MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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He looked across at his wife. “It’s from Mrs. Lexton. She says her husband’s better, and that I need not go there tomorrow. That’s a comfort!”
Idly he took out what that other envelope contained. Dr. Lancaster’s prescriptions might give him a clue as to what the old fellow really thought of Lexton’s mysterious condition.
“Hallo!” he exclaimed in a tone of extreme surprise, for what was written on a wide sheet of thin, common paper, folded in eight, ran:
Friday night.
My own precious love (for that you are and always will be)—
Of course I quite see your point of view. Indeed I absolutely agree in a sense with every word that you have written to me. We have done wrong in allowing ourselves to love one another, and when I say “we” I really mean I Roger Gretorex, not you, Ivy Lexton. You were, you are, the purest and best woman I have ever known.
I can swear before God that, had you been even moderately happy, I would have killed myself rather than have disturbed your peace. My only excuse, not for having loved you—of that I am not at all ashamed—but for having let you know that I loved you, is that when we first met you had begun to find how bitter a loveless life can be.
You say you feel you ought never to come again to Ferry Place. I bow to your decision, dearest, and I will say that you are right in having come to that decision, even though it causes me agony. Thank you for saying I may still write to you, and that you will sometimes telephone to me.
Your devoted Roger Gretorex.
Berwick read the letter right through. Then he handed it to his wife.
“Janey? I want you to tell me what you think of this! Both of the writer, I mean, and of the woman to whom this letter was written?”
Slowly, with her husband closely watching her, and feeling, it must be admitted, ashamed of what she was doing, Janey Berwick read Roger Gretorex’s letter to Ivy Lexton right through.
Then she looked across at her husband, and her face bore an expression that a little surprised him. He had expected it to be filled with the wrath and disgust he felt himself.
“This is written with a man’s heart’s blood,” she said at last. “There must be more in this little Mrs. Lexton than you think, Angus. Surely this letter cannot be in answer to one sent by a silly, frivolous woman?”
“I wonder,” he said gloomily, “what their real relations have been. This letter might, of course, mean one of two things.”
She was reading the letter once more, slowly and carefully. At last she looked up. “I am inclined to think——” then she stopped and exclaimed, “I don’t know what to think, Angus!”
“What were you going to say just now?” he asked quickly.
“I was going to say that I’m inclined to think that their friendship has not been innocent. That was what I was going to say; but even in these last few moments I’ve turned right round! Now I would say in all sincerity, my dear, that I think it very probable that there’s been nothing but passionate love on his side, and I suppose grateful affection on hers. She evidently doesn’t care for her husband; so much is quite clear.”
“No one would ever think so, from her way of speaking of him. The only time I’ve ever seen them together they seemed on the most affectionate terms. He was calling her ‘darling’ all the time, and she called him ‘dear old boy,’ and seemed genuinely very much worried about him.”
“At any rate she’s now made up her mind to do the right thing,” said Janey Berwick gravely. “One can’t but honour her for that, when one remembers——”
She smiled, a curious little smile.
“Yes, my dear? Out with it!”
“After all, it is very delightful to be loved,” she said softly, “and this poor young chap evidently adores her.”
“Now comes a difficult question: what am I to do with this letter? I wonder if I ought to send it back to her——”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t send it back to her. If she’s the sort of woman you’ve described her to be, it’s quite likely she’ll never discover that she sent it you by mistake.”
“Ought I to put it in the fire?”
“I don’t think you ought to do that. It doesn’t belong to you. You’ve no right to destroy it. Wait a day or two, dearest, and see what happens. She may ask you if you have got the letter? Then you can give it back to her. I’ll keep it if you like, Angus. We’ll put it in an envelope and I’ll address it to myself. If I keep it in the secret drawer of my old desk over there, only you and I will know where it is.”
Chapter seven
A long, long week went by, and it was now the evening of the 16th of November. Nurse Bradfield had been out for an hour after lunch, and while she was out Ivy had “looked after” Jervis. She made a point of doing this at some time of her day, though it was always over-full.
Being both good humoured and good natured, Nurse Bradfield fell in easily with any plan proposed by her patient’s wife. She had become very fond of Jervis Lexton, and, though aware of Ivy Lexton’s selfishness and innate frivolity and levity, she was yet attracted, in spite of herself, by the younger woman’s beauty, and what was in very truth an exceptional charm of manner, and what some of Ivy’s friends called her cheeriness.
Nurse Bradfield would have been surprised indeed could she have looked into Ivy Lexton’s mind, and seen how often and how anxiously that mind was occupied with herself.
Often the nurse would be touched and gratified by the consideration with which she was treated, and her comfort studied. It was no wonder that she, on her side, never even thought of insisting on her right to a certain amount of rest and exercise. She was no longer a young woman. She had few friends in London, and this day nursing job with a pleasant young couple was an agreeable interlude in her often anxious and hard-working life.
So on this early afternoon Ivy and Jervis had what her patient afterwards weakly described to his nurse as a quiet, nice little time together.
Then Ivy had gone out to a bridge-party, and now she had just come in, leaving herself barely time enough to dress and go out again.
To the young day-maid who hovered, timidly, admiringly, about her, Mrs. Lexton sadly expressed her regret at being in too great a hurry to see Mr. Lexton, even for a minute.
Hurry was the word today. She was hurrying over her dressing as she never hurried before, and, while she made up with feverish haste, there was a strange look on her lovely face. She even noticed that she did not look “quite the thing,” as she gazed at herself in the looking-glass, and she tried, but it was a failure, to smile, reassuringly, at herself.
She had turned away from the dressing-table and had just slipped her frock over her head, when there was a knock at the bedroom door, and Nurse Bradfield came in.
“I feel anxious about Mr. Lexton,” she said in a worried voice. “I don’t like his colour. Will you ‘phone for the doctor, Mrs. Lexton? I hate leaving Mr. Lexton, even for a moment!”
Ivy of course murmured a word of assent. Then it was as if her heart bounded in her breast. Had it come at last—her order of release?
She felt a spasm of terror shake her being. Also a sensation of abject fear of hard-faced, cold-mannered Dr. Berwick.
This morning she had discovered the envelope containing the prescriptions which she believed she had sent the doctor a few days ago. And as she