MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
was opened almost at once, revealing a grey-haired, sad-faced old woman, who, before the visitor could speak, said sharply, “You’ve made a mistake. No one lives here now.”
“I’ve come from Mrs. Gretorex,” said Enid in a low voice.
And then the door, which had been nearly closed in her face, was opened widely.
“Come in, miss. Come in, do!” and the old woman opened a door to the left, and showed the visitor into what had been Roger Gretorex’s consulting-room. It was bare and poor-looking, but the girl, with a stab of pain, saw at once a small piece of furniture which had always stood in what was still called “the day nursery” at Anchorford Hall.
“Mrs. Gretorex is ill, or she would have come herself. But she has given me a message for you, Mrs. Huntley. She wishes me to tell you how grateful—how grateful——”
And then all at once Enid Dent broke down, and burst into a storm of tears.
She had not so “let herself go,” at any rate not in the day-time, since the end of Roger Gretorex’s trial. But somehow now, with this stranger, she didn’t care. It was such a comfort to have a good cry, and something seemed to tell her that this sad, anxious-looking old woman would understand, and sympathise with, her grief.
Mrs. Huntley pushed the sobbing girl gently down into the worn leather arm-chair in which Gretorex would sometimes put a delicate-looking woman patient—the sort of patient who did not care to go into the surgery.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Huntley in a troubled voice, “that you was the doctor’s young lady, miss?”
It somehow comforted Enid to hear those simple words, uttered in so quiet, if pitying a tone.
“I think I was,” she sobbed. “Indeed, I am sure I was—though that was a long time ago, Mrs. Huntley.”
“I know,” came the low-toned answer. And the old woman did know, perhaps better than anyone else in the world, why Roger Gretorex had left off thinking of the girl who now sat, the picture of despair, before her.
Enid suddenly got up. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.
“And now,” she said, “let me deliver the rest of my message, Mrs. Huntley. Mrs. Gretorex knows how good you were to her son, and she wants me to tell you that a little later on she would like you to come down to Anchorford, for she does want to see you.”
“Later on?” echoed the old woman in a strange voice. “But that would be too late, miss. I has to see Mrs. Gretorex today for it to be of any good. Can’t you take me to her? Not that I likes to leave the house alone. I never do leave it—not since I got the message from Mr. Oram that I was to regard myself as caretaker, that is.”
“I am afraid you can’t see Mrs. Gretorex today,” said Enid firmly. “But I’ll give her any message, and—and you can trust me, Mrs. Huntley, you really can!”
“I wonder if I can? I wonder if I dare?”
“Have you anything to say that we don’t already know?” she asked.
“Yes, I have, miss. But in telling it I may be doing wrong.”
“D’you mean something about Dr. Gretorex? Something that might, even now, make a difference?”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell. I fear me it may be too late.”
“Let me judge of that,” said Enid Dent.
She had become quiet, collected, though she was filled with a feeling of suspense and, she dared not call it “hope.”
“Shall I tell you?” said Mrs. Huntley as if asking herself the question. And then, all at once, she answered it, “Yes, surely I will!”
Alfred Finch was reading a copy of an old complicated will. But though he was trying to concentrate on the business in hand, he found his mind straying persistently to the prison cell where Roger Gretorex sat waiting for the morning of the day after tomorrow. For one thing, he had heard by a side wind that the warder who had Gretorex in his special charge believed him innocent, and this made a great impression on him. That warder had had charge of over thirty men condemned to death, and this was the first time he had ever believed one of them to have been innocent of the crime for which he was to suffer death.
The telephone bell at his elbow rang.
“Miss Dent is on the line, Mr. Finch. Can you speak to her? She says it’s very urgent.”
“Put her through at once.”
And then he heard an eager, quivering voice, “Is that Mr. Finch? Can you come at once, Mr. Finch, to 6 Ferry Place? I believe I’ve got some new evidence.”
“New evidence?”
Mr. Finch, though he was alone, shook his head. Had he not himself done everything that was in the power of mortal man to procure new evidence in the last three weeks, and had he not entirely failed?
“I don’t wish to say more over the telephone, but can you come now, at once, to take a statement from Dr. Gretorex’s day maid, Mrs. Huntley?”
Mrs. Huntley? Why, that was the old caretaker woman! He remembered distinctly reading over the record of her short, colourless, unimportant interview with Inspector Orpington.
Mrs. Huntley could have nothing new to say of the slightest value. Stop, though—she probably knew certain facts which might have been regarded as greatly to Mrs. Lexton’s discredit, had they come out at the trial. Facts which would certainly have added pungency to Sir Joseph Molloy’s speech for the defence. But Mrs. Huntley could have nothing to reveal that could make any real difference, now, to the fate of Roger Gretorex.
However, if only because he had come to like and respect Mrs. Gretorex’s young friend, Mr. Finch made up his mind he would do what Enid Dent desired.
“I’ll be with you within twenty minutes,” he called out.
“Be as quick as you can. I’m so frightened, Mr. Finch.”
“Frightened?” he repeated, surprised.
“Yes.” The voice dropped. “Supposing Mrs. Huntley were to die, suddenly, before you’ve heard what she’s got to say? I dare not tell you what it is over the telephone. But it is very important——”
Now Mr. Finch thought so little of what he was going to do, and, presumably, hear, that he simply left word for Mr. Oram that he had had to go out. And when he reached Westminster, he did not dismiss his taxicab; he left it at the end of Ferry Place.
Enid Dent stood waiting for him at the open door of the little house, and he noted at once the strained, excited look on her face.
Had she been a young man, and not a young woman, Alfred Finch would have exclaimed, “Come, come! What’s all this pother about?” But as it was, he looked at her very kindly, and made up his mind that he would “let her down” as gently as might be.
“I hope she’ll tell you all she told me,” murmured Enid as he shut the door. “Mrs. Lexton told a lie when she said she had never been here but once, and then with a woman friend. Mrs. Huntley swore to Roger Gretorex that she would say nothing about that, and she feels that she is breaking her oath. But I doubt if she realises herself the fearful importance of something else she told me, something Roger may suspect, but which only she actually saw.”
And then she opened the door of the consulting-room.
Mrs. Huntley was sitting all in a heap in a chair, staring before her. She looked up when the two came in, but she did not get up.
“Here is Mr. Finch. I want you to tell him exactly what you told me.”
“You tell him, miss,” muttered the old woman. “I’ve told you everything and—and I feels very upset.”
“Mrs. Huntley is ready to swear,” said Enid quietly, “that she once found Mrs. Lexton alone in the