MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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For the first few moments, spent alone by her in her bedroom, Ivy could only feel relief—sheer, sobbing relief.
Then there came over her a sensation of utter, numb despair.
She had lost everything that makes life worth the living to such as she . . .
But there was no time left her, now, to remember the past, or dread the future. She must hurry—hurry.
So it was that, in less than five minutes after Rushworth had left her, she was standing outside the flat, clad in a small pull-on black hat and a big fur coat.
The lift came up, and then, just as she was going to step into it, she remembered suddenly the bolster bag Rushworth had bought for her at Dieppe. On the morning of Jervis’s death she had shaken out of the inner pochette the two or three pinches of—of “stuff” which remained in it, into the fire, and then, hardly knowing what she was doing, she had put it back in the red despatch-box. It would be all right, there, till she went out of her widow’s mourning.
She couldn’t leave that behind. Why it was worth a lot of money! Besides, she would give up wearing black as soon as she reached the place of safety Rushworth had promised her.
“Wait a minute,” she said to the porter. “I’ve forgotten something. I won’t be a second!”
She put her key in the lock, and rushed back to her bedroom.
Meanwhile there began an insistent ringing for the lift from the bottom of the shaft, in the hall of the Mansion.
The porter knew pretty Mrs. Lexton’s ways. He felt sure that when she had said: “I won’t be a second!” she meant probably five minutes, maybe even longer than that, especially if she had forgotten something.
The bell was ringing continuously now, and with a shock the man remembered that the agent for Duke of Kent Mansion was coming to see a leak in the roof this very afternoon.
Quickly he pulled the cable, and the lift slid down.
Meanwhile Ivy had run back into her bedroom, turning up the electric light as she walked through the door. Quickly she took the three keys she always carried about with her in her embroidered black vanité case, and, unlocking the half of the great cupboard, she seized the despatch-box.
The lid fell back the wrong side, queerly. Someone failing to force the lock had prized open the hinges, and the bag with its beautiful emerald and pearl clasp was gone—gone!
She threw a wild look round her. What could she take with her? Then she remembered what Rushworth had said. No, she mustn’t take anything. Nothing, apart from that little bolster bag, was of any real value. . . . She turned out the light, and, running blindly through the dark hall, opened the front door of the flat. She hadn’t been more than two or three minutes, after all.
She was trembling now; she felt strung-up and terrified, hardly conscious of what she was doing.
She opened wide the lift gates. They were already ajar, and then—her little feet stepped through into the void.
The man below heard a terrible scream, followed by an awful thud, thud, on the iron top of the lift.
And, at once, with a fearful sensation of dismay, he knew what he had done. He had omitted to shut the gates for the first time since he had been on this job.
For one thing, apart altogether from that little matter of the agent’s visit, he, too, was excited—he, too, had been wondering what was going to happen. Everyone in Duke of Kent Mansion had been thrilled by the news of the reprieve. And, in his excitement at seeing the heroine of the Lexton Mystery, and in his certainty that he would be up again in less than a minute, he had left the lift gates ajar.
In one rushing moment, while on his way to the house-telephone to ring up the engineer, he visualised with dreadful clearness the Coroner’s court, the censure passed on him by the jury, his dismissal from this good situation, and the consequent angry despair of his wife.
Poor, pretty, pleasant-spoken “Ivy,” as he, in the company of thousands of other men of all ages, conditions, and kinds, had fallen into the way of secretly calling her—she had brought bad luck on everybody who came in touch with her. Well! Now she wouldn’t be able to harm anybody, man or woman, any more.
The End of Her Honeymoon
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