During the night which preceded the day when Ivy Lexton was to
appear as chief witness for the Crown, she lay awake, hour after hour,
dreading with an awful dread the ordeal that lay before her.
Her chattering, excited circle of friends had all unwittingly
terrified her with their accounts of how Gretorex’s counsel, Sir
Joseph Molloy, was apt to deal with a witness. And in the watches of
the night, Ivy, shivering, saw herself faced by that ruthless
cross-examiner.
What was this formidable advocate going to say to her, to get out of
her, by what one of her admirers had laughingly called “his exercise
of the Third Degree?”
For the first time the widow of Jervis Lexton realised how insincere
and how shallow were the sympathy and the cloying flattery with which
she was now surrounded. Only two human beings seemed really sorry at
the thought of what was going to happen to her to-morrow--Lady Flora
Desmond and Philip Paxton-Smith.
The concern manifested by her solicitor made Ivy feel sick with
apprehension. He had spent hours with her trying to teach her what she
had to say; that is, what to admit, what to deny, during her
cross-examination.
It was plain, dreadfully plain, to her, that Paxton-Smith was very
much afraid of how the great Sir Joseph Molloy would treat her when he
had her in his power.
Again and again, during that long winter night, she asked herself with
terror whether Sir Joseph could have found out anything with regard to
her past relations with Roger Gretorex.
She knew Gretorex far too well to suppose, even for a moment, that he
had given her away. But the short interview with Roger’s mother,
though she, Ivy, had appeared to come out of it so well, had left a
frightening impression. And she shivered as she recalled the terrible
expression which had come over Mrs. Gretorex’s face when making to her
the appeal which she had rejected with words implying that she, too,
believed the man who loved her had been guilty of a terrible crime.
Ivy even asked herself with a kind of angry resentment, in the
darkness of the night, why Roger Gretorex had not done this thing of
which he stood accused?
Her own set, the men and women round her, all seemed to think it
natural, in a sense, that he should have done it. And yet, though he
had had many opportunities of ridding himself of Jervis Lexton, in the
days when he had been so much with them, and though the only bar at
one moment which had stood in the way of his happiness had been the
life of Jervis Lexton, the thought of doing such a thing had evidently
never even occurred to his mind!
Looking back, Ivy knew that there had been a time last winter when,
had she then become a widow, she would have married Gretorex. She had
been--how curious to remember that time now, though it was less than a
year ago--infatuated with the splendid-looking young man who loved her
with so intense and passionate a devotion.
She remembered, also, how reckless she had been in those old days.
Anyone but Jervis would have suspected the truth. Thank God, she
hadn’t known Miles Rushworth, even slightly, during those mad weeks of
what she had called her love for Roger Gretorex. Rushworth would have
guessed, nay more, he would have known, what was going on.
Had Roger’s mother suspected the truth? Almost certainly, yes. If Mrs.
Gretorex thought it would help Roger, she would of course tell the
famous advocate who was now fighting for her son’s life what she
believed had been the real relations between her son and the woman who
was to be the chief witness against him.
Always it was to Sir Joseph Molloy, the man whose name she had never
heard till, say, a fortnight ago, that Ivy’s thoughts turned with
dread, during those endless hours of darkness when she tossed this way
and that through the long night.
Nurse Bradfield had had a terrible time in the witness-box. Indeed,
she had confessed to Ivy last evening that Sir Joseph could have made
her say black was white and wrong right! He had dwelt with sinister
insistence on the short time that she, Mrs. Lexton, had been left
alone with Mr. Lexton on that fatal last afternoon; nay, more, he had
almost gone so far as to imply that, had Nurse Bradfield been faithful
to her trust and had not gone out for those few minutes, Jervis Lexton
might be alive to-day. Also he had called her “Woman!” She had even
appealed to the Judge to protect her--not that that had done her much
good.
The nurse’s account of the ordeal she had been through filled Ivy with
such foreboding that she would have done anything, even gone back to
the old black days when she and Jervis lived in those poverty-stricken
Pimlico lodgings, if she could thereby have wiped out all that had
happened since.
When at last there came the morning, she got up, pale and really ill.
Then she waited, in an extremity of nervous fear, till, at last, there
came the moment when Mr. Paxton-Smith, looking, so she told herself,
like an undertaker, and not at all like his usual jovial self, called
in his car to take her to the Old Bailey.
During their long drive in the crowded streets the lawyer remained
almost entirely silent. He had explained and made her rehearse
yesterday, carefully and kindly, everything she must say and refrain
from saying.
When passing the Piccadilly end of Bond Street, for the chauffeur,
chauffeur-like, had taken them the longest way, a sob escaped Ivy.
There had risen before her a vision of care-free, happy nights, spent
in dancing, and in what old-fashioned people would have called riotous
living, within a few yards of where the car was now being held up in
the traffic.
After they had gone on again, her frightened eyes caught glimpses of
the newspaper placards. On each one was blazoned forth her now
notorious name:
LEXTON MYSTERY.
LEXTON MURDER.
NURSE IN THE BOX.
Though she was singularly unimaginative, Ivy shuddered as she told
herself that, in a couple of hours from now, maybe, there would be the
words, “Mrs. Lexton in the Box,” or, worse by far, “Mrs. Lexton
Cross-examined.”
At last, after what seemed both to Paxton-Smith and to his client a
long drive, the car drew up by a side door of the great frowning
building called by that name of dread to every evildoer the Old
Bailey.
What an awesome, and in some ways superb, spectacle is the scene
presented by every British trial for murder! And if this is always
true, even in the humblest country town Assize Court, how much more
tense and awe-inspiring is what takes place in the courthouse of the
Old Bailey, when the prisoner in the dock is the central figure in a
murder mystery which has suddenly become world-famous. Especially is
this true when the accused man is putting up a struggle, not only for
his life, but what to some men really does mean more than life--his
honour.
Since the war there has appeared in London a new world of idle,
luxury-loving human beings who live for pleasure, and who, if their
income is fluctuating and uncertain, yet mysteriously appear always
plentifully provided with ready money to burn on what they call “fun.”
To the eyes of those composing this new world, lovely Ivy Lexton, and
good-humoured, popular Jervis Lexton, had been familiar figures,
especially during the years when they were merrily engaged in running
through their capital. All these people regarded the trial of Roger
Gretorex as a spectacle produced and staked for their special benefit,
and while the more enterprising and fortunate among them attended each
day the exciting proceedings at the Old Bailey, the others all read
with avid interest the full accounts of the trial which appeared every
morning in whatever happened to be their favourite daily paper.
Although the case was called the Lexton Mystery, none of the hundreds
of thousands of Roger Gretorex’s fellow-countrymen and countrywomen,
who were following each detail of the story as unfolded now day by day
in Court, considered that there was very much mystery about it. What
was of tense interest, and what formed the real enigma, was the latest
variant of the eternal triangle--the story of the relations of the
three, wife, husband, and lover.
One doubt remained in many a mind. That doubt concerned the relations
of Ivy Lexton and of Roger Gretorex. To what extent, if any, had that
beautiful young woman been involved in her lover’s guilt? Was it true
that her own feelings, with regard to the young man who had slowly
done a husband to death so that a wife should be free, had been simply
those which it was known she was going into the witness-box to swear
they had been? Had they really been feelings of kindly and
indifferent, not to say tepid, friendship?
Another question which is always being asked by every student of human
nature was asked in this case--that is, whether a certain kind of
exalted passion, the passionate love of a man for a woman which leads
to crime, can exist without even a touch of secret encouragement?
The more worldly-wise shook their heads, and said that, whatever
romantic poets and novelists may aver, such entirely unrequited
passion on the part of an intelligent, educated man is impossible.
Surely, before such a man as Roger Gretorex had set out to do that
awful thing, he must, at any rate, have had some cause to believe that
Ivy Lexton, when widowed, would become his wife?
There was yet another point which made this judicial drama appear, to
use a phrase sometimes used in such a connection, “a full-dress
trial.” Justice may be blind, yet she can see the glitter of gold. No
money had been spared on either side. Indeed, judging by the array of
counsel engaged, there must have been limitless wealth available for
the defence. And, in a sense, there was, for Mrs. Gretorex had thrown
all the fortune that remained to her into the struggle for her son’s
life.
And now, on the fourth day, was approaching the great moment of Roger
Gretorex’s trial for murder. The highest peak of the fever chart of
this drama, which was being watched not only by those who were present
in Court, but by hundreds of thousands of English-speaking people all
over the world, was now about to be reached.
There came a peculiar rustle through the Court, followed by a moment
of complete silence, as Ivy Lexton stepped, with short, dainty steps
into the witness-box, and faced what appeared to her a myriad world of
eyes fixed on her pale countenance. In accordance with a strong hint
given yesterday by her solicitor, Ivy had not made up her face at all
to-day.
Paxton-Smith, as the tense moments flew by, felt full of admiration
for his beautiful client.
Ivy even remembered everything that he had advised with regard to her
behaviour when in the witness-box, including certain things she might
well have been pardoned for forgetting. One of these had been that,
when answering counsel for the Crown, she should hold her head well
up.
This she obviously tried to do, and when, as more than once happened,
she threw what looked like a childlike glance of fear and supplication
at the kind, if grave, face of the inquisitor whose only desire was to
learn the truth and nothing but the truth, a thrill of sympathy went
through her great, silent audience.
Again, when the flawless oval of her face appeared framed in the tiny
little pull-on black hat, and her star-like eyes for a moment looked
wild, many a man, watching her, told himself that he could well
understand, indeed almost sympathise with, any crime being committed
by one who loved her, and who longed, as only lovers long, to have the
exquisite creature standing there at bay entirely his own.
But one curious thing was observed by those who note such things. This
was that not once did Ivy Lexton glance at the prisoner in the dock,
during the long examination-in-chief.
As for Gretorex, he on his side crossed his arms and stared straight
before him as if with unseeing eyes, during the whole of the time the
woman he had loved with so devoted and trusting a love, remained in
the witness-box.
Sir 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 to-morrow of what she said, and left
unsaid, to-day.
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 to-day 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.