MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
did that happen?” he asked quietly. “Is there any way in which you can fix the date of that occurrence, Mrs. Huntley?”
She looked up at him. “Yes,” she said dully. “’Twas the last time Mrs. Lexton ever had supper here. The doctor got a messenger boy, and sent him up to a grand shop in Piccadilly for some cold fish—sole, I thinks it was—done up in a newfangled fashion. Also there was a game pie, likewise an ice.”
“But how does that fix the date in your mind?” asked Alfred Finch rather impatiently.
“I can’t fix it. But you could, sir, from the messenger boys’ office. I heard one of them boys once tell the doctor that they kep’ all their receipts. ’Twas early last summer when that happened.”
He felt suddenly convinced that she at least believed she was telling the truth.
“The last time Mrs. Lexton had supper here?” It was that statement which in a sense impressed him. And had he been another kind of man he would undoubtedly have explained, “But you yourself signed a statement declaring that Mrs. Lexton had never been here, at 6 Ferry Place, excepting on one occasion to tea?”
But, instead of saying that, he observed encouragingly, “Now listen to me, Mrs. Huntley. You say, I notice, ‘the last time.’ Would Mrs. Lexton have been here to supper as many, say, as three or four times?”
“Much oftener than that!” exclaimed the old woman, rousing herself. “At one time, Mrs. Lexton was here constant. She’d come in just for ten minutes. ‘Nother time, maybe, for a couple of hours. She’d ‘phone first, to see if the doctor’ud be in. Mostly I couldn’t help knowing about it, though the doctor always made an excuse to get me out of the place before she come.”
“And on that last occasion, what exactly was it that happened? Are you sure this jar of arsenic was on the table, in front of Mrs. Lexton?”
In his eagerness he came and flung himself across a chair, close to the old woman.
“I’m sure ’twas there, though I don’t know how it come there, excepting that the doctor had maybe some medicine to make up. I come in to clear up, and as I puts my key in the surgery door—that’s our back-way in, sir—she didn’t hear me. When she did, she was awfully put about. I begged her pardon, and I went away. And when I come round to the front of the house, I saw the doctor letting a man out. That was why Mrs. Lexton was alone, then, in the surgery. She was waiting for the doctor, maybe to get her a cab. He often did that.”
“I suppose you can give me nothing that would afford any corroboration as to what you have just told me? I mean that would make anyone know that you are now telling the truth? I believe you, Mrs. Huntley, but you know that, in a matter of this sort, belief doesn’t go very far. People want proof.”
“I knows that. But I can’t say no more than I have said.”
“Is there nothing? Think, Mrs. Huntley!” exclaimed Enid Dent. “Did you never tell anyone outside that you’d found Mrs. Lexton in the surgery under such curious circumstances?”
“I give the doctor my word I’d never tell on either of them. He said I could do a great thing for him in doing that, and I’ve kep’ my word till today.”
And then Alfred Finch had something like an inspiration.
“Of course, I know the police made a thorough search of this house,” he observed. “But I ask myself, Mrs. Huntley, if they overlooked anything—anything in the way of a letter or letters?” And he looked very hard at the old woman.
Mrs. Huntley blinked at him, and for the first time she looked uneasy and ashamed.
“I’ve got summat,” she said in a low reluctant voice. “Summat I’ve no business to have. It’s two love-letters Mrs. Lexton wrote to the doctor. As was his way, poor young gentleman, he tore them up in little pieces, and——”
“You pieced them together,” observed Mr. Finch pleasantly.
Enid Dent gave a gasp, as he went on:
“If you can produce those letters, I think I can promise you, Mrs. Huntley, that Dr. Gretorex will not hang the day after tomorrow. They, together with a sworn statement made by you before a Commissioner of Oaths, will provide what is called ‘new evidence.’ I want you to go with me now into the surgery, to tell me exactly where Mrs. Lexton was standing when you surprised her. You are sure that she was alone?” he added quickly.
“She was quite alone,” said Mrs. Huntley positively. “I come in softly like, and there she was! I can show you exactly where she was standing.”
She got up and led the way down the passage, and through the two doors which shut off the surgery from the house.
“Is everything here just as it was?” asked Mr. Finch quickly.
“No, sir. They took away everything as was in that cupboard, but they left the books.”
He glanced up at the row of shabby volumes in the hanging bookcase, but made no comment.
“Is that the same table where stood the jar labelled arsenic?”
Mrs. Huntley put her work-worn hand on a certain spot on the deal table.
“The jar was here; the light was full on it, and I saw it plain as plain.”
And then she acted, or, rather, enacted, the scene with some spirit, making Enid Dent stand exactly where Ivy Lexton had stood.
“I noticed particular how she was dressed,” she went on eagerly. “She always dressed very dainty-like, lovely clothes they was! And she had the most peculiar looking bag I ever did see. ’Twas exactly like mother-of-pearl. Lovely it was! I noticed it when she turned round. Says she, ‘Why, Mrs. Huntley, how you did startle me,’ or something like that, sir.”
Alfred Finch was writing down every word that came out of her mouth. He was one of those men who never lose a chance, and he had invented a kind of shorthand for himself. Everything the woman had said since he had come into the room had been put on record by him.
“And now,” he said quietly, “I’ll trouble you to show me those two letters.”
Finch noticed that Mrs. Huntley gave just an imperceptible glance towards the girl who stood a little aside, gazing into vacancy, as if her thoughts were far away, as indeed they were—with Roger Gretorex in his prison cell.
“Yes, sir, I’ll go and get the letters, but I do hope Dr. Gretorex won’t ever know I did such a thing as that, sir? I was very attached to the doctor, and that made me feel curious, I suppose. I oughtn’t to have acted so, sir; I knew I was doing wrong.”
“All I can say now is, thank God you did do wrong, Mrs. Huntley! But don’t you worry—we won’t let him ever know you did what you did. After all, anyone who found those pieces might have put them together, eh? Why people don’t burn compromising documents always beats me! I’ve got a cab at the end of the street, and I want you to come along this very minute to a Commissioner of Oaths. I’ve got all you’ve told me in black and white. You’ll only have just to repeat word for word what I’ve got down here before the gentleman, and then swear it’s true.”
“But do you think I ought to leave the house, sir?”
“We can leave Miss Dent here, while I go on to your place to get those letters.”
When, within a quarter of an hour, the three were standing outside the queer little office of a Commissioner of Oaths, with whom Alfred Finch happened to be acquainted, Mr. Finch said something which surprised Enid Dent. “I think you’d better not come in here with us,” he muttered. “You see, it’s better, in such a case, to have the witness alone. Prevents her being nervous.”
She did not guess the truth, which was that, in the few minutes he had been away with the old woman, she had spoken more freely than she had cared to do before the girl whom she regarded as Gretorex’s “young lady.” And some