Early that same afternoon Miss Prince made her way to the rectory. She
felt too anxious, too excited, too restless to stay quietly at home, and
she knew that the rector would soon be returning with the news of what
had happened.
She and the rector’s wife, Mrs. Cole-Wright, were on terms of armed
neutrality rather than friendship, and that though they “ran the parish”
between them. Mrs. Cole-Wright was the best-read woman in the
neighbourhood. In happier circumstances she might have cut a certain
figure in the world. As it was, her sarcastic tongue and reputation for
“cleverness” caused her to be avoided by many of her neighbours.
She shared to the full the prevailing excitement concerning Harry
Garlett, and so, for once, she was glad to see Miss Prince.
“The rector is not yet back,” she observed, “but you must wait and hear
what he has to say. I suppose that unfortunate man has been committed
for trial, though I don’t quite see what actual evidence they have
against him.”
“How d’you mean?” exclaimed the other, surprised. “Surely you don’t
doubt that poor Emily Garlett was poisoned?”
“Of course I don’t doubt that,” answered Mrs. Cole-Wright impatiently.
“But I do ask myself how they will be able to bring the murder home to
Harry Garlett, unless they can prove that he had arsenic in his
possession, or that he bought arsenic for any purpose whatsoever, within
a comparatively short time of his wife’s death.”
“I think it’s almost certain that they did find some arsenic in the
Thatched House,” said Miss Prince. “But we shall soon know——”
She did not look up as she spoke; she kept her eyes fixed on a worn spot
in the rectory drawing-room carpet.
Even as she said the words there came the sound of the front door
opening and shutting, and a moment later the rector came hurriedly into
the room, almost as eager to tell his news as they were to hear it.
“Well, it’s gone as I suppose we all expected it to do,” he exclaimed.
“Garlett has been committed for trial at the next assizes on the charge
of having murdered his wife!”
“How did he take it?” asked his wife.
“Very oddly, to my thinking. The unhappy man addressed the magistrates.
Think of that! Why, he himself was sitting on that very magistrate’s
bench less than a month ago——”
“What did he say?” exclaimed the two ladies together.
“He only spoke for about three minutes—but it seemed an hour to me! He
declared most solemnly that he was not guilty, and he made a kind of
appeal—it made me go hot all over—asking how it was possible that any
one who had ever known him could believe him guilty?”
And then Miss Prince looked into the rector’s kindly, troubled face.
“Did they find any arsenic at the Thatched House?” she asked in a low
voice.
“Nothing was said about that,” answered the clergyman slowly. “If any
arsenic was found they have not chosen to bring the fact forward to-day.
Of course what told terribly against Garlett was Maclean’s evidence.”
“Had he anything new to say?”
“Well, I don’t know that he had, exactly. But there was quite a
sensation in the court when he revealed that Mrs. Garlett had taken a
plateful of strawberries and sugar from Harry Garlett’s own hand a few
hours before the poor soul died in agony! One could tell that according
to Maclean’s theory the arsenic was administered in the white powdered
sugar which seems to have been thickly sprinkled over the strawberries.”
“My strawberries!” exclaimed Miss Prince, as if speaking to herself, “my
strawberries—alas!”
They both turned on her quickly.
“_Your_ strawberries, Miss Prince? What do you mean?”
“Ever since I was a girl,” she answered, “I have grown a few forced
strawberries each spring. I thought every one in Terriford knew that.”
There came a spot of colour into her sallow face. She had never
presented the Cole-Wrights with a basket of her forced strawberries, and
now she regretted the omission.
“Do you mean you grow them in pots in the house?” asked Mrs.
Cole-Wright, a touch of sarcasm in her voice. She had no love of
gardening—another peculiarity which tended to make her unpopular with
her neighbours.
“I grow them there in two small barrels in which holes have been
pierced,” answered Miss Prince quickly. “A French governess showed me
how to do it when I was little more than a child, and I grow those tiny
Alpine strawberries that the French call the ‘Four Seasons.’ On that
fatal Saturday last May, hearing that poor Emily Garlett was feeling
rather less well than usual, I took her up my first gathering, so to
speak. Though the berries were rather white they were very sweet. To
think that they should have helped to kill her!”
“And was it your sugar, too?” asked the rector abruptly.
“Good gracious, no—of course not! I took the strawberries to the
Thatched House in a little covered basket which I left with Miss Cheale,
and she brought me back the basket that same evening.”
“Did Mr. Garlett allude to the strawberries in his speech to-day?”
inquired Mrs. Cole-Wright.
“I’m sorry to say he did. He denied absolutely that he had given his
wife any strawberries. He said that he had never even seen them! But of
course no one doubted that Maclean had told the truth, the more so that
one could see that he gave his damning evidence with the greatest
reluctance. I thought at one moment that the poor fellow was going to
break down. It’s an awful thing for the Macleans. I feel truly sorry for
them.”
“You mean because of Jean Bower?” observed his wife. Then she gave a
curious little laugh. “Men are so sentimental, aren’t they, Miss Prince?
The girl will get over it soon enough, Philip—never you fear! It’s lucky
they weren’t already married. There I admit that Jean Bower and the
Macleans have had a lucky escape. But as for the girl, no pity need be
wasted over her. Why, she hardly knew Harry Garlett, when he came back
four months ago!”
“I hope that’s true,” remarked Miss Prince in a singular tone.
“What d’you mean?” asked her hostess eagerly.
“I have my doubts as to the terms they were on before Harry went away.”
“Do you mean before his wife died?” asked the rector, in a horror-struck
tone.
“My dear Philip,” exclaimed his wife. “Do you _never_ hear any gossip?”
“I never heard any gossip as to the relations of these two people,” he
said decidedly. Then, looking at his wife, “Did you?”
“I can’t remember exactly when I first heard a word said. But I do
remember that I didn’t believe a word of it,” answered Mrs. Cole-Wright.
“But of course I’ll change my mind if Miss Prince has any evidence that
they were intimate——?” and she looked fixedly at her visitor.
“Intimate!” exclaimed the rector in a horrified tone.
“All I can say is,” Miss Prince spoke in a dogged tone, “that on the
very morning I took those strawberries to the Thatched House, Harry
Garlett and Miss Bower walked back together from Grendon across the
fields. I saw them with my own eyes, just before I left the house.”
As the husband and wife leaned forward in their chairs and looked at her
full of keen, if rather shamefaced, curiosity, she went on composedly:
“I’d already heard some talk about them even then. Jean Bower’s a very
attractive girl, for all her quiet ways. Old Dodson was crazy about
her.”
Mrs. Cole-Wright said musingly: “When one comes to think of it, Jean
Bower was at the Etna China factory some time before Mrs. Garlett’s
death. She first came here in the winter.”
“So she did—I’d forgotten that! Still, if Mrs. Maclean is to be
believed,” observed the rector, “she and her husband were utterly taken
by surprise over the engagement. The day she came to see me about the
marriage—you remember how quiet they wanted it to be—she admitted that
they had both thought the girl liked Tasker.”
“Dr. Tasker has reason to be thankful to-day,” said Miss Prince slowly.
“Why?” asked husband and wife.
“Because,” she replied briskly, “could anything be more awful than to
have one’s bride, even one’s fiancée, mixed up in such an affair?”
“D’you really think Jean Bower would have been mixed up in it—if she’d
been engaged to Tasker?” asked the rector in a pained tone.
“One never can tell,” said Miss Prince sententiously, forgetting—as
scandal-mongers are apt to forget—that in this life one cannot have it
both ways.
She went on eagerly, “However, Dr. Tasker is out of it, and, next to
Harry Garlett himself, the one most affected is Dr. Maclean. Mark my
words—there’ll be an awful falling-off in his practice!”
She did not utter that prediction with any touch of regret in her voice,
for she had never liked her father’s successor.
After a pause she added, “He showed himself grossly careless, if not
worse, when signing poor Emily’s death certificate.”
“He was certainly taken in,” said Mrs. Cole-Wright acidly.
The rector exclaimed: “Yes, indeed! By the way, he made great play
to-day with the fact that he was being called as a common, and not as an
expert, or skilled, witness.”
“How very odd,” observed Mrs. Cole-Wright. “Surely a doctor is always an
expert—or ought to be?”
“Well, no, not according to law,” said the rector. “According to him—and
I could see that none of the magistrates dared to contradict him—he was
only bound to state, as any other witness might have done, the facts
that had fallen under his own observation. They tried hard to make him
say what he thought himself as to Garlett’s guilt or innocence, but he
refused, very properly, to give an opinion.”
“Of course it will be got out of him at the trial,” exclaimed his wife.
“Do you know whether Dr. Maclean is to appear for the prosecution or the
defence?” asked Miss Prince.
“For the prosecution, surely?” cried Mrs. Cole-Wright quickly. “But the
defence will cross-examine him, and I pity the poor man if, as I heard
yesterday, Sir Harold Anstey has already been briefed by Mr. Toogood.”
“Maclean said one thing that struck me very much,” said the rector. “He
reminded the magistrates that a medical witness should always remember
that he is not retained for any particular person, but in the cause of
justice alone. I think you will find that he will make a most excellent
witness. He certainly managed to conceal what he really thought from
me—I could form no opinion as to whether he believes Garlett innocent or
guilty.”
“You’d have made it out fast enough if he thought the man innocent,”
said his wife shrewdly.
“Of course he knows Harry Garlett to be guilty,” exclaimed Miss Prince
in a hard voice. “I don’t see how any one can doubt it.”
“How well I remember,” went on the rector, “Dr. Maclean coming up that
Sunday morning, just as I was going into church, to tell me of Mrs.
Garlett’s death. He looked terribly tired, for he had been up most of
the night. But still we had a little talk about it. I was very much
shocked, for, if you remember”—he turned to his wife—“I had seen Mrs.
Garlett the day before, and she had seemed to me rather brighter than
usual.”
He waited a moment, then exclaimed: “By the way, I remember now that
Maclean actually mentioned those strawberries as having caused the acute
indigestion which resulted in her death!”
His wife looked at him apprehensively. “Be careful what you say, Philip.
You don’t want to be called as a witness?”
“Of course I don’t. Miss Prince? May I rely upon you not to tell any one
of this curious little piece of corroborative evidence?”
“What the rector said is not evidence,” said Mrs. Cole-Wright lightly.
Her husband looked at her puzzled.
“One can never be quite sure as to who may be called upon to give
evidence,” observed Miss Prince. “But the one witness they are sure to
call at the trial is Jean Bower.”
“What an awful ordeal it will be for the poor girl,” said Mr.
Cole-Wright in a moved tone.
“The person I shall feel sorry for,” broke in his wife, “is Miss Cheale.
I respect that young woman. She was always so quiet, so dignified, and
kept herself to herself. She will be a most important witness.”
“And she seems to have been the only person actually with Mrs. Garlett
when the poor soul passed away,” chimed in the rector.
“I was surprised at the time,” observed Mrs. Cole-Wright, “that there
was neither an inquest nor a post-mortem with a person so important in
her own way as poor Mrs. Garlett.”
“And there’s another thing,” said the rector hesitatingly, “though
perhaps I hardly ought to tell it to you?”
“Of course you must tell us, Philip. All we are saying here is
absolutely private——”
She looked at Miss Prince, and Miss Prince nodded, gravely:
“Harry Garlett was exceedingly anxious that the burial should take place
two days earlier than it did,” said the clergyman impressively. “This
fact, to which I now attach a sinister significance, was the more
ominous because, instead of raising the question himself, he got Miss
Cheale to do so. Miss Cheale and that queer, sickly brother of hers came
and asked me if the funeral could take place on the Thursday instead of
on the Saturday. Miss Cheale said that Garlett was anxious to have the
funeral as soon as possible. But that again”—he turned to Miss
Prince—“is a thing I naturally do not wish made public. The wretched man
will be condemned on direct, not circumstantial, evidence, unless I’m
much mistaken.”
“I suppose he will,” said Miss Prince.
Then she got up to go. She had enjoyed every moment of her visit, save
during the short discussion as to the forced Alpine strawberries.
Lucy Warren was moving about her little kitchen trying to make work for
herself. She was miserable with the dull dogged misery bred of hope
deferred. Since the night she had seen Guy Cheale disappear through the
drawing room window of the Thatched House, she had only had one short
interchange of words with him.
Months had gone by since then, and yet to Lucy Warren the wounds
inflicted on her pride as well as on her heart were still open wounds.
She was of course excited and interested in the question of Mrs.
Garlett’s death, but to her the one thing that mattered was the mystery
of Guy Cheale’s disappearance out of her life.
This afternoon the man she had come to love was very present to her
mind. She seemed to see his keen, mocking face rise up before her. It
was as if his heavy-lidded gray eyes—eyes that could be at once so cruel
and so tender, were following her about.
Her feelings toward Agatha Cheale had undergone no change—in fact, when
that young lady had stayed at the Thatched Cottage—Lucy had quietly told
Miss Prince that she would not meet her, and Miss Prince had allowed
Lucy’s sister to take her place for the time. Often since then, poor
Lucy had regretted that she had not forced herself to stay and face her
enemy. She would, maybe, have learned something as to Guy Cheale and his
condition; she might even have had the good fortune to discover his
address.
As these thoughts were drifting through her mind, there came at the back
door a curious, furtive, uncertain knock.
With a strange sense of foreboding at her heart, she went and unlatched
the door, and for a moment she thought the slight woman whose face was
swathed in a long motor veil a stranger.
“I want to see Miss Prince,” said the husky voice Lucy remembered only
too well. Then came a surprise: “Why, it’s Lucy Warren! Tell me—do you
know if Mr. Garlett was committed for trial this morning?”
Lucy stared at the unexpected visitor, remembering that Miss Cheale was
supposed to be too ill to leave London.
“I don’t know what’s happened to Mr. Garlett. I’m expecting Miss Prince
back every minute. She’ll have found out for sure,” said Lucy coldly.
“Come in, do! You look perished with cold, miss.”
Agatha Cheale came through into the warm kitchen. She loosened her
concealing veil, and Lucy saw that her face was thin and worn. She
looked very ill, and though there seemed nothing in common between her
and her big, fair brother, yet to-day Lucy did see a kind of family
resemblance which made her heart beat faster, and impelled her to do a
thing she would have thought herself incapable of doing even for Miss
Prince. It was in a tone of kindly sympathy that she exclaimed:
“Sit you down, miss, and I’ll take off your boots and bring a pair of
shoes for you to put on!”
Agatha Cheale sat down wearily.
“I’ll take off my boots myself,” she said, “but I shall be glad of the
shoes, though I can’t stay long.”
“Mother’s fretted a deal about Mr. Cheale,” said Lucy nervously. “Is he
quite well?”
A challenging look flashed between the two young women, and then Agatha
Cheale said coldly:
“I have no idea where my brother is. The last time I saw him was about a
month after he left here. He was then going abroad.”
Almost as if the words were dragged out of her, Miss Cheale added: “He
asked me about the Thatched Farm—how you all were, and so on. But I told
him I did not know.”
After Lucy had fetched Miss Prince’s warm bedroom slippers, she asked
the visitor: “Won’t you come into the little sitting room? I’ve kept up
a good fire there. Miss Prince will be back in a minute.”
But it seemed a very long time both to the young lady sitting in the
parlour and to the maid sitting in the kitchen, before there came the
familiar knock at the front door. Miss Prince would have thought it
quite wrong, almost a “fast” thing to do, to let herself in with a
latchkey.
As Lucy opened the door she whispered: “Miss Cheale is here, waiting to
see you, ma’am.”
“Miss Cheale!”
Miss Prince could hardly believe her ears. She had supposed her friend
to be ill in bed, in London.
As she came in to her sitting room, Agatha Cheale stood up, a look of
agonized suspense on her face.
“Is Harry Garlett committed for trial?” she asked.
“Of course he is—surely you did not expect anything else?”
And then Miss Prince felt suddenly disturbed and angry. She disliked
intensely anything that savoured of hysterical emotion, and here was
Agatha Cheale clasping her hands together with a wild gesture, and
exclaiming: “How terrible! For he is innocent—innocent!”
“You cannot possibly know whether he is innocent or guilty,” said Miss
Prince coldly. “Sit down, my dear. We’ll have tea in a moment.”
“He _is_ innocent,” cried the other passionately. “I know Harry Garlett
far, far better than I have ever admitted—even to you!”
Miss Prince’s heart seemed to leap in her breast. Was she at last to be
positively assured of something which no one but herself had ever
suspected, with the one exception, maybe, of Dr. Maclean?
Agatha Cheale sat staring before her, a look of terrible suffering in
her eyes.
The older woman at last ventured: “You mean, my dear, that there were
love passages between you? I always suspected it.”
“No!” almost screamed Agatha Cheale, starting up from her chair. “There
were no love passages between us. What love there was was on my side—my
side alone.”
And then she broke into bitter sobs. “I’m a wicked woman, a wicked
woman——”
“Nonsense, my dear! If there have been no love passages, you are not a
wicked woman,” said practical Miss Prince.
She walked over to where her friend still stood, a dreadful look of
rigid misery on her face.
“Sit down,” she said quietly, taking up the other’s hot, nerveless hand.
“Sit down, Agatha. You’re in a high fever, I do believe.”
“I have been in bed on and off for nearly ten days. But I felt I must
come down here and learn what had really happened to-day. Have you seen
any one who was there?”
“Yes, I’ve seen the rector. What told against Harry most was Dr.
Maclean’s evidence. But no arsenic has yet been traced to his
possession.”
In spite of herself, as she said those last words Miss Prince’s voice
altered slightly.
“Why should he be suspected then—more than any one else who was in the
house at the time?”
Miss Prince thought this a very silly question.
“What is absolutely certain, Agatha, is that poor Emily died, poisoned
with an unusually large quantity of arsenic.”
“I know that,” said Miss Cheale in a quieter tone. “And yet—I daresay
you will think me very foolish—though I do know it’s true, somehow I
can’t believe it. Once or twice I’ve wondered—you’ll think me raving
mad”—her voice sank almost to a whisper as she fixed her burning, sunken
eyes on Miss Prince’s face—“if the analyst, the man who made the
examination, could have mixed up poor Mrs. Garlett’s remains with those
of some one else?”
“My dear Agatha!” the older woman looked at her with concern, and then,
choosing her words, she said: “You mustn’t allow your feelings of
affection for Mr. Garlett to affect——”
“I know what you mean,” broke in Agatha Cheale. “But while my reason
tells me Emily Garlett was poisoned, everything else tells me that it
can’t be true.”
“I’ve often wondered,” said Miss Prince suddenly, “what first started
the inquiry. After all, none of us had the slightest suspicion there was
anything wrong, had we?”
Agatha Cheale turned herself about, and sitting down, gazed into the
fire.
“Well,” she said at last, in a voice that had now become collected and
steady, “though none of us suspected anything at the time, there may
have been some outsider who thought it odd that there was no inquest.”
“I can tell you who that outsider was,” exclaimed Miss Prince. “Mrs.
Cole-Wright thought it a most extraordinary thing that there was no
inquest! I remember her saying so to me the very day of the funeral.”
“Perhaps she wrote to the police,” said Agatha Cheale in a hesitating
voice.
“I’m sure she didn’t. She’s a cautious woman, and she’s always liked
Harry Garlett. No! it’s far more likely that some one who saw Harry
carrying on with Jean Bower in the factory wrote to the police.”
“I suppose they called the girl as a witness?” said Agatha Cheale. There
was acrid bitterness in her voice.
“No,” said Miss Prince, “they didn’t call her, oddly enough. They seem
to have decided to do without her. Dr. Maclean was most anxious she
shouldn’t be called. He said she was ill, and, after all, he’s the
medical attendant of every one of the magistrates who were there——”
“Does she still consider herself engaged to Mr. Garlett?”
“She certainly does. Though, as to that, I can tell you a very curious
thing.”
Agatha Cheale turned round eagerly, her face full of intense, painful
curiosity.
“Harry Garlett has absolutely refused to see Jean Bower—I mean since his
arrest. Some people say it’s nearly broken her heart. She’s so pale and
thin you’d hardly believe her to be the pretty girl of a few weeks ago.”
The other drew a long breath. “So he won’t see her? Then he can’t have
really cared for her.”
She waited a moment, and then added in an odd tone, “He is a very cold
man.”
Miss Prince was surprised, “I shouldn’t call him that——”
Agatha Cheale turned round and looked straight into the older woman’s
face. “He is what foreigners call ‘A Jaseph,’” she exclaimed.
Miss Prince shrank back, almost as if she had been struck.
“My dear Agatha—what a horrid expression!”
“It’s a true expression,” answered Agatha Cheale. “We’ll never speak of
this again, and I don’t want you to have a worse impression of me than
you must. But I cared for Harry Garlett, and I did my utmost—my
utmost—to make him care for me. I failed. Let’s leave it at that!”
“Did Emily suspect that you liked him?”
“Good God, no!”
And again Miss Prince shrank back a little. This was an Agatha Cheale
she did not know—a violent, unrestrained human being, laying her soul
bare as few human beings ever have the cruel courage to do.
“I hope you got poor Emily’s legacy all right?”
“Yes, I got it almost at once. It enabled me to send my brother abroad.”
“How is he?” asked Miss Prince.
“I don’t know, he never writes to me, unless he wants money,” she said
bitterly. “I’ve only cared for two people in my life—my brother and
Harry Garlett—and neither of them have cared for me.”
She got up. “I must be going back! The driver of the car I hired at Dill
Junction had a friend in Grendon. I said he could go there for an hour.
I was afraid he might go into the village, and cause gossip. I think I
heard the car come up just now.”
“I wonder if I ought to let you go away?” said Miss Prince hesitatingly.
“You don’t look fit to go back to London to-day, my dear.”
“I couldn’t stay here. If I did I should get into serious trouble for
not having appeared at the Police Court to-day.”
She turned and put her arms around Miss Prince’s angular neck.
“Good-bye, Mary. You’re a good friend,” she exclaimed. “Forget all I’ve
said to-day!”
“I will,” said Miss Prince soberly, “indeed I will, Agatha. I don’t feel
as if you are really yourself, my dear.”
“I’m not myself in a sense, and yet in another sense I’m quite myself,
more myself than you’ve ever seen me be.”
The great tide of life flows on steadily, ruthlessly, whatever be the
tragedies or comedies being enacted below the swift-moving waters. Dr.
Maclean had an important consultation early that afternoon with a great
London specialist. And though both his wife and his niece were aware
that he could not be in to lunch, yet both of them shrank from learning
the news as to whether Harry Garlett was a free man or had been
committed for trial from any one but him.
After the clock had struck two, Jean constantly took the little gold
watch, which she wore on an old-fashioned gold chain round her neck, out
of her belt, and Mrs. Maclean felt that they had both come near the
breaking point.
“Let’s put on our things and walk to meet your uncle,” she said at last.
“You won’t mind our seeing people on the road who may stop and speak to
us?”
“I don’t mind anything,” she answered listlessly, and soon they were
walking quickly in the direction from where they knew Dr. Maclean was to
come. As they hurried through the biting January wind a little colour
came into Jean’s face and she began to look more herself.
“It’s foolish to feel as I do to-day,” she said at last. “I’m not really
in suspense, for of course I know quite well that Harry has been
committed for trial. Nothing excepting a miracle happening—I mean the
guilty person coming forward—could have prevented it. And yet?—and yet,
Aunt Jenny, I hope against hope!”
“So do I,” said Mrs. Maclean in a low voice.
At last they saw the familiar little car rolling along very much more
quickly than it was apt to do, and as the doctor drove up to them a
glance at his face was enough.
“Of course he’s committed for trial. Nothing new came out—one way or the
other.”
Then in a voice which he tried to make colourless, he went on: “I’ve got
a letter for you from Harry, child. I was to give it to you only if he
was committed for trial. Would you like us two to drive on, leaving you
to read it and walk home alone?”
She looked up into his kind, tired face—oh, so gratefully, and held out
her hand for the envelope.
“I think I’ll go walking on, for a bit, by myself. Don’t be frightened
if I don’t come in for an hour or so.”
She tried to smile, but failed.
Mrs. Maclean got into the car, and the husband and wife drove off
together, their hearts heavy with pity and that most painful of
sensations that nothing they could say or do could help the poor girl
they both loved so dearly.
After a few moments Mrs. Maclean made a restless movement.
“Don’t look round,” said the doctor sharply. “I know what’s in the
letter I’ve just given the poor lass. He’s not only offered to release
her from their engagement, but he begs her strongly to allow it to come
to an end. Whatever he may have done, there’s something very fine about
the chap. Both Toogood and the governor of the prison told me that Jean
is never out of his mind—and not selfishly in it, mark you.”
“She’ll never give him up,” said Mrs. Maclean woefully.
“Bide a wee, my dear. I think she’ll do anything he asks her to do; and
though I haven’t seen the letter I know that he’s put it very strongly
to her. He’s assured her—a splendid lie if ever there was one—that the
breaking of their engagement will be to his benefit, I mean during the
course of the trial.”
“If he’s said that, perhaps she’ll do it.”
“The governor had a little talk with me before the proceedings began.
He’s so much impressed with Garlett’s way of taking the whole thing that
he half believes him to be innocent. I wish I could believe
it”—unconsciously he was slowing down—“it’s no good my pretending that I
don’t feel very wretched, the more so that I know well enough that if
he’s hung it will be my testimony that will hang him.”
“Were you asked anything about Jean?” asked his wife in a low voice.
“Of course I was! And of course I had to admit that she’d been at the
factory fully five weeks before Emily Garlett’s death. Also that they’d
corresponded while he was away.”
“Jock! You never said that? Why, it was only the most formal business
correspondence,” exclaimed Mrs. Maclean dismayed.
“They particularly questioned me about it, and though I tried to make
the truth as clear as I could, I don’t think they believed me. Then I
had to admit that the moment he came back he and she were always
together. Garlett’s head foreman was called. I felt sorry for the poor
chap—he is obviously attached to Jean, but he had to confess that the
factory was humming with talk about them long before they became
engaged. That stupid, daft old Sir William Harding asked: ‘You mean
before Mrs. Garlett’s death?’ and the foreman was so bewildered that he
actually answered: ‘I don’t seem to remember exactly when the talk about
them did begin.’”
“And will it all be put in the papers?”
“Of course it will.”