MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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deceived. He was aware of how carelessly generous Rushworth could be and often was.
Still, a glance at his client’s face, now filled with a painful expression of suspense and acute anxiety, showed that this matter was of great moment to him.
“Mrs. Lexton,” he said in a low voice, “is going to be arrested, I understand, this evening, or tomorrow morning. The Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard are completing what they consider a very strong chain of evidence against her. I have here copies of three letters which have come into their possession. You had better glance over them, Rushworth.”
He got up and, leaning across his table, handed a number of typewritten sheets to his client.
How strange looked those burning words of love and longing, transcribed on a bad old typewriting machine! But the man now reading them could visualise Ivy’s pretty flowing handwriting, and, as he read on, he turned hot and cold.
Then he started on Gretorex’s letter; the letter acquiescing in Ivy’s decision that there should be a break between them.
“That was written,” observed the solicitor, “after Lexton’s mysterious illness was well started. I think you will agree that it is the letter of a man who was certainly unaware of what was going on?”
He waited a moment, then he added: “They’ve unluckily traced all your cables to the lady, Rushworth, as well as yours to me. I fear that you are certain to be called as leading witness for the Crown, if Mrs. Lexton is sent for trial, as seems now inevitable.”
“That would be monstrous! What is my connection with the case?” exclaimed Rushworth. “Surely I had the right to give all the help in my power to the wife of one of my own people?”
“They will call you in order to prove that Mrs. Lexton had a strong motive for wishing to get her husband out of the way,” returned Oram in a doleful tone. “I hope you refrained from writing to her? If you did, I trust she had the sense to destroy your letters.”
“It is this man Gretorex, if, as you seem to think, he is entirely innocent, who should be called, not I,” said Rushworth in a hard voice.
“Roger Gretorex will certainly refuse to give evidence against her. They’ll try to make him. But they’ll fail. He worshipped Ivy Lexton, and I fear he still loves her.”
Then the old man sighed. “It’s an awful story, Rushworth,” he observed, “however you look at it.”
The other threw the typewritten sheets of paper back on the table. He rose, and rather blindly he felt for, and found, his hat and stick.
“I must be going now,” he said shortly. “If I’m wanted, you know where to find me, Oram.”
He felt humiliated to the depths of his being. His passion for Ivy Lexton had turned to bitter hatred. Yet he knew that their fates were linked together, and that through what had been his mad infatuation for this woman, a name which was known and honoured all over the world, was not only going to become a laughingstock, but also to be smirched and befouled for ever.
As he went down the fine staircase of the old house, he exclaimed wordlessly, “By God, that shall not be!”
He waited a moment in the hall, and in that moment he thought of a way out.
It was a way made possible by the fact that an unpleasant experience at the beginning of August, 1914, had taught him the value of gold. Since the Saturday which had preceded the outbreak of war, he had always kept a thousand pounds in gold, and a thousand pounds in Bank of England ten-pound notes, in the private safe of his London office.
He walked quickly to the corner of a quiet street where he had left his car, and threw the chauffeur the address.
Then he looked at his watch. If what old Oram had said was true with regard to the probable arrest of Ivy Lexton, there was just time to accomplish that which he had planned to do in what had seemed but one flashing second.
“Stop at the nearest telephone box,” he called out. And the chauffeur drew up at a tube station.
Rushworth was in the telephone box for a long time, for he had to a certain extent to speak in parables. But the young man whom he had called up, and had had the good fortune to find at home, at last understood exactly what was wanted of him. He was an airman to whom Rushworth had once been magnificently generous.
“Right-ho!” came the young voice down the line. “I’ll be quite ready. I understand you want me to take my wife, too, and that you’ll motor her down here from town. Her passport’s always O.K. You can trust me. Afraid? Not much!”
Rushworth’s face looked strained and white as he came out of the telephone box.
He was well aware that he was inciting that lad to do, from pure gratitude, a very wrong thing. Well? If it “didn’t come off,” he, Rushworth, would take all the blame, of course. But he felt pretty sure that the plan he had made would succeed, for it had the two essential qualities which spell success. His plan was bold and his plan was simple.
True, he wondered uncomfortably if the police had traced that last wire of his from Paris. He was glad indeed that Ivy had had the wit to telegraph her country address. And then, as he evoked her lovely face, her beckoning eyes, his own darkened, and filled with wrath and pain.
He did not go himself into his London office. Instead he sent in his chauffeur, with the key of his private safe, and armed with minute instructions as to what he was to take out of it.
Then, when the man had brought him the heavy little canvas bag, and the envelope containing a hundred ten-pound notes, he threw him the address of some lodgings in a quiet street off Piccadilly, where he knew Lady Dale and her daughter were staying just now. His sister had made him promise that he would see Bella the moment he reached London, and he was fulfilling that promise.
When he was told that her ladyship was out, but that Miss Dale was in, and alone, he suddenly felt as if his luck was holding, after all!
Ivy had insisted on coming back to London before luncheon.
Not only was her mind now full of vague, unsubstantial fears, but she was aware that Miles Rushworth would call at her flat some time this evening. That, indeed, was a fact to which she clung and constantly returned with a feeling of reassurance and hope. Even so she had not allowed Lady Flora to telephone the fact that she was returning unexpectedly to the flat. She felt, somehow, that she wanted no one to know about her movements just now. She was beginning to feel that most terrifying of sensations—that of being hunted.
Even when settled comfortably, and alone, in a first-class carriage of the train taking her to town, she found she could not rest, and she actually got up and began moving about.
It was such an awful sensation—that of feeling that human hounds might be hot on her scent . . . .
She had bought her favourite picture paper at the station, and then she had had a shock, for a large photograph of Roger had confronted her on the front page.
Underneath the picture ran a long paragraph, stating that Dr. Gretorex, who was to have been hanged this morning for the murder of Jervis Lexton, had had his execution postponed on the very eve of its being carried out. Such a thing had not taken place in England for close on eighty years. But important new evidence had been placed before the Home Secretary at the eleventh hour . . . .
“New Evidence”—Ivy turned those two ominous words over and over again, in her troubled, anxious mind. They now forced her to do what she had believed she would never, never have to do—live over again, in imagination, a certain fortnight of her life, the first fortnight of last November . . . .
She found herself imagining, suspecting, wild, crazy things. For instance, the existence of minute peepholes in the ceilings of certain rooms in the flat? Even that seemed more likely than that Roger Gretorex should have “given her away” with regard to the fact that she had been once left alone by him with a jar of arsenic on the table of his surgery.
Besides, even