After a short while, though he was still without a job, Robert seemed to have no less spending-money than he had before.
He told Lydia that he had managed to sell one or two secondhand cars on commission; and then that he had got in with some racing men at a bar he went to and got tips from them.
Lydia did not know why a suspicion insinuated itself into her unwilling mind that something was going on that was not above board.
On one occasion an incident occurred which troubled her.
One Sunday Robert told his mother that a man who, he hoped, was going to give him a job had asked him to bring Lydia to lunch at his house near Chartres and he was going to drive her down; but when they had started, picking up the car two streets off the one in which they lived, he told Lydia that this was an invention.
He had had a bit of luck at the races on the previous Thursday and was taking her to lunch at Jouy.
He had told his mother this story because she would look upon it as an unjustified extravagance to go and spend money at a restaurant.
It was a warm and beautiful day.
Luncheon was served in the garden and the place was crowded.
They found two seats at a table that was already occupied by a party of four.
This party were finishing their meal and left while they were but half through theirs.
“Oh, look,” said Robert, “one of those ladies has left her bag behind.”
He took it and, to Lydia’s surprise, opened it.
She saw there was money inside.
He looked quickly right and left and then gave her a sharp, cunning, malicious glance.
Her heart stood still.
She had a conviction that he was just about to take the money out and put it in his pocket.
She gasped with horror.
But at that moment one of the men who had been at the table came back and saw Robert with the bag in his hands.
“What are you doing with that bag?” he asked.
Robert gave him his frank and charming smile.
“It was left behind.
I was looking to see if I could find out to whom it belonged.”
The man looked at him with stern, suspicious eyes.
“You had only to give it to the proprietor.”
“And do you think you would ever have got it back?” Robert answered blandly, returning him the bag.
Without a word the man took it and went away.
“Women are criminally careless with their bags,” said Robert.
Lydia gave a sigh of relief.
Her suspicion was absurd.
After all, with people all around, no one could have the effrontery to steal money out of a bag; the risk was too great.
But she knew every expression of Robert’s face and, unbelievable as it was, she was certain that he had intended to take it.
He would have looked upon it as a capital joke.
She had resolutely put the occurrence out of her mind, but on that dreadful morning when she read in the paper that the English bookmaker, Teddie Jordan, had been murdered it returned to her.
She remembered the look in Robert’s eyes.
She had known then, in a horrible flash of insight, that he was capable of anything.
She knew now what the stain was on his trousers.
Blood!
And she knew where those thousand-franc notes had come from.
She knew also why, when he had lost his job, Robert had worn that sullen look, why his mother had been distracted and why Colonel Legrand, the doctor, had been closeted with mother and son for hours of agitated colloquy.
Because Robert had stolen money.
And if Madame Berger had sent away the maid and since then had skimped and saved it was because she had had to pay a sum she could ill afford to save him from prosecution.
Lydia read once more the account of the crime.
Teddie Jordan lived alone in a ground-floor flat which the concierge kept clean for him.
He had his meals out, but the concierge brought him his coffee every morning at nine.
It was thus she had found him.
He was lying on the floor, in his shirt-sleeves, a knife wound in his back, near the gramophone, with a broken record under him so that it looked as if he had been stabbed while changing it.
His empty pocket-book was on the chimney-piece.
There was a half-finished whiskey and soda on a table by the side of an armchair and another glass, unused, on a tray with the bottle of whiskey, a syphon and an uncut cake.
It was obvious that he had been expecting a visitor, but the visitor had refused to drink.