MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
Instead of doing what he ought to have done—that is, to have sought at once the best legal aid in his power—Roger Gretorex made up his mind to go back to Sussex, if only for a few hours.
Ivy’s words of agonised fear now found an echo in his own heart. His mother must hear the very few and simple facts concerning Jervis Lexton’s death from himself.
On his way to the station he saw two newspaper placards, and he felt as if it was at him that they shouted the ominous words:
Kensington Poisoning Mystery.
Well-known Clubman Poisoned.
He bought an evening paper in the station, and then, when he unfolded it, he felt a sharp stab of anger and disgust. In the centre of the front page was a charming portrait of Ivy—Ivy looking her sweetest and most seductive self. Above and below the photograph was printed a series of paragraphs dealing with the joyous life the young couple had led in the care-free existence which centres round the idler members of the fashionable night-clubs. It was also stated that, on the very night of Mr. Lexton’s unexpected death, Mrs. Lexton was supping at the Savoy with “a smart theatre-party.”
In the grateful darkness of a late November afternoon, Roger Gretorex walked the two miles which separated the little station from Anchorford, the village which he still felt part of the very warp and woof of his life, though he owned practically no land there. All that his father had been able to keep was the manor house, and the little portion of the park which had surrounded the dwelling-house of the owners of Anchorford from the days of Domesday Book.
Now and again Gretorex, as he hurried through the narrow lanes, would tell himself that the inexplicable mystery attaching to Jervis Lexton’s death by poison was bound to be cleared up, and probably in some quite simple way—a way that he himself was now too excited and too anxious to think out for himself.
Then there would come a sudden sensation of doubt, of despondency. Like Ivy, but with far more cause, Roger Gretorex began to feel as if a net were closing round him.
At last he turned into the long avenue which led to Anchorford House, and his heart leapt when he saw the long Elizabethan front, now bright with twinkling lights.
He rang the front door bell, and then he schooled himself to wait patiently for old Bolton, who, once his father’s head groom, now acted as general factotum and odd-job man.
But when, all at once, the door opened, it was his mother, tall, upright, grey-haired, who stood there, her face full of eager welcome.
“I knew it was you, my dearest! I don’t believe in presentiments, but I have been thinking of you all today, even more than usual.”
His face gave no answering smile. He looked very grave, and yet how young he seemed to her, standing there; how strong, how finely drawn and carved, was his now serious face!
“I wish you’d wired, Roger. Enid was coming in to late supper; but I’ll put her off——”
“You needn’t do that, mother. It’s true I’ve come down to tell you of something rather unpleasant that’s just happened to me. But the telling of it won’t take long. Please don’t put off Enid. In fact I shall be glad to see her, and I may have to go back to town by the last train.”
He followed her across the wide hall which formed the centre of the old house, and so into a lobby which led to the charming sitting-room which had always been associated in his mind with his mother. They both sat down there. But he waited a moment before he began his story and then in the telling of it he chose his words with painful care.
“A very odd thing has happened, mother, and I felt I should like to tell you about it at once.”
“What is it that has happened, Roger?”
As he said nothing, she went on quietly, in a matter-of-fact tone: “Whatever it is, I know quite well that you have not been to blame in any way.”
“Well, no, I don’t think I have been to blame. And yet, well, mother, I’ve not been——” and then he stopped dead.
For the first time in his life he felt afraid. The extraordinary story he had come to tell suddenly took on gigantic proportions. Until today, though he had felt discomfort, and something akin to shame, sometimes, when with Jervis Lexton, Roger Gretorex and Fear had never met.
“You remember,” he said at last, “my friend Ivy Lexton? She came down here for a week-end last winter.”
“I remember Mrs. Lexton very well,” answered Mrs. Gretorex in a tone of studious detachment.
As her son had uttered the name of the woman he called his friend, a feeling of fear coupled with a sensation of painful jealousy filled the mother’s heart. Remember the beautiful woman she had instantly known, without his telling her so, that Roger loved? There had scarcely been a day in the last few months when she had not remembered, with a sensation of discomfort, lovely Ivy Lexton.
“Jervis Lexton, Ivy’s husband, fell ill about three weeks ago——”
And then again Gretorex felt as if he could not go on.
“What has happened is put as clearly, here, as anything I can tell you!” he exclaimed at last, and he handed her the evening paper containing Ivy’s photograph.
She took the paper from his hand, and she was in such haste to see what it was that her son did not dare to tell her himself, that she did not wait to put on her spectacles.
Holding the sheet right under her reading lamp, she read the ominous paragraphs headed “A Kensington Poisoning Mystery” right through.
“Well,” she said at last, “and in what way, Roger, does this concern you? Were you acting as Mr. Lexton’s medical attendant?”
He answered at once, “I’m glad to say I was not. In fact I only saw the poor chap twice during the whole course of his illness. He was being looked after by a very good doctor, a man called Berwick.”
She said again, “Then in what way does this horrible story concern you, my dear?”
There followed a long pause, and all at once a certain suspicion rushed into Mrs. Gretorex’s mind.
“Is it possible,” she said at last, in a very low voice, “that your friend Mrs. Lexton is suspected of having poisoned her husband?”
Roger Gretorex leapt to his feet.
“Good God—no, mother! Whatever made you think of such a thing?”
“I don’t know. Forgive me, Roger.”
For the first time in her life she felt that her son was looking at her with something like—oh, no, not hatred, but anger, furious anger, in his blazing eyes.
He repeated the cruel question: “Whatever made such a monstrous idea come into your mind?”
She faltered, “It was foolish of me.”
“More than foolish—and very unlike you, mother,” he said harshly.
Then he moved his chair closer to hers, and stretching out his hand, he took hers.
“Ivy was the best of wives to Jervis Lexton,” he said in a low voice. “Lexton ran through a large fortune, and then, instead of trying to get a job, simply idled about, and lived on his friends. He was a complete wastrel.”
“Then isn’t what the paper says true?” she asked in bewilderment. “I mean about his having joined the firm of Miles Rushworth? I thought the Rushworths were shipping millionaires?”
“So they are. And it’s quite true that Lexton had just got a job in the Rushworths’ London office. He was well connected, and had a lot of good-natured friends who were always trying to get him something to do. However——” and then he quoted the familiar Latin tag concerning ill words of the dead.
She