Twenty-eight KING VICTOR

“I suspected her from the first,” explained Anthony. “There was a light inher room on the night of the murder. Afterwards, I wavered. I made in-quiries about her in Brittany, and came back satisfied that she was whatshe represented herself to be. I was a fool. Because the Comtesse deBreteuil had employed a Mademoiselle Brun and spoke¹ highly of her, itnever occurred to me that the real Mademoiselle Brun might have beenkidnapped on her way to her new post, and that it might be a substitutetaking her place. Instead I shifted my suspicions to Mr. Fish. It was not un-til he had followed me to Dover, and we had had a mutual² explanation,that I began to see clearly. Once I knew that he was a Pinkerton’s man,trailing King Victor, my suspicions swung back again to their original ob-ject.
“The thing that worried me most was that Mrs. Revel³ had definitely re-cognized the woman. Then I remembered that it was only after I had men-tioned her being Madame de Breteuil’s governess. And all she had saidwas that that accounted for the fact that the woman’s face was familiar toher. Superintendent⁴ Battle will tell you that a deliberate plot was formedto keep Mrs. Revel from coming to Chimneys. Nothing more nor less thana dead body, in fact. And though the murder was the work of the Com-rades of the Red Hand, punishing supposed treachery on the part of thevictim, the staging of it, and the absence of the Comrade’s sign manual,pointed to some abler intelligence directing operations. From the first, Isuspected some connexion with Herzoslovakia. Mrs. Revel was the onlymember of the house party who had been to the country. I suspected atfirst that someone was impersonating Prince Michael, but that proved tobe a totally erroneous idea. When I realized the possibility of Mademois-elle Brun’s being an imposter, and added to that the fact that her face wasfamiliar to Mrs. Revel, I began to see daylight. It was evidently very im-portant that she should not be recognized, and Mrs. Revel was the onlyperson likely to do so.”
“But who was she?” said Lord Caterham. “Someone Mrs. Revel hadknown in Herzoslovakia?”
“I think the Baron⁵ might be able to tell us,” said Anthony.

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