MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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of his death, for I had seen him just before leaving town. Though I thought him far less well than the last time I had been with him, there was nothing to indicate the seriousness of his condition.”
“Yet you told the nurse that you were dismayed by the charge in his appearance?”
“I daresay I did. She thought him distinctly better, I do remember that, and I disagreed with her.”
“You did not ask to see Mr. Lexton, Dr. Gretorex. The nurse tells me your call was on Mrs. Lexton. As that lady was out, Nurse Bradfield, I understand, suggested you should see her patient, as she thought it would cheer him up.”
“That is so, and I was not with him for more than ten minutes.”
“You were, I think, alone with him during that time?”
“Yes, I was.”
“You went down to the country immediately after seeing him?”
“Yes. I went to my home in the country the same afternoon, and, as I told you just now, I only came back this morning.”
“Mr. Jervis Lexton died during the evening of the day you saw him—that is, on Tuesday, the 16th of November. His regular medical attendant, Dr. Berwick, was not satisfied as to the cause of death. A post-mortem was held on the Thursday, and revealed the fact that Lexton’s death was due to a large dose of arsenic administered some hours before death. According to Nurse Bradfield, you, Dr. Gretorex, were the last person, apart from herself and, I believe, the cook, who saw him alive. That is why I am here.”
Gretorex stared at the speaker in silence; and, gradually, all the colour ebbed from his face.
In spite of himself the inspector felt sorry for the young man. He told himself that Roger Gretorex evidently saw the game was up. Still, the doctor looked the sort of chap who would put up a fight for it.
Inspector Orpington made an almost imperceptible sign to the sergeant he had brought with him, and the man at once quietly left the room.
Orpington got up and looked out of the window until he saw his sergeant in the street outside. Then he turned and said to Gretorex:
“I sent my sergeant out of the room, doctor, because I am obliged now to ask you a question which I thought you would prefer to have put to you privately. You were, I understand, a friend of Mrs. Lexton’s as well as a friend of her husband?”
“I was on terms of friendship with them both,” and his face turned deeply red.
“But you saw much more of Mrs. Lexton than you did of her husband?”
This was a bow drawn at a venture, and it brought down the quarry.
“I sometimes escorted Mrs. Lexton to a picture gallery, and now and again we went to a theatre together. But——” he waited a moment, and the colour ebbed from his face. Though what he was going to say was true, he hated saying it—“Mr. and Mrs. Lexton always seemed on the best of terms together.”
“So I understand. But I am not seeking information as to the relations of Mr. and Mrs. Lexton. What I wish to suggest, without offence, is that you, Dr. Gretorex, would have liked to have been on closer terms of friendship with Mrs. Lexton than she thought it right to allow? I will be frank with you—Mrs. Lexton has admitted as much.”
A burning flush again rose to Gretorex’s dark face. Poor Ivy! Poor, foolish little darling! He did not feel the slightest feeling of anger with her. He only felt a choking sensation of dismay. Whatever had possessed her to say such a thing?
He answered, speaking quietly, passionlessly, “Mrs. Lexton is a very attractive woman, and a beautiful woman. It is difficult to be with her without feeling inclined to—well——” and as he hesitated, the older man smiled.
“To make love to her? I absolutely agree, Dr. Gretorex. Though she was naturally very much upset when I saw her this morning, I thought Mrs. Lexton one of the most engaging, as well as one of the best-looking, young ladies I had ever come across.”
Poor Gretorex! He would have liked to have struck Inspector Orpington across the face, and yet his own words had called up the look that had so grossly offended him on the other’s countenance, and had also provoked his remark.
“Do you admit, Dr. Gretorex, that you were very much attracted to this lady?”
“You put me in a difficult position; but I admit that perhaps I did say one or two foolish things to her.”
He was wondering, with a feeling of agonising anxiety, whether Ivy had kept his letters.
“Did Mrs. Lexton ever by chance come here, to 6 Ferry Place?”
“She came to tea on one occasion, but not alone, of course. A friend of hers, a widow called Mrs. Arundell, and a man friend of Mrs. Arundell’s, came with her.”
And then Roger Gretorex leant forward:
“I do hope that you will believe me when I tell you that any—well, feeling of attraction, was entirely on my side. When I did, I admit very foolishly, once try to tell her——”
He stopped, and the other interjected, not unkindly, “How much she attracted you?”
Gretorex nodded, and then he gasped out the lying words—“She made me feel at once she was not that kind of woman.”
“I suppose,” said the inspector with a twinkle in his eyes, “that Mrs. Lexton used that very expression.”
Gretorex tried to smile back.
“Well, yes, I believe she did. It happened a long time ago, in fact when I first made the Lextons’ acquaintance.”
Now this observation gave the direct lie to Ivy Lexton’s statement, which Orpington honestly believed had been extracted from her against her will.
“I suppose that you can suggest no reason why this man, Jervis Lexton, should have wished to take his own life?”
“No, none at all. He had just obtained an excellent job.”
“You can throw no light either, I presume, as to how the arsenic which undoubtedly caused his death can have been administered to him?”
“Not only can I throw no light on it, but I find it almost impossible to believe what my reason tells me is true—your assertion that his death was directly due to the administration of arsenic.”
The speaker’s voice was strong, assured. At last he was on firm ground.
“I take it there is a surgery attached to this house, and that you make up your own medicines?”
The inspector asked that vital question in a very quiet tone, but Gretorex realised its purport as he answered, “I do—for the most part.”
“I should like to see the surgery.”
“By all means.”
Roger Gretorex got up. Then he placed his back against the door.
Instantly Inspector Orpington, though he was a brave man, and had been in more than one very tight corner, felt a cold tremor run through him. Was this fine-looking young chap going to whip out a revolver and kill, not only himself, but also the man whose unpleasant duty it had been to show him that the game he had been so mad as to play was up?
But he need not have been afraid.
“Look here! Before I take you into my surgery, where you will find a jar of arsenic as likely as not on an open shelf—for I am a careless chap, and no one has access to the place but myself and my old charwoman—I want to say something to you. I don’t suppose you will believe me, but I wish to tell you, here and now, that I have no more idea of how poor Lexton got at the arsenic which caused his death—if it did cause it—than you have, and that the one thing of which I am quite sure is that it did not come out of my surgery.”
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