MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
Jonathan Wright, the leading counsel for the Crown, to whom fate had assigned Ivy Lexton as his principal witness, was very gentle with her, moved, no doubt, by her evident, shrinking fear. But all those present in Court were struck by the clear way she answered the questions concerning her early married life, the loss of Jervis’s fortune, and his final, successful, effort, to find work.
It was not until she was questioned as to her relations—her “friendship,” as counsel put it—with the prisoner that Ivy’s voice for the first time became inaudible, and that the Judge had to admonish her to speak louder.
But at once she responded with pathetic submission to the flick of the whip.
“I am sorry to have to press the question, Mrs. Lexton”—and the distinguished man on whom had fallen the, to him, painful duty of conducting the prosecution did feel really sorry for this lovely, pathetic-looking, young creature—“but I put to you, and most solemnly, the question: What were your real relations to and with Dr. Gretorex?”
“We were great friends. All three of us were great friends. My husband, too,” she answered, in a tone which, if clear, yet quivered with pain.
“Were your husband and Dr. Gretorex friends before you ever met Dr. Gretorex?”
Then came a whispered, “I don’t know.”
“Eh, what?”
The Judge, Mr. Justice Mayhew, was old, but none the less keen and clear as regarded his mind, though he was slightly deaf.
“She does not know, my lord,” said Sir Jonathan emphatically.
Then he turned back to his witness.
“Do you think they were already acquainted?”
“I really don’t know.” And then, perhaps because she saw she was creating a less good impression than had been the case with regard to her other answers, “I think not,” she said firmly.
As the examination went on, it became clear that Ivy Lexton was painfully anxious to say all that was good of Roger Gretorex. More than once she managed to bring into one of her answers to a short question the fact that he had been kind to her—very, very kind.
And those who listened breathlessly to Ivy’s artless story of how the prisoner in the dock had come to love her, were moved by her apparent surprise and gratitude that he should have been “so kind” to her.
With quivering lips, again and again, in no wise checked by the man who was taking her, step by step, through the story of these last few months, she said a good word for the now tragic lover with whom she had been on those terms—peculiar, and yet how usual nowadays—when a beautiful young married woman, while enchanted to take all she can from a man, will yet give nothing in exchange.
And with every word she uttered, with every apparently spontaneous admission, Ivy threw a secret thought over the sea to Miles Rushworth, and of what he would think tomorrow of what she said, and left unsaid, today.
How strangely drawn out appeared that first portion of her ordeal, to Ivy herself, and to the man now on trial for his life! Not so to those who listened, with ever-increasing curiosity and excitement, to her admissions, omissions, and equivocations.
But it was generally agreed that, as a matter of fact, the murdered man’s wife had very little to reveal, after all. Even the most mindless and stupid of those present knew that the jury only had to look at her, standing there in the witness-box, and then to look at the prisoner in the dock, to know what must have been that young man’s motive for the crime of which he stood accused.
Ivy was so helpless-looking, so fragile, so appealing, as well as so exceedingly lovely. She seemed, indeed, to some of those watching her, like some poor little delicate furry creature caught in a cruel steel trap.
Had she flirted dangerously, heartlessly, with Roger Gretorex? Even that seemed doubtful to some of those listening to her low-toned replies to counsel for the Crown.
There were women now watching her intently who had come into Court that day with the strongest prejudice against Ivy Lexton. Yet they were conquered by what appeared to be her effortless, youthful charm, as also by her evident suffering. And then her many pitiful little efforts to say the best she could say for this man who had loved her moved her own sex, in some cases, to tears.
Many a woman there told herself that the witness now in the box had once loved the prisoner in the dock, even though she had not known it then, and though she would deny it, no doubt, even to herself, now.
At last came the moment which Ivy had visualised hundreds of times in the last few days—the moment, that is, when Sir Joseph Molloy rose to begin his cross-examination of the chief witness for the Crown.
The silence that there had been before was as a loud noise to the silence there was now. But, as always happens, three or four people coughed nervously, and were angrily hushed by those about them.
What was Sir Joseph going to do? One thing certainly. It would be nothing less than his bare duty to try to prove to the jury that, because she had taken everything, and given nothing, the beautiful wife of Jervis Lexton had goaded this young man, Roger Gretorex, to the frenzy which leads to crime.
Not long ago Sir Joseph had caused two juries to disagree over what, to the plain man, had been a clear case of murder. That simply because he had been able to prove that the prisoner in the dock, who was a far from prepossessing type of bucolic lover, had been rendered jealous to madness by the foolish girl whom he had killed, and this though his act had been clearly premeditated. That had been a very different case from the Lexton case, and one not nearly so exciting to those in Court. Still, there were many present today who remembered the terrible cross-examination of the poor dead girl’s mother. It had been the way Sir Joseph had dealt with the trembling woman, the admissions he had forced out of her, which had saved his client’s life.
Chapter Sixteen
But even in a court of law, where everything, in spite of what the more ignorant section of the public may think, is arranged and prearranged, the unexpected sometimes does happen.
To the amazement of everybody present, Sir Joseph Molloy was almost as kindly, as courteous, as careful of hurting her feelings, in his cross-examination of Ivy Lexton, as his good friend Sir Jonathan Wright had been during the examination-inchief. Indeed Sir Joseph, as a famous descriptive writer declared the next morning, was positively dove-like in his gentleness. When cross-examining Mrs. Jervis Lexton, his object seemed to be simply that of proving that Roger Gretorex, in everyday life, had been a considerate, chivalrous, and extremely unselfish friend. And that had already been freely admitted by the leading counsel for the Crown.
True, there came a moment when Sir Joseph, who found it painfully difficult to play the rôle he had faithfully promised Roger Gretorex to play, pressed Ivy just a little hard as to what form of words the prisoner had used on the last occasion he had made love to her.
The witness broke down, for the first time, over that probing question, and it was sobbing that she asked: “Must I answer that?”
The Judge explained to her, kindly enough, “Yes, prisoner’s counsel is entitled to an answer to that question. But if you cannot remember the exact form of words which were used on that occasion, you are entitled to say so.”
And then she replied, uttering the words very clearly this time: “I can only remember that he said he loved me, and that were I free he hoped I would become his wife.”
Now those were the last words Sir Joseph had intended Ivy Lexton to utter in answer to his question. And the knowledge that this was so caused a murmur of—was it amusement?—to run through the Court. The public much enjoy hearing a witness score off counsel.
“And what did you answer to that?” he asked sharply.
And