MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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“I see,” she said in a dull tone. “Then you are half inclined to believe that Roger did do this terrible thing—for love, I suppose, of you?”
And there flashed a look of awful condemnation over the mother’s worn face.
“Please don’t say that, Mrs. Gretorex! I never said that I thought poor Roger really did it!” cried Ivy hysterically. “Perhaps Jervis did commit suicide, but, as nurse says, if he did poison himself, where did he get the stuff to do it with? Also Roger was so fearfully gone on me. It’s all so very, very strange!”
Oh, why had Mrs. Gretorex come here, just to torture her and frighten her? It was too cruel!
Then Roger Gretorex’s mother did make to the woman who stood before her, this woman whom her son loved to his undoing, a desperate appeal, though she worded what she had to say quietly enough.
“I understand that you’re going to be the principal witness for the Crown at my son’s trial?”
Ivy began to cry.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Isn’t it dreadful—dreadful? As if I hadn’t gone through enough without having to go through that too!”
“On what you say,” went on Mrs. Gretorex firmly, “may depend Roger’s life or death. After all, you and he were dear friends?”
She uttered that last sentence in a tone she strove to make conciliatory.
Ivy stopped crying. Then Roger hadn’t given her away, even to a very little extent, to his mother? It was a great relief to know that.
“I implore you to guard your tongue when you are in the witness-box,” went on Mrs. Gretorex.
“I will! I will indeed——”
“Can you think of no natural explanation with regard to the utterly mysterious thing which happened?”
Her eyes were fixed imploringly on the beautiful little face of this frivolous—Mrs. Gretorex believed mindless—woman, whom Roger still loved so desperately.
“I’ve thought, and thought, and thought——” whispered Ivy.
And then for the fourth time during this brief interview she uttered the words, “It’s all so strange.”
As, a few minutes later, she walked down Kensington High Street, still full of bustling, happy people on shopping intent, Roger Gretorex’s mother was in an agony of doubt, wondering whether she had done well or ill in thus forcing herself on Mrs. Jervis Lexton.
Again and again there echoed in her ear the silly, vulgar little phrase: “Roger was so fearfully gone on me.”
Gone on her? Alas, that had been, that was still, only too true. Even now his one thought seemed to be how to spare Ivy pain, and, above all, disgrace.
She stepped up into a crowded omnibus at the corner of Chapel Street, and for a while she had to stand. Then a girl gave up her seat to her, and heavily she sat down.
Who, looking however closely at Mrs. Gretorex sitting there, her worn face calm and still, would have thought her other than an old-fashioned, highly bred lady, leading the placid life of her fortunate class, that class which even now is financially secure, and seems to be so far apart from and above the sordid ills and anxieties of ordinary humanity?
Yet there can be little doubt that Roger Gretorex’s mother was the most miserable and the most unhappy woman of the many miserable and unhappy women in London that night. To the anguish, which was now her perpetual lot, was added a feeling that she had done, if anything, harm, in forcing herself on Mrs. Lexton.
“I’ve done no good!” she exclaimed as she walked into the sitting-room of the lodgings in Ebury Street where she and Enid Dent had taken refuge, after spending two or three days with a kind friend who, they had soon discovered though no word had been said, considered Roger almost certainly guilty.
The girl looked dismayed, for it had been at her suggestion that Mrs. Gretorex had gone to Duke of Kent Mansion.
Enid Dent now felt convinced that Ivy Lexton held the key to the mystery of Jervis Lexton’s death. She had never seen this woman whom she now knew that Roger loved, but she had formed a fairly clear and true impression of Ivy’s nature and character. Hatred, as well as love, has sometimes the power of tearing asunder the most skilfully woven web of lies.
And then there began for them all what seemed an interminable time of waiting. And all those nearly concerned with the case, apart from Ivy herself, felt almost a sense of relief when the winter day at last dawned which was to see Roger Gretorex stand his trial at the Old Bailey.
Chapter Fifteen
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 tomorrow—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.