As she walked away from the great advocate’s chambers Jean Bower felt
happier than she had felt since the terrible morning when Harry Garlett
had been arrested in her presence on the charge of murder.
Though she felt certain that her forthcoming interview with Garlett
would not bring the result Sir Harold evidently expected it to do, yet,
deep in her heart, she was full of joy at the thought of seeing the man
she loved. Her heart had hungered for him, and nothing but the knowledge
that he shrank from seeing her in the shameful place where he was now
strictly confined had prevented her making an effort to see him. It was
an infinite comfort to feel that it was now her duty to do so.
She had deliberately sent no word of her approaching return to Bonnie
Doon, and when she went out of Grendon station, where she had always
been met by either her uncle or her aunt, even by Elsie if neither of
them could come, there swept over her a curious feeling that henceforth
she must live her life alone, if only because of her promise to the man
on whose instructions she was now acting.
Quickly she walked away from the station, intent on seeing Mr. Toogood,
so that her interview with Harry Garlett should be arranged as soon as
possible.
But when she turned into the High Street of the busy country town she
became aware that she had been recognized by certain of the people who
had passed her, and by the time she had reached the lawyer’s office some
ten to twenty men and women were dogging her footsteps.
She began to feel like a hunted thing, and oh, the relief of finding
herself in the hall of the house where she had come with her uncle on
the day her lover had been arrested.
This time Jean was shown straight into the room where Mr. Toogood, the
last time she was here, had remained closeted with her uncle for so
long.
She went, as was her nature, straight to the point.
“I have made up my mind to ask for an order to see Mr. Garlett,” she
said quietly. “And I should be grateful if you would tell him, Mr.
Toogood, that it is because I have to speak to him on a matter of
importance that I’m doing what I know he does not wish me to do.”
“I’ve always thought his attitude as to that quite unreasonable,” said
the lawyer in a decided tone.
“How would you like Mrs. Toogood or your daughter to see you in prison?”
asked Jean in a low voice.
“There’s something in that—especially as I suppose you realize, Miss
Bower, that you won’t see Mr. Garlett alone?”
“I thought perhaps that as I want to see him on private business, I
would be granted the privilege of seeing him alone.”
He shook his head.
“There is no country in the world, Miss Bower, where such privileges are
extended to a prisoner under remand. I, as Mr. Garlett’s legal adviser,
have free private access to him. But you cannot expect the same
privilege. Whatever you have to say to him will be said in the presence
of two warders.”
He saw that this was a great surprise to her, and she looked deeply
troubled.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he exclaimed. “I’ll put the case to the
Governor. I suppose you’ve met him?”
“I remember that he was in the cricket pavilion at that big match last
May, and I even had a talk with him. But I don’t suppose he’ll remember
me.”
“You do yourself an injustice!” exclaimed the old lawyer gallantly. “I
expect Colonel Brackbury remembers you very well indeed. In any case I
will put the matter to him personally. I take it, Miss Bower,” he looked
at her hard, “that you really require to see Mr. Garlett on business?”
“I would willingly tell you why I wish to see him, but I have given my
word to tell no one.” She hesitated, and then, “I have been asked to put
a certain question to him.”
“Kentworthy making the poor girl do his dirty work,” thought Mr.
Toogood. Aloud he observed:
“Well, my dear young lady, I’ll see what can be done. I know the
Governor will stretch a point if he can. He is on very cordial terms
with your uncle, and I seem to remember that he’s a regular cricket
maniac. Funny, isn’t it, that such things should make any difference?
But they do! I’ve found out that the lawyer who doesn’t allow for the
oddities of human nature makes a great mistake—I mean professionally. I
hope you’ve left every one quite well at home, eh?—I mean at Bonnie
Doon?”
“I’ve been in London,” she answered, “so I haven’t seen them since the
day before yesterday.”
“That fixes it!” said the lawyer to himself. “I wonder what Kentworthy
wants that poor girl to get out of Garlett? Surely he’s never told her
to find out who was in the wood with him? That would be hard on her. Yet
he may be beginning to see what I’ve always seen, that Garlett’s one
hope is to bring some other woman into the case.”
They both got up; he strolled across to his window, and saw with dismay
that a crowd had gathered below on the broad pavement, waiting for the
heroine of the Terriford Mystery to appear.
“Haven’t you got a car?” he asked, surprised.
“I thought of walking home.”
“No need to do that,” he said kindly. “I’ll telephone and ask my
daughter to bring our car along. She’ll get you to Bonnie Doon in no
time! Meanwhile, will you go into the other room for a minute? I have a
private message to give her.”
Slightly surprised, Jean did as he asked her. Then, when he had got
through to his house, he said: “Is that you, Kitty?”
“Yes, Father.”
“I want you to run the car along here. Are you listening?”
“Listening hard, Father!”
“Good! Now don’t come through the High Street. You’ve got to make your
way somehow into Juniper Alley, to the back of this house. There’s a
crowd gathered at the front door waiting for that poor child, Jean
Bower, to come out. I want to get her away without any one seeing her.
You’ll only have to drive her to Bonnie Doon. It won’t take you long.”
Then he brought his young visitor back to his room.
“Now, look here, my dear, we’ve got about ten minutes before my daughter
can be here, and I haven’t had an opportunity of seeing you alone since
we met—you remember when? I want to tell you to be of good heart! It’s a
tremendously important point on your side—I wonder if you realize how
important?—that no arsenic has been traced to Harry Garlett’s
possession. What’s more, poor Mrs. Garlett was poisoned with _white_
arsenic. We’ve got one of the biggest poison experts in the world ready
to go into the box and swear that Mrs. Garlett was poisoned with pure
arsenic, not arsenic extracted from some article in common use.”
She looked at him gratefully, but remained silent.
“Then there’s another point,” he went on. “A great deal has been made of
those strawberries which were eaten by Mrs. Garlett on the fatal
evening. As a matter of fact, no one saw her eat them, and no one has
the slightest idea who brought them into her room. It’s very unfortunate
that your uncle conveyed the impression, as he certainly did, that he
knew as a fact that Mrs. Garlett received those strawberries from her
husband’s hand. He knew nothing of the kind.”
“I’ve never been able to understand the question of the strawberries,
and why so much importance has been attached to them,” said Jean Bower
in a low voice.
“Importance has been attached to them,” said the lawyer decidedly,
“because they seem to have been the only vehicle by which the poison
could have been administered. The Prosecution have two witnesses ready
to swear that they saw the small dish of strawberries, sprinkled thickly
with powdered sugar, outside Mrs. Garlett’s door at five o’clock, and
that at seven o’clock the dish was no longer there.”
“How strange,” said Jean in an oppressed tone.
“Mr. Garlett denies having even seen the strawberries. The lawyer who
took Miss Cheale’s evidence on commission received from her the
assurance that she did not know who had given Mrs. Garlett the fruit—she
simply assumed that it must have been Mr. Garlett. Sir Harold Anstey—you
will remember I told you about him last time you were in this room—will
certainly make the most of the fact that no one knows what happened to
those strawberries! Not only the fruit, but the dish, one of a set of
four, disappeared from the top of the chest of drawers where it was
known to have been that afternoon. The apparent obliteration of the dish
is a very curious circumstance.”
“I suppose it is,” said Jean doubtfully.
“That odd occurrence, coupled with the fact that no purchase of arsenic
has been traced to our friend, will certainly be an important point in
his favour, so you must keep up heart.”
“I try to,” said Jean. “I’m feeling happier——”
She stopped short. She had nearly said “now that I have seen Sir Harold
Anstey.”
Mr. Toogood looked at his watch.
“Kitty will be waiting for you now.” He opened the door, and then, to
her surprise, said a little hurriedly: “No, not downstairs, but
upstairs, Miss Bower! My daughter prefers driving up to the back of the
house.”
As he uttered these lying words, he was leading her up the staircase,
she bewildered but obedient. When they reached the top story he led her
down a passage, and then they walked silently down what had been the
back stairs of the old mansion when it was a dwelling-house. Once on the
ground floor, he took her rapidly through a small paved court into a
kind of little alley, where the car stood waiting.
“Good-bye, Miss Jean! I’ll see if I can catch the Governor to-day, and
then your interview will take place, if it can be managed, to-morrow
morning.”
It was not often that Mr. Toogood felt a pang of curiosity. As a rule,
lawyers know too much, not too little, of their clients’ affairs. But he
did wonder very much what it was that Kentworthy had asked Jean Bower to
find out. He felt sure that she would fail in her task. Harry Garlett
was the last man to be persuaded to say anything he did not wish to say,
and if he had indeed been holding clandestine meetings in the wood with
some woman whose name he alone knew, he would certainly not “give the
lady away.”
Mr. Toogood chuckled a little as he found his way back to his room,
remembering that his good friend, Colonel Brackbury, Governor of His
Majesty’s Prison at Grendon, had said to him only two days before:
“I feel interested in Jean Bower. I thought her a most attractive girl!
We had quite a talk at that cricket match last spring. I should very
much like to see her again.”
Late that same afternoon Elsie put her head through the door of the
dining room of Bonnie Doon.
“Ye’re wanted on the telephone, Miss Jean.”
“Would you rather I went, my dear?” asked her aunt kindly.
“I’ll go,” said the girl quickly. “I think I know who it is.”
And, sure enough, it was Mr. Toogood.
“It’s all right, Miss Bower. If you will be at the prison at ten o’clock
to-morrow morning, the Governor will himself be present at your
interview with Mr. Garlett. He says he will keep out of earshot. I hope
you are pleased.”
“I am indeed,” she called back, “and very grateful to you!”
And then she walked back slowly to the room where her uncle and aunt
were sitting. She was sorry, now, that she had not confided to them her
intention of seeing Harry Garlett, but she had shrunk from doing so, for
she knew they were hurt with her for concealing the reason of her visit
to London.
As she opened the door she said abruptly: “I am going to see Harry
to-morrow morning. I called at Mr. Toogood’s office on my way home and
arranged it.”
As neither of them spoke, she went on, catching her breath a little:
“Try not to mind my not being able to tell you why I want to see him.
I’ve promised not to do so—but it is important. It may make a difference
at the trial.”
There was a pause, and then Mrs. Maclean said a little coldly:
“Neither your uncle nor I wish to interfere in your private affairs, my
dear. You are grown up, and you have a right to do as you please. But
your uncle has a very wide knowledge of life, and I think you would
probably find that, in the long run, it would be worth your while to
take him into your confidence.”
Jean burst into bitter sobs, and her aunt got up from her chair and put
her arms around her.
“Come, come, don’t be offended, childie! It’s only that we’re so
anxious—that’s all. The matter’s so terribly important, not only to you
but to your uncle—perhaps you don’t quite realize that, eh?”
“How d’you mean?” exclaimed Jean, glancing from the one to the other.
“Well,” said Dr. Maclean slowly, “I’ve not said anything about it, for
I’ve known that your trouble, my dear, has been much, much greater than
mine. But of course this terrible affair is a fearful blow to my
professional reputation. And though for a little while people will be
eager to see me—after I’ve been badgered and worried like a rat worried
by a terrier, in the witness-box—the better class of my patients are
sure to say: ‘Better not send for old Maclean. D’you remember that
stupid mistake he made over the death certificate of that patient of his
who was poisoned?’”
“I didn’t realize all that. Oh, how sorry I am that I’ve brought all
this awful trouble on you!” exclaimed Jean, looking from the one to the
other of them with unhappy, haunted eyes.
For the first time since this great trouble had come on them all, they
separated that evening not on their usual affectionate, open terms, the
one with the other. And it was after a night spent wide awake in bitter
self-communing that Jean got up early the next morning.
“I’ll breakfast with you in the kitchen,” she said to Elsie. “I’ve got
to be at the prison by ten o’clock, and I should like to get out of the
house before my uncle and aunt come downstairs.”
The modern prison of Grendon was built at a time in the nineteenth
century when there was still but small reverence for historic buildings.
Within the vast enclosure surrounded by walls five feet thick still
stands the mound crowned by the ruins of a Norman keep known to
antiquaries as Grendon Castle. And close to that high mound rises the
mediæval mass of brick and stone locally called the Old Prison. To the
imaginative historian that house of woe, long emptied though it be of
suffering humanity, is of far greater interest than are the remains of
the castle.
Last, but, from the point of view of the townspeople, by far the most
important, within the same vast enceinte is the eighteenth-century
pillared building where the county assizes are always held, and where
many a famous trial has taken place. But the public doors to the Assize
Court are reached from without the great walls, some way from the
jealously guarded entrance to the modern prison, and to the vast space
in which it stands.
Till comparatively lately, the public were freely admitted to what is
still called the Castle yard, and public meetings of deep import to the
state were held there. But now it is difficult to obtain even permission
to visit the Castle ruins and the Old Prison.
Jean Bower had walked quickly through the keen morning air, and so,
being full half an hour early, she paced up and down for what seemed a
long time under the stout walls; at last, when her watch told her it was
a quarter to ten, she rang the bell of the small postern door cut into
the great gate.
There came the sound of footsteps on stone flags, the clanking of big
keys, and then the door was opened by a gray-haired man in uniform.
Taking the admission order from her hand, he glanced over it, and looked
at her with quickened interest.
“You’re a bit early, if I may say so,” he said kindly, “but you follow
me, miss, and I’ll see what I can do.”
As she walked under the vaulted gateway, past the quaint little opening
which evidently led into her guide’s home, Jean found herself on the
edge of a vast paved enclosure.
To her left rose the huge mound, and in front of the mound, as if cut
out of the paving stones, was a round lawn of closely cropped turf.
Then, gradually, she became aware that behind a row of tall, now
leafless, plane trees was a strange-looking building of dark red brick
and gray stone. There was something stark and desolate about the
irregular outline which showed sharply clear against the pale blue of
the winter sky.
Her companion followed the direction of her eyes.
“Ay, that’s the Old Prison,” he observed. “Folk used to come from a long
way to go over that place, but now it isn’t shown—ever. But as you’ve
got a few minutes to spare, miss, maybe you’d like to have a look at
it?”
He took her assent for granted, and slowly they began walking straight
toward what Jean now knew to be a very famous place—famous if only
because it had been the first prison visited by Elizabeth Fry.
“Where is the real prison?” she asked hesitatingly.
“You turn yourself right around-about and you’ll see it clear enough.”
She turned quickly, and beyond the Castle mound, far to the right, she
saw a large, commonplace-looking yellow brick building which reminded
her of a modern factory. The knowledge that Harry Garlett was there gave
her a stab of pain. Quickly she turned away and once more stared at the
sinister-looking Old Prison, and it was with a thrill of surprise that
she saw that the low doors giving access to the dark, grimy-looking
building were all wide open.
“I should be afraid to come here at night,” she exclaimed. “That place
looks as if it were haunted.”
“You’re not the only one to say that. My wife wouldn’t go in the Old
Prison not after dark—for a hundred pounds! It’s said that on
All-Hallows Eve one ’ears groans and awful moanings agoing on the whole
night. However, I’ve never been there to see, and bless you! people are
sure to say them sort of things about that sort of place. Now you come
along—and I’ll show you what many a lady in Grendon would give a good
bit to see.”
He moved on, his bunch of keys clanging in his big hands as he walked,
till they came right up to the widest of the low entrances to the
deserted building.
The black oak iron bound door had been clamped back to the wall, leaving
the way in clear.
“I’d best go in first,” said the porter; and Jean, following him, found
herself almost at once in pitch-darkness, groping along a narrow
passage. Suddenly he took out of his pocket and turned on an electric
torch. But that only seemed to make more dense the thick-feeling
blackness, though it enabled Jean to see that on each side of the
passage were tiny, windowless cells. Was it possible that human beings
had ever been confined in such holes as that?
They walked on and on along the lightless, airless burrows, and once the
girl stumbled badly on the uneven earthen floor.
At last the porter stayed his steps and held up his hand; she saw it
gleaming redly against the bright white light cast by his torch.
“This is the place folk most wants to come and gloat over,” he observed
in a half joking tone.
They were on the threshold of a low vaulted chamber, and a moment later
he and Jean were standing in the middle of the otherwise empty,
windowless crypt-like room, by what looked like an enormous kitchen
table, excepting that it was made of stone. Jean’s guide threw the light
of his torch right on to the gray, stained surface, and she saw that
into the stone two deep ruts had been cut, one each way.
“Folk were drawn and quartered on this ’ere table,” he explained, “and
not so very long ago, missie! The last lot done ’ere was a batch of what
they called ‘the rebels,’ those Scotchies who reckoned they wanted
another king. Just before my time they used to keep ’ere, careless-like
on the table, the big knife and fork with which they quartered the poor
wretches. But now they’re put away in what’s called Grendon Museum.”
As if talking to himself, he went on musingly: “’Anging’s a sight more
merciful than the old ways they ’ad of doing men and women to death.
That I always will maintain. But a ’anging’s a gruesome sight. Maybe
we’ll have time for me to take you just round to see the gallows.
Leastways you won’t see much! Only a kind of platform, you know—that’s
where they’re turned off. It’s just off the new prison.”
And then the good man felt considerably startled, for the girl he had
supposed to be by his side staring down at the stone table had
disappeared!
He flashed his torchlight round the stone walls, and with relief
perceived that she was leaning up against the side of the arched
entrance which gave into the black passage way.
Her face was drawn, and very pale, and all at once he remembered her
relation with the man who, it was confidently expected by most of the
people connected with Grendon Prison, would be the next poor wretch to
be “turned off.”
“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, “I oughtn’t to have said that. I clean
forgot about your friend, missie. What a fool I am to be sure!”
There was a tone of deep dismay and regret in the voice in which he
uttered these words.
“I’m all right now,” Jean said faintly. “I suddenly felt queer. I think
the air must be very bad in this place.”
“Of course it is,” he agreed, “no draught through.”
And then he went on, this time in a very serious voice, “As I’ve said so
much, miss, I’ll say just one thing more to ye——”
“Yes?” she said questioningly, standing away from the door. She had no
idea what he was going to say, and yet somehow she felt horribly afraid.
“’Anging, as now practised,” he observed, “is a very merciful form of
death. It isn’t ’anging at all, so to speak—they just breaks the poor
chap’s neck and it’s all over in a second! ’E don’t know it’s ’appening
till it ’as ’appened—if you take my meaning?”
She “took his meaning” only too well, and, with a wild wish to escape
from her now torturing thoughts, she turned out of that awful room of
death, and almost ran along the cavernous way and so out into the fresh
air.
Her guide followed, uncertain whether he had been right or wrong in
saying what he had last said to her. “But there!” he said to himself,
“the poor little missie may be glad to remember it some March morning.”
But when he saw her face in the daylight, he exclaimed, “Dang me! The
wife’s right! I do talk too much—that I do.” And then, shamefacedly, he
added: “Best say nothing of my having shown you a bit of the Old Prison,
eh? I mean to the Governor?”
“Of course I won’t,” she murmured.
Soon they reached the great gate, and then the man took hold of Jean
Bower’s arm.
“Mary Ann,” he called out.
A tall thin woman came out: “Yes?” she said acidly, “what d’you want,
John?”
“Give this young lady a drop o’ that brandy I’ve got in the cupboard.
Give it her neat—no water, Mary Ann! That Old Prison of ours ’as turned
’er over queer.”
The woman gave a quick look at Jean, and then she ran indoors. A moment
later she came back, a small glass in her hand.
Hardly knowing what she was doing, the girl gulped down the brandy.
Almost at once she felt better, and the colour came back into her face.