text:
The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 12

LSIE, the cook, was an early riser and worker, but even she had been exhausted by the doings of the long day on which Harry Garlett had been arrested. So she came down later than usual the next morning.

It was still rather dark, so she turned on the electric light, and, after she had lit the fire and put on a kettle of water, she began bustling about the kitchen.

All at once, and for the first time in her life, she gave a suppressed scream, for three pale faces were glued to the kitchen window, and for an awful moment she thought they were the spirits of dead men.

Then the woman's strong good sense asserted itself. Spirits don't wear great coats and billy-cock hats. Looking straight into the three staring faces, she hurried to the front door and unlocked it. At once the three men faced about and stood before her, and, in the hazy morning light, she saw the motor which had brought them standing outside in the road.

The youngest of the strange-looking visitors, a “cocky-looking young man,” so Elsie told herself, took off his hat and held out his hand; but Elsie kept her hands down.

“Is it the doctor you're wanting?” she said, sharply. “And what d'you mean by behaving so unmannerly? You gave me the fright of my life—if it's any pleasure to you to know it.” And then, to her indignation and surprise, the cocky young man bent a little forward, took up her right hand and pressed into it a pound note.

“We want five minutes' talk with Miss Jean Bower,” he said in a husky whisper. “Don't think we're going to frighten the young lady, or insult her in any way—we only want a few moments, which will be all to her advantage. Can you conveniently manage that for us?”

Elsie crunched up the pound note and flung it straight at his face. To her regret it did not touch either of his eyes, it only hit his nose.

“How dare you offer me your dirty money?” she exclaimed. “You make yourself scarce, young man, or I'll go and ring up the police!”

“The police won't be able to help you,” but he spoke with less assurance. “We have a perfect right to try to see this young lady. In fact, as I hinted just now, it will be better for her, and better for Harry Garlett, too, for her just to see us and tell us her side of the story. We each represent a big London paper.—Crawford?” A tall, fair youth stepped forward. “Let me introduce the Live Wire!”

Elsie could not but feel thrilled. This was the first time she had ever seen a newspaper man.

“Now then, Angus—don't be shy!”

The oldest man of the three, in answer to that remark, moved a little nearer.

“I think it will be to the poor girl's advantage to see us,” he said gently.

“He's the Sunbeam—a bad poet in his rare moments of leisure, and, I take it, a fellow countryman of yours, Mrs. Housekeeper!”

There was something boyish about the impudent young fellow, and Elsie unconsciously melted a little. Also she had been impressed by the few words uttered by “Angus.” There might be something in what he said.

“You all go up to the village,” she said suddenly, “and put in an hour at 'The Pig and Whistle.' Then you come back here. By then I'll have told the doctor what you say. Maybe he'll let Miss Jean see ye.”

The three men consulted together, and then the man who had not yet spoken, he of the Live Wire, came forward.

“Look here,” he began, “if we do that—I admit we've no business to come and disturb you so early—can we rely on you that no one will get in before us? I and my friends here came down from London last night, determined to be the first in the field. All we ask is some kind of statement from Miss Bower. She'll have to give one sooner or later to the press, and we represent three big papers. We don't want to be let down by some fellow who stayed in bed up to the last minute and had a good breakfast before starting on this job.”

“I think I'll go so far as to promise ye that no one else will see the doctor or Miss Jean before you come back. Will that satisfy ye?”

And then the Scotsman came close up to her.

“Look here,” he said in a low voice, “I'm sure you could tell me something that would be worth while hearing? What sort of a girl is this young lady who's brought all the trouble about? You must know the truth—if any one knows it.”

Elsie looked at him shrewdly.

“Look here, my bonny man,” she ordered, “you just go and join the other two. You won't get anything more out of me because you come from Aberdeen, and don't you be expecting of it!”

“Though you're so unkind to me, I'll be kind to you,” he answered significantly. “See that every door and window in this house is tight shut this morning. There's a swarm of reporters coming out from Grendon. The public is just thirsting for a good murder mystery,” and then he ran off to join the other two, who were already in the car.

Hurrying through her kitchen Elsie slipped the bolt in the back door which gave into the scullery, and glad was she that she had done so when a few minutes later there came a loud knock on the bolted door. She started so violently that she nearly dropped the kettle of boiling water she had taken off the fire.

But it was only the milkman, who had been amazed to find the door locked against him. He and Elsie were old cronies, but when he ventured on just a word—and it was a kindly word, too—with regard to Miss Jean, she answered him so roughly that he was quite offended.

“You needn't bite my head off,” he said in an injured tone. “Nobody talks of anything else in Terriford, and no more they won't till that fine gentleman, Mr. Harry Garlett, has been strung up. I'd go a good way to see 'im hanged, that I would! Think of all the trouble he's brought on your poor young lady—to say nothing of the good doctor and his missus.”

“And what if I say that I believe Mr. Garlett to be innocent?” asked Elsie pugnaciously.

“I should say your 'eart, cook, was better than your understanding,” he answered tolerantly.

It was an hour later, nearly nine o'clock, when Mrs. Maclean touched her still sleeping husband. She had got up at the usual time, for all that they had talked till two in the morning, debating every point of the mysterious and terrible business with which they were now so closely and so pain fully connected.

“Jock?” she said in a low voice, “it's time to get up.”

He opened his eyes.

“What's that you're saying? I wish you'd let me sleep a little longer, Jenny.”

“Well, so I should have done” and then she stopped short.

Walking across to the window, she drew the blind a little way up. “Get out of bed for a minute, and come over here,” she exclaimed.

Together, in silence, husband and wife gazed out on what was to them a most surprising sight. The drive up to their front door, as well as the road beyond, was blocked with vehicles—old-fashioned flys and motors, closed and open. In one of the cars a man was standing with a huge camera bracketed on the house.

“My God!” exclaimed Dr. Maclean, and then with a groan, “I suppose we must expect this kind of thing, Jenny, till we've got that child away.”

“Ay,” she answered. “This will surely show her that she can't stay here. But I'm glad she's having her breakfast in bed this morning.”

As they gazed down they saw one man after another came up to their front door, try the handle, look up at the knocker and then walk away.

“Whatever can Elsie have done to prevent their knocking and ringing the house down?”

“She has put a notice on the knocker,” said Mrs. Maclean, in a low voice. “Three London newspaper men were here at seven, it seems, but she persuaded them to go away. They told her there would be a lot of men out by nine o'clock, so she tied a label on the knocker, with 'Please do not knock or ring bell' written on it. But she has one of the kitchen windows open, poor woman, though it's a bitterly cold day, and she just parleys with them through it. We shall have a lot to thank Elsie for, Jock, when all this trouble's over.”

“I'll get up now,” he said, shivering not so much with cold as with horror at the thought of what did, indeed, lie before them.

“I've got your bath nice and hot.”

He took her hand and patted it. “Now you go down and tell Elsie that I'll deal with these gentry as soon as I'm up.”

“I've arranged for your breakfast to be brought up here on a tray. You may as well wait till you've had that.”

“Perhaps I might,” he agreed.

“They're all round about the house,” she went on, “their faces just glued to the windows trying to get a glimpse of Jean.”

The doctor had just finished his hasty breakfast when there came a knock at the bedroom door and Elsie appeared.

“Please, sir,” she said in a hesitating voice, “the three men who came very early this morning have come back. They're from big papers, and I'm thinking 'twould be best for ye to see them. I promised no one should see ye before them.”

He looked at her sternly.

“You had no business to make such a promise, Elsie. I do not wish to see anybody.”

“I'm afraid that ye'll be well advised to see them,” she said in a subdued tone; “their newspapers are read a lot in these parts, sir.”

He got up. “You're a wise woman, Elsie. I'll take your advice. Are they in my study?”

“Oh, no, sir. They'd be seen there. I've got them in the scullery.”

And it was standing in the cold, dark scullery, in which he had not been for years, that Dr. Maclean confronted the three inquisitive strangers, his anger breaking out afresh that he should be subjected to so horrible and degrading an ordeal.

As to the one thing they all so eagerly desired, he was absolutely firm.

“It is quite impossible for you to see my niece. And if you did see her, there is nothing which she could say to you that I cannot say. Ask me any questions you like, and I will try to answer them truthfully.”

And then they did ask him questions, foolish questions and wise questions, dangerous questions and harmless questions, clever questions and stupid questions! The doctor was too new to the game to ask them to read over to him what they had been writing down so busily. But at last, with infinite relief, he shook hands with each of the three and let them out, one by one, into the little yard from which ran a separate way to the high road.

He was going through the kitchen, when they were startled by a loud, imperative double knock on the knocker which, so far, no one had touched that morning. The front door bell also pealed through the house.

“You wait just inside here, sir. I'll go to the door. I've got it on the chain. No one can force their way in.”

Elsie purposely left the kitchen door open, and soon the doctor heard a stern voice say:

“Please take off the chain and admit me at once. I'm a police inspector sent down by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Ive ' [sic]come to take statements from Miss Jean Bower and Dr. Maclean.”

The tone of the speaker was not pleasant. But a moment later, to Dr. Maclean's relief, he heard the same voice apparently addressing a small crowd of men who had gathered round him. They could be seen through the window of the kitchen edging closer and closer to the now open front door.

“If you newspaper people don't show a little more good feeling and decent regard in such a case as this we shall have a Bill put through Parliament making it illegal to take any photograph or any interview in connection with any murder case as yet untried! That wouldn't suit some of you, I reckon? There's nothing doing this morning, apart from what I've come to do, so I advise you to be off.”

Dr. Maclean heard Elsie's voice: “If you'll come into the doctor's consulting room, sir, I'll go and tell him that you're here.”

“I should like to see Miss Bower.”

“Miss Bower's still in bed sir.”

“I shall have to see her in bed, if she's not inclined to get up.”

“I'm sure she'll get up, sir. Will you please come this way?”

Very different from James Kentworthy was the man whom the doctor greeted a moment later. He was tall and thin, with a clever stern face.

“My name is Fradelle, Dr. Maclean. And it is my duty to take from you and from Miss Jean Bower the statements which will be used by the Crown in the forthcoming inquiry concerning the death of Mrs. Emily Garlett.”

“I will, of course, put all the information in my power before you,” answered the doctor quietly. “But is it really necessary that you should take a statement from my niece?”

“Most certainly it is. I understand that Miss Bower is in bed. That does not mean, I presume, that you consider her too ill to give me a statement to-day?”

“No,” said Dr. Maclean, “I could not honestly say that. But the girl is terribly distressed, Mr. Fradelle.” He hesitated and then added, “She believes Mr. Garlett to be absolutely innocent.”

“So I understand,” said the other dryly.

An hour later, Dr. Maclean, getting out of the chair where he had sat while he was being interrogated, exclaimed. “I will fetch my niece, Mr. Fradelle.”

The early morning mist had cleared away; it was a brilliant sunny day, so brilliant as to seem to mock the doctor's feeling of despondency and distress.

Every question put to him had seemed deadly in its import—how different from that first interrogation from James Kentworthy!

The most relentless duel of words—and a duel it had been between those two men, shut up in that cozy, shabby, consulting room—had concerned the strawberries eaten by Mrs. Garlett the evening preceding the night of her death. At first the doctor had not seen the trend of the younger man's questions, as he had assented, without much thought, to a statement that Mrs. Garlett had been given the strawberries by her husband.

Then suddenly he had exclaimed, “You realize that I'm not speaking from knowledge, but only from hearsay, Mr. Fradelle?”

The other seemed taken aback. “How do you mean, doctor?”

“I was simply told by Miss Cheale that Garlett had probably given them to the poor lady.”

“Even so, I presume that you have no doubt Garlett did give his wife the strawberries?”

“Well”

The doctor hesitated a moment; he was tired and somewhat confused. At last he replied evasively: “Garlett strongly denies that he even saw the little dish of strawberries, and he further asserts that, knowing how delicate was his wife's digestion, nothing would have made him give them to her so late in the evening.”

Mr. Fradelle frowned. He consulted his notes.

“There seems very little doubt that the arsenic was administered in the sugar spread over the strawberries. Still, from what you now say, there seems to be no direct evidence at all as to who gave the strawberries to the poisoned woman?”

“The one person who could give you authentic information as to what happened on the evening before Mrs. Garlett's death is Miss Agatha Cheale, who was Mrs. Garlett's housekeeper-companion.”

“I hope to see this Miss Cheale as soon as I am back in London,” said Mr. Fradelle. “I made two attempts to see her the day before yesterday. I tried at the place where she has a flat, and then I went to the office where she works, but I was unfortunate both times. I take it to be unlikely that the defence have got hold of her yet?”

“They may have done so,” said the doctor dubiously, “She was on very good terms with both Mr. and Mrs. Garlett. In fact Miss Cheale is, in some way, related to Mr. Garlett. I think it would be very painful to her to be among the witnesses for the prosecution—though not more painful, I feel sure, than it is to myself,” he concluded ruefully.

“I take it Miss Jean Bower will be an unwilling witness. Dr. Maclean?”

“I know that my niece will be a truthful witness” he looked rather straight at the thin tight-lipped man who sat with his back to the light, in shadow.

“I trust so, though a woman witness is seldom as truthful—perhaps I ought to say as straightforward—as would be a man in her place. Too often your honest, truthful woman witness is such a fool that, without meaning it, she gets confused and begins to lie!”

“My niece is not at all that sort of woman,” said the doctor coldly.

Perhaps the last words uttered by Dr. Maclean prejudiced the stranger, for the glance he cast on the pale, sad-faced girl who a few moments later entered the room was far from kindly.

Jean Bower walked over to her uncle's writing-table and sat down in his big chair.

She looked such a little slip of a thing that even a harder man than was Mr. Fradelle might have been moved by her look of fragility, deep sadness, and youth. But, like so many clever people, the Crown inquisitor was one of those men who find it difficult to change their minds. He had made up his mind that Jean Bower was the villain of the piece. He felt convinced that it was for love of this girl that Garlett had committed a cruel crime. Far from having any wish to spare her, he hoped to convict her lover, if not herself, out of her own mouth.

“Miss Bower,” he began, in a rasping, unpleasant tone, “I must ask you to give me your whole attention, and I want no wordy explanations. What is required are straight, simple answers to what I think you will admit to be straight, simple questions.”

Jean bent her head. She felt not only frightened, but utterly lonely and forlorn.

“You are, I believe, aware that you are to be among the witnesses called by the prosecution, that is, by the Crown, at the forthcoming trial of Henry Garlett for the murder of his wife. I want you to understand quite clearly that you will be examined on what you tell me to-day—examined, that is, by the prosecution and cross-examined by the defence.”

Jean Bower was in the condition in which many a poor wretch must have been during those periods of the world's history when such an examination as she was about to undergo was always carried out with the aid of physical torture. While determined to say nothing that could implicate the man she loved, she felt too oppressed and bewildered to make full use of her wits.

He looked at the paper he held in his hand. “You became secretary to the Etna China Company last April? I take it that you were already acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Garlett before you obtained that appointment?”

“I did not know Mrs. Garlett,” she answered in a toneless voice. But I had seen Mr. Garlett two or three times. My aunt had taken me to call on him at the Etna China factory, and I had seen him walking about the village.”

“Come, Miss Bower”—his voice was at once stern and contemptuous—“you are, I understand, Dr. and Mrs. Maclean's adopted daughter? Do you mean to tell me that you were not acquainted with the lady who was your uncle's principal patient?”

“I lived with my father in the north of England till last February, and though I always accompanied Dr. and Mrs. Maclean on their holidays, I had not been in Terriford since I was a child.”

She looked at him quite straight.

“While I was doing war work I took no holidays. My father worked himself literally to death, as did so many men who were too old to join up. After the war he became an invalid, and I nursed him till his death, just a year ago.”

“I see. By a strange chapter of accidents you had not been to Terriford for many years till you came here to live last winter?”

“That is so.”

“But after you'd become secretary to the Etna China Company I take it you saw Mr. Garlett constantly, he being managing director of the business?”

“Yes, I used to see him quite often—not every day, but on most days.” She nearly added—“Most of my work lay with Mr. Dodson,” but something made her refrain from even making that true statement of fact.

“Now, Miss Bower”—he waited for some seconds, while she remained silent—“I'm going to ask you a question which I fear will be very disagreeable to you. I cannot force you to answer it truly, but I advise you in your own interest to do so.”

She said nothing, and he went on:

“Did Mr. Garlett, during the month that elapsed between your coming to the works and his wife's death, ever make any improper advances to you?”

Twice she opened her mouth to speak, and twice the one word “Never!” she wished to utter, would not come.

She was bitterly angered and shocked by the blunt question, and to the man who gazed into her now flushed and quivering face her silence proclaimed, if not her own guilt, then certainly that of the man who would soon be on his trial for murder.

Perhaps because he felt he had scored a great point he went on in a kindlier tone:

“I'm sorry to have to press you about this matter, but it is far better you should tell me now than have it dragged out of you when you are in the witness-box. I suppose I may take it, Miss Bower, that there were”—he hesitated, then brought out awkwardly the words—“love passages, no doubt of a comparatively harmless kind, between yourself and Mr. Garlett?”

She started to her feet.

“There were no love passages,” she cried passionately, “none, none at all! I hardly knew Mr. Garlett. Oh! do believe that! Indeed, indeed it's the truth!” More calmly she added: “The cricket season was beginning, and he was constantly away from home.”

“And yet you told me just now that you saw him most days at the factory?”

“He used to come in for a few moments to see his letters. I was generally present when he did come in, with the man who really managed the business—Mr. Dodson.”

He glanced down at the paper he was holding.

“And yet,” he observed, “slight as was your acquaintance with your employer, you walked back with him from Grendon to Terriford the day before Mrs. Garlett's death. Or do you deny having done that?”

She sat down again.

“Did I?” she said falteringly. And then she exclaimed—while he told himself that she was perhaps the best actress he had ever encountered in the course of his work—“Yes, I did! I remember it now. We came in to Miss Cheale's sitting room just when she had dismissed a servant. But for that I should not have remembered having walked home with Mr. Garlett.”

“Now that your memory has become more clear, Miss Bower, I want you to remember something else. At what time—I mean about what date—was the word 'marriage' first mentioned by Mr. Garlett with respect to yourself?” He leaned forward. “Was it before Mrs. Garlett's death, or immediately after it?”

Again she looked at him quite straight. She could see his shadowed face—to her it was the face of a sneering devil.

“The first time we actually spoke of our marriage,” she gave a quick, convulsive sigh, “was in answer to a question asked by my aunt the day after we had come to an understanding, early in November.”

“Come, come!” he exclaimed roughly, “that is what a mere man calls quibbling, Miss Bower. You know what I mean!”

“I do not know what you mean. If you mean did Mr. Garlett ever make love to me before his wife's death, I answer, 'No, never!' He has told me since that instead of liking me, as many a man may like a young woman in his employment, he disliked me. He thought me too—too—” she sought for a word, and then faltered out the word “'self-assured.' The person who liked me, who tried to make love to me, was old Mr. Dodson.”

She covered her face with her hands. “Why do you force me to say these horrible, degrading things?” she asked brokenly.

He felt embarrassed, even perhaps slightly ashamed.

“You are making my task difficult, Miss Bower. Believe me, I have no wish to make you say anything either horrible or degrading. But it is my duty to ask you certain painful questions.”

He went on, in a more conciliatory tone. “I am to take it, then, that Henry Garlett never made love to you at all till the day when he became engaged to you early last November?”

“Yes,” she said, looking up, “that is the truth.”

“You ask me to believe”—but there was no jeering touch in his voice now—“that Mr. Garlett asked you to become his wife with no preliminary love passages at all?”

“Yes,” she said steadily. “I ask you to believe that, because it is true. After Mr. Garlett's return, when we had worked together for some two months, seeing each other constantly, there came a day—a day”

She could not go on.

He said quickly, “You mean that there came a day when he realized that he loved you—that is what you want me to understand?”

She bent her head.

He got up and went and stood opposite the writing table, so that for the first time she was able to see him quite clearly.

“I formally ask you if Mr. Garlett ever made love to you before his wife's death, or ever spoke to you of marriage till within the last few weeks?”

“He never did.”

“You will be ready to swear to both those statements in the witness box?”

“Yes.”

He came round to where she was standing.

“Will you read what I have written?” he asked. “As you see, it has boiled down to very little, but I wish to be quite sure that I have got everything quite correct?”

She read down the two sheets of bold, clear handwriting.

“Yes,” she said, “that is exactly what I have said.”

She was surprised that he had put it all down so fairly, so truthfully.

“If you wish to modify or alter anything I have written down here, I will come and take any fresh statement you may wish to make. You understand that perjury is a most serious criminal offence?”

title: The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 12


text:
The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 13

N THE arrest of a man for murder he is taken before the magistrates at the earliest possible opportunity, but only to be formally charged—that is, evidence of arrest is given, and a remand, generally for a week, is asked for and obtained.

During that long week Dr. Maclean was the least unhappy of the unhappy inmates of Bonnie Doon because he was forced to follow his profession. The fact that Harry Garlett—it was taken as a fact—had poisoned his wife for love of Jean Bower did not prevent men and women in the neighbourhood falling ill and sending for the doctor. Indeed, quite a number of his old patients suddenly developed some kind of slight complaint in order that he or she might have the intense satisfaction of a short talk with Jean Bower's uncle.

At first Dr. Maclean had keenly resented these strange manifestations of inquisitive human nature, and he dreaded the questions which he knew would be put to him. But after two or three days he became quite accustomed to the usual opening:

“Dr. Maclean, I hope you won't be offended if I say how very, very sorry I feel for you and for Mrs. Maclean over this terrible Garlett business. I hardly like to ask you what you really think about Harry Garlett, but you and I are such old friends I'm sure you won't mind my asking?”

From the first he had taken up a line to which he steadfastly adhered: “I should much like to tell you my theories—but if I am to be a witness next week, when Mr. Garlett is brought up before the magistrates, it would not only be unprofessional but very wrong for me to say anything at all to you about the case.”

As was only natural, nine times out of ten, the lady—for it was generally a lady who asked him the indiscreet question—afterward told her husband, her friends, and her acquaintances, that Dr. Maclean, though he was too kind to say so, undoubtedly believed Harry Garlett guilty, for the simple reason that had he thought Garlett innocent there was no reason in the world why he should not have said so right out.

But if Dr. Maclean found it far from easy to put off his patients, his real trouble in connection with the painful mystery with which all their hearts were filled was with his one-time happy home.

Jean Bower's eyes followed him about as a dog's eyes follow his master. She never actually asked him to declare his belief in her lover's innocence, yet he always felt that she was asking him, mutely, for some such declaration.

At last, feeling he could bear her speechless interrogation no longer, he put his arm round her shoulder and said very quietly: “It's no good, Jean! I'm an honest man, and I can't deceive you. I would like with all my heart to feel sure that Harry is absolutely innocent, but the truth is I can't make up my mind.”

As for Mrs. Maclean, she longed to talk the whole matter out with Jean, but her Scotch reserve kept her silent. Even Elsie said nothing, but more than once Jean heard her administer a vigorous, well-directed snub at some one who tried to engage her in conversation at the back door on what had now become the forbidden subject at Bonnie Doon.

But if that strange, unnatural silence was preserved in Dr. Maclean's house, that was not the case anywhere else. Within a circuit of thirty miles round, Harry Garlett and his affairs were discussed constantly, and that by men and women of every class and kind, of every social position, of every degree of poverty and wealth. Strange rumours flew hither and thither, some of them absurdly false.

One fact gradually emerged. Little by little it became known that no arsenic had been traced to the possession of the man now lying under remand in Grendon prison. This was the missing link in the chain of circumstantial evidence which, it was beginning to be believed, would certainly in the end hang the famous cricketer. Meanwhile, not only the local papers, but the great London papers had become busy over the case. Harry Garlett's special interest in life, his wonderful cricketing records, his popularity, his character as an employer, everything and anything that touched on his personality, was made the subject of comment.

Often during that long week Jean Bower felt as though she had fallen into a bath of ill-smelling mud from whose stains she would never be wholly cleansed. British law considers a man innocent until he is proved guilty, but it is amazing what the English language can do in the way of innuendo, and that without in any way sailing too near the dangerous law of libel.

Half way through that terrible week of waiting suspense there came to Jean one happy hour. Dr. Maclean had insisted that the girl should go out with him, if only to get a little fresh air, and they were both coming in tired from a long round when they saw Elsie's face at the kitchen window. Before the doctor had time to jump out of his two-seater she was at the door.

“Mr. Kentworthy has arrived, sir. He's with the mistress in the dining room. She has given him some tea. He's fair longing to see you and Miss Jean!”

Mr. Toogood would have been surprised had he seen how utterly the girl who now walked quickly forward into the dining room of Bonnie Doon had changed in looks from the sad, listless, pale young creature to whom he had delivered her lover's message a few days before. Mr. Kentworthy grasped her hand warmly and his eyes twinkled as he exclaimed:

“I've got up from my sick-bed in spite of my wife's protests. I said to Mrs. Kentworthy, 'Now, this is just the sort of job I'm going to enjoy thoroughly—clearing an innocent man of a foul charge'—for that's what we're going to do, Miss Bower. We may have a difficult task before us, but there are already several very important points in our favour.”

“Yes,” chimed in Mrs. Maclean, “Mr. Kentworthy has been telling me that the Crown, in spite of the limitless money at their disposal, have failed to trace any arsenic to Harry's possession. But I'm astonished to hear that there's arsenic in almost everything in use. Did you know that?” She turned to her husband.

“Of course I did,” he answered curtly.

“Even in chocolate,” went on Mrs. Maclean, with a touch of excitement. “Every chocolate manufacturer has a certain amount of arsenic allowed him by the Government—so much per ton of chocolate.”

“That's why it's lucky for us, my dear madam, that Mr. Garlett made china instead of sweets,” exclaimed the private detective, smiling. “And now,” he said, turning to Dr. Maclean, “I suppose we must get down to business. Shall we go into your study, sir?” I have got your former statement to me here. We must go over the whole thing again, and I want you to put your mind to telling me anything—however small or apparently unimportant—that may be of value to us.”

But in spite of skilful cross-examination and shrewd suggestive questioning, the hour which followed in Dr. Maclean's consulting room yielded little or no fresh material for Mr. Kentworthy to work upon, and at last he said:

“I wonder, sir, if you would mind my seeing Miss Bower alone? She is more likely to talk frankly to me if there are none of her family present.”

Dr. Maclean looked dubious.

“I don't believe that would be the case with my niece,” he replied. “But it shall be as you wish, Mr. Kentworthy. Talk to the girl frankly—as frankly as you have talked to me. For one thing she deserves frankness.” He added, in a rather shamefaced voice, “I take it, Mr. Kentworthy, that you still feel an unshaken belief in Garlett's innocence?”

The detective allowed a moment to pass by before he answered, but at last his words came out clearly:

“I do believe in Mr. Garlett's innocence. But to err is human, and I shall be able to tell you more as to what I really think and feel after I have made fresh investigations. I'd like, for instance, to have a talk with that Miss Cheale. You never know in a case of this sort who may give you a valuable clue. I take it she will be on our side?”

Dr. Maclean hesitated, a fact which was duly registered by Kentworthy.

“I don't think Miss Cheale will be able to add much to our knowledge.”

“I suppose the fact has occurred to you, doctor, that this young lady—I mean Miss Cheal—had a certain interest in Mrs. Garlett's death? She was left, I understand, a thousand pounds.”

“Yes, but she was receiving three hundred pounds a year, and all found,” was the quick answer. “Besides, I feel convinced that she knew nothing of that legacy. It took us all, even Mr. Garlett, entirely by surprise.”

He went to the door and called out: “Jean! Mr. Kentworthy is ready to see you.”

Pale, but absolutely composed, the girl came in. “Mr. Kentworthy would prefer to see you alone,” said Dr. Maclean.

“I should prefer that also, Uncle Jock.”

After her uncle had left the room there came a pathetic eagerness into her manner. She knew that James Kentworthy believed in her lover's innocence, and she also knew, though she would have scarcely admitted it even to herself, that very few people shared that belief.

But though they discussed at length every detail of the story, he soon became aware that Jean had nothing to say that threw any light on the mystery.

“You suspect no one?” he asked at last, looking at her rather hard. “There is no secret thought lying at the back of your mind?”

“No,” she answered very gravely. “I suspect no one, and, what is more, I know Mr. Garlett does not either.”

Kentworthy gave her a long, measuring look. He was wondering whether she could be trusted with a secret. Finally he made up his mind that he would run the risk.

“Did Dr. Maclean tell you what first caused the Home Office to take action?” he asked.

“He doesn't know!” she exclaimed. “Only the other day my aunt was saying she'd give anything to find out what had caused those first inquiries as to Mrs. Garlett's death.”

“Your uncle is a man of his word,” said the detective briefly. “I myself told him what started the whole business, but I made him promise not to pass the knowledge on. However, I'm now going to tell you the secret, and I must ask you to make me the same promise that he made me.”

She looked at him with wide-open eyes, and then he said in a hesitating voice:

“Mr. Garlett has some bitter enemy, some one who, as soon as the news of his forthcoming marriage to you had begun to leak out in the neighbourhood, formed, as I believe, an infamous plot to bring him to disgrace.”

“A bitter enemy?” faltered Jean.

“Yes, a bitter enemy, to my mind certainly a woman, who wrote the three anonymous letters which led indirectly to the exhumation of Mrs. Emily Garlett.”

As she stared at him, overwhelmed with horror and dismay, he laid before her on her uncle's writing table the three sinister sheets of paper.

“By rights I ought not to have kept these facsimiles in my possession. But I made up my mind that it would be right for me to keep even that which does not belong to me—if it will help me to save an innocent man.”

Jean gazed down at the first impersonal note, that in which the writer said he felt it his duty to draw the attention of the Head Commissioner of Police to “certain mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs. Garlett.”

“This,” she said doubtfully, “was perhaps written by some one who really thought there should have been an inquest?”

Kentworthy shook his head.

“You are too kind, my dear young lady. Look at No. 2.”

“But surely this letter was not written by the same person who wrote the first one?” exclaimed Jean, as she gazed at the second, ill-written, comma-less letter.

Then, as she read it over, she grew deeply red. Indeed, she felt as if the words: “The doctor's niece can tell you why poor Mrs. Garlett's doctor made no fuss,” had been burnt, with a hot iron, for ever on the tablets of her memory.

“Now look at No. 3—that which purports to be written by the sender of the first letter.”

She read over the long sentence, and then a look of bewilderment and pain struggled together in her face.

“Well,” asked the detective gravely, “have you any suspicion at all as to who wrote these letters?”

She knitted her forehead and remained silent for quite a long time, and James Kentworthy's hopes rose high.

But at last: “I have no suspicion,” said Jean Bower slowly.

“Your uncle thought that they might be the work of that Miss Prince, who lives in the Thatched Cottage.”

“I'm sure not,” said Jean, shaking her head. “Miss Prince is a spiteful woman, and she has never liked Harry, but she's not a fiend.”

James Kentworthy looked at her with increased respect.

“I agree,” he said, “it's never any use trying to convince oneself of what, deep at the back of one's mind, one knows is not the case. But I won't conceal from you that I'm disappointed! Somehow I hoped you would be able to help me, Miss Bower, and now I feel as if we were up against a blank wall.”

She said nothing, for she felt terribly oppressed—the knowledge that there was some one in the world who in tensely hated both Harry Garlett and herself filled her with a kind of unreasoning terror.

“I'm not giving up hope, mind you,” went on Kentworthy. “We've a long time before us yet, and after all”—he was now speaking as if to himself—“we're lucky to have secured Sir Harold Anstey.”

Jean's lip quivered. She felt as if, in spite of his brave words, he was beginning to believe that he was confronted with an unfathomable mystery.

“Sir Harold and I are old friends,” went on the detective with a queer smile. “Thanks to me, a murderer Sir Harold was bent on getting off was hung. So there's no love lost between us! Still, he's a tower of strength with a jury—makes them see black's white, so to speak.”

“Do you think that will be necessary?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“I think Sir Harold will start some queer theory of his own—such as that the poor lady may have poisoned herself.”

“That won't be the truth,” said Jean.

“And when you are in the witness-box it will be very pleasant for you, Miss Bower—very pleasant, I mean, that Sir Harold will be with you, and not against you.”

“Mr. Garlett means to go into the box,” said Jean quickly.

“I know he does,” said the other, “and I'm sorry for it. It's an unfair thing that any man now standing on trial for his life has to go into the box or be considered guilty! Why, it's a monstrous thing in a way. Those who changed the law never thought it would be like that.”

“I don't understand,” she exclaimed, bewildered. “Why shouldn't he go into the box?”

“Because, Miss Bower, he'll be up against people very much cleverer than himself, if you'll forgive me for saying so—people, too, who'll be keen and resourceful, while he'll be nervous and dejected. Now take one thing”—he looked at her hard, hesitated in his own mind, then determined that he would go through with what he felt ought to be said—“Mr. Garlett will be asked when he first began to feel for you those—well—sentiments that led to his asking you to be his wife? If he is an absolutely honest man I expect he will feel compelled to answer that he was attached to you long before anybody else knew that he was. That will look pretty bad from our point of view. Motive, Miss Bower—that's what judge, jury, everybody in a word, is always looking for in a murder mystery. And you would provide a very strong motive—if you take my meaning.”

He saw her face change. It was as if all the colour was ebbing out of it. He suddenly regretted that he had been so frank.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked piteously.

He shook his head regretfully.

“I suppose it wouldn't be any good my seeing Sir Harold Anstey?”

Mr. Kentworthy remained silent for a moment, and then he answered in a rather singular tone:

“I think it would be a good thing for you to see him, Miss Bower. But, mind you—it would be irregular—very irregular! Mr. Toogood wouldn't lend himself to anything of that sort.”

“If you think it would help Mr. Garlett, I'd manage to see Sir Harold Anstey somehow,” she exclaimed, the colour coming back into her face.

“I expect you would. But”

“But what?” she said eagerly.

“I shouldn't like it to be known that I advised your doing such a thing. It isn't my business to advise what isn't proper,” he said irresolutely.

“You haven't advised it,” she exclaimed. “The moment I heard that Sir Harold was going to defend Harry I made up my mind to see him.”

“Between you and me,” went on the worthy man, “it has always seemed to me to be dashed stupid that the advocate who is going to defend a man accused of a serious crime isn't allowed to see him! In this case it might make a real difference, for if Mr. Garlett convinced me of his innocence, who'd gone to see him feeling pretty sure he was guilty, then think of the effect seeing him might have on a man who wants to think him innocent?”

“Can't I persuade Sir Harold to see Harry?”

The detective gave a short barklike laugh.

“Sir Harold won't see Mr. Garlett till they're both in court, and one of them in the dock!”

Jean covered her eyes with her hand, but that made her see all the more clearly the awful picture conjured up by Mr. Kentworthy's words.

“Look here, Miss Bower. If you will keep your word you'll never let Sir Harold know how you obtained them, I'll give you these anonymous letters to show him. I'm sure the Prosecution don't mean to produce those letters. 'Twould put people off writing to the police if they thought their letters would be put in among the exhibits.”

“Exhibits?” echoed Jean, “what are they?”

“Exhibits are the actual, concrete objects connected with the case,” explained Kentworthy. “If you show Sir Harold these letters he may demand that the originals be 'put in,' as they call it. That will add a useful touch of mystery—and he'll make the most of it, never fear!”

“Then I'm to leave these facsimile letters with him?”

“Indeed you're to do nothing of the kind! If we have the good luck to run across their writer we may be very glad of them.”

“How soon ought I to try to see Sir Harold?”

“As soon as I hear Sir Harold is back at work I'll wire to you: 'Have hopes of a clue.' But look here, Miss Bower. If I were you I'd tell no one of what you mean to do, for it's irregular—very irregular! If the case were reversed, if you were a gentleman and not a young lady, I'd never advise you to try to see Sir Harold. But I think he'll see you.”

Sir Harold was what is known in common parlance as a ladies' man. But somehow the detective felt it best to leave Jean Bower to discover that fact for herself.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 13


text:
The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 14

'M FRIGHTENED about Jean.”

Dr. Maclean looked across at his wife. “How d'you mean?” he asked irritably. “Explain yourself, woman.”

“I sent her upstairs to lie down after Mr. Kentworthy had gone away, and about tea-time Elsie went up to see if she was asleep. But she wasn't in her room. We looked all over the house, but she's slipped out without telling anybody.”

“Well? What of that? Why shouldn't the girl want a breath of fresh air? It's just what I should have done at her age if I'd felt as I'm afraid the poor wean is feeling now.”

“Listen to what she did do,” said Mrs. Maclean in a low voice. “Elsie felt uneasy—just as uneasy as I did. So she went off into the village. They said at the post office that Jean had gone by, walking very quickly, about a quarter of an hour before. Then Elsie—the woman's no fool, Jock—somehow guessed what the child had done!”

“D'you mean she went to the Thatched House?”

Dr. Maclean could not keep the dismay out of his voice. He knew that the police were still in charge of Harry Garlett's dwelling-place.

“She went to the churchyard. Elsie found her close to poor Mrs. Garlett's grave. She was kneeling there, on the bare, wet ground, and when Elsie came up close behind her she heard her say: 'Don't be angry with Harry, Mrs. Garlett. He hardly knew I existed while you were alive. But I'll give him up—I will, indeed, if you'll help to save him?' The poor girl screamed when Elsie spoke to her. But she got up off the cold earth, and came back with Elsie. She's sitting in the dining room now, but she looks very strange, and when I spoke to her just now she didn't seem to hear.”

The doctor looked alarmed. “She's got it in her head that she may have said something to the man who took her statement that will injure Garlett. She let out as much to me yesterday. I did my best to reassure her, but I found it damned difficult to do so, beyond saying that if the man's innocent nothing she said could affect the issue.”

“I wish I could think that,” said his wife significantly, “I used to believe that an innocent man was never found guilty, but I don't know that I think so now, Jock.”

“Does that mean,” asked the doctor quickly, “that you now think Garlett is innocent?”

“I am more inclined to think him so than you are. For one thing, Mr. Kentworthy's belief in him has impressed me very much.”

“Has Jean said anything to you about her talk with Kentworthy?”

“No,” said Mrs. Maclean; “in a way, she's been quite mysterious about it, but I'm afraid she was terribly disappointed.”

“I suppose she's sleeping badly?”

“She looked this morning as if she'd had no sleep at all.”

Dr. Maclean got up; he came over to where his wife was sitting and patted her hand.

“To-day I received a sample of a new preparation of bromide and valerian with just a dash of chloral. I'll try Jean with that to-night, and if it gives her a good night I'll wire to London for a bottle of the stuff to come down by train parcel to-morrow. We've got to keep her going these next few weeks.”

“I've such a horror of drugs,” said Mrs. Maclean in a low voice. “I thought you had, too, Jock?”

“So I have, but it's quite an exceptional case. For the matter of that, I only wish I could send the poor child to sleep till the whole of this painful business is over. I've sometimes thought what a fine thing it will be when science is able to suspend a man's thinking faculties for a much longer period than for just a few hours”

“I don't want to live in that time,” said Mrs. Maclean stubbornly.

“I daresay you don't, but a good many people would be thankful to be able to take a dose of—shall we say 'forgetfulness'?—through their worst time of sorrow, and, above all, of anxiety.”

“Has any one spoken to you of the case to-day?” she asked.

“Every one has spoken to me of it! I was even stopped in the road three or four times, and not very far from our gate I had quite a talk with a newspaper man—in fact I wonder Jean and Elsie didn't meet him. He admitted he'd been hanging about all the afternoon.”

“They did meet him—he said he came from the biggest of the London press agencies. But of course they hurried indoors and refused to have anything to say to him.”

“He almost persuaded me that it would be worth our while to let Jean give him an interview,” observed the doctor hesitatingly.

“I disagree,” she said emphatically.

“Well, the question won't arise now, for I told the man right out she would give no statement to the press at all.”

“If only she would go away,” moaned Mrs. Maclean.

“I think she might—if you were to tell her that you simply can't bear staying here in the circumstances, and that you will go with her,” said Dr. Maclean slowly.

As only answer his wife burst into sudden, sharp, short sobs.

“Why, what's the matter?” he exclaimed.

“I can't do it, Jock.” She was trying hard to regain her composure. “You mustn't ask it of me! I don't feel I can leave home just now. I know that my unhappiness is nothing to that poor child's, but still, I am very unhappy.” The tears were running down her cheeks. “I suppose we've been very fortunate,” she sobbed, “more fortunate than I knew. Well, we're paying for it now!”

“It'll be all the same a hundred years hence,” he said lamely, “cheer up, woman!” And Mrs. Maclean wiped her eyes and did try to cheer up.

It is two o'clock in the morning, the darkest hour of the winter night, and Jean Bower is dreaming. In what she would describe as “a sort of a way” she knows she is dreaming, and yet, even so, she is filled with an awful sensation of foreboding and affright.

In this strange and terrific dream of hers, Bonnie Doon is transformed into a citadel. She is in an upper room, and, gazing fearfully out of the window, she sees a mob of men surging round the pretty, old-fashioned, creeper-covered house standing so defenceless close to the road leading from Terri ford village to Grendon. The assaulters are trying to force their way inside the house. She can hear the roar of triumph when one of them thinks he has obtained a foothold on the trellis work, and the murmur of disappointment and exasperation when one of them falls back.

She knows with a sure and dreadful knowledge that they are all trying to get at her, and she begins running from room to room trying to hide herself. But this only means a new horror—for into whatever room she runs there is always a window, and against that window she sees pressed menacing, grimacing faces.

And yet, even so, one part of her drugged brain tells her that this fearful adventure is only a dream—a dream induced by what Elsie told her about the three reporters whose faces were pressed against the kitchen window on the morning after the arrest of Harry Garlett. Her uncle had warned her that what had happened that morning would probably occur again and again....

At last, with a sobbing sensation of relief, she awakes and sits up in bed. What was it woke her? The sound, which seemed infinitely far away, of a window opening and shutting?

Again she lies down, and soon she has gone back to that strange land of dreams that has always played such a part in her life. But this time it is to a happy dreamland, and to her weary, bemused brain the knowledge brings with it a vague comfort. Anything is better than real life just now.

A dream-match has been struck close to her face, and a dream-man's voice—a low, pleasant, caressing voice—ex claims soothingly:

“Don't be frightened, little girl; it's only a friend who wants to help you and your lover.”

A friend? A real friend who wants to help her and Harry? How wonderful! Even though she knows it is only a dream-friend, the kind deep voice brings comfort, and a measure of reassurance, to her oppressed heart. So she answers in a low, sleepy voice:

“How can you help us? I don't think any one can help us.”

As she mutters the words the light flickers out, and she is again in darkness. But out of the darkness there again comes that drawling, caressing voice:

“We—you and I—have this in common, Miss Jean. You believe in Harry Garlett's innocence, and I know he is innocent.”

She answers dreamily, “I know it, too. I more than believe, I know that Harry is innocent.”

And from her unseen friend there come again brave, comforting words:

“We must put our wits together, and think of something that will make other people believe him innocent.”

“I can't think of anything,” she says wearily, “can you? Oh, do try, dream-friend!”

She finds it so delicious to be lulled by that deep, caressing voice, even though she knows it is only a dream-voice.

“Have you never thought that Mrs. Garlett might have taken the poison herself?”

She answers, as if hynotized [sic]: “Do you think so?” and quickly the answer comes back out of the darkness: “Why not? There's only one thing worth having in life—and that one thing the poor soul lacked.”

One thing worth having? What can he mean? Jean is losing hold of herself, she is beginning to feel extraordinarily drowsy.

“The one thing worth having in this queer life of ours is love,” whispers the tender, mocking voice. “Mrs. Garlett had no love in her life, and even she must have known that life is not worth living without love.”

Jean murmurs: “What brings happiness is to love, not to be loved.”

And then, as if the familiar words were being uttered infinitely far away, she hears—“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings”

Then the voice comes nearer, it is close to her ear.

“Before I go back, far, far away, to the land of dreams, I have a message for you, Miss Jean.”

“A message, dream-friend?”

“A message from Harry Garlett's soul to yours. He asks you to remember that 'stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.' He says he feels happy—happy in spite of all that has happened—because he possesses your love.”

And then the voice becomes infinitely sad: “There is no love where I live—in Goblin Land—only an ugly imitation of love. Still, even an ugly imitation of the greatest thing in the world is better than no love at all,” and there is something so mournful, so hopeless in the voice that utters those words that Jean feels keenly distressed. Were she not so drowsy the tears would come into her eyes.

“Hobgoblins, strange and horrible shapes of pain and death, haunt my dwelling-place,” goes on her dream-friend. “True there is no unjust judge, no stupid, conceited set of jurymen, but as a terrible set-off to that relief there is no rapture—or none to speak of—in the land of dreams. You and Harry Garlett have the best of it, even now, in the waking world, Miss Jean. And now, dream happy dreams, poor child, happy, happy dreams....”

The next morning but one Elsie was bustling about her kitchen, but ever since she had seen those pallid faces pressed against the window-pane she had left the shutters closed till after breakfast.

Soon there came the sound of milk cans jingling against one another, so she hurried into the scullery and cautiously unlocked the back door.

The milkman looked so cheerful that Elsie felt irritated.

“You're later than usual,” she said snappily.

“I stopped to 'ave a read of the paper. 'Tis rare exciting to-day.” He added with a chuckle: “I'm in it this morning.”

“You!” exclaimed Elsie. She thought he had gone mad.

“There's my picture in it, as well as my name—just because I 'aves the honour of leaving the milk 'ere each morning,” he said grinning.

Then he waited for a second. Though they were old friends he was slightly afraid of the tall Scotswoman who now stood looking at him with an air of disgust and doubt on her strong features.

“You're in it, too,” he said at last, enjoying with a somewhat fearful joy the look of wrath that flamed up into her face.

“Me in it?”

“You and me is on the back page. Right in the middle where they prints the big news there's a piece as what they calls a statement about your young lady”

And then he handed her the paper.

She opened it wide and saw that on the middle sheet, under a photograph of Bonnie Doon, ran the words in huge letters:

“Miss Jean's not given any statement,” said Elsie fiercely. “It's all a lie, from beginning to end.”

“Well, you just read what's there.”

“I hope the doctor will have the law on this dratted paper. I never heard of such a thing. How dare they?” she cried indignantly.

But she was rapidly reading the short double-column, large-print article, and as she did so she was impressed in spite of herself.

As Elsie read on her first feeling of anger and disgust was insensibly transformed into one of satisfaction, though she frowned, or tried to frown, when, after a laudatory account of Bonnie Doon, of Dr. Maclean and of his wife, she came to the following paragraphs:

“What a havering idiot the man seems to be!” said Elsie at last.

“Some there are as believe as what Mrs. Cole-Wright wrote that piece,” observed the milkman.

“Never!” exclaimed Elsie. “She's far too proud a body to demean herself by writing for a newspaper. This is a man's work—unless I'm much out of my reckoning.”

“Maybe it's the Reverend Cole-Wright.”

“No, 'tisn't him neither,” said Elsie decidedly.

Her quick mind was darting hither and thither. She felt genuinely puzzled, and then there came to her a sudden illumination.

“It's that fat Kentworthy!” she exclaimed, remembering that Mr. Kentworthy had highly approved of the bountiful tea which had been spread out in his honour. Also, now that she came to think of it, he had said that he liked Scotch cakes owing to his mother having been a Scotswoman. Well, well, the world's a small place!

Elsie took her old worn leather purse out of her pocket.

“I'd like to keep this paper,” she observed. “Here's a penny, milkman, for you to get yourself another one.”

“You can keep the paper and your penny, too,” said the man offended. “I never thought, Miss MacTaggart, good friends though we may be, that you'd take me for a Scotsman!”

Locking the scullery door, Elsie went back into her kitchen, and there she spread the newspaper out on the table, and once more read the article through.

Now Elsie never went into the village to do her daily shopping without hearing Mrs. Garlett's mysterious death discussed from every point of view, but never once had any one even so much as hinted that the late mistress of the Thatched House had committed suicide.

Again and again she now read over the words: “She is inclined to believe that Mrs. Garlett, a bed-ridden invalid who was known to have attacks of depression at times, administered the poison to herself.”

This was, of course, the one solution that would make them all happy again!

So it was with a look of real happiness on her thin, intelligent face that she took the paper into the dining room just after the doctor and his wife had sat down to breakfast.

“There's something just here,” she exclaimed, “that I doubt whether you'll approve, doctor. But I'm thinking it will make you happy all the same.”

Without waiting for an answer, she went out of the room, and Mrs. Maclean jumped from her chair and came round to where her husband, an air of astonishment on his face, was staring with angry, disgusted eyes at the picture of Bonnie Boon. Then, together, they eagerly read the article which purported to contain a statement by Jean Bower.

“Whoever do you think wrote this?” asked Mrs. Maclean at last. “Of course there's a lot in it that's true, but I'd stake my life that Jean hasn't talked about this terrible business to any human being. I know she has absolutely refused to discuss it with Miss Prince, though the woman's been at her again and again about it.”

For a few moments Dr. Maclean remained silent. Half mechanically he was reading over and over again the phrases in the so-called statement that puzzled him the most.

Then at last he looked up.

“This is the work of a practised literary hand—maybe I ought to say of a practised literary hack!” he exclaimed.

“I'll tell you who I think did it, or maybe had it done,” said Mrs. Maclean slowly. “I think 'twas that man Kentworthy or someone he employed to write it.”

The doctor struck his hand on the table.

“You've got it, woman!” he cried. “Kentworthy did his level best to force me to say that that poor creature, Emily Garlett, had administered the poison to herself. This is the red herring across the trail. Not a doubt of it!”

He sat back in his chair.

“The more I know of law and lawyers, the more I feel that what we call law and justice are queer, twisted things,” he said in a low voice. “Perhaps Kentworthy has done the best in the circumstances. At any rate, it's not our job to let him down or blame him.”

His wife shook her head.

“To my mind no one is justified in putting words into Jean's mouth which she never uttered, and never will utter,” she said firmly.

“You are one of those old-fashioned people who believe in telling the truth,” said the doctor dubiously. “I'd have said the same of myself a month ago. Of course, you and I know that that woman never committed suicide—the idea's absurd! Still, if they can't get any better notion, that's what the defence will set out to prove—I can see that well enough. I fear me I shall be asked the question straight out, if only because of this foolish article.”

“And if you are asked the question straight out, what is it you intend to say in answer, Jock?”

They were both unheeding and uncaring of the good breakfast which was fast getting cold, and instinctively they had both lowered their voices for fear lest Jean, though they believed her to be safe in bed, might suddenly open the door on them.

“Well, Jenny, if I'm on oath, what can I say, except that to the best of my belief the thought of suicide never crossed Mrs. Garlett's mind?”

“Will you have to put it quite as strongly as that?” asked his wife.

“Well, I don't say I shall put it quite as strongly as I've put it to you, but still it's the truth! Mrs. Garlett loved life, for all she was such a poor, sickly thing. You must remember that she had never been a strong and healthy woman.”

And then Mrs. Maclean so far forgot herself as to say something which reduced her husband to silence.

She went back to her place behind the teapot, and from there, in a small, still voice, she said quietly:

“You did make one mistake, Jock. You hadn't a doubt that the woman died a natural death, and you signed a certificate to that effect. Isn't it just possible that you've made another mistake? Supposing, after all, Mrs. Garlett had got tired of her life and made up her mind to quit? Don't you go and be too sure of anything, my dear. You were wrong once; you may be wrong again.”

He made no answer to that, and though she loved him well, and had no wish to hurt him, she would not have taken her words back. What she had said was true—in this strange world it is a mistake, sometimes a terrible mistake, to be too sure of anything.

After a while she spoke again:

“I wouldn't let Jean know about this article, if we can prevent it, Jock. She's so fearsomely truthful. She might think it her duty to write to the paper and say that she does not believe Mrs. Garlett killed herself! I did raise the point with her after Kentworthy came that first time, and she declared that Harry Garlett told her his wife was much too religious a woman ever to have thought of such a thing—apart from the fact that she always seemed perfectly happy and contented with her life.”

“I think you're right. We'll say nothing of it. What a blessing it is that we can trust Elsie to hold her tongue!”

And so it was that Dr. Maclean locked the paper away, and that Jean Bower was never shown the article described as containing her statement.

Yet the so-called statement was widely discussed, and both the Prosecution and the Defence took special note of it. Further, the circulation of the paper was very largely increased, at any rate in Terriford and Grendon, during the weeks which followed. Thus the enterprise the editor had shown in securing the article was justified, though one of the proprietors, when he discovered, as he took the trouble to do, that the author was a casual contributor and had been paid a special fee of fifty guineas, thought the sum excessive.

title: The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 14


text:
The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 15

ISS PRINCE got up very early on the morning Harry Garlett was to appear before the magistrates, to be either committed for trial, or sent out into the world a free man.

Though glad, in a sense, that her friend Agatha Cheale had been saved by illness from the painful ordeal of appearing against her late employer, she, Miss Prince, felt, from a selfish point of view, sorry. For it had been arranged, at Agatha Cheale's own request, that the older woman should accompany her to the police court, and Miss Prince had a special reason for wishing to know what exact evidence as to the arsenic, the administration of which had undoubtedly killed Mrs. Garlett, would be tendered to-day.

As things had now fallen out, she would have to possess her soul in patience till the afternoon.

It may be asked why Miss Prince did not follow the example of innumerable women belonging to the neighbourhood, that is, go off to Grendon and, after a more or less long wait, fight her way into the police court? Had she been thirty years younger she might have done so, but being the manner of woman she was, the thought of doing so unladylike and bold a thing never even occurred to her. And yet, during the whole of the wakeful night which preceded her early rising, her mind was entirely occupied with the form the evidence against Harry Garlett was likely to assume.

As is the case with most clever, malicious gossips, no woman could on occasion keep her own counsel more rigidly than could Miss Prince. No doubt this was owing, in a measure, to the fact that for more than half her life she had been the trusted confidante of her father. In no profession is there so high a standard of loyalty to another's personal secrets as in the medical profession, and what is true of the doctor is generally true also of the doctor's wife and daughter.

So it was that Miss Prince had kept rigidly to herself a dreadful suspicion which since the arrest of Harry Garlett had hardened into certainty.

Lucy Warren, hearing her mistress stirring, had hurried down to cook the breakfast, and Miss Prince, leaving her cold bedroom, felt a certain warmth about the heart as there floated up her tiny staircase a pleasant aroma of frizzling bacon.

Worried and unhappy as she felt, uncertain, too, as to where her duty lay—a most unusual feeling with her—she yet told herself that she was indeed fortunate in her good, quiet, sensible young servant. Even as a child Lucy Warren had been a favourite of hers, and the girl seemed so superior to her class, so reserved, so proud, that for a moment Miss Prince asked herself whether she would not do well to confide in Lucy, for she longed to share her anxiety and uncertainty with some other human being. But the thought was no sooner there than she dismissed it, aware that if the moment came when she felt she must share her secret, it was to a lawyer that a certain fact, known to her alone, must be admitted.

But one thing she did this morning marked both to herself and to Lucy Warren the unusual nature of the day. She ordered her breakfast, for the first time in her life, to be brought to her upstairs sitting room. Perhaps because it was upstairs, she very seldom used this room, except when she asked a few friends in to supper and a game of cards. From her point of view, though she would not have admitted it, the upstairs sitting room of the Thatched Cottage was a cardroom and nothing else.

She sat down, feeling deadly cold, for though the fire was burning brightly the room was chilly, as a room in which no fire has been lit for some days is apt to be. But it was not the cold which made Miss Prince feel so shivery, and so miserably undecided in her mind. For the first time in her now long life she was confronted with a problem to which she could see no solution that would not bring disaster, even death, in its train.

Lucy Warren came up with her mistress's breakfast tray. She drew up a small table and set it before her in silence, making no remark, as almost any other young woman would have done, as to Miss Prince's surprising choice of a breakfast room, and she was just leaving the room when her mistress called out: “Lucy!”

Lucy turned round. “Yes, ma'am?” she said inquiringly.

Always Miss Prince insisted on being accorded brevet rank both by her own servants and the people of the village. She hated the term “Miss.”

“Come nearer, Lucy. I want to speak to you.”

And then, somewhat to Miss Prince's astonishment, she saw that her words startled the girl. Lucy became painfully red, as she stood before her mistress twisting and untwisting a bit of apron in her hand, and looking very unlike her usual composed self.

“I want you to cast your mind back to last April and May—I mean, of course, when your friend Agnes Dean was my servant. You used to be in and out of my kitchen a good deal, I think.”

Lucy answered freely, eagerly: “Yes, ma'am, I used to come along most days.”

“Now I want to ask you a very serious question, Lucy, and I rely on you to keep the fact that I have asked it of you to yourself. Did she tell you, or were you aware of your own knowledge, that Mr. Garlett was ever in this house at a time when I was out of it?”

“Not that I know of, ma'am. The only person who used sometimes to come and wait for you while you was out was Miss Cheale.”

“Of course, I know that,” Miss Prince spoke with a touch of impatience. “What I want you to try to remember is whether Mr. Garlett was ever in this house alone for, say, a quarter of an hour? Especially, Lucy,” she hesitated, then asked the question firmly, “whether he was ever in this upper part of the house by himself? As you know, he is my landlord. On him depend all the outside repairs. It is possible, nay, even probable, he may have come upstairs once or twice on such business as that.”

“Mr. Garlett never bothered about that sort of thing himself, ma'am. He always sent the builder along. A nice fat lot of money Blackman has made out of that poor gentleman in the last ten years! Mr. Garlett never bothered, and Mrs. Garlett was too ill to bother.”

Miss Prince looked fixedly at the girl.

“Then you are not one of those,” she observed in a rather cold tone, “who believe that Mr. Garlett poisoned Mrs. Garlett?”

Lucy hesitated, and then she made a reply that surprised Miss Prince.

“I don't care one way or the other,” she said sullenly. “Though it doesn't seem to me that Mr. Garlett had any reason to do such a wicked thing. It wasn't as if he'd known Miss Bower then—leastways he did know her, but he didn't like her. I know that!”

“You know that, Lucy?”

“I do, ma'am. I heard Mr. Garlett say one day, when I was waiting at table, that he wished Mrs. Maclean hadn't gone and asked him to take her niece on at the factory. He said it would be difficult to reprimand her—that was the word he used—if she did anything that he or old Mr. Dodson didn't like. He said it was a mistake to mix up friendship and business.”

“Whom did he say that to?” asked Miss Prince eagerly. Here she was on her old familiar ground of gossip.

“He said it to the lawyer, Mr. Toogood,” answered Lucy.

“Was that just before his wife's death?”

“Well, 'twas perhaps a fortnight before she died. I can't say exactly. Miss Cheale had already gone upstairs, and Mr. Garlett had rung for more port wine, and it was as I came into the dining room that I heard him say that.”

“Dear me, that's very interesting.”

“You won't let on I've told you that, ma'am?” asked Lucy earnestly. “Mother's fearful lest I be mixed up in it all. She was once called to an inquest and never forgot it. It made her ill for months afterward, that it did—she was so terrified. Those lawyers 'ud get anything out of you. They make you say black's white—and white's black.”

“I don't think there's the slightest reason to fear that you will be called as a witness,” said Miss Prince coldly, “and in any case, if you were called, it would be your duty to attend, Lucy. Surely you would think it a duty to speak up and tell the truth?”

And then Lucy, emboldened by Miss Prince's benignant mood, ventured a question.

“Will you be a witness, ma'am?”

“I? Certainly not! Why should I be?” Miss Prince looked disturbed—she even flushed a little. “Miss Cheale will be a witness for the Prosecution, for she was with poor Mrs. Garlett when she died.”

And then Lucy said in a singular tone:

“Miss Cheal will be sorry if Mr. Garlett is hanged. She was such a friend of his.”

“Not only a friend,” said Miss Prince quickly, “but a relation, too. Miss Cheale is a distant cousin of Mr. Garlett's. I've always supposed that that was why Mrs. Garlett left her that legacy.”

Lucy turned away, and perhaps it was as well that Miss Prince did not see the look that came over her face.

“Lucy? One word more. Has your mother heard from Mr. Guy Cheale lately? Does she know where he is, and what he's doing?”

Lucy did not turn round, as a properly trained servant ought to have done.

“Mother heard from Mr. Cheale? Not that I know of. Why should she?”

Then she slipped out of the room and went down the stairs at such a pace that her mistress concluded she must have heard some one knocking at the back door.

Miss Prince began eating her now cold egg and bacon. She felt sick and shivery, yet she forced herself to eat, and after a while the food and her good China tea made her feel a little better. But even so she was in a miserable state of uncertainty.

With all her odious peculiarities she had a strict, if a narrow, sense of duty, and she could not make up her mind as to what she ought to do with regard to a sinister fact known to herself alone.

Miss Prince, for her misfortune, knew of a place in Terriford where arsenic could be found. And deep in her heart she was quite certain it was from that store or cache of arsenic that had been stolen the dose of poison which had killed Emily Garlett.

That store or cache of arsenic was here, in her own house, close by where she was now considering the difficult problem of what it was her duty to do.

Sitting there, in front of the now bright fire, she could visualize with horrid clearness the fat glass-stoppered bottle with the red label on which was printed in black letters the word “Arsenic.”

The bottle—which contained a sufficient quantity of the deadly poison to have killed every one in the village—stood on the top shelf of her drug cupboard, in a tiny room next door, known all over the village as “Miss Prince's medicine room.”

As residuary legatee to her father, everything that had belonged to him at his death had passed into her possession, and she had chosen to take with her to her new home the drugs that had been in his dispensary.

In a country medical practice every little counts. Thanks to Miss Prince, the poorer folk in Terriford had hardly ever had occasion to consult Dr. Maclean. He had spoken to her of the matter only once—years ago—soon after his arrival. She had said what had been far more true then than it was to-day—that the working folk were so miserably poor that it would be sheer cruelty to ask them to send for the doctor for every trifling ailment. Further, she had asserted that often she relieved him of work for which he could never expect any payment, and Dr. Maclean had admitted, somewhat reluctantly, the force of the argument.

But while the knowledge of that stoppered bottle on the top shelf of the drug cupboard which she generally, but not invariably, kept locked, made her feel acutely anxious, she tried to persuade herself that it could not be her duty to force herself into this, to her, horrible affair. Not only was the thought of appearing in the witness-box at a great trial terrible to one with Miss Prince's old-fashioned feminine outlook on life, but she was well aware that she would certainly be severely censured, by both counsel and judge in the case, for keeping such poisons as arsenic and strychnine in her house.

She faced the grim certainty that she, and she alone, could supply the missing link in the chain of circumstantial evidence now tightening around Harry Garlett. But would that link be missed? Never having liked him, and having now no doubt as to his guilt, she equally had no doubt as to his fate. Was it essential that she, his wife's oldest friend, should hound him to his death?

She asked herself with a sharp feeling of self-rebuke why she had been such a fool as to keep a poison which she never had any reason to use? But there it was, she had kept it.

Getting up at last, she took off a small bookshelf “The Student's Handbook of Forensic Medicine and Public Health,” and turning to the entry “Metallic Irritants,” she quickly made herself mistress of what information was there.

She learned that white arsenic—that is the type of arsenic in her possession—was not only colourless and odourless, but almost devoid of taste, thus very easily administered in powdered sugar, and even she, with her wide knowledge of drugs, received a certain shock when she discovered that a pinch of arsenic holds no less than seventeen grains, two grains being a fatal dose.

Now Miss Prince, in common with almost every one in the neighbourhood, had severely blamed Dr. Maclean for his lack of suspicion, but, as she read the little black volume by which her father had set such store, she realized that the old doctor had not been so much to blame after all. For, whereas in many cases the symptoms of arsenical poisoning point to an irritant administered, all sorts of anomalies may and do occur. In fact the symptoms are frequently so misleading that death due to the action of arsenic has even been described as spontaneous internal inflammation!

Miss Prince put her book back on its shelf and went out on the landing. She listened intently for a few moments, and then, turning the handle of the door giving into her medicine room, she went through into the tiny bare chamber.

After having shut the door softly, she gazed at the substantial wooden cupboard in which she kept the drugs which were a survival of the days when she had been her father's faithful assistant and dispenser.

The cupboard was locked now. But it had been often left open till a few days ago—owing to the trifling fact that something had gone wrong with the lock, and that it had become just a little tiresome to turn the key.

If only walls could speak! Miss Prince, gazing up at the grained wood, would have given years of her life to know if Harry Garlett had ever stood where she was standing now—but with the cupboard doors wide open before him.

At last, with an impatient movement, she took a step forward, and stood by the narrow window of her medicine room, and then, suddenly, she shrank back, and a deep frown gathered on her face.

Trudging quickly along in the wintry sunshine was James Kentworthy, the man who had, to use her own expression, bamboozled her. It was easy now to marvel at her stupidity in supposing for a moment that such an individual could have been connected, even very distantly, with her poor friend, Emily Garlett. But she had believed him, absolutely, and on the strength of it had asked him in to tea. Well she remembered the quiet, skilful way in which he had examined and cross-examined her concerning the inmates of the Thatched House.

James Kentworthy was on his way to Bonnie Doon, for it had been arranged that he and the doctor should drive together to Grendon in order to be present at the final inquiry before the magistrates.

The private inquiry agent felt, if possible, even more baffled than he had been at the end of his conversation with Jean Bower. He had learned everything there was to learn, or so he felt convinced, concerning the only people who had had access to Mrs. Garlett, and more and more it had become clear to him that the only human being with a paramount interest in her death was her husband, Harry Garlett. Twenty years of hard work in the Criminal Investigation Department had proved to him that where there is no motive there is no murder, and if this be true of an ordinary, sordid crime, how much more true when a secret poisoner is in question!

But Kentworthy was also aware of a fact which is often forgotten by those interested in murder mysteries—namely, that a motive which may seem utterly inadequate to one type of mind, to another may be overwhelmingly sufficient for almost any crime.

Again and again he had asked himself, in the last few days, what manner of woman was Agatha Cheale? Next to Harry Garlett she was the only human being who had benefited by Mrs. Garlett's death. On the other hand, the young lady had been in the enjoyment of a very exceptional salary. For her apparently simple and easy services she had been paid at the rate of three hundred pounds a year. Further, Mr. Toogood had assured him that Mrs. Garlett, secretive as are so many people concerning their money affairs, had not even made the husband whom she dearly loved acquainted with the terms of her will.

All those men whose professions, be they lawyers, doctors, ministers of the gospel, whose way of life brings them closely in touch with human nature, soon become aware of how difficult it is to form any accurate view concerning the secret relations of a man and a woman. Mr. Kentworthy had come to the reluctant conclusion that long before his wife's death Garlett had lived a double life. He was convinced of the truth of Lucy Warren's statement as to the meetings in the wood, and the more convinced because the girl had made it unwillingly, indeed had been frightened into making it. Twice he had tried in the last three days to get in touch with her again, each time choosing a moment when Miss Prince was out. But Lucy Warren had defied him, and the second time he had seen her she had said with a shrewdness that surprised him:

“I am not bound to tell you anything now. It was different when you came from the police.”

Kentworthy was convinced that she had told the truth, and so he accepted it as a fact that Garlett had been in the habit of meeting a woman secretly at night. Further, he believed that the anonymous letters had been written by that unknown woman, and he hoped that her association with Garlett—of whatever nature it might prove to be—would provide a sufficiently strong motive for her to have committed secret murder.

With his mind full of these vague and uncertain half-suspicions, the detective came within sight of Bonnie Doon, and then he hastened his steps, for the doctor's motor was already before the door waiting to start for the police court in Grendon where Harry Garlett's fate was to be decided to-day so far as it was within the power of the local magistrates to decide it.

title: The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 15


text:
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 word my father said, was accommodated either to herself, or her family concerns.

Pray, Madam, in what street does the lady live, who would not have done the same?

From the strange mode of Cornelius's death, my father had made a transition to that of Socrates, and was giving my uncle Toby an abstract of his pleading before his judges;—'twas irresistable:—not the oration of Socrates,—but my father's temptation to it.—He had wrote the Life of Socrates himself the year before he left off trade, which, I