The Prisoner in the Opal by A.E.W. Mason — Read

Mr. Ricardo fairly jumped in the air when he heard the third name. He looked at Hanaud anxiously. How could he know? He was just guessing with more than his usual audacity, more than his usual self-confidence. But no protest broke from the lips of the two men who were thus arraigned. Tidon the Judge sat hunched in his chair, his face white as paper, his eyes pinpoints of fire. The Vicomte de Mirandol stood like an enormous flabby child detected by his governess in one of the crimes of infancy. He shook from the crown of his bald head to his feet, and little wordless deprecating cries were whispered and caught back and whispered again. And gradually the damning argument was unrolled like a parchment before Ricardo's eyes. It was to this house that Evelyn Devenish had come when all the world was in bed. In the conference room she had met her violent death; and her hand showed the same wound as the hands of Tidon the magistrate and Robin Webster the manager at Suvlac. It was for that reason that it had been lopped off after her death. A precaution had been taken, brutally by men in a panic of fear, not a sadic punishment exacted. It would never do to plunge that dead woman into the Gironde, however held down by lead, with the selfsame wound upon her palm as that which gnawed the hands of Robin Webster the manager and Tidon the magistrate! No, no! Bodies were recovered from rivers. Drags would certainly be used. Precautions must be taken lest it should come to light that on the same evening, Tidon the magistrate and Robin Webster the manager passed through the same gate.

"As to Madame Devenish," said Tidon, who was the first to recover his self-control, "I of course know nothing. I do not deny, however, that I used that gate two nights ago. Why indeed should I? De Mirandol is my friend. You spoke of traps, Monsieur Hanaud. Yes, but you set a trap for a stoat and a young pheasant loses its leg. Traps catch the innocent..."