Page:The Big Four (Christie).pdf/74

64 her head. She had a long pale face, and wonderful dark eyes that burnt with a light almost fanatical. She looked more like a priestess of old than a modern Frenchwoman. One cheek was disfigured by a scar, and I remembered that her husband and co-worker had been killed in an explosion in the laboratory three years before, and that she herself had been terribly burned. Ever since then she had shut herself away from the world, and plunged with fiery energy into the work of scientific research. She received us with cold politeness.

“I have been interviewed by the police many times, messieurs. I think it hardly likely that I can help you, since I have not been able to help them.”

“Madame, it is possible that I shall not ask you quite the same questions. To begin with, of what did you talk together, you and M. Halliday?”

She looked a trifle surprised.

“But of his work! His work—and also mine.”

“Did he mention to you the theories he had embodied recently in his paper read before the British Association?”

“Certainly he did. It was chiefly of those we spoke.”