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The letter had been written and withdrawn from the Post Office on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.
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