MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
Mr. Finch was keenly alive to the value of prejudice. He was aware that the Home Secretary was a man of rigid, some would have said too rigid, moral principle.
So it was with considerable satisfaction that he had exclaimed, after reading through the two letters, “My word! Mrs. Lexton’s what I call a hot cup of tea. Eh? Mrs. Huntley?”
Solemnly she had nodded her head. She had always known that such was the fact, though she wouldn’t perhaps have put it in just those words, for she was a refined, delicate-natured old woman.
Chapter Twenty
The morning after these events had taken place, the Home Secretary, Sir Edward Law, was moving about his fine room in Whitehall. He felt restless and thoroughly ill at ease, and that, although he was a statesman noted for his calm and cool temperament.
Within a few moments from now he expected his door to open and three persons to be shown in. First there would be a solicitor named John Oram, whose name he vaguely knew as that of a man of the highest standing in his profession, and who, the year before, had been President of the Law Society. Mr. Oram was the legal adviser of Roger Gretorex, a man convicted of murder, whose execution had been fixed to take place the following morning at nine o’clock. Then Sir Joseph Molloy, the most famous advocate of the day, known by the cynically minded as “the murderer’s friend,” who had defended Roger Gretorex at the Old Bailey would accompany Mr. Oram, though his presence could not be regarded as being quite in order. However, Sir Joseph was a very old friend of the Home Secretary, and he had pleaded urgently to be allowed to come this morning. The Judge, Mr. Justice Mayhew, who had tried Roger Gretorex, was the third visitor expected, his presence at the forthcoming conference being, very properly, regarded as essential.
An odd thing had happened only the previous day in connection with this Gretorex case. Sir Edward Law had received an envelope, marked “Private,” and containing a letter signed “Roger Gretorex.” With it, a plain piece of paper bore the following words: “The enclosed was written to Mrs. Lexton only last November, after the beginning of Jervis Lexton’s illness. It reads like the letter of an innocent man.”
That touching, in its way noble, love-letter had much impressed him, and had added a note of real mystery to a story with all the details of which he was by now painfully familiar.
At last Sir Edward stopped in front of his writing-table. There, in a place by themselves, stood five white cards. Each was marked with a name and a date; and they formed a perpetual reminder that four men and one woman were now lying under sentence of death. For the date on each of those death-cards was the day on which the person named was to suffer the last penalty of the law.
The Home Secretary’s eyes became fixed on the card bearing the name of Roger Gretorex, the young man of gentle birth who had been sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for the murder of one Jervis Lexton. And, as he gazed at the rather unusual name, the Minister, in whose hands the fate of these men and one woman still reposed, asked himself, with a tightening of the heart, whether Sir Joseph Molloy might not be right after all in his belief that there had been a grave miscarriage of justice.
Sir Edward Law was a man with a high sense of duty. At first he had naturally accepted the verdict at the trial as conclusive of Gretorex’s guilt, and he had daily expected to hear the news that there had been a full confession, especially after he learnt that the condemned man had refused to enter an appeal. But he had been unwillingly impressed by Sir Joseph Molloy’s strong conviction of his client’s innocence, and now he understood that certain extraordinary new evidence was to be laid before him this morning, at what was indeed the eleventh hour.
That was why, as late as the day before, the Home Secretary had conscientiously read once more all the documents, and they were many, connected with what had been called “The Lexton Mystery.” He had felt it to be his plain duty thus to prepare himself for the critical examination which it would be his business to apply to this new evidence.
And yet? And yet, he could not imagine what new evidence could possibly be adduced of a nature strong enough to upset the apparently conclusive case built up against Roger Gretorex at the trial.
The door opened, and Sir Edward’s principal private secretary came in.
“Sir Joseph Molloy to see you, sir, by appointment. And there is another man with him.”
Thus announced, Sir Joseph Molloy, who was followed by Alfred Finch, entered the room and, after greeting his old friend, the Home Secretary, came at once to business.
“Mr. Oram is unfortunately ill, so I have ventured to bring in his stead his head clerk, Mr. Finch, who has had all the threads of the Gretorex case in his hands. Indeed, it is to Mr. Finch that I believe we owe the proof of a fearful miscarriage of justice. I hope he will be able to convince you, Sir Edward, of the innocence of his most unfortunate client, Roger Gretorex. ‘Murder, though it hath no tongue, will speak!’” added Sir Joseph in a dramatic tone.
The Home Secretary slightly raised his eyebrows. Sir Joseph was going just a little bit too fast, as he sometimes did, especially when he had any kind of audience. But the famous advocate realised that he was not going quite the right way to work, for quickly he changed his tone:
“I think, Sir Edward, that after you have seen the statutory declaration made by a certain person who was closely connected with Gretorex’s London life, as well as other new evidence which Mr. Finch is about to lay before you, you will agree that there is a strong case for, at any rate, the postponement of Roger Gretorex’s execution.”
And then the door of the room opened again, and the Judge who had tried the Lexton case came in.
Mr. Justice Mayhew appeared outwardly his usual calm and dignified self. But within he was full of interest, and even a certain excitement. Unlike the Home Secretary, he thought nothing of Sir Joseph Molloy’s belief in his client’s innocence; what had profoundly impressed him had been the condemned man’s refusal to appeal.
A few moments later the three men—for Alfred Finch was standing a little aside, he had done his part and he knew the documents which he had brought with him almost by heart—were gazing with intense curiosity at Mrs. Huntley’s statutory declaration. Each, in turn, read the pasted-up fragments of Ivy Lexton’s two passionate love-letters. They belonged to an early period of her friendship with Roger Gretorex, and each letter proposed a meeting at Ferry Place. On each occasion she had chosen an evening, or rather a night, when her husband was to be with an old friend who had a fishing place some way from London.
And then the Home Secretary took out of a drawer, and handed to the Judge, Gretorex’s own piteous letter to Ivy Lexton, the letter which had remained so long hidden in Mrs. Berwick’s desk.
It took quite a little while for Sir Edward Law and Mr. Justice Mayhew to make themselves fully acquainted with what had been laid before them. And then they looked at one another in silence for a moment. As for Sir Joseph, he wisely said nothing, though he was longing intensely to express something of the triumph and exultation which filled his heart.
“I read a full report of the case over again yesterday,” said the Home Secretary. “There seemed to me, then, no doubt as to the guilt of Roger Gretorex. But this Mrs. Huntley’s report of what she swears she saw the very day before, it is now ascertained, Jervis Lexton had his first attack of illness, does, I admit, entirely alter the complexion of everything. But I should not have attached very great importance to a statement which rests on the word of one person, who, if she tells the truth now, certainly lied before, had we not also these three letters. They prove that Mrs. Lexton has committed gross perjury.”
As the two men he was addressing remained silent, he went on: “I suppose the police made a thorough search of the flat in which Jervis Lexton met his death?”
And then all at once Alfred Finch took a hand.
“No, Sir Edward, the flat was not searched,” he