eve
now that Monsieur Darzac is the murderer, I must say I do not. I do not
think I ever quite thought that. At the time I could not really think
seriously of anything. I had so little evidence to go on. But I needed
to have at once the proof that he had not been wounded in the hand.

"When we were alone together, I told him how I had chanced to overhear
a part of his conversation with Mademoiselle Stangerson in the garden
of the Elysee; and when I repeated to him the words, 'Must I commit a
crime, then, to win you?' he was greatly troubled, though much less so
than he had been by hearing me repeat the phrase about the presbytery.
What threw him into a state of real consternation was to learn from me
that the day on which he had gone to meet Mademoiselle Stangerson at the
Elysee, was the very day on which she had gone to the Post Office for
the letter. It was that letter, perhaps, which ended with the words:
'The presbytery has lost nothing of its charm, nor the garden its
brightness.' My surmise was confirmed by my finding, if you remember,
in the ashes of the laboratory, the fragment of paper dated October the
23rd. The letter had been written and withdrawn from the Post Office on
the same day.

"There can be no doubt that, on returning from the Elysee that night,
Mademoiselle Stangerson had tried to destroy that compromising paper.
It was in vain that Monsieur Darzac denied that that letter had anything
whatever to do with the crime. I told him that in an affair so filled
with mystery as this, he had no right to hide this letter; that I was
persuaded it was of considerable importance; that the desperate tone in
which Mademoiselle Stangerson had pronounced the prophetic phrase,--that
his own tears, and the threat of a crime which he had professed after
the letter was read--all these facts tended to leave no room for me to
doubt. Monsieur Darzac became more and more agitated, and I determined
to take advantage of the effect I had produced on him. 'You were on
the point of being married, Monsieur,' I said negligently and without
looking at him, 'and suddenly your marriage becomes impossible because
of the writer of that letter; because as soon as his letter was read,
you spoke of the necessity for a crime to win Mademoiselle Stangerson.
Therefore there is someone between you and her someone who has attempted
to kill her, so that she should not be able to marry!' And I concluded
with these words: 'Now, monsieur, you hav