thing of Miss Hamilton —
she was always so kind to mother. But someone killed
my mother, Mr. Armitage. There was someone, here
in Neyronnes, who wanted her to die. And there must
have been some reason... Miss Hamilton Oh,
what do you think?'
Strange that the first direct question Christine had
ever asked me should be one to which I could give no
direct answer... For I did not know what I thought.
Or rather, I did not know how to differentiate between
what I thought, or felt, and what I knew. And the
more I pondered over it, the more strong grew the
realization that although what I thought and felt might
be in Miss Hamilton's favor, what I knew pointed dread-
ful fingers of accusation against her. What I thought
was that I liked Miss Hamilton, enjoyed her conversa-
tion, admired her spirit; what I thought was that she
was intelligent and courageous, that she was an aris-
tocrat who had fallen upon evil days, that she was
kind...
And even as I formulated the last items in my mind,
I saw how they themselves were items of accusation.
An aristocrat who had fallen upon evil days — a gently
nurtured woman, unused to poverty, untrained to any
profession, without commercial experience or ability,
without much physical strength, a woman middle-aged
and desperate. And kind. Oh, so terribly kind! So


I Learn the Secret of the Ruins 123
terribly too kind! Damningly, I heard again Henri de
Brassac's casual sentences:
'She is kind, that lady. Why should she be so kind
to this Madame Wilde? She is the good neighbor,
n'est ce pas?'
Could one think, now, that she had been merely the
good neighbor? Or must one read a new and sinister
significance into those next casual words that Monsieur
de Brassac had spoken — 'She is very intelligent'?
Before I could frame an answer to Christine's ques-
tion, Elinor Sherrill and the doctor came into the Place,
and Henri de Brassac was with them. But when Mrs.
Sherrill's voice fell upon my ear, it was not of what she
said that I was thinking. It was of another voice, low-
pitched, beautiful, somehow poignantly living in its
quality, speaking in the fragrant summer darkness
sentences which I would have given anything in the
world, now, not to have heard:
'...I'm just finished, done for, Elinor, unless some-
thing turns up... It's all just swallowed up, disap-
peared ... When one is quite desperate, as I am... A
sense of desperation seems to sweep away everything,
somehow, one's sense of values, even one's sense of
right and wrong... I'm not going to sponge on my
friends; theft or murder seems more self-respecting
than that... Sometimes I feel as if I understood the
strangest impulses... It almost frightens me...'
Oh, they were terrible sentences to be remembering
now, to be unable to forget, to be haunted by, along
with that low wail of anguish and the sight of a thread-
bare coat sleeve on the dirt floor! At the time I had
thought them almost heartbreakingly sad; but now they
were terrible! Then, as she and her friend finished their


124
Murder in a Walled Town
conversation, I had admired her courage so greatly,
I had thought her words of valorous acceptance so fine,
so utterly sincere. And she was almost old enough to
be my mother, this tired and lonely woman with the
beautiful voice. Yes — another thought came to tor-
ment me — she was not young; she had been living in
Europe for several years, ever since the crash came;
the Sherrills had not seen her for some time; with all
their loyalty and old affection, how could they really
know to what dark depths her spirit might have sunk
under the pressure of those lonely desperate years?
How could even they know? How could anyone know?
What was I to think, how puzzle through it all?
Well, at least I knew what I was going to do — or,
rather, what I was not going to do. I was not going
to tell anyone that Miss Hamilton had lied to me about
Paul MacNeil, or that she had cried out to me that
Mrs. Wilde had taken an overdose of morphine when —
as she had been obliged later to admit to the police —
she had no way of actually knowing what the drug in
the hypodermic syringe had been. Certainly those
first words of Miss Hamilton's to me, repeated there
in the doorway of the inn, had been precisely the right
words to 'plant' the impression that Mrs. Wilde had
died accidentally after taking too much of an habitual
narcotic; if Christine had not made her surprising revela-
tion about her mother's idiosyncrasy in regard to opiates,
that impression, I thought, would most likely have
prevailed... I shuddered. But I had made up my mind.
Let them all find out for themselves, if they must.
I was still sorry for Miss Hamilton; I was more sorry
for her than ever. I wasn't going to tell.
And upon these thoughts in my mind fell Elinor


126
Murder in a Walled Town
Christine seemed surprised, and I allowed Henri de
Brassac's negative to serve as answer for the two of us.
'Then I will tell you about him, of course,' she went on,
at once. 'It's no secret, now. And it is all very simple...
'Paul MacNeil is an American, who has been living
for several years in a village in the Vaudoise Alps, be-
cause of the state of his lungs, and who came here in
May. My mother and I met him in Lausanne two
years ago, and, curiously enough, it was he who told
us about Neyronnes: he had known this place, and
loved it, long ago. But we never had much acquaint-
ance with him — as a matter of fact, he seemed to us
a very solitary sort of young man, who loved English
poetry more than anything else. He knew heaps and
heaps of it, and he used to recite long poems to himself,
he told us, to pass the time. For, you see, he was very
poor, and very ill. I mean, he had consumption badly,
even then, and he had had it for years. The woman
who introduced him to us said that his condition was
probably hopeless, and had been ever since they found
out about it; but of course nobody told him that; and
he always seemed cheerful, the few times we saw him.
'It seems that he had a very small income, and he
had come to Switzerland and was living in a pension
in the mountains for five Swiss francs — one dollar —
a day. And once in a great while, when he had saved a
little money, and was feeling better, and the weather
was good, he would go down to Montreux or Lausanne —
once, I think, even as far as Geneva — on a holiday, to
keep in touch with ordinary life, he said. And then his
little income began to shrink. And this spring, when
his dollar^wasn't a dollar any longer, he simply didn't
have the money for his board in the pension. He got


128
Murder in a Walled Town
You are speaking of what we call "dry" pulmonary
tuberculosis. There is no discharge from the lungs until
the last stage of the disease is reached, and therefore
there is no danger to other persons except under condi-
tions of great intimacy. But the last stage is that of
hemorrhages, Miss Wilde; and although naturally I
cannot make any specific diagnosis until I have seen
the patient, I should warn you, I think, that the last
stage is usually very brief. Is Mr. MacNeil having
hemorrhages?'
Henri de Brassac had been listening with the most
absorbed attention to everything that Christine and
the doctor said. It was he who answered the latter's
question.
'He has had at least one, and it was very severe in-
deed. Since then, he has seemed to be simply exhausted.
He has not been able to talk to us.'
'He is very ill,' said Christine. 'I tried to see him
this morning, but he was too ill to see me at all.'
'It is no wonder that he is very ill if he was in a leak-
ing shed through a hard night's rain,' the doctor com-
mented sternly. 'Monsieur de Brassac tells me that
that was where Mr. Armitage found him, and that his
clothes and bed were soaked through. Why was he
there, Miss Wilde? If he must come to Neyronnes,
why did he not come to the inn? And why has there
been — I gather from Monsieur de Brassac that there
has been — such secrecy about him?'
The physician hurled these questions at Christine,
not unkindly, but in the authoritative manner of one
who must be told everything. And then he added an-
other query, which, like its predecessors, had been in
my mind, too.


I Learn the Secret of the Ruins 129
'Did he come to Neyronnes because you were here?'
he asked.
But on this point Christine seemed as innocent as a
child. Small chance she had had, I reflected, to so
much as think of any romantic suggestion in connection
with young men, or to suspect them of a sentimental
interest in herself!
'Why, no,' she answered. 'We hardly knew him.
We had not seen him since that time in Lausanne, long
ago. And we did not know he was coming here. We
have scarcely seen him since he came. Mother did not
like me to talk with him, or to talk with him herself.
In spite of what people had told her, she could not get
rid of the fear of contagion. That is why there has
been so much secrecy, don't you see?'
'Oh,' the doctor commented briefly, 'I see. But why
was he living in those ruins?'
Christine looked as if she thought that the answer
to that question, too, must be obvious, and her voice
was very gentle and sympathetic when she spoke.
'He was so poor,' she said. 'He was poor, and his
illness was worse, and the dollar was falling, and he
loved Neyronnes and knew it well; and so he made this
plan. We thought it was a good one.'
'We?'
'Mother and I, in the first place. And of course Mon-
sieur and Madame Delande — they have been very
kind. And then Miss Hamilton. Mother did not ap-
prove of his being here — I think that if she had not
been so worried and felt so poor, she might have sent
him to a sanatorium, or somewhere, herself. But after
we had talked it over, she did consent to his staying in
Neyronnes, so long as he wasn't in the inn. The vil-


130
Murder in a Walled Town
Iage people knew about him, of course; they didn't
mind at all. But mother was afraid that the fear of
contagion might get about, and so she told the Delandes
that they mustn't allow anyone else to know about his
plan. So Monsieur and Madame agreed to that, and
so did Miss Hamilton.'
'But what was this plan of his, Miss Wilde?' the
doctor persisted.
'That was his hut in the ruins — his living there,'
Christine answered. 'He thought it up himself, and at
• first he enjoyed it. He said that it was like camping
out, and that it was absolutely the best thing in the
world for him: it was like living outdoors, when those
shutters were opened. He thought it was a good idea.'
'That is true — until it rained on him,' the doctor
commented, 'but it is certainly not good for a sick man
to get wet.'
'I know,' Christine agreed. 'It was terrible — the
rain coming in. I don't understand that. I never went
into the shed myself, after he settled there, but mother
told me it was water-tight. The rain must have been
unusually hard that night. I wasn't here.'
She turned pale as she spoke, and it occurred to me
suddenly that this questioning was a little cruel: it
was on that night that Mrs. Wilde had died — Monday
night; and we were talking in this cool historical fashion
on Wednesday, with the mystery of her death unsolved.
But Christine went on with her story:
'Monsieur and Madame Delande arranged that he
should have the free use of one of the ruined old houses —
the one with the best roof and shelter — and they did
everything they could to make it comfortable for him.
They gave him a camp bed, and blankets, and candles,


132
Murder in a Walled Town
he would greatly prefer to remain here, where he feels
himself among friends. Myself, I am extremely sorry
that I did not know all this when I came — I might
have been of service to this unfortunate young man
in time to save him much suffering. As it is, I can
only ask you to command me now. I wish to befriend
him to the best of my ability.'
It was not the first time that a quiet remark from
this grave and scholarly gentleman had made selfish-
ness seem very ugly, and presumptuousness very child-
ish, and ill-temper very crude and coarse. I felt ex-
tremely sorry for Christine at this moment: she had
been accustomed all her life to accepting everything
her mother did as right and everything her mother
wanted as desirable, without any reflection of her own;
but if she had not realized her mother's callous selfish-
ness and niggardliness as she told her story, she certainly
must have some inkling of it now! She would very
gladly have taken entire charge of Paul MacNeil her-
self, I know — indeed, I think she had been planning
to do just that — but naturally she was in no position
to dispute the matter with Monsieur de Brassac! And
I was glad that Miss Hamilton was not there, to listen
to this story of her acquiescence in selfishness and neglect.
She had been very kind to Mrs. Wilde. But, in spite
of the eggs and milk, it seemed to me that she had not
been kind to poor Paul MacNeil...
That young man's pathetic story was unimportant
enough, perhaps, in the sense that he himself was un-
important, poor lad. But it was not unimportant in
what it had to tell us about the outstanding figures in
this other story with which it was so oddly joined.
Nor, as a matter of fact, was it unimportant in regard


I LEARN THE SECRET OF THE RUINS 133
to myself; but I did not know that until later. I was
thinking, now, about the story itself.
I believed that Christine was telling the truth as she
herself saw it. But I did not for one moment believe
that her mother had really been afraid of contagion
from a case of fibrous consumption, and still less did
I believe that Margaret Hamilton felt any such fear.
Mrs. Wilde had kept Paul MacNeil at a distance, and
virtually imprisoned, had not allowed Christine to pay
any attention to him, because she wanted to concen-
trate all attention — her daughter's and everyone
else's - on herself. And Miss Hamilton had fallen in
with her callously selfish designs, had followed wherever
Mrs. Wilde had chosen to lead — why? It was an
ugly thought that threw a dark shadow over my old
vision of Miss Hamilton as generous and kind. And
then, on the heels of that, came another idea, a curious
idea, but a little less ugly: if Miss Hamilton were really,
at heart, as humane as she had seemed to be, the sheer
inhumanity of Mrs. Wilde's self-absorption might have
offered, to those 'strange impulses' of which it fright-
ened me now to think, something of excuse...
All these thoughts were ugly, and this story had been
cruel. I was glad that Christine went off at once with
the doctor, on his way to visit Paul MacNeil, and that,
asking Mrs. Sherrill to accompany her, she left me alone
with Henri de Brassac.
* And yet, it seems strange to me now to remember
that I felt such a comforting sense of peace in being
left there alone in the galerie with Monsieur de Brassac.
For there was no peace in Neyronnes, and no comfort.
And what was to come later was more dreadful than
anything that had gone before.


CHAPTER X
I RETURN A HANDKERCHIEF
‘THE roof was already leaking,' Monsieur de Brassac
said.
I jerked my thoughts back to Paul MacNeil.
'What do you mean?' I asked.
“The roof leaked before this last rain,' the Frenchman
answered. “This unfortunate young man may have
been drenched many times before this. He may have
had other hemorrhages. He seems unable or unwilling
to talk much, but he did tell me that rain had been
getting into his shelter — that this was not the first
time. He said that Monsieur and Madame Delande
had been extremely kind: I suppose that they did the
best they could, and they probably believed that the
shelter was waterproof — they could not have been
expected to watch over him constantly: they have
their own work to do. But surely Madame Wilde
might have informed herself.'
'Or Miss Hamilton,' I reminded him sadly. 'Miss
Hamilton might have looked after him, poor boy.'
“Yes,' Monsieur de Brassac agreed, 'that is true.'
Then, as we caught sight of John Sherrill and the
Lausanne lawyer coming up the hill, he changed the
subject.
'The juge d'instruction is coming tomorrow to hold
his first inquiry,' he said. 'Madame Wilde's physician
will remain to repeat his testimony. I understand also
that the lawyer will arrange, if possible, to stay in
Neyronnes as Miss Wilde's legal representative — for-


136
Murder in a Walled Town
did he show me any ill-will as a result of the unpleasant-
ness of our last meeting. He sat down beside us and
lighted a cigar.
'Rosalie still feels rotten,' he grunted. 'A hell of a
mess we got into, coming to this place. Hullo, Sherrill,
how's the arm of the law?'
John Sherrill made some appropriate reply to this
sally, and I was pleased to notice that the attorney
from Lausanne was not regarding Horace Braye with
too great attention. If he had any personal interest in
him, he was keeping it quite successfully to himself.
And Horace went on:
'I'm glad we've got two American lawyers here,
anyhow. That means we'll get something done. A
nice chance there'd be of solving the mystery if we had
to leave it to these fool French, hey, Mr. Williamson?'
Henri de Brassac looked merely amused by this re-
mark, but the precise lawyer took it very seriously.
'You are mistaken, Mr. Braye,' he said. '"Foolish"
is the last adjective which can be applied to the French.
It is true that I have my own practice in Switzerland, and
not in France. But the efficiency of the French police
is famous the world over. All lawyers know that.'
'"Efficiency"!' echoed Horace, with a roar of his
ready laughter, which, like his outbursts of ill-temper,
seemed to be always on tap. 'Well, I'll be blowed!
Efficiency! The French! Well, when I drove my car
into this tumble-down dump-heap of a place, and I was
growling about that damned street, my wife said maybe
the people were just too poor to tear down that gate
and those houses and make a real road that you could
drive a decent car through. Poor! And now comes a
lawyer and tells me they're efficient! The French poor,


I Return a Handkerchief 137
and the French efficient! What's the next fairy-tale for
little Horace's bedtime story?'
Here was the 'comic relief of which John Sherrill
had spoken to Mr. Williamson. But for the first time
it seemed to me that Horace's laughter was a little
forced, and his joking a little self-conscious, even labori-
ous. Perhaps the big bounder was really upset about
his wife, I reflected — or, more likely, about his auto-
mobile and his own position as a law-breaker.
'Have you got your car yet?' I asked him. And it was
not a question likely to keep Mr. Braye in good-humor.
'No, I haven't got my car yet.' His roar was not of
laughter this time. 'I can't get my car until Saturday,
damn them! What's more, I've got to pay a fine. I
offered to hand out the money for the tax and their
idiotic identity card, and they had the nerve to say
I'd have to pay a fine on top of that! Look here, Mr.
Brasstacks' — he turned suddenly to Henri de Brassac
and bellowed at him — 'I've got nothing against you
personally — God knows you're quiet enough — but
you're French, and I'd just like to tell you here and
now that I'm not going to stand for this without a
protest. You God-damned foreigners think you can
get away with anything, as long as it's an American
you're picking on — well, you can't: not with Horace
Braye. I'm going to get my car on Saturday, and I'm
going straight to the American Ambassador, and I'm
going to see that he knows about this. You'll see!'
'Volontiers,' replied Henri de Brassac, with real
alacrity. Then he looked Horace up and down, aloof
and frigid. 'Monsieur Braye, I have no personal in-
terest in your affairs or in your automobile. And I
have no wish to pronounce an oration. But since you


138 Murder in a Walled Town
have chosen to address me as the scapegoat, so to speak,
of the French nation, you must forgive the candor of
my reply. I hope with all my heart that you will make
a detailed report to your government representatives
at the earliest possible moment. The American officials
in France, Monsieur Braye, are gentlemen who know
the laws of France and respect them. It is your mis-
fortune, and ours, that one cannot say the same of you.'
There had been no emphasis whatever upon the word
'gentlemen,' and indeed I did not know, then or ever,
whether Henri de Brassac, speaking in what was to
him a foreign language, realized the ambiguity in his
use of that term. But Horace turned purple. And I —
although my intentions were good in desiring to create
a diversion — did not improve matters much by the
tool which I now threw into the disordered machine.
I stuck my hand into my pocket and pulled out the
square of white linen that I had picked up in the corner
outside Mrs. Wilde's door, the morning before.
'Here's your handkerchief, Mr. Braye,' I said, and
added, unnecessarily, 'I found it on the hall floor, near
Mrs. Wilde's door yesterday.'
The purple color of rage ebbed away from Horace's
fat face and left it looking pale and oddly flabby. But
he did not take the handkerchief from my hand.
'That isn't mine,' he said. 'I didn't drop any hand-
kerchief in the hall.'
I opened up the folded piece of white linen, and I am
afraid that — since I disliked him so heartily — I took
a certain pleasure in the thought of Horace Braye's
discomfiture, as well as a certain satisfaction in with-
drawing his attention from Monsieur de Brassac and
from the pastime of insulting all foreigners.


· I RETURN A HANDKERCHIEF 139
'It has your initials in the corner,' I said.
Mr. Braye took the handkerchief from me then, and
looked at it, and at the neat embroidered letters, 'H. B.,'
to which I had called his attention. The color came
back to his cheeks and he no longer appeared fabby.
And when he spoke it was without bluster or rage, and
totally without discomfiture, in a voice that was no
bellow, but surprisingly clear and calm and cold. .
'That is not my handkerchief,' he said. “Those are
not my initials. I mean to say, my initials are H. B.,
to be sure, but not that H. B. I suggest that you re-
turn his handkerchief to Mister Henry Brassac.'
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. 'Monsieur is
mistaken,' he said. 'If I may borrow the terseness of
Monsieur's remark, those are not my initials. I mean
to say, my initials are not H. B.
'It's your handkerchief, all the same,' Mr. Braye in-
sisted, with a slight return of his braggadocio. But
the Frenchman only shrugged his shoulders again.
'Well, anyhow, it isn't mine,' said Horace flatly.
John Sherrill reached out his hand. 'I guess I'll take
charge of it, if you don't mind,' he said. “It may pos-
sibly prove to be interesting. Our neighbor's name is
de Brassac, Mr. Braye.'
Horace grunted. 'Sounds pretty phoney,' he mut-
tered, “but have it your own way. You can't pin any-
thing on me, that's one sure thing.' He got up. I'm
going to look after my sick wife,' he said, “and I'll
thank you to have some consideration for her, the
whole damned lot of you.'
He strode belligerently up the ruelle toward the
pavillon annexe.
Not a nice man, as Reggie Fortune would say,


I Return a Handkerchief 141
voice, dress. I could see him as the successful novelist
which I knew him to be. I could see him as the lawyer
which I had just learned that he was. I could not see
him in the activities of a detective, at all. His spare,
lank person, his already sparse brown hair, his atten-
tive dark eyes deep-set beneath his broad forehead, his
long hands with their rare gestures, his pleasant, unob-
trusive manners with their quick thoughtfulness, the
occasional boyishness with which he swung his long legs
in and out of his little car, or expressed himself in some
racy or slangy bit of speech — all these were the at-
tributes of a likable American gentleman, which was
just what John Sherrill was. He could get, on rare oc-
casions, outrageously angry, but he could see a joke;
he was not self-conscious; he neither bragged nor tried
to show off. Modestly, with a characteristic quiet gusto,
he went his way. He was widely informed, widely
traveled, I could see that he was widely and keenly ob-
servant. But his novels were primarily character-stud-
ies— never stories of crime, or even of adventure; and
I did not know then, as I did later, that he had been a
newspaper reporter in New York City, and that in
that maelstrom of strange mysteries he had solved more
than one problem which had 'baffled the police.' Now,
as he went about his self-appointed task in solving the
mystery of Neyronnes, he was very far from calling
attention either to his activities or to himself.
'The police have been busy,' he told us on this Wednes-
day afternoon, the day after the discovery of Mrs.
Wilde's body. When the formal inquiry was opened the
next morning, the whole affair had entered, I realized,
upon a new phase.


We Hear Testimony 143
out to the garden... An official interpreter had been
brought this time from the city, together with a police
stenographer who also seemed to understand English.
The testimony was all given very slowly, and Henri de
Brassac's obliging pencil made it possible for me to
follow it fairly easily, without waiting often for the
formal translations.
Madame Delande and the maid Aurelie testified to
the finding of the body, and were immediately excused
to go about their sadly interrupted business. And I
want to say right here that my hat will always be off
to the Delandes and to their servants, for the quiet
efficiency with which they managed to keep the inn
going in its accustomed way and to meet all the extra
demands upon their time and thought as well; when
the news of the tragedy had become public it must have
been especially hard. After Madame's testimony came
that of the local doctor as to the morphine in the syringe
and the cause of death — the autopsy had borne out the
original diagnosis — and then the Lausanne specialist
took the stand.
He repeated the statements he had already made:
that Mrs. Wilde was not addicted to the use of any
drug, that she had an idiosyncrasy which made any
opiate a poison, and that the self-administration of even
a small quantity of morphine would be tantamount
to suicide.
'Speaking as Madame Wilde's physician, would you
consider suicide probable?' he was asked; and his reply,
as we had expected, was an emphatic negative.
'I should consider it all but impossible,' he said.
'In spite of her ill-health, Mrs. Wilde enjoyed life. Her
financial worries were not serious. If her daughter will


We Hear Testimony 145
caused her death, was not the kind of syringe which is
customarily used for morphine and other ordinary
piqures, but was of a size and type especially adapted to
the administration of insulin.'
'But one can administer morphine with this syringe
without difficulty?'
'Without difficulty, yes. But not in a very large dose.
I cannot picture a drug-addict using such a syringe
habitually.'
'Do you suggest that the morphine was administered
to Madame Wilde by someone who knew of her idio-
syncrasy in regard to opiates — or who at least knew
that she was unaccustomed to the use of opiates and that
a small dose would be fatal?'
'I suggest nothing. I think it quite possible.'
'Do you know how long Madame Wilde had herself
been aware of this idiosyncrasy?'
'For many years. An extremely small dose of mor-
phine nearly killed her, many years ago. She always
told doctors and nurses of that experience, to avoid all
danger of having an opiate given to her again.'
'Then she made no secret of it?'
'Oh, no. Generally speaking, Mrs. Wilde was not a
secretive person. On the contrary, she was in the habit
of talking very freely about herself. But she never told
anyone that she was threatened with diabetes, and I
think that almost no one knew that she took insulin.'
'Then it is possible, is it not, that an individual who
knew that Madame Wilde kept the nature of her disease
a secret might have administered the morphine with
homicidal intent, and trusted that her death would be
attributed to an accident of drug-addiction?'
'It is quite possible,' the doctor replied. 'I should say


146
Murder in a Walled Town
that it was probable. It would have been a stupid
chance to take, but murderers do take stupid chances,
as you know, Monsieur le juge. Since I feel personally
convinced that Mrs. Wilde did not commit suicide, I
can see no alternative to murder. And it certainly leaps
to the mind that a woman in a mysterious state of ill-
health — particularly, perhaps, a woman of Mrs. Wilde's
temperament — might be suspected of drug-addiction
and that her death might be set down to that. As I
said, it was stupid,' he went on. 'It was either very
ignorant or very careless, or both. But it may have
been what happened.' He took it upon himself to bow
to the magistrate. 'Such a plan would only have been
carried out, in my opinion,' he added, 'by a man or
woman unaware of the efficiency of the French police.'
The juge d'instruction bowed in return. 'I thank you,
Monsieur le docteur,' he said. 'You will permit me to
remark that that also leaps to the mind. But now I
must inform you, Monsieur le docteur, of a strange thing:
finger-prints were found upon the hypodermic syringe;
but they were all Madame Wilde's own finger-prints.
The broken ampoule, also, which had contained in-
sulin'
John Sherrill leaned forward in his chair. His eyes
were very bright, but when he spoke his voice was even
quieter than usual.
'May I interrupt with a question, Monsieur le juge?'
he asked. 'The broken ampoule — it had not con-
tained morphine?'
The magistrate consulted his notes again. 'No, Mon-
sieur Sherrill,' he answered. 'The broken ampoule had
not contained morphine. That fact has been estab-
lished. The broken ampoule had contained insulin.'


148
Murder in a Walled Town
John Sherrill addressed the presiding official again.
'I should like to ask Monsieur le docteur another
question, if you will be so kind as to permit it,' he said.
'It is rather a delicate and difficult question, but I am
sure that I shall not be misunderstood... Dr. Lavigne,
you were speaking of Mrs. Wilde's "temperament" a
few moments ago — should you say that she was a
person of uncertain moods, that she was subject to mo-
ments of great anger?'
I did not dare to look at poor Christine, but of course
I realized that questions like that had to be asked. The
doctor's answer was calm and even.
'Yes, Monsieur Sherrill, she was. She was subject —
I think I must put it so — to attacks of rage, which
were always ungoverned, usually unprovoked, and
sometimes very cruel. She was often very unreasonable
in her demands, in her likes and dislikes, so to speak.
Mrs. Wilde was not gifted with much self-control — you
understand that her health had been delicate for some
years; she had been indulged in every way. I dislike
saying these things, Monsieur le juge. But if you agree
with me that someone must have murdered Mrs. Wilde,
you will wish to uncover all possible motives to crime.'
He shrugged his shoulders. 'Mrs. Wilde was a woman
of wealth, of charm, but of no self-discipline. She suf-
fered, too, from the curse of jealousy.'
'Thank you,' said John Sherrill again. 'That is what
I wanted to know.'
The magistrate spoke now, first to the doctor, and
then to the company at large.
'We do agree with you that someone must have mur-
dered Madame Wilde,' he said. 'Your character evi-
dence against suicide, Monsieur, is borne out by one


We Hear Testimony 149
simple, concrete, and I think we may say conclusive,
fact: Madame Wilde's door was locked, and the key
has disappeared.
'The lock was of the old-fashioned kind,' he con-
tinued, 'which cannot be fastened without a key. The
key was one of the large implements with which, in an
old house like this, we are familiar. It was not easy
to mislay, or even to hide; and the room has been thor-
oughly searched. Moreover, no one had an opportunity
to take away the key after the body was discovered.
If Madame Wilde had locked her door herself, the key
would have been in her room: to assume any other
possibility is to ask too much of coincidence, of possi-
bility itself.
'It appears, however, that Madame Wilde's own
hand was the last to touch the hypodermic syringe in
which the residue of morphine was found. We are then
forced to consider the probability that Madame Wilde
was in some way deceived, and was thus persuaded to
give herself this injection of deadly poison — in other
words, that she took an injection of morphine in the
belief that she was taking her customary injection of
insulin. On the face of it, this probability would appear
to narrow the field of our inquiry: for so far as our
present knowledge goes, the number of persons who
could thus have deceived Madame Wilde is limited.
But our present knowledge, Messieurs et Mesdames,
does not go very far. This investigation is only be-
ginning. There may have been influences at work of
which we know nothing, as well as motives of which we
are unaware. I need not remind you all that most of
the witnesses in this case are foreigners, that the victim
was a foreigner, that the possible interrelations of one


150
Murder in a Walled Town
with another among you are unknown to the French
police. We are glad to welcome the co-operation of
Monsieur Sherrill, an American whose reputation has
preceded him to France' — he bowed, and John Sherrill
bowed in response — 'and we thank him for his courte-
ous assistance. Before this inquiry is continued at its
next meeting, we hope to be in possession of certain
specific information which we at present lack. Mean-
while, we continue with what is at hand...
'Monsieur le docteur, I thank you for your most gen-
erous aid, and I am glad now to be able to excuse you
so that you can return to your important duties in the
very friendly country from which you come. We will
proceed now to the next witness: Miss Margaret Joyce
Hamilton.'
The beneficiary of Mrs. Wilde's surprising will was
deadly pale now, and her hands were trembling. She
understood perfectly, of course, that in spite of the
magistrate's careful warning against premature judg-
ment, the evidence that had been given thus far pointed
directly toward her; and information which might
come from America, laying bare her financial losses
and her desperate need of money, could not be expected
to help her... She had a great deal of courage, Margaret
Hamilton, and the poise of a duchess; but these were
not enough, now, to conceal the fact that she was suffer-
ing from what was certainly shock, and might well be
remorse or even fear.
I looked from her to her friend Mrs. Sherrill, anxious
and watchful beside her; to Christine, unmoving and
expressionless in her grief; to Henri de Brassac, whose
sensitive face showed real pain; and around to Horace
Braye, to note with some astonishment that Horace's


We Hear Testimony 151
coarse cheeks were marked with nervous red blotches,
and that his eyes, a minute ago so fixed in their gaze,
were roving restlessly about the room. Was he be-
ginning to feel this as a real human tragedy, I wondered?
Or was he only tired and ill-tempered and in want of a
drink?
Then, very low, hesitant, still lovely, Miss Hamilton's
voice fell upon my ear.
Her evidence brought forth, however, practically
nothing that was new. She was obliged, of course, to
repeat the damaging admission that Mrs. Wilde had
left her door unlocked so that she, Margaret Hamilton,
could gain entrance to her room, 'to see if she was all
right' during the night. Her story, as a whole, Miss
Hamilton told exactly as she had told it before, except
that she was interrupted from time to time with a
question that was in effect a demand for more detail.
Thus, it was brought out for the record that the door
of her room was directly at the top of the stairs and the
door of Mrs. Wilde's room directly at the bottom, and
that on the night of the crime the rooms above Mrs.
Wilde and opposite Miss Hamilton had been empty,
because Mr. and Mrs. Sherrill, who occupied them, had
been away. Except Horace Braye, no one could have
had such easy access to Mrs. Wilde's room as could
Miss Hamilton.
It was also made clear for the record that the space
under the Wildes' room, on the ground-floor, was given
over to the hot-water heater and a sink, and was never
used except when an extra serving-room was needed
for banquets in the pavillon. Miss Hamilton told again
of the maid's visit to her room, of the vain effort to wake
Mrs. Wilde by pounding on the door; she told of seeing


152 Murder in a Walled Town
Mr. Braye come out of his room just opposite Mrs.
Wilde's and of hearing his remark about the key; she
told of finding Mrs. Wilde's body. And she surprised
me a little by telling, under detailed questioning, of
seeing me come from the other side of the Place and
hearing me ask help for a sick man.
'But I could not think of that,' she said. 'I could not
even grasp what Mr. Armitage was talking about. All
I could think of was that Mrs. Wilde was dead from
an overdose of morphine.'
'You said that to Mr. Armitage?'
'About the overdose of morphine? I — I don't re-
member. I may have. It was what I was thinking.'
'But you did not know it was morphine?'
'No. I — I think I must just have taken it for granted
in that first moment. I had never known what Mrs.
Wilde's illness was, and I had never known that she
took insulin. She had been a person of moods, some-
times very gay and animated, and at other times nervous
and — er — irritable. She was exceedingly restless, also.
When I said good-night to her the evening before, she
had seemed nervous, and I thought she was anxious to
be left alone. When I saw the hypodermic syringe be-
side her bed, I jumped to the conclusion, Monsieur
lejuge, that she had been a victim of the drug-habit.'
'Then you did not know of her idiosyncrasy against
opiates?'
'Certainly not, Monsieur. If I had known that I
should not have thought she was a drug-addict.'
The juge aV instruction frowned.
'Madame Wilde had an affection for you, had she not?'
Miss Hamilton's white hands closed tightly, and
opened, and clenched again, and she did not reply at


We Hear Testimony 153
once. Then she looked straight at the magistrate from
eyes that were swimming with tears, and said:
'She must have had. I never knew.'
She was asked then whether she had expected a be-
quest from the dead woman, and she denied all knowl-
edge or thought of such a possibility. She said that a
little over two weeks ago she had seen the Lausanne
lawyer in Neyronnes one day, in conversation with
Mrs. Wilde, but she had never learned who he was nor
why he was there.
'You were fond of Madame Wilde?' the magistrate
asked. And it seemed to me curious that Miss Hamilton
hesitated before answering, and that even then she
gave no direct response.
'I was very sorry for her,' she said. 'At the begin-
ning, I was under the impression that she had had very
serious financial losses, like — perhaps like my own.
And she had an illness of which she was unwilling to
talk, except to say that she suffered. She told me that
she had no real home, and that she was alone in the
world except for her young daughter; and she required
so much attention from her daughter, I thought that
she must be much more ill than she seemed. I — I
thought perhaps she had cancer, Monsieur, or something
like that, and I was very sorry for her. I myself have
had grave financial losses, Monsieur le juge, and I my-
self am alone in the world; but I am not ill. When Mrs.
Wilde came to Neyronnes to live quietly and cheaply,
I felt that here was someone whose situation was far
more serious than my own — and I wanted to help her
all I could.'
In Miss Hamilton's low and beautiful voice, this was
a very moving little speech, and I knew that it might


156
MURDER IN A WALLED TOWN
Mr. Braye, of course, spoke in English. This remark
hit me head on. The magistrate, when it had been
translated, repeated most of it.
'Ah. Monsieur Armitage — prowling around the
house in the middle of the night? How did you know
it was Monsieur Armitage?'
'Because his room is just above mine and I heard him
go into it.'
'Yes — Miss Hamilton heard that also. But you,
Monsieur Braye: you heard Monsieur Armitage moving
about elsewhere in the house? In other rooms? In the
corridors?'
'Well, no — that was the funny part of it,' Horace
answered. 'I didn't really hear him until he got upstairs.
I-I had sort of felt there was someone out there,
prowling around the halls. And when I heard this
whippersnapper go into his room, I realized that he
had been wandering around and keeping mighty quiet
while he was doing it.
Through my indignation I found myself conscious of
amusement, for the interpreter very politely trans-
lated 'whippersnapper' as jeune gentilhomme...
'Ah,' said the magistrate again. 'And what time
Sixteen minutes past twelve,' replied Horace promptly.
'You looked at your watch?'
'Sure I looked at my watch.'
"You turned on the light?'
“No!' roared Horace, 'I didn't have to. My watch
has a radium dial.'
*And after that you went to sleep?'
'I did. I went to sleep, and I slept all night.'
“Then you did not hear the dog when he disturbed
Miss Hamilton?'


We Hear Testimony 157
'No, I didn't. I'm a sound sleeper,' Horace answered,
and went on with a rather surprising willingness, I
thought, to add details. 'But my wife did. My wife
has the room just under Miss Hamilton's. She said
this morning that she had heard the dog growling, and
she thought it was funny, because she hadn't heard
him do it before.'
'Madame Braye will tell us her story later, when she
has recovered. Now in the morning, Monsieur Braye'
But the rest of Horace's testimony proved to be
merely a repetition of what we had already been told.
Once or twice the juge d'instruction looked at a piece
of paper which he held in his hand throughout the ex-
amination of Mr. Braye, but the examination itself was
merely formal. And after that we adjourned for a queer,
strained, hurried luncheon.
Henri de Brassac was the first witness called at the
afternoon session, and it seemed to me that he was
being questioned in a good deal of detail about the
finding of Paul MacNeil. I thought, too, that the
Frenchman looked a little worried — as if his mind were
troubled by some new anxiety — when the magistrate
finally spoke the word of thanks which concluded his
examination and turned to me. And I was asked for
the complete and minute story of that night: naturally,
after Horace Braye's silly and malicious insinuation,
I had expected that!
So I told them all about the sounds I had heard in
the ruins of Neyronnes, the inexplicable English word
that had struck my ear in the midst of unintelligibility,
the return to listen for other sounds, other words. I
told about hearing the poetry on Monday evening; I
did my best to describe the state of perplexity in which


158
Murder in a Walled Town
I had gone back to the house; I confessed my worry
and my now conscience-stricken inaction over the
rain in the night.
Then I went on to the morning, my early departure
from my room, the discovery of blood on the cobbles,
the trail that led to the sick man. Up to this point,
I was allowed to tell my story in my own way, as a
straight and uninterrupted narrative; but here I was
taken back, by a question, to the night before — what
time was it when I came in?
I replied that I did not know exactly — unlike Mr.
Braye, I had not looked at my watch — but that I felt
sure it was somewhere around midnight. And, I added,
emphatically, I had not been 'prowling around the
house'; far from it! I had taken especial pains not to
make any sound as I passed Mrs. Wilde's door and
went up the stairs just outside her room, but there was
nothing unusual in my going up those stairs at a late
hour: although I did not often stay out until after
twelve o'clock, I was in the habit of strolling about
Neyronnes in the evening. I told about hearing Miss
Hamilton's dog growling at some time during the night,
and repeated my first statement that after that dis-
turbance I had slept well until daylight. I told about
my hurried return to the house, after finding the sick
man, to look for help, and about my encounter with
Miss Hamilton at the inn door. Except for Miss Hamil-
ton's denial of the presence of an English-speaking
stranger in Neyronnes, I told them now everything I
could think of. My one desire was to keep nothing back.
And yet, I felt that I did not tell my story very well.
I was heartsick, anxious, upset. The whole difficult
situation made me feel self-conscious, and I know that


We Hear Testimony 159
I spoke stupidly: I found myself hesitating, forgetting
things and having to go back. My one purpose was to
tell the whole truth, simply and clearly, keeping to my-
self only that one falsehood of Miss Hamilton's, which
might have hurt her, and which was, I said to myself,
quite irrelevant really. But after I had been thanked
for my courtesy and was allowed to relapse into silence,
I found myself wondering, as I had wondered about
Miss Hamilton's testimony, whether my true and simple
story had really sounded convincing at all! For the
first time, I was conscious of a sort of envy of Horace
Braye: in spite of the silliness of his accusation against
me, that big bounder had said what he had to say
clearly, unhesitatingly, exactly, and well!
What with the need for translation, my examination
took a long, long time. When it was over I was tired,
and I thought that everyone must be; I was not sur-
prised when the juge d'instruction stated that he was
about to dismiss us for the day.
'I shall want you all to meet with me again, as you
understand,' he said, 'but not tomorrow. I may tell
you now that there are points in this situation which
are far from being clear. We cannot solve a problem
like this in terms of what we have seen only today, or
yesterday, or in the past two months. We must look
for a past beyond that brief moment, Messieurs et
Mesdames.
'And if in so doing we subject some among you to
. inconvenience, hold some of you here against your will,
investigate matters which our very investigation proves
to have had no concern with this tragedy — in such
case I must pray that you will be patient, and that in
so far as possible you will give me your willing aid.


CHAPTER XII
I EXPLAIN TO A FRENCHMAN
Horace looked at his wife, and saw that we saw her.
'My God, Rosalie, do you want to kill yourself,
coming downstairs when you're so sick?' he cried out.
'This is terrible — look at her, all of you! And, here,
someone lend me a hand to get my wife back to her bed.'
He glared at us all. 'Now you understand why I asked
to have her excused from the hearing; and I hope you
all see how sick she is,' he said. 'Look at her — white
as a sheet. Hold on, old girl, don't faint again. There,
now, you're all right. Your old man's got you.'
Without taking advantage of the assistance which
was instantly proffered by every man in the room, he
supported his wife across the hall-lounge and toward
the stairs. But in spite of her husband's physical aid
and his noisy words of comfort, the expression on Rosalie's
insignificant, not-quite-pretty face did not change at
all. She certainly did look ill. But she looked more
than ill, I thought. There was certainly a suggestion of
terror where there was usually placid and good-humored
stupidity. Was there something that Rosalie Braye
knew, or suspected, something that frightened her?
Whatever questions of this kind the others might
have shared with me, no one showed anything but
complete acceptance of Mr. Braye's explanation and
complete sympathy for Mrs. Braye's ill-health. But
after Horace and Rosalie had gone up the stairs and
into their own rooms, the juge d'instruction handed to


162
MURDER IN A WALLED TOWN
John Sherrill a paper which I recognized as the one
he had held in his hand during Horace Braye's testi-
mony.
*Thank you, Monsieur,' he said. 'I am very glad,
indeed, to have your co-operation. Let us hope that
the succeeding cable messages will be more detailed.'
'Yes, this one is a disappointment,' Sherrill replied.
He took another paper out of his bill-fold and handed
one to Henri de Brassac and one to me.
'You fellows would like to see these,' he said. "They
are the French and English versions of the cable I told
you I was expecting: the one you have is the original,
Armitage. It doesn't tell us anything, but we are look-
ing for another soon.'
I read:
SHERRILL NEYRONNES — JEANNIOT HORACE
BRAYE WELL-KNOWN IN CLOAK-AND-SUIT TRADE
NEW YORK NINETEEN-TWELVE TO NINETEEN-
TWENTY-TWO STOP MADE CONSIDERABLE FOR-
TUNE IN SIXTEEN-DOLLAR SUITS MEN AND WO-
MEN STOP BAD REPUTATION WITH FACTORY
INSPECTORS CONSUMERS' LEAGUE UNIONS STOP
IN NINETEEN-TWENTY-TWO RESIGNED PRESI-
DENCY HOBRY MANUFACTURING COMPANY AND
APPARENTLY DISAPPEARED STOP RETURNED
TO NEW YORK FEBRUARY NINETEEN-THIRTY-
THREE STILL PLENTY OF MONEY WHERE-
ABOUTS IN INTERIM UNEXPLAINED STOP SAILED
WITH WIFE AND LINCOLN CAR CHAMPLAIN MARCH
THIRTY-FIRST STOP INVESTIGATIONS CONTINUE
END OF MESSAGE GREGG
'So the question, Who is Horace Braye, is not yet
satisfactorily answered,' Sherrill said Apparently


I Explain to a Frenchman
163
Horace Braye is simply Horace Braye. But there was
no connection between Mrs. Wilde and a sweat-shop
proprietor who got in wrong with the Amalgamated,
that's sure! We'll hope for more news soon.'
It occurred to me that the juge d'instruction might
make a caustic comment on the first of these remarks.
I half-expected him to ask, 'Who is Margaret Hamilton?'
Or even, 'Who is Wayne Armitage?' And I remembered
suddenly that I, like Horace Braye, had no identity
card. But the magistrate only smiled politely and took
his departure. The lawyer Williamson hurried away,
too. And I yielded to the warmth of a comfortable
feeling that Horace's accusation against me might have
acted merely as a boomerang for himself. It was de-
cidedly Horace Braye of whom I was thinking as I walked
over to the auberge with John Sherrill and Henri de
Brassac.
'Did you see how Mrs. Braye looked?' I asked them —
a foolish question, for everyone must have noticed
Rosalie.
She had evidently come downstairs to see whether
the hearing was almost over and to find out whether
her presence would be required before it was adjourned,
and she had overheard the translation of the magis-
trate's remarks about awaiting further information.
So much was apparent to everyone.
Sherrill and Monsieur de Brassac both nodded.
'Our ugly braggart,' said the Frenchman, 'is not
lacking in quick thought.'
'Horace,' said John Sherrill, 'is nobody's fool. We
all see that his wife is in a panic over something, and
does he try to cover it up, or distract our attention?
Not he, the old fox! He points it out to us, and ex-


164
Murder in a Walled Town
plains it, as quick as a flash and as natural as you please.
By George, it might even be true! But I'll bet he beats
her when he gets her upstairs!
'So far as I am concerned,' he went on, with a com-
plete change of tone, 'that inquiry did not go badly.
It established two points which are important, though
they are both negative. One of them I'm not going to
call attention to at this moment, but the other we can
certainly talk about: it was not Christine who killed
Mrs. Wilde.*
We had reached the sharp turn of the road under
the overhanging corbels of the beautiful fourteenth-
century house at the entrance to the Place, and I stretched
out my hand toward the wall in a queer impulse to
steady myself.
'Christine?' I echoed blankly. 'Christine? How could
it have been Christine? How can you say such a thing?'
Sherrill looked at me almost pityingly.
'You haven't thought much about this affair, Armitage,'
he said. 'You've felt a lot and thought very little. Up
to this point — this point in the inquiry — there was
not one of us here who could be held free from the
suspicion of having killed Mrs. Wilde. And until the
establishment of those two facts about the key and
the ampoule, Christine was one of the most obvious
suspects. I have not doubted her myself, any more than
you have, Armitage, but look here...'
We walked across to the outspreading linden tree and
sat down. 'It's the cocktail hour,' said Sherrill. And —
for the sake of relaxation, as we all recognized, and
not because we wanted a drink! — we all ordered
aperitifs. Then Sherrill began:
You can't get away from the good old rule of motive,


I Explain to a Frenchman
165
means, and opportunity, Armitage. That's the three-
pronged fork with which you spear your murderer.
And to look for motive, means, and opportunity, in
searching for a murderer, is more than a rule: it's an in-
stinct. Motive, means, and opportunity — and the
first of these is motive. Who had the biggest motive for
getting rid of Mrs. Wilde?'
'Miss Hamilton,' I replied.
'Miss Hamilton may have had the most immediately
obvious motive, and she did have a big one,' Sherrill
agreed. 'But it wasn't the biggest. No, Armitage, the
person who gained most by Mrs. Wilde's death was
Mrs. Wilde's daughter.'
He looked at me a little queerly, I thought. 'You
know that,' he said.
'But Christine was devoted to her mother,' I stam-
mered.
'Was she?' Sherrill raised his eyebrows. 'She was a
very dutiful daughter, and she went through all the
paces of devotion, as she had been taught to do all her
life. Christine Wilde had been trained to walk in a
treadmill, poor child, and she kept on walking in it.
But I very much doubt if she felt any real devotion —
any warmth of human affection and comradeship — for
a mother who treated her like an African slave, and
never even let her call her soul her own.
'Good God!' he interrupted himself, 'that girl's life
was a thing to make your blood boil! She never had
any fun. She hadn't a cent of money of her own. She
had no chance to make friends of her own age and no
freedom in choosing her acquaintances. She hadn't had
any education to speak of. She wasn't allowed to so
much as read a book to herself, or ever to choose any book


166
Murder in a Walled Town
she wanted to read. All this petty slavery in addition
to having to be at her mother's beck and call every
minute of the day and night. We found out a good deal
about Christine's existence on that trip, and it just
about made me want to go out and kill Mrs. Wilde
myself! She was tied for good and all, too: her mother
would never have allowed her to marry. In fact, she
would have started in with some special torture, I'll
wager, if Christine had ever shown any signs of a girl's
simple normal human interest in a young man.'
'Yes,' said Henri de Brassac.
As for me, I groaned. It seemed worse even than I
had imagined. Monsieur de Brassac shot a quick glance
at me, but Sherrill continued:
'And Christine Wilde was an heiress. Thirty thousand
dollars a year is a lot of money. Even if the dollar drops
to fifty, at home and abroad, thirty thousand dollars is
still going to mean a lot of money. With her mother's
death, Christine gets that money with not one string
to it.'
I felt like groaning again, but of course I didn't. I
growled at Sherrill, instead:
'Good Lord, do you think I don't know that? It's
terrible!'
Henri de Brassac stared at me now, but Sherrill
gave a not unkind little laugh.
'Terrible, is it? A nice unselfish thought that is!
Terrible for you, maybe, if you look at it that way, but
not for Christine! Christine, who has been a slave, is
free. Christine, who hadn't a penny of her own, is rich.
What's more, her mind and spirit are set at liberty,
just as her actions are. She can make decisions and
choices, think things out for herself. And do you mean


168 Murder in a Walled Town
gent, thoughtful, sophisticated, older than I, yet surely
my friends... They had been very kind to me, John
Sherrill and Henri de Brassac: Sherrill was ten or twelve
years my senior, and Henri de Brassac must be nearly, if
not quite, fifty; they were men of the world, men of as-
sured position, and I must be, in their eyes, no more than
a boy; but there had been a real companionableness in
their attitude toward me. And to Monsieur de Brassac,
for his ready, unquestioning help in the matter of poor
Paul^MacNeil, I felt a deep and personal gratitude. I felt
that I was not talking to mere acquaintances, casually
met in travel, but to friends, as I continued:
'I am very, very glad, for her sake, that Miss Wilde is
rich, and free. But of course you can see for yourselves
that her being so great an heiress makes me feel a little —
well, a little dashed. Even in this short time, Monsieur de
Brassac, Christine Wilde has come to — to mean a great
deal in my thoughts; you can understand, surely, what
my dreams must have been. And you can understand
what it is that I feel now, since her fortune has shut me
out, on the other side of a high wall...'
'No,' said Henri de Brassac,' I do not understand. But,
Monsieur Sherrill, you need not try to explain it to me.'
His movement gave me a quick comprehension of the
term 'Gallic gesture,' so vivid, so significant, did that
little flicker of his hand seem to be. 'I have read it, in
books, of the English and the Americans, this feeling
about marriage. Now I see it. Monsieur Armitage wishes
his bride to be poor, not rich: it is he himself, he alone,
who will build the house, who will set the fire upon the
hearth; it is what he earns from day to day or from year
to year, that and that only, which will keep the fire burn-
ing. And when he finds that the young lady of his choice


I Explain to a Frenchman
169
is rich, then Monsieur Armitage sees an insuperable ob-
stacle between himself and his happiness.
'No, my friends, I do not understand. I cannot see
logic there, nor common-sense, nor a frank facing of the
realities of life. It is not so with us: in France, Monsieur
Armitage, when a man finds that the young lady who at-
tracts him is an heiress, he does not regard it as "terrible."
It is not to him what you call it — a high wall to bar him
from happiness for himself. No, it is a door, on the con-
trary, which opens for happiness for the two together and
for their children, since it assures security for the family.
'I think our way is best, Monsieur. But I am glad to
have seen yours, in its sincerity. And I believe what you
say, Monsieur Armitage. I believe what you say. At this
moment, that is important.
'And now that you have been so courteous as to bear
with my ignorance and permit my interruption,' he added,
'shall we ask Monsieur Sherrill to solve the riddle of how
Miss Christine could have had the "means" and the
"opportunity" of which he spoke?'
I felt definitely grateful to the Frenchman for the
formal speech which gave me time to recover myself after
my outburst; and grateful, too, for the way he changed
the subject by bringing it back to the question that had
been in my own mind.
And Sherrill went on as if there had been no interrup-
tion:
'You see, Mrs. Wilde was not really very ill — not
nearly so ill, for instance, as Miss Hamilton thought at
first. She was not strong; she had the first threatenings
of diabetes, for which her doctor was already giving her
insulin, and which he was already able to control and
might well have been able to cure. But a large part of


170
Murder in a Walled Town
her ill-health, I am convinced, was in reality a pretext for
having life made easy, for getting her own way, for keep-
ing in the center of the picture. And she was compara-
tively young — only in her early forties.
'What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that Mrs.
Wilde would probably have lived for years, keeping her
daughter chained to her side until Christine's own youth
was past. And Christine is not stupid. On the contrary,
she is an ingenious girl. I think she is quite ingenious
enough to have got hold of a small quantity of morphine,
and to have found a way to substitute that drug for in-
sulin in one of those ampoules, so that her mother would
have taken a deadly poison when she herself was some-
where else.'
Upon my speechless horror and amazement fell Mon-
sieur de Brassac's voice, calm, interested, impersonal:
'But in that case would she have called attention to the
fact that her mother was not a drug-addict, that she
could not take opiates?'
'I think not,' Sherrill agreed. 'But one can't be sure of
that. A clever murderer might possibly have taken just
such a step, with the idea of provoking just such a re-
action as yours has been. But of course it is not necessary
for us to fash ourselves over that question: the ampoule
had contained insulin; there was nothing in the room
which had contained morphine. The poison was put in
the hypodermic syringe by someone who was on the spot.
And the murderer locked the door on the outside and took
the key away with him; that second piece of evidence
came out after my question about the ampoule. By one,
or both, of those items, Christine is eliminated as a sus-
pect. As are also,' he added, with a little smile, 'my wife
and myself.'


172
Murder in a Walled Town
'Some of us had, very obviously. About the others, we
really don't know very much, as yet.'
'You think the dossiers will tell us?'
Sherrill got up. 'Perhaps,' he said. 'Look here, it's
almost dinner-time. If you want me to, after dinner, I'll
tell you more of how I've reasoned it out so far. I
shouldn't mind talking with you both about Margaret
Hamilton...'
'I shall be very glad,' said Monsieur de Brassac, with
more animation than he had yet shown. 'You seem so
sure... That other piece of evidence you spoke of, Mon-
sieur Sherrill — the second point which was established
at the inquiry today — does it concern Miss Hamilton?'
But Sherrill shook his head. 'I'm not going to say any-
thing about that yet awhile,' he declared. 'But I will
talk with you both about — well, about things, if you
will come and have a liqueur with me after dinner.'
Each of us accepted the invitation with alacrity. But
when the tables had been cleared and Elinor Sherrill and
Christine had gone back to the house — Margaret
Hamilton had not come to dinner — and the three of us
were having our coffee, the hope of a talk about 'things'
was doomed to disappointment. Out from the main salle
d manger, where he had dined alone, came Horace Braye.
He came straight at us, a little like a charging bull; and
it was plain to be seen that he was in a very bad humor.
Without so much as a 'Good-evening,' still less an invi-
tation to join us, he pulled up a chair and sat down.
'I'm about fed up,' he said.
Henri de Brassac regarded him with distant politeness.
'Oh,' he remarked, 'is it that you have not eaten suffi-
ciently well? You should speak to Monsieur Delande
about it.'


I Explain to a Frenchman
173
Horace glared at him. 'Trying to be funny, are you,
Mister Brasstacks? Or just pretending you don't under-
stand the English language? Well, it's a little late for you
to pretend that. I said I was fed up, and when I say fed
up I mean fed up, and you know damned well what I
mean. My wife's sick with all this damned trouble that's
been wished on her, and I'm stuck in this hell-hole giving
evidence to your fool detectives, and I say I'm fed up.
Not your handkerchief, eh? My handkerchief, was it?'
A look of cunning mixed itself with his air of ferocity
and made his ugly expression uglier still, and he went
on:
'Well, suppose it was — that's no hanging matter. But
you know what is a hanging matter, and what I say is,
when is this conspiracy of silence going to end? There's
been a murder committed in this place, and you know
damned well why it was committed and you know
damned well who committed it, and I say, when are you
going to tell what you know?'
Monsieur de Brassac met this outburst with entire
calm, as by this time I knew him well enough to expect.
But what did surprise me was that he was a little pale, as
he answered, coldly and very disdainfully:
'I am totally ignorant of what it is that you are trying
to express, Monsieur Braye. I do not know what you are
talking about. I suggest that you endeavor to control
yourself.'
This, of course, was pouring oil on the fire. 'You do,
do you?' Horace bellowed. 'Well, I can do a little sug-
gesting too, you damned French popinjay. I suggest that
you stop trying to get by with a highfalutin manner, and
come clean. And I suggest that it's about time. Do you
get that, Mr. Accessory-after-the-fact?'


I Explain to a Frenchman
175
with murder. Sherrill can tell these dumb policemen
about it— I can't talk their damned fool gibberish, but
they can't put one over on me — I'm an American'
John Sherrill pushed back his chair so that it fell with
a bang against one of the iron tables, and stood over
Horace Braye with a look on his face that was almost
frightening. His fists were clenched, and his eyes were
burning coals in furious whiteness.
'Yes, you're an American, God help us,' he said, in a
voice that was low and terribly distinct in its rage and
bitterness. 'You and your kind are the worst liability
America has — and about the worst disgrace, you beast!
"Fed up," are you? Well, I'm "fed up." I'm fed up with
your greed and your meanness and your selfishnesstand
your ignorance and your coarseness and your vile temper
and your brag. I'm fed up with your silly insults to other
countries and your childish profanity and abuse. I'm
fed up with the meanness that suspects everyone else of
meanness and dishonesty and self-seeking, and that
doesn't know kindness or ingenuousness when it meets
them face to face. A pig in the barnyard has a better
standard of right and wrong than you have.
'An American, are you? Well, there are certain quali-
ties that we like to think of in America, that we're proud
of in our history, and you wouldn't recognize them if you
fell over them in the street. You? You're a bully and a
sneak and an ignoramus and an empty-headed braggart
and a beast, and I'll swear you're a crook, and the only
place where you really belong in America is behind prison
bars. You'd better believe I'm fed up! An American —
my God, you've got your nerve! Wayne Armitage is an
American. I'm an American — and you ask me to pull
your dirty chestnuts out of the fire, you big loathsome


176
Murder in a Walled Town
brute! I'll see you in the frozen limbo first: that's where
I'd like to see you, Mr. Horace Braye!'
He made a gesture with his hand as if to push the very
thought of Mr. Braye far from him, and strode out of the
galerie. But Horace sat limp and red-faced in his chair
for a full minute, while no one spoke. Then he got up
slowly, and lumbered across the Place toward the chemin
de ronde.


CHAPTER XIII
A FRENCHMAN EXPLAINS TO ME
‘MONSIEUR BRAYE has never read Dante,' remarked
Henri de Brassac dispassionately. 'Monsieur Sherrill
would have done better to use the only language he under-
stands and to tell him to go to hell. But no — Monsieur
Sherrill has done enough!'
His eyes were fixed reflectively upon Horace's back, as
that completely deflated personage all but stumbled
across the square. And the phrase, 'go to hell,' as the
Frenchman spoke it, was really funny. But I was not
listening. I was not at all interested in Horace Braye's
collapse into silence and flabbiness. I was engrossed in
my own affairs.
'Monsieur de Brassac,' I demanded, “is this true?'
'Is what true, Monsieur Armitage?'
'Is it true that I am suspected of the murder of Mrs.
Wilde? And what is all this about her warning Christine
against me? What did that bounder mean?'
Henri de Brassac answered my first question, and his
voice was grave.
'I am afraid that it is true, my young friend,' he said.
'You are one of what Monsieur Sherrill has called the
"obvious suspects." And no one has known — I myself
have not known — that you were unaware of Madame
Wilde's opposition to your – er — acquaintance with
her daughter.'
“There was never anything for her to be opposed to,'
I muttered. 'I've hardly spoken three sentences to


178
Murder in a Walled Town
Christine Wilde. If I've thought about her a lot — well,
her mother didn't know that.'
'No. It was not your thoughts that her mother was
interested in. It is quite possible that her mother guessed
that she might be thinking about you. It seems to me
that you are too modest, Monsieur Armitage — too
modest for your own good, and also too romantic. But
we must remain with the facts. Here, then, is the fact
which you have not hitherto known: Madame Wilde for-
bade her daughter to hold any communication with you
beyond the demands of the most casual courtesy to a
fellow-guest who was, and would remain, a stranger. She
told her daughter that you were undoubtedly a fortune-
hunter, that you wished to pay your addresses to her for
the sake of her money, that you were — forgive my re-
peating her words — an unscrupulous adventurer, a
nobody, looking for a rich wife.'
'And did Christine believe that?' I cried out.
Monsieur de Brassac smiled.
'I am inclined to think that she did not,' he answered,
with a certain amount of compassion and forbearance, I
realized, for my state of mind. 'She cried. She cried very
miserably, Monsieur Armitage, and she told her mother
she was sure she was mistaken. But she obeyed her
mother, as you have probably noticed.'
So that was why I had seen so little of the Wildes! My
mind went back quickly to that early day — how many
lives ago! — when first Miss Hamilton, and then Chris-
tine herself, had welcomed me to Neyronnes as a person
who would help to keep an invalid entertained. 'I am
hoping,' Margaret Hamilton had said, in that beautiful
voice which, like a magic wand, touched slang with
piquancy, 'that your coming will pep her up a bit.' And


A Frenchman Explains to Me
179
Christine had greeted me with 'You will give her a new
interest.' I had been irritated by the prospect of sacrific-
ing my treasure of privacy and quiet to the business of
pepping up Mrs. Wilde, but I had been pleased, natu-
rally, by the hope of becoming acquainted with Christine,
even though all she seemed able to talk about, in those
first moments, was her mother's ill-health.
Then I had had that pleasant little exchange of a few
sentences with a charming, wide-awake, dirty-fisted girl
in overalls at a garage door — and after that I had
scarcely seen the Wildes at all. My irritation had had
nothing more to feed upon, my hope had not been ful-
filled; and I had occupied my time with other matters,
although the thought of Christine had never been far from
my mind. I had scarcely seen either of them — now I
understood why! Christine had told her mother about
chatting with me, and the result had been this string of
silly accusations; and Christine had cried...
'How do you know this?' I demanded. 'How does
everyone know?'
'I overheard it, alas,' Henri de Brassac answered. 'I do
not know the source of Monsieur Braye's information,
but I suspect that Madame Wilde herself talked about it
to Madame Braye. Madame Wilde seemed to welcome
the Braye couple as congenial acquaintances' — he made
a little grimace —' I have asked myself whether that
would not have been unpleasing to her daughter: one can
see that the Wilde and the Braye families are not of the
same social standing in the United States, is it not so?'
I nodded. 'But Mrs. Wilde was excruciatingly bored,'
I said, 'and the Brayes were the kind of people she could
impress. How did you overhear all that talk about me,
Monsieur de Brassac?'


180 Murder in a Walled Town
'Too easily. My room is next to the large one which
thekWildes occupied. Although the walls themselves are
thick, one keeps one's windows open on a warm June
evening and words leap to one's ears. Madame Wilde was
given to moods of excitement in which her voice was less
low than in ordinary conversation. And you may re-
member, Monsieur Armitage, during the first days after
my arrival, Madame Wilde had no reason to know that I
understood English.'
Yes, I remembered. I remembered the scene of the
Brayes' arrival, and Mrs. Wilde's preposterous demand
of our French fellow-guest. I remembered the coy per-
suasiveness with which she had addressed him in his
language, and the icy, rigid obstinacy with which he had
answered in hers. How they must have loathed each
other after that brief exchange of courtesies, Mrs. Wilde
and Henri de Brassac! And it came over me suddenly,
for the first time, what a curious mixture of raw human
emotions we had, as civilized creatures and as complete
strangers, stirred up in each other in a very few days!
Mrs. Wilde and Henri de Brassac hating each other.
Mrs. Wilde taking a bitter and cruel dislike to me, and
persecuting her daughter miserably because of it. Myself
angrily resentful of the woman's selfishness toward
Christine, and John Sherrill confessing that he could
'just about want to kill Mrs. Wilde' himself, for the
same reason. Then Horace Braye and I, flaring out at
each other into an actual enmity; and John Sherrill losing
his temper when his detestation of that big bully —
especially his detestation of him as a disgrace to John
Sherrill's country — burst the bounds of conventional
self-control.
And Margaret Hamilton — what had she been think-


A Frenchman Explains to Me 181
ing and feeling, through these last weeks? Under the
avalanche that had fallen upon my own unhappy person,
the thought of Miss Hamilton had been battered clean
out of my mind. For the matter of that, too, what about
poor ill Paul MacNeil, whose recitations of English poetry
to solace himself in the ruins I had heard at such an in-
opportune time for myself? And what about Henri de
Brassac — what was really going on in the clear mind
behind that mask of French calm?
Well, at least I could go on asking questions of Mon-
sieur de Brassac...
'Then you suspected me,' I said. And I could not help
noticing that his reply came not only a little wearily, but
with hesitation.
'I would not say that,' he demurred. 'But Miss Chris-
tine's tears told me that she did feel an interest in you,
and from that it was surely only the next step to see that
you might have had a very strong motive for wishing —
forgive my rude phrasing — to put her mother out of the
way.
'Moreover, Monsieur Armitage, it seems to me im-
portant in this connection that you should remember that
you are in France, and not in the United States of Amer-
ica. I have no way of knowing how generally your ideal-
istic conception of the best foundation for a marriage is
shared by the young men of your country; that it is uni-
versal I find it difficult to believe; but that is not the
point. The point, my romantic young friend, is that just
as it had not occurred to me that you would regard Miss
Wilde's independent fortune as an obstacle to your court-
ship, so it will not occur to the police. The police, I fear,
will not — will not easily credit it.'
'Oh,' I said flatly. 'Goon.'


182
Murder in a Walled Town
He went on:
'Also, Monsieur Armitage, there are one or two little
things which were, I am willing to believe, mere unfortu-
nate coincidences, but which do not look very well. In
the first real conversation which I ever had with you, it
was a little noticeable that you made a special point of
telling me that Miss Christine had never had a chance
for independent intellectual development. When you
ran to me for aid for poor young Monsieur MacNeil and
told me your story of having heard him in the ruins in
the night, it is quite possible that you might have been,
as this person Braye charged, attempting to establish
something in the nature of an alibi — not an alibi in
actual strokes of the clock, but something more subtle:
the impression that you were a young man of very gentle
and sensitive nature, who had spent the night in con-
templation of a work of mercy.'
'But I wasn't!' I interrupted. 'I don't know anything
about alibis, but I hate myself for not having rushed right
out to find that poor boy as soon as it began to rain. If
I had done that, I'd have an easier conscience — and a
real alibi,' I added, a little bitterly.
'If you had done that, you would perhaps have met
the murderer in the hall,' said Monsieur de Brassac
gravely, 'or, possibly, heard sounds as you passed Madame
Wilde's door.*
'I wish to Heaven I had,' I muttered. And then I
had a sudden thought.
'Look here, Monsieur de Brassac,' I said, 'didn't
you hear any sounds at all in Mrs. Wilde's room that
night — after you had been able to hear all that conver-
sation before?'
'No,' he answered, still gravely, 'I heard nothing.


A Frenchman Explains to Me
183
And that is not so strange as it seems. The walls of those
rooms are very thick — the police have been testing
for noises, I believe — and one cannot overhear anything
but the loudest sounds, through the wall. The conver-
sation to which I was unwillingly obliged to listen came
through the windows: out one open window and into an-
other. On the night of that hard rain from the west,
my own windows were closed, and Madame Wilde's
must have been. Also, the rain itself was noisy, and
could have drowned light sounds.'
'Oh, I see.' I felt as if I had been a little stupid, not
to grasp that obvious fact for myself. 'Well, are there
any more clues against me?'
'Not clues exactly, Monsieur Armitage.' He smiled
again now. 'Not clues. But you know I have already
warned you against the obviousness with which you
began to devote yourself to Miss Christine as soon as
her mother was dead. And, although this last has no
apparent bearing upon the death of Madame Wilde,
it is something which may be thought to require explana-
tion — your footprints have been found in the dust of
the unfinished room in the pavillon. One may ask one-
self, what were you doing there?'
'One may ask me that,' I remarked none too politely.
And somewhat to my surprise Monsieur de Brassac's
smile became more friendly.
'These are small things,' he said. 'Perhaps I should not
have mentioned them at all. They are small, and obvious.
Too obvious. Monsieur Sherrill would tell us that the
too obvious clue is probably no clue — that anyone
clever enough to commit a murder would be too clever
to leave a succession of aids to identification behind him,
or to throw out helpful hints to his pursuers from day to


184 Murder in a Walled Town
day. If it is any comfort to you, Monsieur Armitage, I
do not believe that you murdered Madame Wilde. I
know that Monsieur Sherrill does not believe it. But it is
possible that you may have to undergo further police
examination before the real murderer is found.'
He sighed. 'Myself, I am no investigator. I am a
quiet scholar, of no particular distinction and no par-
ticular talent, who has been drawn much against his will
into these lamentable events. As I once pointed out to
you, I am almost old enough to be your father, and I am
your friend. And since I have been caught in the currents
of this tragedy, I am interested, Monsieur Armitage.
I lack the skill to inquire into the mystery — that is not
my mStier, it is Monsieur Sherrill's — but I am interested.
I am interested in you, my young friend with the illogi-
cal modesty and the romantic ideas in regard to marriage
and love. I am interested in Miss Christine, whose life
is just beginning — who can awake now like an embryo
that is for the first time touched by the light. I am inter-
ested in Miss Hamilton, that American lady whose
fortune has fallen from her, but who keeps her pride.
I am interested in this poor afflicted young man whom
it is so easy for everyone to forget in his affliction. I
am even interested, Monsieur Armitage, in Monsieur
Horace Braye and in his wife.'
'Horace and his wife?' I echoed. 'Oh, are you? Well,
I'm not.' But as soon as I said that, I knew it was a
brainless remark. As a matter of fact, I was still feeling
stunned — too stunned, too bruised and sore, to think
clearly.
And Monsieur de Brassac seemed to understand that.
'Et puis alors,' he said, 'have you any theory about
this crime, Monsieur Armitage? Myself, I am offering


A FRENCHMAN EXPLAINS TO ME
185
no opinion,' he added, 'but we must face the fact that
one of our number here in Neyronnes is a murderer.
Will you permit me to ask you — who do you think
killed Madame Wilde?'
‘Not Horace Braye's wife, anyhow,' I answered.
'No? And not Horace?'
I shook my head, not as a negative reply, but in sheer
perplexity.
'I don't know. It has occurred to me that he might
have done it. I think, as Mr. Sherrill says, that he's a
crook. And he seems to be doing all he can to frame me.
But he doesn't seem the type for that kind of murder —
that big bragging bounder. And what motive could he
have? He and his wife seemed, as you said, to be making
friends with Mrs. Wilde.
'There is no type for any particular kind of murder,
I am afraid,' Monsieur de Brassac said soberly. 'And I
think that Monsieur Braye's mind is more subtle than
it seems. Motive? We do not know now what motive he,
or anybody, may have had. We cannot place too much
dependence at this moment upon motive, I think. The
clue of motive, Monsieur Armitage, leads to you.'
'The clue of motive,' I said, 'seems to lead to Miss
Hamilton.'
'Ah, yes, Miss Hamilton...' Henri de Brassac looked
worried, and for an instant he did not speak again.
Then he went on:
'Myself, I know little or nothing. But there is one
thing in which I find myself somewhat interested: the
handkerchief. The handkerchief which might have been
used to keep the murderer's fingers from leaving any
prints, even on the door-knob in Madame Wilde's room.
Why did Monsieur Braye deny ownership of the hand-
kerchief you found?'


A Frenchman Explains to Me
187
central government bureau to investigate crime, but
you are probably familiar with the corresponding office in
Great Britain. The Surete, my friend, is the Scotland
Yard of France; it is our Criminal Investigation Depart-
ment, so to speak.
'And now,' he continued, without pause, 'permission
has been given to remove the body of Madame Wilde,
and tomorrow her daughter, with Monsieur and Madame
Sherrill, will go to the city, where there will be a funeral
service and temporary burial. They will remain until
Saturday morning.
'And on Saturday morning the second meeting of the
inquiry will be held. By then, surely, something will have
happened.'
In that, he was right.


CHAPTER XIV
MRS. BRAYE COMES TO DINNER
After I got over feeling dazed, I found that it was
impossible for me to take the suspicions against myself
seriously, in any practical way. When I tried to imagine
myself being arrested for the murder of Mrs. Wilde, it
seemed simply ridiculous. It was true that Christine's
wealth — which had filled me with such consternation —.
might contariwise be argued as inciting me with a motive
to crime. It was true that I had had — like everyone else
in the place — the opportunity to kill Mrs. Wilde on the
night when she slept alone in a hotel room behind an
unlocked door. Probably someone would be able to think
up a way in which I could have got hold of the means —
though where and how I could have laid my hands on
morphine, whether in France or in my own country, I
had not the slightest idea! But none of that was real
evidence! And I felt too firm in my complete innocence
to be worried. I even concluded that Monsieur de Brassac
who had said he was my friend, had meant to speak a
word of comfort and reassurance when he told me that
the case had been put into the hands of the highest police.
They would find out the absurdity of accusations against
me!
But did Christine herself suspect me? That was another
question. She had been so kind, in these last few days.
I had had very little opportunity to talk with her; I had
not even seen much of her. But at this time, when she
was certainly awakening to a real life of her own, she had


190 Murder in a Walled Town
not known that he was ill, I had heard the note of weari-
ness in his voice as he said over the poetry that he loved,
in the darkness. I had marked the dragging tempo that
made the final lines so sad, even though the last words
were those of the beautiful cadence of the Shakespeare
sonnet —
_ 'All losses are restored, and sorrows end.'
And when I had got back to my own comfortable
room I had been pricked and troubled by the thought of
the strange man in those crumbling ruins, in the rain.
I had questioned then whether I should not go and find
him and bring him to a surer shelter. And in the morning
it had been too late! And I found no comfort in the
sorry realization that Paul MacNeil was a doomed man
anyway, and that the end could not have been far off in
any case, even though it was the pelting all-night down-
pour which had caused his present collapse. Dr. Lavigne
had intimated unmistakably that there was little chance
of his living through the summer and autumn — 'Con-
sumptives die in the autumn,' an old saying came back
to me — but he might have spent these weeks of mid-
summer with less suffering if he had not had that night
in the rain...
That was the thing that was haunting me. And some
people were saying that my discovery of Paul MacNeil
was an attempt to establish a sort of alibi! What a
strange irony!
My conscience was making me so unhappy on the
Bubject of the sick man that, when I went to see him
immediately after breakfast on Friday morning, I was
surprised to find him sitting up in bed, clad in a red
bathrobe, and looking actually gay. There was a volume


Mrs. Braye Comes to Dinner 191
of Alfred Noyes's poems, Tales of the Mermaid Tavern,
lying on the counterpane beside him, and his eyes were
bright and dancing.
'Hullo, here's my rescuer,' he greeted me. 'I say,
these Noyes things are great, aren't they? I had read
them before, but I didn't remember any of them well
enough to say off to myself. Mrs. Sherrill got me this
book when she went into town the other day. Wasn't
it good of her? And wasn't it queer, and lucky, that she
could find this in such a funny job-lot of English books as
they had there? Not much poetry, of course. Mostly
novels. I don't like novels. I don't like modern poetry
much, either — I mean, Robinson Jeffers and T. S.
Eliot and Cummings and Ezra Pound and those chaps
that do the woozy stuff. What I like is a good swinging
rhythm, something that sings itself to you in the night.
Or else a sonnet. There's nothing in the world like the
beat of a sonnet, is there? And the old ones are glorious.
Listen:
'"Earth has not anything to show more fair..."'
I had a curious feeling that I could almost have wept,
as, sonorous in the very faintness of his tired voice, the
noble words swung out upon my ear. Like the rise and
fall of a great wave, it was, line after line — sweeping to
its climax, ebbing far away, lost now in the sea...
'"And all that mighty heart is lying still!'"
He smiled at me. And, thinking of the wave, I remem-
bered how lovingly his voice had dwelt on the lilting
rhythms of 'The Last Chantey,' and the Masefield poem.
'But don't you like the ocean best?' I asked.
'Oh, yes!' he cried, like a boy. 'I love the sea. I never


MRS. BRAYE COMES TO DINNER 193
burlesque in his sing-song that I burst out laughing in
delight. And then it was easy enough to say:
'You look very perky. In fact, you look fine. Don't
tell me you got that scarlet bathrobe off Monsieur de
Brassac!
He laughed at my mild effort. 'Oh, no. This bit of
tarnished splendor is my own. Gaudy but not neat.
But Monsieur de Brassac had been most extraordinarily
good to me,' he added seriously. 'So has Miss Hamilton.
For all she has felt so ill and — and troubled herself,
she has been so very kind to me, ever since you brought
me to the inn. And Monsieur de Brassac treats me as if
I were his own — he told me once that I made him think
of a nephew, who had died. Now, what do you think, he
is getting me a new suit! And he is so kind and fatherly
I don't mind his doing it. He looks after me just as if
I were a baby. It's grand!' He chuckled again. 'Pull
aside that curtain, and see how he has arranged my
princely wardrobe.'
I held back the cretonne curtain that had been hung
in front of a row of hooks to make a closet in the tiny
room, and I was impressed, just as Paul MacNeil
had wished me to be, with the orderliness with which
his few bits of clothes had been hung there: his two shirts
laundered, a necktie solitary on a coat-hanger, a worn
pair of boots mended and polished and set into shoe-trees
on the floor. It was all neat and practical, and it showed
that someone was taking good care of the sick man.
But on the hook farthest from the bed, where he himself
could least easily see it, hung the old gray suit in which I
had found him: the trouser-legs looked rough around the
edges, and on the jacket were pathetic dark splashes,
still. I was in the act of dropping the curtain -- for I


194 Murder in a Walled Town
had guessed by this time that any reminder of that
hemorrhage distressed young MacNeil — when I noticed
something else, which swung my attention painfully
back to a tragedy more terrible than his. One elbow
of that coat was threadbare, and a fringiness was begin-
ning to appear about the cuff: it was like Margaret Hamil-
ton's...
He was marvelously quick, I knew already, at reading
one's thought, putting two and two together. I have
never known whether his eyes followed mine and he
grasped the association in my mind, or whether his
next remark was mere coincidence. But he reached out
to the night-table, as I let the curtain fall, and handed
me a book, an old book, much worn, much read, in a
blue cover.
'Look,' he said. 'Miss Hamilton has let me have this.
It is one of her treasures. I have never been able to buy
it, because it is an expensive book — and now she has
let me have this.'
It was the Oxford Book of English Verse, in the thin
paper edition. And on the fly-leaf, in a girl's writing,
immature but by no means without character, I read,
'Margaret Joyce Hamilton, Vassar College, April, 1907.'
Perhaps I was sentimental over this sudden glimpse of
the young Margaret Hamilton — a girl of Christine's
age or less, beginning life with a promise, a background
of stability and of consideration, which had been denied
Christine, and coming now to — what? Perhaps I was
too sentimental, as Monsieur de Brassac had told me that
I was too romantic. But it seemed to me that not even
her cry of despair when she fainted had been more sad,
more fraught with disquiet, than the sight of this book
which had been 'one of her treasures' such a long time
ago...


Mrs. Braye Comes to Dinner 195
I was glad when Paul MacNeil changed the subject.
'When my new suit comes — maybe today — I'm
going to surprise you,' he burst into gaiety again. 'I'm
coming to dinner. Oh, yes, I am, like a real gentleman, or
a Bright Young Thing. I'm going to have a festive eve-
ning at the Auberge de Vieux Neyronnes!'
So I chaffed him about that, and the things we should
eat and drink, and I kept the conversation as light as I
could, and left him soon. I had been very careful not
to mention anything that might have reminded him of
the tragedy among us, and I had tried not to tire him;
but I felt that he had talked as much as was wise. I
went back, myself, to the inn.
There, in the Place, I found a surprise.
To be exact, I found two surprises. The first was Miss
Hamilton, wearing an old-fashioned blue cotton dress,
and looking stronger and more natural than at any time
since Mrs. Wilde's death. But the second — and more
noteworthy — was Horace Braye. The Sherrills were
just about to set out with Christine on their sad errand
to the city. Henri de Brassac had apparently been having
some conversation with Elinor. And, as I arrived, Horace
embarked upon a voyage of apology.
He apologized abjectly. He apologized profusely.
He apologized to Henri de Brassac, to me, to John Sherrill
— who certainly owed an apology to him, and who had
no intention of making one! He apologized for his be-
littling references to the French police and his offensive
remarks about the French nation. He apologized to all
the countries of Europe for having accused them of
cheating Americans; and I thought he was going to take
the grand final step of apologizing for his traveling
American bar. But he stopped short of that. He evidently


Mrs. Braye Comes to Dinner 197
you in the morning. Monsieur de Brassac, if anyone asks
for me, will you be so kind'
'Yes, but the thief might have got scared and run
away without his loot,' Horace interrupted. 'Miss
Hamilton's dog'
Sherrill had already put the car in gear — they were
taking the Packard, but he was driving — and it was on
the point of moving. But he put his foot on the brake,
turned, and looked straight at Horace Braye.
'Yes,' he said, with an emphasis which I was at a loss
to understand, 'Miss Hamilton's dog. Good-bye.'
The car shot forward, around the corner, and out of
sight. Fergus, as if he had recognized the mention of
himself, gave the sharp little bark with which he some-
times said good-bye to his friends, and Miss Hamilton
leaned over and scratched his ear.
'Well,' remarked Horace, to everyone and no one,
'I'll say it's good to have a car. I'll appreciate mine for
the rest of my life, you bet! I'm going down to get it early
tomorrow morning, and drive back to the hearing in
style.'
Nobody paid any attention to him and he went into
the inn. Miss Hamilton and Henri de Brassac walked
across the Place together and down the sloping path
toward the Promenade des Lices. A little girl with a
tall copper pitcher came out of one of the smaller old
houses and got water at the faucet-pump on the opposite
corner of the square. The gardien of the little ciU, a
courtly white-haired old army man who was curator,
cicerone, and caretaker for all the mediaeval Neyronnes,
came out of the museum in a blue denim apron, with a
broom made of long fagots, and began systematically
to sweep up the already clean cobbles under the great


198
Murder in a Walled Town
linden tree. And two little boys came running up the hill
with a hoop made of an old bicycle tire. In the distance
sounded an ear-piercing shriek which I recognized as
heralding the approach of the baker's car from Jeanniot;
but not even a motor klaxon, and a bad one, could
break the sense of peace which seemed to lie over Ney-
ronnes when Horace Braye had removed himself and
I was left there in the Place, alone with the village's
ordinarytdaily life. How restful it was! And how natural,
in its ancient beauty! When the sadness of today was
over, and the ordeal of tomorrow, might it not even be
possible for Christine to find a little quiet, a little healing
here at Neyronnes?
And through the rest of that silent and almost com-
pletely solitary day, my own spirit found some guerison.
When Rosalie Braye came to dinner with her husband,
and they elected for the first time to be served in the
galerie, I was not disturbed by Horace's nearness, or
even by the sound of his voice and his laughter. And
when Miss Hamilton and Henri de Brassac appeared in
company with Paul MacNeil, proudly dressed in his new
suit, and suggested that the four of us dine together, I
was glad.
Paul MacNeil's eyes had the pathetic brightness of the
consumptive, and fever burned, almost scarlet, in hia
wasted cheeks; but he walked without support or
assistance, and he seemed very pleased to be there. It
was easy to see that he felt an actual dependence upon
Monsieur de Brassac, and a very deep gratitude to him
and also to Miss Hamilton. And no words were necessary
to make plain the tacit determination which we three well
people shared, that the evening should be made wholly
light and pleasurable for Paul MacNeil's sake, and that


Mrs. Braye Comes to Dinner 199
we should behave like a happy normal group of friends
whom neither mysterious death nor hopeless illness had
touched. The sick lad was very quiet: he ate little and
drank nothing and talked scarcely at all; but his smile
was happy; and he seemed richly contented just to sit
there with his friends and look out across the Place to
that unfailing spectacle that was Neyronnes.
'I am so glad you love it as I do,' he said, once, to us all.
'Isn't it odd that Miss Hamilton and Monsieur de Brassac
and I have known Neyronnes, and loved it, for years and
years, and that it was I who was responsible for the Wildes'
coming here?' He smiled at his own speech. 'Don't
misunderstand me,' he said. 'I should not be likely to
have influenced the Wildes to do anything! And I had
no idea they had ever thought of coming here. But when
I met them in Lausanne that time, I got to talking about
Neyronnes: how picturesque it was, and how sweet, and
what a good inexpensive inn it had. And then when
the United States went off the gold standard, and Mrs.
Wilde wanted to get the most for her francs, she came
here. Isn't that funny, really — the near-millionaire
Mrs. Wilde, and the near-pauper me, coming to the same
place at the same time, for the same reason!'
'And Mr. Armitage,' said Miss Hamilton, 'and I.
That is, I have been coming for years, to spend part of
the summer; but this year, as soon as the country went
off gold — or rather, as soon as I could get any money
out of any bank — I came straight here.' She smiled at me,
and I wondered if a great effort lay behind the return
of her old roguish gaiety. 'I, Mr. Armitage, changed my
dollars at twenty-three. And you, Monsieur de Brassac
— don't think we can't see that you are finding it hard
to eat this delicious poularde de Bresse at this mo-


200
Murder in a Walled Town
ment, because you are struggling between your native
politeness and your desire to burst into howls of mirth
over the fall of the mighty dollar and the squirms of the
Americans as they choke over their own medicine, so to
speak.'
She made a grimace that was pure comedy. 'Go right
ahead,' she said. 'Don't mind us. We are not amused.'
I forget what Henri de Brassac said in answer. But
I remember how light-hearted our chuckles would have
sounded to any stranger passing by...
Then Miss Hamilton continued, 'Mr. and Mrs.
Sherrill came here to economize, too. And — I wonder...'
Obviously she had been thinking of the Braye couple,
wondering what had brought them to Neyronnes. But
they might have overheard any mention of themselves,
there in the galerie, and it seemed safer to change the
subject. It was only a few minutes after that that
Monsieur de Brassac announced firmly that his charge
must go to bed, and arose and walked with him up the
ruelle toward the pavillon.
Miss Hamilton and I smoked in silence for a few min-
utes, and I watched a little sadly as the gaiety faded from
her face and left the traces of fatigue and anxiety behind.
She had been 'keeping up,' so that the sick lad might
have a pleasant festival. Now that he was gone, she
looked suddenly very tired. But she seemed to have
made up her mind to cast the mantle of sociability over
the whole evening, for soon, with a companionable little
smile to me, she got up and walked down to the table
that was set at the other end of the galerie.
She addressed Mr. and Mrs. Braye with what seemed
to me to be, in the circumstances a beautiful gracious-
ness. 'Won't you come and have your liqueurs with us?'


Mrs. Braye Comes to Dinner 201
she said. And a rather pathetic blush of almost too
evident pleasure swept over Rosalie's face and showed
wherever it could through and around her make-up.
'Oh, thank you! We'd just love it!' she cried, and
jumped up promptly.
Horace lumbered to his feet. And again the blushes
chased each other across Rosalie's cheeks as Miss Hamil-
ton exclaimed in genuine delight and admiration,
'Oh, Mrs. Braye, what a beautiful piece of lace!'
It was a scarf of exquisite point d'Alengon, thrown
around her neck in the opening of her fussily smart
summer evening dress; and it gave Rosalie the utmost of
grace and charm that she would ever, I thought, be able
to achieve. I was annoyed with Horace when he scowled
at her.
'It's worth a fortune,' he grumbled. 'She hadn't any
business to wear it tonight, at a place like this. When I
pay a lot of good money for lace, I want it to be taken
care of.'
Rosalie giggled. 'Oh, Horace,' she said, 'you've given
it away!' She giggled again. 'I don't mean that you've
given away the lace, Horace; I mean you've given away
the secret.' She turned to Miss Hamilton. 'Horace
keeps saying that I must tell everyone that this is ancestral
lace. And I guess it must have belonged to somebody's
ancestors; but they weren't mine! Horace bought this for
me at some family sale in St. Louis.'
'You shut your mouth!' roared Horace. His face was
purple again, and I thought he was going to burst into
one of his tirades of abuse. But he controlled himself,
and apologized to Miss Hamilton, not to his wife.
'I hope you will excuse me,' he said. 'That is a very
valuable piece of lace, as you can see — I got it in Louis-


202
Murder in a Walled Town
ville, Kentucky, not St. Louis — and I am naturally
upset over Mrs. Braye's wearing it here. There is no
sense in dressing up so in a little place like this; and, as I
told Mr. Sherrill this morning, I feel more and more sure
that there are thieves about.'
Poor Rosalie had turned quite white, but she pulled
herself together again. Miss Hamilton had asked them
to have liqueurs with us, and have liqueurs with us they
did. And Miss Hamilton talked to Mrs. Braye with
sweetness and with charm. But Horace scarcely spoke,
and all Rosalie's pleasure had been spoiled. Horace had
the air of being somewhat crushed, if not actually repent-
ant. But he was still disagreeable. And the brutality of
his public insult to his wife was something one couldn't
forget.


CHAPTER XV
A WITNESS IS LATE
Christine seemed to feel much better when she came
back to Neyronnes in the morning, and I thought that
the Sherrills had been wise to suggest staying at a hotel
in the city overnight. They had picked up the lawyer,
Mr. Williamson, who had come from Lausanne by
express train, and had brought him with them from
one of those numerous junctions; and Christine was
driving when I looked out of my window and saw the
big Packard swinging the four of them through the arch
of the ancient gate. To my surprise and delight she caught
sight of me and waved her hand. After that I did not
see her again until she came, still flanked by her attorney
and Elinor Sherrill, into the inquiry room. John Sherrill
followed with Miss Hamilton. We sat down in the same
horseshoe of chairs, in the same order. But it was
Rosalie Braye, not her husband, who was seated at
my left.
She looked anxious and haggard, almost ill. In
deference to the subject of the meeting she had put on
a dark gray dress, which was of heavy silk, and haa'the
appearance of being stiflingly uncomfortable on a warm
June day. And in a praiseworthy but mistaken attempt
to conceal the fact that she did not look well, she had
piled more make-up than usual on her face, and had a
strained and indeed almost ghastly expression in con-
sequence. Poor Rosalie! She looked as if this inquiry
frightened her. And that, certainly, was not a good
way to begin...


204
Murder in a Walled Town
She assured everyone, nervously, that Mr. Braye would
be in very soon, surely in a few minutes. She even made
a bright little remark to me about a possible puncture.
But nobody paid any attention, and, with Horace Braye
still absent, the hearing began.
It began with the reports on who and what and
whence we were, those 'bundles of papers' that we had
been promised or threatened with. But the first dossier
was one which the police must have had in their hands
all the time:
'Henri Maurice Robert Veyrin de la Palud de Brassac,
third son of the Marquis de Brassac, brother of the
Comte de Brassac, born August 22, 1885, in the Chateau
de Brassac, near Sarlat, Dordogne 'and so on with
his education, his war record, his decorations and marks
of distinction, his achievements in the authorship of
several erudite works on prehistoric man. Our French
neighbor had certainly done well to refer to himself as
a 'scholar,' although he was, as certainly, wrong when
he said he was not a distinguished one. Since he did
not use the courtesy title that belonged to him, he evi-
dently wished what renown he might have to rest upon
his work alone. We all listened to his record in respectful
silence, and then the juge d'instruction laid down the
first paper and picked up the second:
'Margaret Joyce Hamilton, only daughter of Philip
Wainwright Hamilton, Judge of the Supreme Court of
the State of New York, born April 18, 1888, at 12 East
Eleventh Street, New York City, educated at Vassar
College, Poughkeepsie, New York 'and then some
unimportant facts about Miss Hamilton's no doubt
charming and interesting, but on the whole quite un-
important, life. Her financial ups and downs, which of


A Witness is Late 205
course the police knew, were not read to the assembled
company, but uncertainties in her career could easily
enough be guessed; for it was noted that she was an
orphan, without near relatives, with no 'permanent'
address except Morgans' in Paris, and with a list of
abiding-places for more than three years in which the
only alternative to cheap pensions was an occasional
country inn, equally cheap; one could guess, too, that
the selections of these had been getting cheaper.
It was Mrs. Wilde's own dossier from which we next
heard chosen facts, but these facts were not new to us
now. And then came Christine's — the short bare
record of the existence of a girl who had been born in
Honolulu and had wandered about the world in a fashion
which seemed as aimless and intellectually meager as
it was uprooted and emotionally poverty-stricken, for
all her twenty years. I wondered whether the short
and simple annals of the poor Wayne Armitage would
be given to the public next. But after Christine's life-
story the magistrate laid aside his dossiers. He began
again to question Miss Hamilton.
He questioned her in new detail about her acquaint-
ance with Mrs. Wilde, her knowledge of Mrs. Wilde's
financial circumstances, the possibility of her having
expected any legacy. The facts of her own devastating
losses, her extreme poverty, came out now. The ques-
tions were put considerately enough, but it was a cruel
ordeal, and Miss Hamilton showed plainly that she was
suffering under it. Whether or not the officials believed
her continued stout denials, it was of course impossible
to tell. She stated again, emphatically, that she had
known nothing of Mrs. Wilde's finances, nothing of
Mrs. Wilde's will; that a bequest for herself was the last


A Witness is Late 207
But Christine shook her head as the magistrate asked
this question. As she answered it, it occurred to me that
her knowledge of the French was not confined to their
language. She realized that any danger of 'detriment
to the family' was something that needed explaining, in
this land.
'No, Monsieur le juge,' she said, 'it was not strange.
Ifc was not to the detriment of her own family. My
mother had no family, except myself. Miss Hamilton,
also, had been left by circumstance alone in the world.
I think that this similarity in their situations appealed
to my mother's heart, Monsieur. I am sure that you can
understand fully, Monsieur le juge, that a woman who
had lost all her family except one daughter would be
moved to great sympathy for a woman who was quite
alone...'
It seemed to me that in that moment I saw the mature
Christine Wilde — clear-thinking, perfectly poised, gra-
cious — just as in the moment in the garage I had seen
the girl who longed for activity and freedom, just as in
her smile when I found Paul MacNeil I had seen her
kindness and loved her for the gentle, thoughtful nature
that looked from her beautiful eyes. I saw a woman,
not a mere girl, in Christine now, and I felt that I loved
her more than ever for this glimpse of her clear mind.
But how clearly her mind was working at this moment,
and how cleverly, I had not at the time the slightest
idea...
'Then, too,' she went on easily, 'my mother enjoyed
surprising people, making things dramatic. From the
point of view of her health, her physician has told you
that. It was as true from other points of view. She did
not have many pleasures; making things dramatic was


208
MURDER IN A WALLED TOWN
one of them. Sad as it may seem, Monsieur, I know
that my mother got a real pleasure out of the thought
that Miss Hamilton would find her kindness to her so
surprisingly rewarded, when she was gone.'
If Christine's testimony had ended with this matter
of the will, it would have left a very good impression for
Margaret Hamilton. But the magistrate.changed the
subject and asked her a question for which she was quite
unprepared: did her mother often sleep with her door
unlocked?
'No,' Christine said, and added: 'I was always with
her. We locked the door.'
'Why do you think she left it open on this night?'
‘Miss Hamilton has told you that.' Christine's voice
was very low.
'Had your mother mentioned to you her intention of
leaving her door unlocked?'
'Yes, Monsieur.'
'For the reason Miss Hamilton gave — so that she
might be able to enter her room in the night?'
“Yes, Monsieur.'
'What exactly did your mother say to you, Miss Wilde?'
Christine was very white, but she answered the
question with a certain brave casualness, as if she did
not consider it important:
'She said that since I was going to be away overnight,
and she disliked to feel herself entirely alone, she was
going to leave her door unlocked and ask Miss Hamilton
to look in during the night, to make sure that she was
all right. That was Sunday night, of course, not Monday.'
The magistrate thanked her, and recalled Miss Ham-
ilton. Had Madame Wilde requested her to visit her
during the night?


A Witness is Late 209
'No, Monsieur.' Miss Hamilton's voice was firm, and
not casual.
'She did not ask you to go to her room, either on Sunday
night or Monday night?'
'No, Monsieur, she did not make any such request.
She said that she was leaving the door unlocked so that
I could go in if she called. She did not call.'
'And you did not go into her room?'
'No, Monsieur, I did not go into her room.'
That, somewhat to my surprise, marked the end of
Miss Hamilton's questioning at this time. The magis-
trate thanked her with unwavering politeness. Then he
looked over his papers again, and said:
'Monsieur Horace Braye.'
Horace's empty chair stood staring at everyone in
the room.
'He hasn't got here yet, Muhseer,' said Rosalie weakly.
'Pas encore arrivS,' I heard someone else remark.
Whether in French or English, it seemed unnecessary.
Horace's non-arrival was patent to all.
'ArrivSf echoed the magistrate, sharply. 'D'oil?'
This was too much for Rosalie. 'Do? Do what?' she
cried almost hysterically. 'What can I do? He isn't here.
He went downtown to get his car. He hasn't come back.'
The juge d'instruction spoke in a low voice to one of
the gendarmes. Then he frowned. He sent the gendarme
out of the room, and he looked long and steadily at
Mrs. Braye. After that he spread out a sheet of paper
before him and read it through to himself, very carefully.
He did not speak, and his silence was stern and terribly
impressive: I guessed that it must be shattering to Rosalie's
nerves. No one spoke. At the end of perhaps three
dragging minutes the gendarme came back and whispered


210 Murder in a Walled Town
to the magistrate, and the official eye fixed itself again,
pitilessly, upon poor Rosalie Braye.
'Madame,' said the juge d'instruction, 'according to
the permission given him by the authorities, and upon
receipt of his corrected papers, your husband took his
car from the police garage at Jeanniot at four o'clock
yesterday afternoon. He did not go this morning to get
his car. Why has he not come to this inquiry?'
More appallingly garish than ever, the carmine make-
up stood out again like the gashes of ugly wounds in
Rosalie's dead-white face, and her hands opened and
shut with the convulsiveness of an automaton.
'I — don't — know,' she whispered, and her voice
was ghastly.
'Madame,' said the examining magistrate, and curi-
ously it did not seem odd to us that the next words
were spoken in English, 'where is your husband?'
Rosalie gave a wild little shriek and sprang to her
feet.
'I don't know where he is!' she screamed. 'I don't
know where he is! Why can't you let him go? He never
hurt you! He never hurt any of you! He never even
hurt you, Christine Wilde. Let him go — let him go —
let him go!'
Her voice rose to the frantic shrill outcry of hysteria,
and she rushed out of the door. No one stopped her. A
gendarme silently followed. There was perfect stillness
in the room
But if I allowed myself for one moment to think that
the inquiry might be adjourned, I was mistaken. I
believe that most of us had some idiotic idea of rushing
out ourselves in search of Horace Braye; of finding him


A Witness is Late 211
and dragging him back in triumph, to thrust him into
the jaws of the guillotine. With the shock of Rosalie's
revelation, too, I realized how deep-seated my fear of
Miss Hamilton's guilt had been, and how the more
earnestly I had longed to believe in her innocence, the
more difficult had such belief appeared.
In reality, it seemed to me up to this moment, nothing
that had come out in anyone's testimony, no circum-
stance, no clue, had weakened the possibility that Mar-
garet Hamilton, middle-aged, solitary, desperate, had
ingratiated herself into a rich woman's good graces, worked
cleverly upon the hope of a future generosity, and mur-
dered her benefactress at the first opportunity when that
generosity was assured. Not the loyalty of the friends
who had known her before the plunge into poverty had
changed her life and taught her 'strange impulses';
not her own graciousness and poise (that least of all!);
not this new assurance of Christine's about the will —
nothing had really lifted the burden of suspicion that
lay on Margaret Hamilton's sloping shoulders, that
threatened its hideous brand upon that lined forehead
under her graying hair. And now came Rosalie Braye, to
shriek out her wild demand that the law let her husband
go...
I had suspected, of course, that Horace's past was
not all that it should be. But even in that moment
when his wife listened panic-stricken to the threat of
'information from the United States,' or later when
Henri de Brassac insisted that there was 'no type for
murder,' I had not really thought that this big bully
was guilty of this rather subtle and clever crime. Now,
in my reaction of relief over Miss Hamilton, I could have
pushed Horace Braye, with gladness, down the stone


212
Murder in a Walled Town
trap-door in the Salle de Justice of some mediaeval donjon,
into some forgotten oubliette beneath a robber baron's
keep...
What happened was that the magistrate sent two of
his officers from the room, and the rest of us, with his
eye upon us, just sat still. And in fearing that we should
hear no more from Rosalie for the time being, I had
reckoned without the gendarme. The French gendarme,
of course, is no mere cop, and it is not for him to be
confused with the agent de police whose whistle stops a
motor car that is making a wrong turn. A member of
the National Constabulary, the gendarme has his place
in the French army; he is a very real person, and when
occasion requires he can behave like a real personage.
Rosalie's screams continued for a few moments only.
We caught the sound of the gendarme's voice, calm and
determined, from the lounge outside. He could not speak
a word of her language, and she knew nothing whatever
of his, but he plainly had the Latin gift for expressing
himself clearly, even when words failed. And under his
methods, whatever they were, Rosalie Braye snapped
out of her hysterics in an astoundingly short time.
Incredibly soon, as it seemed to me, the slammed door
opened softly, and she walked into the room, followed
by the gendarme in an attitude of the most complete
deference. Mrs. Braye went back to her chair and sat
down.
'Do you feel able to talk to me now, Madame?' asked
the magistrate.
And she said, weakly but willingly, 'Yes, Muhseer.'
But it was the interpreter who next addressed her
directly. He had a paper in his hand.
'It is requested that you listen to what I am about


A Witness is Late 213
to read you, Madame,' he said, 'and that, having heard
it, you tell us whether or not it is true.'
'Yes, Muhseer,' Rosalie murmured.
'Very well,' said the interpreter. 'I will now read:
'"Horace Braye of New York identified as Howard
Bretton of St. Louis, Vice-President of the defunct
Marquette Trust Company, wanted by the Missouri
police for fraud, embezzlement, and misappropriation
of funds."
'Is that true, Madame?'
'Yes, Muhseer.'
'The juge d'instruction suggests that you tell what you
can, in your own way, of your husband's life and —
er — operations.'
'Yes, Muhseer. I don't know much about his opera-
tions, but I know about his life. He made a lot of
money. He was smart,' said Rosalie.
'Please continue.' The magistrate spoke to her now
himself, and although his words were French, they were
so simple that she could hardly fail to understand them.
His manner was not at all unkind. I think that at this
time everyone was sorry for Rosalie Braye.
'Yes, Muhseer,' she repeated dutifully. 'He made a
lot of money in the cloak-and-suit trade in New York.
He started a company to make suits to sell for sixteen
dollars retail, and he called it the Ho-bry Company'
'What was his real name?' asked the magistrate.
Rosalie looked surprised.
'Why, his real name was Horace Braye,' she answered,
'and he called his firm the Ho-bry Company and his
sixteen-dollar suits the Ho-bry suits — don't you get it?
He was clever like that. He was always smart. He made
a lot of money, and he made it fast, too — big profits


214 Murder in a Walled Town
right from the first. But after while he sort of got sick
of it. The unions were always making trouble — you
know, the Amalgamated: they're a bunch of Bolsheviks,
and he used to say suppose they did take away all his
money and give it to a lot of kikes, the way they wanted
to, how much better off would anyone be? But the trouble
with the fire inspectors in the lofts was the worst. Fellows
used to come snooping round and send in reports that
he wasn't safeguarding his workers and things like that.
He used to talk to me about it. He had a hard time,
and it wasn't fair. He was so smart, and he kept right
on the job, and yet they were always jumping on him
about something, trying to do him out of his profits
just because he was smarter than other fellows. They
tried to make him do all sorts of things to the lofts, be-
cause they said they weren't safe for the workers
Gee, it was only those dumb working girls that anybody
seemed to be thinking about! And of course he tried to
get the best of all those snooping inspectors and people,
but he couldn't always succeed. Things got so hard he
was just fair sick.'
Rosalie gave a reminiscent sigh. But she was deep
in her subject now, and needed no prodding to make
her continue.
'I guess you don't know much about America, Muh-
seer, and maybe you don't want to,' she said, finding
relief and forgetfulness in words, 'but I'll tell you here
and now, that Perkins woman has made a lot of trouble
for men like Horace. And now she's Secretary of Labor,
and you can just see what the country's coming to —
all this talk about working people Gee, America
won't be worth living in for people like Horace, if
things go on this way! Well, Muhseer, about ten years


A Witness is Late 215
ago Horace got sick of it, and he decided he'd clear out.'
Nobody stopped'her, and she went on:
'Besides, he'd always had a sort of a yen to be a banker.
He liked doing things with money. He was smart that
way. And, you know how it is, when you've made a
lot of money in the cloak-and-suit trade, you aren't
satisfied, somehow — not if you're ambitious, like
Horace. He wanted to be a gentleman. We moved to
Park Avenue, but that wasn't enough.'
She had another flash of realization that she was
talking to a foreigner, and she delivered herself of a
few sentences that would, she seemed to think, make
everything clear.
'I suppose you aren't used to anything but Europe,
Muhseer,' she said. 'You are the slaves of the class
system, here — I'm not so ignorant as you may think,
I've heard about those things — and you don't know
what freedom is, like we have it in America. America
isn't like Europe, Muhseer. America is a democracy.
Anybody can be a gentleman in America if he's just
got money enough and is smart enough to put it across.
Being in the cloak-and-suit trade isn't being a gentleman.
But if you're a banker, you are...'
John Sherrill, that genuine patriot, grinned a lemony
grin. Christine's expression was one of shocked bewilder-
ment, and Margaret Hamilton had a light of satiric
amusement in her eye.
Henri de Brassac turned his courtly gaze toward me,
and smiled.
'That kind of democracy is not unknown in Europe,'
he murmured.
The juge d'instruction, too, seemed less shocked than
were Rosalie's compatriots. And it came over me sud-


A Witness is Late 217
'Surely you can recall a little more than that, Madame?
The return to New York — that could not have been
easy?'
'Oh, yes, it was! Horace had kept a lot of his old
acquaintances in the cloak-and-suit trade, and he was
just good old Horace Braye again. Horace was very
smart, just as I've been telling you, Muhseer. And
people liked him. He was always jolly, except when
something made him mad. And he always had a joke
about everything. And when he went back without his
business and wasn't always having trouble with those
Bolsheviks, he was always cheerful and out for a good
time. And he had one of the best bootleggers in New
York City, too — people were always crazy about
Horace's liquor. Oh, yes, Muhseer, things went all
right for a while. You see, there wasn't any warrant
out for his arrest for quite a long time — Howard
Bretton's arrest, I mean. Horace had been awfully
smart. He almost got away with it. You see, he was
only the Vice-President, and those people in St. Louis
had a good deal of trouble with what they called placing
the responsibility.'
She took another drink of water. 'By the-time they'd
placed it on Howard Bretton, Horace Braye was having
a nice easy trip to Europe, and that was that.
'Then we came here and saw Mrs Wilde...'
Mrs. Wilde's lawyer scribbled something on a piece
of paper and handed it to the magistrate.
'I am reminded,' said the latter gentleman to Mrs.
Braye, 'that Madame Wilde lost the sum of sixty
thousand dollars in the collapse of the Marquette Trust
Company.'
'I don't know how much she lost. I don't know any-


CHAPTER XVI
WE WAIT FOR ROSALIE
He was lying directly at the top of the stairs, his legs
and feet sloping down over the upper steps, his head
just inside the door which led to the unfinished room.
Even to me it was unmistakable that he was dead.
But not much blood had flowed from the wound in his
forehead, and most of it must have seeped under the
door, where the ancient crooked boarding of the attic
floor slanted toward what had been the outer edge of
the original old house.
It was the fact that this storage annex was in another
house which had dulled the sounds that must have ac-
companied Mr. Braye's murder, for I was sure that there
had been some struggle, however slight. Through the
thick stone wall and the heavy oak door no noise had
come to us in the pavillon itself. And I remembered that
the maid who usually slept alone, in this ancient'lean-to'
had been given a week-end holiday before the heavier
work of the July season should begin. To all intents and
purposes, this annex was an empty house. Horace might
even have cried out for help without being heard. But
I fancied, somehow, that neither he nor his assailant had
spoken. And that assailant — had the attack been made
in murderous fury or in self-defense?
Horace Braye had been killed by a blow on the right
temple, which had broken the skin, but, I thought, had
not actually crashed in the skull. And the weapon that


We Wait for Rosalie 223
'Well, I wouldn't put it past her,' was what Sherrill
said. He got up quickly, but without giving any im-
pression of restlessness or disturbance.
'Come on, Armitage, snap out of it!' he said, in a very
different tone. 'I'll go with you to tell the police.'
Neither Elinor Sherrill nor Margaret Hamilton spoke a
word — I had already learned that these were no women
to buzz and hem and haw — and John Sherrill and I
crossed the ruelle and went into the main dining-room
where the police group was just finishing its excellent and
somewhat elaborate lunch.
The gendarmes and the interpreter were at a big
table. The juge d'instruction and the detective from the
Surete were set apart in the elegance of solitude. Every
man among them had the air, which seems so universal
— and is so enviable! — among the French, of being
able to set aside all the cares of the world and the deceit-
fulness of riches and battle and murder and sudden
death, and devote all humane motion and energy to the
rich and satisfying enjoyment of a good meal. From
this lunch they would all return, I knew, refreshed and
clear-thinking, to give keen concentrated attention to
the business in hand, without getting frazzled over it.
Not for nothing does all activity in France pause for
two hours in the middle of every day! And although, of
course, I was not making any of these reflections at the
time, it is true that through all my horror and confusion
I was conscious of a sense of relief when I saw that the
magistrate and the detective had already reached coffee
and liqueurs. We should not, then, be really interrupting
them...
'Don't tell them that Rosalie has killed her husband,'
was almost all that Sherrill took time to say to me.


224
Murder in a Walled Town
'Just tell them what you saw. Tell them in English,
old man: I'll translate, if necessary.'
It was not necessary. The detective understood, and
spoke, English perfectly, and the juge d'instruction was
by no means ignorant of the language, as we already
knew. Of course that made my task easier. I told them,
as clearly and quietly as I could, exactly what I had
discovered. And they did not seem particularly sur-
prised.
'We sent you word, Monsieur Sherrill, that Monsieur
Braye's car had been found in a shed at the foot of the
hill,' said the detective Reynal, 'apparently where he
hid it when he took it from the garage in Jeanniot
yesterday.'
'Yes, I got your message, thank you,' Sherrill replied.
'But surely he would not have been able to get far away,
in any case?'
'I should not make any such positive statement,'
Reynal demurred. 'If he had succeeded in getting out
of Neyronnes itself in the middle of the night — say at
two in the morning — he would have had more than
eight hours, on a clear road, before his absence was sure
to be discovered. No general alarm had been sent out.
His papers were in order. He could have got across the
Swiss frontier as soon as the Douanes opened. By half-
past ten, with a car like that, he could have been well
on his way to Bale, and so to Germany — in spite of the
fact that there are speed limits in Switzerland. He was
clever, that Monsieur — and then someone killed him.'
He sighed, almost as if he regretted the world's loss
of a clever criminal. Then he went on:
'I think that we must try to look into the mind of
this Monsieur Braye, to make plain to ourselves what


228 , Murder in a Walled Town
'Ah.r The detective was interested. 'The dog? He
barked?'
I saw that John Sherrill was watching me very closely,
and I wondered why. But I was sure of my ground now.
Fleeting as it was, the memory had come back, and it
was sharp enough.
'No,' and I could answer positively, 'I remember now.
I did hear the dog. But he didn't bark. It wasn't as
loud as that, not that kind of sound at all. He just
gave a little growl.'
4 If it was as slight a sound as that, how do you know
it was this dog?' the detective insisted.
'Why,' I said, 'I know this dog. It was in the next
room to mine,;, the sound, and it was Miss Hamilton's
dog that made it. I am sure of that. He growled that
same way, only louder, the night Mrs. Wilde died.'
John Sherrill never took his eyes off me. The detective
asked another question.
'If it is so difficult to hear sounds through walls so
thick as these, how can you feel sure of a noise like the
"little growl" of a dog?'
I was beginning to feel somewhat on the defensive.
'A dog's growl is a penetrating noise,' I replied. 'And
besides, I have occasionally heard sounds from Miss
Hamilton's room. She seems to move very quietly, but
once in a while I have heard her walking about, and
sometimes I have heard her talking to her dog.'
John Sherrill smiled at that, and himself took up the
conversation, easily.
'I think I can explain the difference in sounds, if you
will permit me, Monsieur Reynal,' he said. 'This old
house, as of course you know, has very thick walls,
within and without. The doors, too, are heavy, and


230
Murder in a Walled Town
Miss Hamilton and I were alone in the galerie. I do not
think that anyone else knows. And I feel sure that neither
Miss Hamilton nor my wife would have taken it upon
herself to tell Madame Braye that her husband's body
had been found.'
'That is something to be thankful for,' said the de-
tective genially. Then he called one of his henchmen,
and there was no geniality left in his voice.
'Bring Madame Braye to me,' he ordered, and leaned
down to remove a large gray cobweb from his blue
trouser-leg.
I think that I shall never forget anything that hap-
pened in connection with the murders at Neyronnes —
certainly I shall never be able to forget any detail that
had to do with the murder of Horace Braye. But it some-
times seems to me that of all the dreadful moments in
all those dreadful hours, the most dreadful was not the
moment when my eye followed the spider's scurrying
flight toward the dark stain on the floor, not even the
moment when I flung open the door upon that horrible
thing that sprawled at the top of the stairs, but the mo-
ment when I stood with the police officers in the un-
finished room and waited for Rosalie Braye...
Was she going to be confronted with her husband's
body, I wondered? The attic door was shut. But in any
case she was about to be told that his body had been dis-
covered— and her eyes would find, I knew, the small
dark spot that was not yet completely dry upon the
floor...
We waited while the gendarme's boots clattered down
the stairs, the gendarme's knuckles pounded on Rosalie's
door, the gendarme's voice spoke first to his colleague on
guard and then to Rosalie. He had left the door wide


We Wait for Rosalie 231
open, and we could hear everything. And then, as I for
one had expected, we heard Rosalie shriek.
'I won't!' she screamed. 'I won't go into that ghastly
room! It's full of spiders. I won't go, and you can't make
me! If that French detective wants to talk to me, he
can come to my room like a gentleman. I tell you I
won't go up there...'
I felt a nervous desire to laugh, of which I was ashamed
until I glanced at John Sherrill and saw that he was smil-
ing quite frankly. Rosalie stormed and bellowed in a
manner that was worthy of Horace's teaching and ex-
ample, but she did, surprisingly soon, walk up the stairs.
She did come through the open doorway of the unfinished
room and stand looking at the detective and the magis-
trate. She had no make-up on, and that gave her an
appearance that seemed oddly unnatural.
There was no chair to offer her, of course, but the two
officials — the only men who were not already standing
— politely rose from the window-sill.
'Madame Braye,' said the detective, speaking in his
perfect English but with no attempt at 'preparation' for
the blow he was about to strike,41 regret to be obliged to
tell you that your husband is dead.'
Rosalie did not scream: she only gasped. But that gasp
seemed somehow far more terrible than any of her howls
of anger or her frantic outcry in hysteria. She gasped, and
tottered a little on her high-heeled 'cut-out' shoes, but
she did not fall. She had fainted when Christine Wilde
had first called out the undirected accusation that her
mother had been murdered, but she did not faint now.
She mustered her strength with a visible effort, and out
of her bluish-white lips came her voice with a strange
hard clearness.


CHAPTER XVII
THE DETECTIVE THINKS ALOUD
'And now, Monsieur Sherrill,' said Reynal, 'we will go
downstairs and hold a little consultation — or, shall I
say, a little meeting of thought? We have made for our-
selves a small bureau in the auberge itself; there is no
necessity, that we remain here in the pavillon. We will sit
down quietly in this small bureau and do some thinking
together, Monsieur Sherrill. It will be well, perhaps, if
the lawyer of Madame Wilde is also present. And Mon-
sieur Armitage will remain with us. Monsieur le juge is
so good as to permit that I do the greater part of the talk-
ing, since he is unduly modest on the subject of his Eng-
lish speech. If you will be so kind as to find this Monsieur
Williamson, and bring him to the little private dining-
room of the auberge, where we of the police have our
bureau, we shall be most grateful. No one else is to be
present — only we five.'
We filed back to the main building of the inn, myself
obediently following in the others' train. I had long since
ceased to try to do any thinking myself, and I admired
them for the ease and competence with which they could
plan at just this time to 'sit down and think.' But all
that was their business, of course. And besides, I re-
minded myself, it was no wonder that I, more than the
others, was still feeling dazed and stunned and sick —
none of them had had that dreadful experience of dis-
covering Horace Braye's dead body where a spider's trail
led through the cobwebs of that dim and dusty emptiness
upstairs...John Sherrill found Mr. Williamson very


234
Murder in a Walled Town
quickly. We all went into the little room behind the
main dining-hall (it had a vaulted thirteenth-century
ceiling, and a spinet stood, dainty and incongruous, in the
corner beside the fireplace) and sat down around a big
table.
'We must try first to look into the mind of this Mon-
sieur Braye,' the detective began. 'And before I ask you
to do that with me, I will recapitulate for you what we
already know, and what has already been done, in the
case of this Monsieur.
'When your friend in New York received your cable-
gram on Wednesday, Monsieur Sherrill, inquiries were
at once set on foot in regard to this Monsieur Braye, es-
pecially to discover what association he could have had
in the past with Madame Wilde or her affairs. And to
that association her mention of the failure of the Mar-
quette Trust Company of St. Louis had already given
us a clue — which, naturally, was made stronger by his
immediate and quite unnecessary denial that he had ever
been in that city, and which was also helped by our
knowledge of the dates upon which Madame Wilde her-
self had been there.
'As you directed in your second cable, Monsieur Sher-
rill, your friend Monsieur Gregg of the New York police
sent the results of his investigations directly to us. But
we did not receive until this morning the cablegram
which was summarized and read to Madame Braye at the
hearing, and we did not broadcast a general alarm — an
order to hold Monsieur Braye if he should try to escape —
until that cablegram was received. We did have a local
guard around Neyronnes itself, and that guard received
special orders yesterday to look out for Monsieur Braye
and his car.


The Detective Thinks Aloud
235
'By not driving his car up the hill, he escaped bringing
the automobile itself under the guard's attention, and
there is a slight possibility that he could have got away
under cover of the darkness last night. That is what I
was thinking of when I spoke to you of the possibility of
successful flight, a little while ago. No one was suffi-
ciently near the empty shed to hear him starting his en-
gine, and such a car as his is very quiet. I think that we
erred in not watching the car more closely; I think our
own movements were not sufficiently correlated, prob-
ably. But as we saw Monsieur Braye in Neyronnes at
five o'clock yesterday afternoon, and several times dur-
ing the evening, we supposed that everything was satis-
factory.
'Indeed,' he added frankly, 'Monsieur Braye's failure
to bring his car up the hill and into Neyronnes yesterday
was not in itself a thing that would arouse our suspicion.
It is extremely difficult to get an automobile of that size
through the double gate, with the curve in the road be-
tween the two arches, and it is also difficult to traverse
the street of the village and get around into the Place.
Monsieur Braye has complained loudly and repeatedly
of this difficulty, and when he took his car from the police
garage he complained more loudly than ever, and said
that he would leave his car outside if he knew any place
to leave it.
'All these considerations are academic merely,' the
detective went on. 'We know that Monsieur Braye did
not go to his car at all last night. He started, but he did
not arrive. At the same time, I think it is helpful to us
to try to establish in our minds what his plans must have
been, and how far he was able to get in carrying them out.
We must remember, however, that it is unlikely that he


The Detective Thinks Aloud
237
matters. The Marquette Trust Company was not a
national bank. It was not even a very large bank. And
in February, 1933, Messieurs, the failure of one small
bank in one big city was not so conspicuous or unusual a
happening that the United States Government as a whole
was likely to get excited over it!'
'Yes, Monsieur Sherrill, I understand that,' said the
detective. 'This Bretton's bank closes in St. Louis just
a few weeks before the general closing of all American
banks by order of the National Government. This Braye
goes back to New York, where he is known as a business
man who never had any connection with banking. And
he is quite clever enough to have found a plausible way of
accounting for his absence to those of his old friends whose
companionship he now seeks.'
'Quite,' remarked John Sherrill, with a wry grin. 'I
can just hear him making jokes about his successful es-
cape from the Factory Commission.',
'And now he has no business to worry about,' Reynal
continued. 'Returning to New York in February, he
makes his presence there somewhat conspicuous. As I
understand it, no one could possibly suspect Horace
Braye of having anything to conceal, in those weeks be-
tween the middle of February and the first of April. He
even sailed to France with a certain amount of reclame.
But before the warrant was actually sworn out for
Howard Bretton's arrest, Horace Braye had left Paris
and was driving about in the French provinces, in dis-
tricts which are not usually visited by tourists.
'I think it likely,' he added, 'that Monsieur Braye
came to Neyronnes with the idea of staying some time —
until his eye fell upon Madame Wilde.'
'I think so, too,' Sherrill agreed. 'Horace didn't come


240
Murder in a Walled Town
go." I made myself as objectionable as I could be, to see
how Horace would take it. I called him a crook, right
straight out. And what did he do? Did he punch me in
the jaw, literally or figuratively? Not he! He crumpled
up like a stewed cabbage, Messieurs, and the next morn-
ing he came around and apologized.'
'I see,' said the detective reflectively. 'That is inter-
esting, Monsieur. And we know, of course, that he was
planning to leave Neyronnes at once — early on the
morning following Madame Wilde's death. You, un-
fortunately, were not here at the preliminary hearing,
when it was still believed possible that Madame Wilde's
death might have been an accident, or suicide. Unfortu-
nately, again, I also was absent. But we have the
stenographic report of those proceedings, and we also
have other reports.
'The baggage of Monsieur and Madame Braye was
packed,' he continued. 'The reservoir of their car was
filled with essence, even the money which Monsieur Braye
so rudely cast in the face of the good Monsieur Delande
was the correct amount of his bill, with the ten per cent
service charge added. If Monsieur and Madame Braye
had been able to get away early that morning as they had
planned, they would have been across the Swiss border
before it was even surely ascertained that Madame Wilde
had been murdered...'
'It was stupid of him to get in wrong over his papers,'
Sherrill commented. 'I don't see how he happened to do
that — I suppose it was just the one stupid thing a clever
criminal is so apt to do. But then, I don't see why he
hung around so long in France, anyway. Indeed, I don't
see why he came to France in the first place.'
Surprisingly, the detective permitted himself, at this,


The Detective Thinks Aloud
241
the luxury of gesticulation. He flung his arms far from
his somewhat stiff and military body and shrugged his
shoulders at the same time.
'Why did he come to France, you ask? Monsieur Sher-
rill, I tell you — they all come to France. All SmigrSs, all
proscrits, all refugees — they all come to France, Mon-
sieur. Russians fleeing from Bolshevism, Italians fleeing
from Fascism, Germans fleeing from Hitlerism, Spaniards
fleeing from revolution, Americans fleeing from Prohibi-
tion — they all come to France! Fugitives from justice
also — they come to France first, even if they know that
they will be obliged soon to leave France and seek refuge
in Greece. They all come here, Monsieur! Ecoutez, if the
man in the moon should be threatened by a dictatorship
on the part of his lady, what is it that he would do?
Figurez-vous, Monsieur, he would make the grand leap
into France!'
He groaned. 'And when they murder each other, Mon-
sieur, we must find the murderer. They have no cartes
d'identiM, they have no dossiers with their own police,
many of them have not even any foyers in the place from
which they come. The American, I am convinced, Mon-
sieur, lives hopping from branch to branch, like a crow!
And we — we must find out all, all! We must uncover
their hidden pasts; we must solve the criminal mysteries
of their present; we must dispatch them to a future in hell
by way of the guillotine Mon Dieu, Monsieur, I ask
you — is this just?'
He all but tore his hair. And I watched and listened
with a good deal of interest. I had always shared the
prevalent American notion that the French were an
excitable people; and through every step of this murder
mystery I had been impressed by their supreme and un-


242
Murder in a Walled Town
shakable calm. In their investigations of the serious
problem which confronted them, and us, all these French-
men, from the juge d'instruction to the youngest gen-
darme, had been self-controlled to the point of frigidity,
and as solemn as owls. Keen, quiet, self-contained, they
had gone about their grave and gruesome business like
perfectly-moving automatons, and one had the feeling
that nothing could ever upset their absolute poise. Now,
over a mere rhetorical question as to why Horace Braye
had chosen France to flee to, the extremely calm and
capable detective from the Surete burst into torrents of
answering rhetoric and beat upon the air about him with
gestures of despair!
Then, before anyone had a chance to break in upon his
speech, he smiled at John Sherrill with extraordinary
sweetness, and said, in a tone whose sincerity took away
all suggestion of grandiloquence from his words:
'But in this case we have the great benefit of your
generous and brilliant assistance, Monsieur. With all
my heart, I thank you...'
And he arose suddenly and shook John Sherrill's hand.
Then, with perfect simplicity and again with complete
calm, he went on with his recapitulation:
'It now appears that we can with assurance say that
we know that Monsieur and Madame Braye were greatly
frightened in recognizing Madame Wilde, who would not
be likely to rest idle if she discovered the man who was
responsible for such a large loss in her fortune. We will
for the time being pass over the night of Madame Wilde's
murder, but we can with assurance say that the Braye
couple planned to flee from Neyronnes the next morning.
When they were held here and their car was taken from
them, Monsieur Braye made a new plan. It appears that


244
Murder in a Walled Town
smile continued to be very friendly, although now it
ceased to be gay.
'Monsieur Armitage has shown all too plainly that he
finds Miss Wilde attractive,' he went on seriously. 'Miss
Wilde, also, has seemed to like him. Unfortunately,
Madame Wilde had objected to the development of any
friendly acquaintance between these two young people.
I have been unable to find the slightest evidence which
would seem to connect this young man with Madame
Wilde's death,' he added, with emphasis, 'but for a per-
son bent upon finding an object of suspicion, as was
Horace Braye, it must be admitted that the situation in
regard to Wayne Armitage played into his hands. Natu-
rally, he took advantage of it.'
'I see,' said the detective. 'Of that, I think, we can
feel assured. The next step in Monsieur Braye's new plan
was to call the attention of all his compatriots — not,
you notice, of the police — to his intention of getting his
car on Saturday morning. Having received special per-
mission — and being of course watched, although he
may not have realized that — he got his car on Friday
afternoon, and hid it in a shed.
'Then,' Reynal continued, 'when he had, as he thought,
quieted his wife by the promise to return to get her, he
attempted to leave the house in the middle of the night.
One point leaps to the mind: one cannot believe for one
moment that Monsieur Braye intended to return for his
wife. He had decided to leave her behind. And she prob-
ably knew it.'
'Yes,' said John Sherrill gravely. And I shivered.
'Then, as I reconstruct the affair,' Reynal's quiet voice
went on, 'Monsieur Braye sought to leave the house by
the back exit, through the storage-room, so as to avoid


The Detective Thinks Aloud
247
Braye was killed, it seems plain, by a blow on the head
with a heavy instrument, and it may seem to some of
you that only a strong arm could have dealt such a blow.
That is not correct, Messieurs. The blow which fell upon
Monsieur Braye's temple could have been struck, with
that spanner, by a child.
'Now,' he continued at once, 'we will pursue our in-
vestigations, and it is better that we should do this alone.'
He bowed formally to John Sherrill and to Mr. William-
son. 'I shall be at your disposal, Messieurs, for any ques-
tions you may wish to ask, and I shall welcome your
collaboration with gratitude. Monsieur Armitage, it is
possible that we may wish to talk with you further. It
will be well if you do not go far away.'
Both the representatives of French law rose from their
chairs and smiled upon us in courteous but firm dismissal.
They had evidently taken time long since to spread the
news that there would be no afternoon session of the
meeting of inquiry. With Sherrill and Mr. Williamson,
I walked out across the main dining-room of the Auberge
de Vieux Neyronnes, and so into the broad Place des
Halles.
It was later than I had thought. Already the shadows
were slanting as the sun made its slow midsummer descent
behind the old houses, and on the side of the square
farthest from the linden tree the cars of Saturday after-
noon visitors were already parked. The maids in their
pretty peasant costume were serving gouters at tables
under the tree, and people were passing in and out of the
museum and up and down the path that led to the lower
Gate and the Promenade des Lices. As always, it looked
as if it were part of a play — but the play was gay and
attractive, not like the grim drama of death and fear and
greed that was really being staged there...


248
Murder in a Walled Town
'I seem to be kept under surveillance,' I muttered dis-
contentedly.
But John Sherrill only shrugged his shoulders.
'You are rather an important witness, you know,' he
said. 'They can't let you get out of call. You found
Horace Braye's body. You have heard Horace "roaring"
at Rosalie in their rooms, and you were present when he
first scowled at her and then insulted her in the matter of
the lace scarf. You found Horace's handkerchief outside
Mrs. Wilde's door on the morning after her murder. It
was you whom he tried to accuse of that crime. You were
here on the night Mrs. Wilde was killed, and you heard
Margaret Hamilton's dog growling on both those nights
— look here, Armitage, did you ever hear that dog growl-
ing in the night, at any other time?'
'I don't remember that I did,' I answered slowly.
4 You know how this hotel is — or rather, how it has been
lately: a certain amount of movement in the halls, people
going in and out, up to half-past eleven or so, and then
everything quiet after that. Fergus seems to be quite
used to hearing some slight noises in the halls before mid-
night, but to resent any sounds after that — or does he
smell people, instead of hearing them? Anyway Oh,
wait a minute! I did hear him growl once. I think he was
growling at me.'
And I told John Sherrill how I had heard a low growl
from Miss Hamilton's dog as I was walking through the
corridor very late on one of my first nights at Neyronnes.
He seemed mildly interested.
'But after I had been here longer, and he had had time
to get accustomed to me, he never made a sound if I
passed his door late at night,' I added. 'You know on the
night of Mrs. Wilde's death I had been out in the ruins


We Plan to Go Home
255
Wilde would soon drive her big Packard down the nar-
row, curving street and out of the towered gate of Ney-
ronnes and along the broad road of the valley; and I
should never see her again. With her wealth and her
beauty and her new freedom, with that strength and re-
sourcefulness of which she herself was just becoming
conscious, Christine would go out into the world. And it
was not my world.
My world was small and simple: its views were such
views as those that lay before me now; its routine was
humdrum, its horizon limited, its rewards a little pinched.
But it was a world not without beauty, not without in-
terest, not without its own lovableness and its own chal-
lenge to valor in living and maturing keenness in thought.
I should never see Christine again. But I would go
home. I would go home to my job...
Yet suddenly, as I thought of my job, of workaday
duties, I was smitten again with the realization of other
tasks that were being carried out at this moment behind
the fortress walls of the ancient village on its hill. I did
not know — and I have never known — how much of the
police 'third degree' was permitted in France: that
dreaded successor to the rack and the thumbscrew, which
is forbidden in England and still talked of in the United
States. I was unable to guess what might be happening to
Rosalie Braye. But I shuddered as I recalled the de-
tective's quiet statement, 'We will pursue our investiga-
tions, and it is better that we should do this alone.' It had
been an ominous quietness, I thought. And I had a sick
sense of having stumbled upon almost a modern analogy,
as I remembered the stories of the torturing^of witches in
the mediaeval prison-tower.
Almost against my will, I turned my face away from the


256,
Murder in a Walled Town
peaceful comeliness of the farming land before me and the
shadows that were growing longer in the brightening
glow of the sky, to look back toward the ancient houses of
Neyronnes, huddled still protectively behind the massive
walls of the town. I looked back with a feeling that I
should find something terrible in the scene, some visible
reminder of death and brutality and remorse and defiance
and punishment. And what I saw was beautiful — old
ramparts grown mellow in the tawniness of their ancient
stone, the rich verdancy of clambering vines touched here
and there with starry clematis or white and yellow honey-
suckle, the crimson of rambler roses 'flung riotously*
against the walls of houses and gardens; an old, old vil-
lage that had lived its life for more than a thousand years
and that was beautiful still...
It was not terrible. It was beautiful. Whatever might
be happening to Rosalie Braye, whatever horror might
have come upon us all, Neyronnes remained beautiful and
lovable. I was still homesick. I still felt lonely and
strange. But Neyronnes itself spoke kindly and com-
fortingly to me, from all its changing centuries...
And as I looked at it in the loveliness of the sunset,
Christine Wilde came through the gate and along the
road to where I was sitting.
'I saw you out the window,' she said conversationally.
'I thought I'd come and talk with you.'
She sat down on the grass beside me, under the tree.
'I have heard what has happened,' she said. 'The
police are with Mrs. Braye now, but it is perfectly quiet.
It is so still it is frightening. I was glad when I saw you
here, because it is so nice to sit here peacefully like this.
Everything is always so beautiful at this time of day.
And one can get away from things...'


WE PLAN TO GO HOME 257
She broke off suddenly, but before I had a chance to
speak, she went on:
'Get away from things — or face them. Wayne, I
want to ask you... You are young, like me, and I'm not
afraid to ask you... Do you think I did a wrong thing to
my mother to leave her like that?'
She was so earnest, so pathetic, so troubled, that my
little thrill of gladness was only subconscious when she
called me by my first name. What I was consciously
thinking was that I wanted to comfort her; but I did not
want to offer any careless consolation, to try to‘cheer' her
with a reassurance merely superficial.
'No, I don't think you did wrong,' I answered. 'I
think you did right. Your mother was feeling better
when you went away. There was no reason why you
shouldn't have left her for two nights.'
'I hadn't gone away from her like that for years,' she
said sadly. 'It was dreadful, Wayne-a dreadful co-
incidence somehow. And the most dreadful part of it all
is that I know I don't feel so sorry as I ought to feel...'
She clasped her hands over her knees, and went on,
without looking at me:
'I can talk to you about it — you are young, like me.
The others — they are all so kind, but they are so much
older. I never could be sure that they would understand.
And if they said nice gentle comforting things to me, I
shouldn't know for certain that they meant them — I'd
be afraid they were just trying to make me feel better,
the way one does to a child that's been hurt. But I'm not
a child. And, oh, Wayne, the trouble isn't that I am hurt.
It's that I'm not.'
‘My mother was buried yesterday in the Protestant


258
Murder in a Walled Town
Cemetery in the city,' she said. 'Perhaps in time I shall
take her body back to St. Louis, or perhaps to Lausanne.
It isn't important, because she had no real home. But
when we came back here, after my mother was buried —
even when I went to the hotel with Mr. and Mrs. Sherrill
last night — I didn't feel sad. I didn't think about sad
things. I thought about glad things. I thought how now
she will never grow old, or be unimportant, or be afraid
of my leaving her, or of people's not liking her enough.
It wasn't being ill that troubled her really. She was not
very ill, and I think she could have got well, probably.
And of course she knew there was no danger of her being
poor. But she was afraid of growing old, of not being
pretty any more, or making friends easily.
'She was only forty-one years old,' Christine added;
and remembering the radiant vision of Mrs. Wilde as I
had first seen her, I was not surprised. 'And she was so
pretty, and always important, the center of things, in
spite of her ill-health. But lately she has not been happy.
She has been so restless, this last year, even more restless
than she used to be. And lately she has been unhappy
about me, in a new way.'
'She was always afraid of my leaving her, and she
would never let me get well acquainted with any young
people. She was jealous about me, you see — that was
natural enough, for she wanted me always to be with her
and take care of her. But lately it had been worse than
that: she seemed to be getting jealous of me, too, in such
a sad way. Because I am young. And she was so afraid
of getting old. She would not let me talk to Paul Mac-
Neil, and she would not let me talk to you — that was
natural enough. But she would not let me talk to Miss
Hamilton either. And when Mr. and Mrs. Sherrill came


We Plan to Go Home
259
and seemed to like me — I mean, seemed to like me as
much as they liked her — she was unhappy. I was
miserable about it. But what could I do?'
She turned and looked straight at me, and I saw that
her brown eyes were full of tears, though her voice was as
clear and unwavering as a silver bell.
'I know that my mother was selfish, Wayne,' she said.
'I know all about that. But she was not happy. I saw her
unhappiness better than anyone else could see it, and I
could forgive her selfishness better than anyone else.
Perhaps selfish people are never really happy. I don't
know. What I do know is that now it is all over. And I
don't feel sad. I can't feel sad. All that I feel is a kind of
perplexity and questioning of myself, and a kind of lost-
ness.'
I don't remember what I said. I only remember that it
was sincere and quite candid, and that it seemed to com-
fort her. I did understand how she felt — it was natural,
poor child, and simple enough — and I was glad that we
could sit there under the tree in the meadow and talk it
#
out, not having to explain much, but really seeing into
each other's minds, as if we had known each other for
years. And after we had exchanged a few sentences, she
said, with a sudden change of expression:
'But I don't know what I am going to do now. It all
seems strange. What are you going to do, when this is all
over?'
'I?' I answered. 'Why, I'm going home. I'm going
back to my job.'
'Oh,' said Christine, 'I remember — you teach history
in a boys' school, don't you? But — where is your
home?'
'In the Chester Valley,' I replied. And as she looked


John Sherrill Dissents 263
a drive next day — Christine and Elinor Sherrill and Miss
Hamilton and I. It would do Christine good to get away
from Neyronnes on a simple little pleasure drive, he said.
And I realized that he and his wife had probably talked it
all over (and got permission from the police) before the
idea was mentioned to us. It was plain that a little
pleasure drive would be good for Christine: it was also
plain that John Sherrill wanted to be alone, or as nearly
alone as possible, in Neyronnes...
I said I thought we should all enjoy having Monsieur
de Brassac with us, and when the others agreed with me I
went to his room and asked him if he could not come
along. But he replied that he did not want to leave his
sick boy — Paul MacNeil was less weak than he had
been the day before, but he was still very ill indeed. And
although Monsieur de Brassac's kindly courtesy was un-
changed and his smile just as friendly as ever, I thought
that he himself did not seem well: his manner was just a
little preoccupied, and his eyes looked as if he had not
slept.
John Sherrill, too, looked tired. I wondered why he
felt it advisable — as I was sure he did — to do any more
work over these last details of investigation, the rounding
up of evidence, the completion of the story of a mystery
when the mystery itself was solved. But was it solved? I
remembered that John Sherrill was not occupying him-
self with the murder of Horace Braye. So far as that
crime was concerned, I felt sure that he would be quite
content to let the police take charge of Rosalie, and keep
his own hands off. But in the murder of Mrs. Wilde, a
crime for which suspicion had rested quite publicly on one
of his friends, he was still very deeply interested. And was
that problem solved?


266
Murder in a Walled Town
And after a while he said, without being asked any
question:
'It has been fairly peaceful here. Curiously enough,
Rosalie has been making a frightful fuss because she can-
not have Horace's body cremated. Her howls about dis-
crimination against Americans would have done credit to
Horace himself.'
'Why can't she have his body cremated?' Margaret
Hamilton asked.
'The French law forbids it in cases of death by
violence,' Sherrill answered. 'But it has been difficult to
get that simple fact into Mrs. Braye's head. She insisted
that someone was trying to put something over on her, as
she said, because she is a foreigner. I tell you frankly,' he
added, 'that I still cannot understand that woman.
Morally, she is a moron: she has no normal sense of right
and wrong. But is she mentally of the lunatic fringe, or is
she very shrewd? I'll swear I don't know.'
'Probably a little of both,' suggested Elinor.
'Probably,' her husband agreed. 'Shrewd along cer-
tain lines of self-interest, and a moron otherwise. She
has stayed in her room all day, and for part of the time
the police have been talking with her. I saw her only
that once, when she howled for me to come and "re-
present" her. She has been actually under guard ever
since her husband's body was found, you know. But now
I think that the Surete man Reynal is giving himself a
well-earned rest, and has turned her over to the gen-
darmes. The juge d'instruction has not been here today.'
We sat there very comfortably, the four of us, and the
tension seemed to have relaxed a bit in all our minds. It
seemed like old times, like those early days in Neyronnes
when we all chatted together so naturally. I had hesitated


John Sherrill Dissents 267
this afternoon, to make any inquiries of John Sherrill or
even to mention the tragedy that still cast its shadow
over us all. But since he spoke himself, so candidly and
so companionably, about Rosalie Braye, I plucked up
courage to ask him a direct question.
I thought for a minute as to just how I should ask it,
what form I should put it in, and I tried to decide upon
the possibility which seemed likeliest in my own mind.
After some pondering, I seemed to feel myself on fairly
firm ground, and I said,
'Don't you think it was probably Horace who killed
Mrs. Wilde?'
Sherrill looked at me without any sign of displeasure,
but he did not answer at once. It was still broad daylight,
but in the Place around the linden tree there were the un-
important movements of late afternoon among the village
folk. An old peasant woman strode slowly across the
square on the side farthest from us, a little girl came with
her copper pot to the fountain, a child on his way home to
supper dashed out of the ruelle and across the Place and
so pell-mell down the hill. Passing him, and stepping
aside to avoid collision with his impetuous speed, Henri
de Brassac walked slowly up the sloping path and into
the square, as he had done so many times in the days
when we did not know him and he was only a stranger
passing by, but this time he waved his hand as he saw us.
The picture was one that never failed to charm me,
that simple scene of the life of Neyronnes toward the end
of a summer day. I gazed out upon it as I waited for
John Sherrill to answer me, but when he turned toward
me, it seemed as if he had been looking at something far
away, and very sad.
'No,' he said slowly, 'I don't think that Horace Braye
killed Mrs. Wilde. I wish to God I did.'


We Learn of a Discovery
269
which John Sherrill had left vacant, but in another, op-
posite, with its back to the Place and the sloping path
down which Christine's white dress was already disap-
pearing on her way to the Lices and the Lower Gate.
Sherrill walked across the square and out the road,
under the beautiful fourteenth-century house at the
corner, and down to the chemin de ronde, where he, too,
was lost to our view and we could not see in which of the
two opposite directions he had gone.
Monsieur de Brassac ordered a vermouth mSlangi,
smiled a rather tired smile at us all, and said:
'I am afraid that my knowledge of grapes is not very
extensive. But we do make some good wine in the Dor-
dogne country. We have a few hectares of vines on my
own little place.'
'I thought you lived in Paris,' Elinor Sherrill remarked.
'Oh, yes, I do; part of the time. But my home is in the
Dordogne country, Madame. I was born near Sarlat, as
the police investigators insisted on pointing out; but my
own little property is a bit farther west, not far from the
chateau of Biron, not far from Monbazillac — do you
know the wine of Monbazillac? The wine of Monbazillac
comes from the Monbazillac estates, of course, but the
grapes of my little property make a wine which is similar
to that.*
He made a little bow again, this time directed specifi-
cally toward Mrs. Sherrill.
'When your country makes the promised change in its
Constitution, it will be a great pleasure to me to send you
some of our wine,' he said.
Perhaps it was because I had been thinking so much of
my own little farm in the Chester Valley — and, too, be-
cause we had driven so far that day through rural France


We Learn of a Discovery
271
Henri de Brassac sprang to his feet. The color had
left his face, but his mouth was firm.
'I may reply that the key could have been planted,' he
said.
'Yes, you may reply that,' John Sherrill agreed, 'but
you know that the key was not planted: you know that it
would not have been planted in this place. The key was
put there to be hidden, Monsieur, as you know — not to
be found. And you cannot make such a reply to other
things. There was no plant about the bloodstains. There
was no plant in the evidence of the coat. I have even
found the broken end of the ampoule, that bit of glass
which had disappeared. I think, Monsieur de Brassac,
that there is nothing that you can say.'
His voice was sad and stern, and like the voice of doom.
No one else spoke. For me, the whole world was whirling.
This was something that I could not believe. Henri de
Brassac! Henri de Brassac! How? Why? Henri de
Brassac the murderer of Mrs. Wilde! How could that be?
And why? Why?
Monsieur de Brassac looked John Sherrill full in the
face, and then he bowed his head.
'You are right,' he said. 'There is nothing that I can
say. There is nothing, now, that I can do. I think you
know everything or almost everything.'
'From the very beginning,' said John Sherrill, 'I have
trusted you.'
Yes, that was it. That was what made it so terrible.
We had trusted him. We had all trusted him, completely.
Far away, as in a daze, I could hear the voice of thejuge
a"instruction, telling us the bare facts of Henri de Brassac's
life — 'son of the Marquis de Brassac, chevalier of the
Legion of Honor, author of 'No, it wasn't that that


276. MURDER IN A WALLED TOWN
both and tried to think. Monsieur de Brassac's attitude
toward the sick lad was so protective: no wonder he had
been so ragingly angry over Mrs. Wilde's cruelty
toward Paul MacNeil, no wonder that had added fuel
to the flame of his pity for the hopeless plight of her
own daughter, whom she was torturing in her im-
prisonment: this was no ordinary murder, as he had
said...
Christine was talking about Tales of the Mermaid Tav-
ern, and how beautifully Paul had read 'The Compan-
ion of a Mile' to her, and the other poem about the marin-
ers who crossed the Atlantic; but I was scarcely listening
to what she said. I was thinking — and in my thinking
I felt as if I were trying to push away blackness from my
eyes, in a blinded effort to see...
For there was something wrong here, something that
didn't fit into the puzzle, that didn't make complete
sense. Mrs. Wilde had been killed before Henri de Brassac
knew of her cruelty to Paul MacNeil. And a faint
memory stirred in my mind: I had heard sounds in the
night; I had heard sounds in the night, in or near the
room that was Henri de Brassac's, before the Frenchman
came to Neyronnes... What was it that they had been
saying to each other, John Sherrill and Henri de Brassac?
What was it they had meant?
But I found myself listening now. For Paul MacNeil
raised the glass of wine that had just come for him -
""'I drink to that great inn beyond the grave -
If there be none the gods have done us wrong -
Ere long I hope to chant a brighter stave,
In some great Mermaid Inn beyond the grave..."
He set down the wine-glass, untouched, and faced
John Sherrill.


WE LEARN OF A DISCOVERY
277
'I think you know everything,' he said.
'I think I do,' Sherrill answered. 'And I want to tell
you — if it can be arranged, my wife and I should like
to take you with us to Geneva when we go.'
Paul MacNeil smiled. 'Thank you very much,' he
responded, 'but I — must stay here. I am not afraid.
And I do not regret what I did. Her death was merciful,
to everyone. And his was accidental. I killed him in
self-defense. I'll tell you the whole story...'
But on the instant his eyes, which had been bright
with fever, turned dull, and the fire that had flamed in
his cheeks left the gray of dead ashes where it had burned
red. It may be that there was something theatrical in his
instinct as he spoke again, but I think not. I like to
think that at this moment his mind went quite simply
to the great immortal English that he loved. For his
smile, as it changed and deepened, was very sweet and
very natural.
""The rest is silence," he said.
As the thin line of scarlet showed between his white
lips, Henri de Brassac sprang forward. But Christine
was nearest; and it was she who caught him as he fell.


We Hear the Whole Story
279
'I was sure that Horace Braye had been killed by his
wife,' Miss Hamilton said one day, when Christine was
with Paul, and both she and Monsieur de Brassac were
having tea with the Sherrills and myself in the galerie,
'and yet, once one grasps the initial mistake about the
key, one can understand what happened afterward.'
Yes, it was the mistake about the key — Paul Mac-
Neil's mistake about the key to Mrs. Wilde's door —
which had precipitated later events and been responsible
for the almost accidental death of Horace Braye. Paul
had entered Mrs. Wilde's room quietly and easily,
through a door not only unlocked but ajar. If he had
left the door as he found it, the whole story of what hap-
pened afterward would have been very different. But
he was in a thoroughly unnatural state of mind when he
went out of that room where Mrs. Wilde lay dying of
morphine poisoning: he was scarcely conscious of what
he was doing; without noticing it, he locked the door
and stuck the key in his pocket. And when he realized
that he had it, he was afraid to go back.
He had hurried out of that house of death to seek his
own shelter in the ruins. And his idea, on discovering
the key, was to throw it down the supposedly bottomless
well, on the grassy triangle near the prison-house. But
he was really very ill and the rain was coming down in
torrents. He ran by the shortest way to his refuge and
flung himself upon his bed. In the morning he vaguely
remembered that he had done something with the key,
but he was too ill to think or even to recall clearly the
main events of what had happened. Later, when he
remembered his intention of throwing the key down the
well, he supposed that that was what he had done.
But on the evening when he felt so much better, when


280
Murder in a Walled Town
he put on his new suit and dined with us in the galerie,
recollection swept over him: he had had the key in his
hand when he entered his hut; he had not thrown it in
the well; he had hidden it somewhere in his shelter; he
could not remember where. In the night he was seized
with the conviction that he must go and find it, that he
must fling it away for good and all. It was certainly not
wise determination; but Paul MacNeil was not wise; and
he was excited and already feverish...
So, in the middle of the night, when the house was
quite still, he slipped out of his room and into the storage-
room of the old 'lean-to' house, on his way out the back
exit to the village street. And he almost walked into a
man who was making a slow and laborious way down the
stairs from the unfinished room, with a suitcase in his
hand. He had been badly frightened, of course, and had
slipped back into the darkness of the shadows — a little
light was coming in through the dusty windows from the
street lamps outside — but the man saw him, and when
he got to the foot of the stairs, he dropped his suitcase
and made a lunge at Paul with a heavy weapon of some
sort which he held in his hand.
I suppose that Horace Braye was desperate and had
completely lost his head. Certainly he flew at Paul with
the enormous monkey-wrench that he was taking back to
his car, and Paul thought that he was trying to kill him.
He got panicky, too, and his only thought was to get
away. He knew the storage annex, as Braye did not, and
he managed to double back and run up the stairs to the
second floor, thinking that he could reach the door of the
unfinished room and so get back into the pavillon. But
Braye rushed after him, still hitting out with the monkey-
wrench, until he got to the top of the stairs, and there


282
Murder in a Walled Town
suitcase, and he didn't want to run the risk of attracting
attention to his packing, at that time, by saying anything
to the servants; so he got the big spanner out of his car.
It is all very simple, isn't it?'
Christine came out to the galerie just then, and Miss
Hamilton went to take her place at Paul MacNeil's bed-
side. We did not speak of these things before Christine.
She, too, was with Paul a great deal, and I came to under-
stand his feeling for her and to feel deeply touched by it.
She was always to him what she had seemed to me to
resemble as she walked with him up the hill and across
the cobbles of the ancient Place — some lovely goddess
of youth and vigor, very strong and beautiful, and gentle
and kind. He did not'love' her, in any ordinary human
sense, but he felt a sort of worship for her, and personally,
a sort of gladness that she was alive. It was like the last
couplet of the Shakespeare sonnet that I had heard him
reciting in the ruins: when he thought of her, his losses
were restored and his sorrows were over, and that was
all he asked. And he was happy now in the thought that
she was happy.
And one day, just before he died, Christine said a
strange thing. She said it to Paul — a few words which
I, hearing, thought might be mere words of comfort.
But she said it afterward to me, at more length, and I
saw that it was quite true.
'I'm not sure that I can make you understand, Wayne,'
she tried to explain,'but, after all the shock and terror of
my mother's death and the fear that those horrible Brayes
had killed her, I feel so relieved, so at peace, now that
I know how it really was. The thing that had haunted
me was the thought that she had waked up in the night
and seen that man's dreadful face, all hideous with fear


284
Murder in a Walled Town
On the night when I first heard sounds in the back
part of the pavillon — the night of the party in the
inn and the sudden hard shower — Paul MacNeil had
slipped into the house early, as soon as the rain began,
about half-past ten, and had gone into the room which
was later Henri de Brassac's, the room which was near-
est the top of the stairs on the side of the house which
was on that night sheltered from the rain. He had been
in that room before, and his demands for comfort were so
simple that he never disturbed anything; nor, as a rule,
did he stay long. He brought a blanket with him, laid
it on the floor beside the window, and usually went im-
mediately to sleep. When the rain stopped, he went back
to his own shelter. He was always absolutely quiet, and
he was personally neat and fastidious to the point of
fanaticism; otherwise, of course, he would not have been
given the freedom of the house!
But on this night he did not sleep. In the next room,
just inside the open window, Mrs. Wilde and her daughter
were having a conversation which he could not help over-
hearing and which made sleep impossible. He had heard
Mrs. Wilde raging at Christine on other occasions, but
he had never heard anything like this. For after she had
worked herself into a fury on the subject of me, Wayne
Armitage, and poor Christine's slight evidence of liking
to talk with me, she suddenly switched over to Miss
Hamilton. And Paul said, telling the story to Henri de
Brassac, it was just as if she were mad...
She accused her daughter of trying to steal her friends,
of setting herself up as a social rival to her mother, of
plotting against her. She said horrible things. She laughed
and shrieked and told Christine that she could never
hope to be as attractive as her mother, and that she had


286
Murder in a Walled Town
by the door, he found the button of a man's coat. Know-
ing the scrupulous housekeeping of the Auberge de Vieux
Neyronnes, he was surprised. And when he had brought
Paul MacNeil to the inn, he looked at his coat-buttons
and understood that he must have been in the house...
On the second night of Christine's absence, Paul again
sought shelter in the pavillon annexe of the inn. His plan
this time was to go to the unfinished room and spend the
entire night, because the rain was getting worse every
minute — one could bolt that door on the inside, and the
plan seemed quite practical. The house was very quiet
as he entered and went up the first flight of stairs, but as
he passed Mrs. Wilde's door he noticed that it was a
hair's breadth ajar, and from inside he heard the faint
sound of moaning. He stopped, listened, pushed the
door a little, and then Mrs. Wilde said,
'Is that you, Miss Hamilton? Please come in. I'm so
miserable.'
Paul MacNeil was naturally kind, and charitable in
his judgments. He knew, too, that people who are ill
are often unreasonable. He had never bothered his head
about Mrs. Wilde's real cruelty toward himself. And he
was genuinely sorry for her. He stood still for a moment,
waiting to see if Miss Hamilton might be coming down-
stairs. But there was no sound or movement anywhere in
the house, and he pushed aside the unlatched door and
went into Mrs. Wilde's room.
'It's only me, Paul,' he said. 'Isn't there something I
can do for you? I just came in for a minute, out of the
rain.'
She was so absorbed in the self-pity of the moment that
she did not give a thought to the disobedience to her
mandates, implied in Paul's presence in the house. She


We Hear the Whole Story
287
was too glad to have someone to talk to. And talk she did.
He had shut the door tight behind him, and no one would
hear them — she had just opened it a crack, she said,
because she was thinking about calling Miss Hamilton.
And she told him right away that it was very wrong of
Christine to stay away two nights.
'She knows I need someone to talk to when I can't
sleep,' she said.
'Well,' he suggested, 'here am I. You can talk to me.'
She really was lonely and nervous. She was angry
with her daughter for leaving her, and the Sherrills'
desire for Christine's company had been a bitter blow to
her vanity. Her desire to dramatize herself ran away with
her. She told Paul MacNeil not only that she was cursed
with an undutiful daughter — which, of course he knew
to be untrue — but that she was suffering from a painful
and incurable disease. She had nothing but a slow and
wretched death, she said, to look forward to. And he did
not know that that was not true. It was his own state
exactly, except that his disease was almost never actually
painful. It seemed to him that Mrs. Wilde was far worse
off than he.
'I told you, Monsieur Sherrill,' said Henri de Brassac
as he reached this point in his story, 'that there was one
thing you did not know, which was to me a greatly ex-
tenuating circumstance. This is it. Paul MacNeil did
not look upon Mrs. Wilde's death only as a justifiable
execution, but as a merciful release. He thought that it
was for her the only way out of hopeless suffering.'
'I thought that, too,' said Miss Hamilton. 'She told
me the same thing, that evening. It seemed to me curi-
ous, but I believed her. When she first came, and talked
to me about her mysterious illness and her great trials


288
Murder in a Walled Town
and misfortunes, I concluded that she must have cancer.
Then I decided that I must have been mistaken. But sud-
denly, Monday evening, she began to talk just as she talked
to Paul. And I believed her, just as he did. I think now
that she was making a frantic effort to attract and con-
centrate attention, to get back to the center of the picture,
no matter how. I suppose none of us can really under-
stand how upset she was, Elinor, when you and John
preferred her daughter to her and actually kept Christine
with you for two days!' She sighed suddenly. 'Perhaps
I should have known better than to believe her — but
even the fear of hopeless disease seems so horrible...'
'Paul MacNeil, at any rate, did not know enough
even to think of such a thing as disbelieving her,'
Monsieur de Brassac went on. 'He felt only pity for her.'
And after a little while — Henri de Brassac was still
telling the story — Mrs. Wilde said, 'I haven't taken my
medicine all day. I didn't want Miss Hamilton to know
about it, and it's such a trouble to fix it for myself.
Perhaps if I took it now, I might be able to get to sleep.
I don't know where it is, but you find it, Paul, and get
it ready for me...'
It was then that he thought of the morphine.
'Don't think I take drugs,' he had said to Henri de Bras-
sac. 'That is something I would never do. But there was
a newspaper man at home who knew that I had consump-
tion and who felt sorry about it, and one day he brought
me a little package, and said, "There's nothing I can do
for you, but if things ever get too bad, here's this. It's
morphine, enough to send you over the edge for good and
all. Keep it for emergency." So I did. I never asked him
how he got it, poor chap, but I kept the stuff in a little
tin box in one of my inside pockets, so it wouldn't get


We Hear the Whole Story
289
wet or be lost — or found. And when Mrs. Wilde spoke
of medicine, and "getting to sleep," I — I thought of it.'
Monsieur de Brassac interrupted himself. 'Of course
that is almost all the story,' he said, and turned to address
John Sherrill. 'Will you be so kind as to tell me how you
traced this sorry business to Paul MacNeil — and why
you were so angry with me for concealing what I knew?'
'I'll answer your second question first,' Sherrill said.
'I was very indignant because I had trusted you completely
all along, and I thought that you ought to have trusted
me. I had no intention of turning that poor lad over to
the police; I would have helped you to do everything
you could for him. I think that you and I must hold
out the hand of pardon to each other over that mis-
understanding, Monsieur de Brassac. And before I an-
swer your first question — tell me when did you first
suspect Paul MacNeil.?'
'I had my suspicions from the beginning,' the French-
man replied, 'but for a while I thought it was most prob-
ably Horace Braye. After Braye's death, Paul told me, as
I have already said to you, everything. And you?'
'I began to wonder about him right at first,' Sherrill
answered, 'because of his clothes. If he had spent that
night on his bed in the ruins, either he would not have
been dressed when Armitage found him or else his suit,
which would have remained in his waterproof box until
the rain stopped, would have been dry. That is what I
meant when I spoke to you of the "evidence of the coat."
It seemed queer. It seemed queer, too, that the big key to
Mrs. Wilde's door should have completely disappeared.
'But when we began to trace Horace Braye's foot-
prints back in his paths of crime,' Sherrill continued, 'I
confess that my ponderings concerned themselves chiefly


We Hear the Whole Story
291
John Sherrill sighed, as he finished his story. But Henri
de Brassac had another question to ask.
'I have been deeply troubled over the suspicions against
Miss Hamilton,' he said. 'About young Monsieur Arm-
itage here, I have not been troubled, because — as you
and I have agreed, Monsieur Sherrill — he is plainly too
frank and ingenuous to play a part successfully after a
murder, even if he had been able to commit such a crime
in the first place. But about Miss Hamilton I have been
troubled. Yet you have intimated that my fears were
groundless. Why?'
'For several reasons.' John Sherrill smiled at his old
friend. 'To begin with, there was Fergus...'
* The Kerry blue, hearing himself spoken of, raised his
beautiful head and fixed his devoted, intelligent eyes upon
his mistress, and she leaned over and stroked him, with
more of open affection than she was usually willing to
show. But Henri de Brassac looked puzzled.
'Fergus?' he echoed. 'I remember that he made a noise
in the night. But how does that prove anything, Monsieur
Sherrill? A house dog, like this one, will often make a
noise when his master or mistress goes out of the room. I
had a dog once that always barked when I left him.'
'Yes. But Fergus didn't bark. He growled. A dog will
bark sharply at his master or mistress, to make a protest,
to say any one of a number of things; but he won't growl.
The fact that Fergus growled on both those nights is as
strong a proof as one could wish for, that it was not his
mistress who was in the hall, that someone else was there
— someone, too, whom he either disliked or did not know
very well. That was the second point of evidence I spoke
of, that pleased me when it came out at the hearing,'
Sherrill added. 'And I noted later that he had growled


292
Murder in a Walled Town
once when Armitage went through the hall late, but never
after he became really acquainted with Armitage. I think
that he never did become really acquainted with Paul
MacNeil — did he, Margot?'
'No,' Miss Hamilton agreed, but I thought she looked
uncomfortable. 'When I went to see Paul in his shelter, I
always left Fergus behind. Paul didn't like dogs much: I
think they were too active and healthy; they seemed to
worry him, poor lad. But, John, Fergus's growl proves
that someone else was in the hall: it doesn't prove that
I was not.'
'Not quite — but wouldn't that have been stretching
the long arm of coincidence to the point of improbability?'
He gave a little chuckle, and addressed Monsieur de
Brassac again. 'Besides, I think that Miss Hamilton was
the one person in Neyronnes most likely to realize that
Christine could not be deceived into thinking that her
mother took drugs. And note this: if she had known what
was coming, when Mrs. Wilde's will was read, and had
killed Mrs. Wilde to get that legacy, I do not believe —
knowing Miss Hamilton as I do — that she could have
managed to faint with such dramatic genuineness when
she heard the codicil.' He turned to Miss Hamilton again,
with his friendly smile that was no longer troubled.
'But I have always wondered, Margot, and I know that
now you won't mind my asking you,' he said. 'Why did
you faint?'
But Miss Hamilton was not smiling. And her voice was
remote and frozen, as if a glacier spoke.
'I fainted because it was I who killed Mrs. Wilde.' she
said.
... John Sherrill and I sprang to our feet, aghast, and


294 Murder in a Walled Town
not want me to know about, and which would help her to
go to sleep, he thought of the morphine — because he
suddenly thought she must be a drug-addict. It seemed
to him probable that her supply of drugs had given out,
or something like that. And he was horrified and heart-
sick, and came to ask me what to do.
'My door was very slightly ajar, because I had gone to
bed feeling very greatly disturbed about Mrs. Wilde, and
after Wayne Armitage had gone to his room and the house
was quiet, I had opened my door a trifle so that I could
listen for any sounds from her room. So I knew that Paul
was there, and as he started to come upstairs I slipped out
into the hall and motioned him into the unfinished room
— I was afraid that Wayne might hear us through the
thin partition if we talked in my room, and of course there
was no one next the unfinished room that night, John be-
ing away. Paul told me what he thought, and told me
about the morphine, and said, "What shall I do?"'
Miss Hamilton was speaking very slowly, but she did
not pause at this crucial point in her narrative.
'I did know about the insulin,' she said. 'Christine
had told me, before she went away. I knew about her
idiosyncrasy against opiates — she had told me that her-
self. I had been her constant companion for nearly two
months, and I knew that she was a monster of selfishness
and jealousy, whose selfishness had become a frightful in-
growing thing that seemed as if it must destroy her reason
and would certainly wreck her daughter's life. That
afternoon, from the time that you telephoned, John, about
staying overnight in Cluny, I had listened to her frenzy
of rage against Christine, and I was sick with dread of the
mental torture she would inflict upon that child when she
returned. And that evening she had told me — in what I


296
Murder in a Walled Town
poule. And in the morning you know what happened...
'I had not thought out clearly what I was going to do.
But I was not worried, not ashamed of what I had done.
I thought probably I should be able to tell Christine, and
since she must know that her mother's disease was so
horrible, she would surely understand. In any case, I
thought that the supposition of suicide or drug-addiction
would stand for the world at large.
'Then came the disappearance of the key. And Chris-
tine, poor child, came in and blurted out that her mother
must have been murdered. And she testified that her ill-
ness had not been serious. And the doctor verified that,
and I knew that what Mrs. Wilde had told me could not
have been true. I was troubled and confused, but I
should have told the truth, all of it, and taken the conse-
quences, if it had not been for that frightful will.'
Miss Hamilton shuddered, now, and caught her
breath in a little gasp, but she went on:
'I did not feel that I had much to lose in life. I had
done something which at the time I had believed not to
be wrong, which at the time I had believed to be merciful.
I was willing to take whatever punishment might be
necessary for that. But to be branded as a woman who
had murdered for money — that I could not face. That I
could not bear.
'From the first Paul had insisted, and pleaded with
me, that he must take the blame. In a curious way, it
seemed to be a point of pride with him. As soon as I
could see him alone, after Mrs. Wilde's body was found, I
told him just what it was that I had done. And he said,
first, that if he had known what I knew he would have
done what I did; and second, that he felt actually re-
sponsible in any case, because he had had the morphine


WE HEAR THE WHOLE STORY
and had called me into the situation, and then had made
the mistake about the key. Of course these were not
real arguments; but I did not know what to do; so I tried
to conceal both Paul's part and my own, tried to behave
as usual, tried to think of something to do.
‘And then Paul had that wild idea of looking for the
key in the night, poor boy, and he killed Horace Braye in
self-defense, as a result of it. I never thought of his hav-
ing had anything to do with that: I believed wholly that
Horace Braye's wife had murdered him, until Paul him-
self told me what had happened. And then his strength
had failed completely, and we knew that he was dying
and he begged me not to tell my story until he was gone.
I did promise him that. But I urged him to tell Monsieur
de Brassac...'
She looked at the Frenchman, and he bowed gravely.
“Yes,' he said, 'at the very end — yesterday — he told
me all that you have told us now.'
You had never suspected the truth?' she asked him.
“No,' he answered. 'I had never suspected the truth.
And now I beg that you will never tell this story to any-
one else...'
'So do I,' said John Sherrill. 'A few of your close
friends know and understand what really happened,
Margaret; that is enough.'
‘And your own life must not be shadowed or troubled,'
Elinor added.
Well, I have written down this story — in deep shame
for having suspected Margaret Hamilton of a dastardly
motive for a crime. But these are my private papers. No
harm will come to her through me.
'I think,' she said now, 'that everything will come
right, in time. Christine is happy — I can see that al-


300
Murder in a Walled Town
just where I stand. I am so worried about Horace's
money, Mr. Sherrill — the police being after him, and all,
and now its all coming out about him being Howard
Bretton, and that bank, and everything. And Mr.
Sherrill, you are a lawyer, and you can tell me all about
it — can they take the money away from me that Horace
kept when the bank failed?'
'My dear Mrs. Braye,' Sherrill began, in cold exaspera-
tion, 'I have not the slightest idea'
'But can't you think?' she insisted. Frigid formality
was lost on Rosalie. 'You can see, Mr. Sherrill, that is
what has been worrying me all along — just as I said to
those policemen, and they never answered me, I said,
"What's going to become of me?" I said. But you will
know, because you're a lawyer; and what I want to ask
you is this — don't you think it will be all right? Be-
cause Horace was always so smart, he put everything in
my name. Of course he saw that the bank was shaky a
long time before anyone else did, and he put it in my name
before anyone could guess there was anything wrong with
his affairs. He was always forehanded that way — he
said if you were going to get away with it you always had
to be looking ahead. And what I want to ask you is —
even if they've found out everything, don't you think the
money'll be all right for me?'
Sherrill's gesture was that of a man trying to shake off
an annoying insect. And his politeness was less careful.
'I told you, Mrs. Braye, I do not know anything about
it'
'Yes, but can't you find out?' Rosalie interrupted
brightly. 'You're a lawyer, and I'd be so glad if you'd
represent me, Mr. Sherrill'
He was really shocked, and he showed it.


We Hear the Whole Story
301
'Oh, no!' was all he could say, for the moment, and she
went on:
'I'd make it worth your while. I always say if you want
good service you've got to be willing to put up a good
price. I used to say that to Horace when he grouched
about spending money. I used to say, "There's lots of
things in life that can't be run like the cloak-and-suit
business," and I know if you want to get the law on your
side you've got to pay the right price for it, or else you
just get gypped in the end, and then where are you?
There won't be any trouble about that, Mr. Sherrill.
You're a lawyer'
'I am not that kind of lawyer,' he broke in rudely, and
fled. In the galerie his wife was smiling broadly, and at
this comfortable domestic sight his sense of humor
triumphed over his annoyance and he joined in the
laughter that somehow refreshed us all.
'Won't someone just throw her into the AtlanticOcean?'
he grumbled between chuckles.
And Miss Hamilton answered, blandly:
'Oh, no, John, not at all. She is going home on the
Rex. She is going back, like everyone else, to the great
open spaces where dimes are dimes. She has been waiting
around here while a shopper in Paris provided her with
heaps upon heaps of clothes in which to honor Horace's
memory, and she has got a chauffeur to drive the
Lincoln to Genoa, and she is about to have her heart's
desire in crossing by the newest and fastest and smartest
ship afloat. In spite of your rude rebuff, I think she is
quite happy. And I'm glad she is. Poor thing, I've felt
awfully sorry for her.'
'You would,' remarked Elinor Sherrill. 'I'll wager you
got her that chauffeur, and probably her steamship
ticket'