The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 12

LSIE, the cook, was an early riser and worker, but even she had been exhausted by the doings of the long day on which Harry Garlett had been arrested. So she came down later than usual the next morning.

It was still rather dark, so she turned on the electric light, and, after she had lit the fire and put on a kettle of water, she began bustling about the kitchen.

All at once, and for the first time in her life, she gave a suppressed scream, for three pale faces were glued to the kitchen window, and for an awful moment she thought they were the spirits of dead men.

Then the woman's strong good sense asserted itself. Spirits don't wear great coats and billy-cock hats. Looking straight into the three staring faces, she hurried to the front door and unlocked it. At once the three men faced about and stood before her, and, in the hazy morning light, she saw the motor which had brought them standing outside in the road.

The youngest of the strange-looking visitors, a “cocky-looking young man,” so Elsie told herself, took off his hat and held out his hand; but Elsie kept her hands down.

“Is it the doctor you're wanting?” she said, sharply. “And what d'you mean by behaving so unmannerly? You gave me the fright of my life—if it's any pleasure to you to know it.” And then, to her indignation and surprise, the cocky young man bent a little forward, took up her right hand and pressed into it a pound note.

“We want five minutes' talk with Miss Jean Bower,” he said in a husky whisper. “Don't think we're going to frighten the young lady, or insult her in any way—we only want a few moments, which will be all to her advantage. Can you conveniently manage that for us?”

Elsie crunched up the pound note and flung it straight at his face. To her regret it did not touch either of his eyes, it only hit his nose.

“How dare you offer me your dirty money?” she exclaimed. “You make yourself scarce, young man, or I'll go and ring up the police!”

“The police won't be able to help you,” but he spoke with less assurance. “We have a perfect right to try to see this young lady. In fact, as I hinted just now, it will be better for her, and better for Harry Garlett, too, for her just to see us and tell us her side of the story. We each represent a big London paper.—Crawford?” A tall, fair youth stepped forward. “Let me introduce the Live Wire!”

Elsie could not but feel thrilled. This was the first time she had ever seen a newspaper man.

“Now then, Angus—don't be shy!”

The oldest man of the three, in answer to that remark, moved a little nearer.

“I think it will be to the poor girl's advantage to see us,” he said gently.

“He's the Sunbeam—a bad poet in his rare moments of leisure, and, I take it, a fellow countryman of yours, Mrs. Housekeeper!”

There was something boyish about the impudent young fellow, and Elsie unconsciously melted a little. Also she had been impressed by the few words uttered by “Angus.” There might be something in what he said.

“You all go up to the village,” she said suddenly, “and put in an hour at 'The Pig and Whistle.' Then you come back here. By then I'll have told the doctor what you say. Maybe he'll let Miss Jean see ye.”

The three men consulted together, and then the man who had not yet spoken, he of the Live Wire, came forward.

“Look here,” he began, “if we do that—I admit we've no business to come and disturb you so early—can we rely on you that no one will get in before us? I and my friends here came down from London last night, determined to be the first in the field. All we ask is some kind of statement from Miss Bower. She'll have to give one sooner or later to the press, and we represent three big papers. We don't want to be let down by some fellow who stayed in bed up to the last minute and had a good breakfast before starting on this job.”

“I think I'll go so far as to promise ye that no one else will see the doctor or Miss Jean before you come back. Will that satisfy ye?”

And then the Scotsman came close up to her.

“Look here,” he said in a low voice, “I'm sure you could tell me something that would be worth while hearing? What sort of a girl is this young lady who's brought all the trouble about? You must know the truth—if any one knows it.”

Elsie looked at him shrewdly.

“Look here, my bonny man,” she ordered, “you just go and join the other two. You won't get anything more out of me because you come from Aberdeen, and don't you be expecting of it!”

“Though you're so unkind to me, I'll be kind to you,” he answered significantly. “See that every door and window in this house is tight shut this morning. There's a swarm of reporters coming out from Grendon. The public is just thirsting for a good murder mystery,” and then he ran off to join the other two, who were already in the car.

Hurrying through her kitchen Elsie slipped the bolt in the back door which gave into the scullery, and glad was she that she had done so when a few minutes later there came a loud knock on the bolted door. She started so violently that she nearly dropped the kettle of boiling water she had taken off the fire.

But it was only the milkman, who had been amazed to find the door locked against him. He and Elsie were old cronies, but when he ventured on just a word—and it was a kindly word, too—with regard to Miss Jean, she answered him so roughly that he was quite offended.

“You needn't bite my head off,” he said in an injured tone. “Nobody talks of anything else in Terriford, and no more they won't till that fine gentleman, Mr. Harry Garlett, has been strung up. I'd go a good way to see 'im hanged, that I would! Think of all the trouble he's brought on your poor young lady—to say nothing of the good doctor and his missus.”

“And what if I say that I believe Mr. Garlett to be innocent?” asked Elsie pugnaciously.

“I should say your 'eart, cook, was better than your understanding,” he answered tolerantly.

It was an hour later, nearly nine o'clock, when Mrs. Maclean touched her still sleeping husband. She had got up at the usual time, for all that they had talked till two in the morning, debating every point of the mysterious and terrible business with which they were now so closely and so pain fully connected.

“Jock?” she said in a low voice, “it's time to get up.”

He opened his eyes.

“What's that you're saying? I wish you'd let me sleep a little longer, Jenny.”

“Well, so I should have done” and then she stopped short.

Walking across to the window, she drew the blind a little way up. “Get out of bed for a minute, and come over here,” she exclaimed.

Together, in silence, husband and wife gazed out on what was to them a most surprising sight. The drive up to their front door, as well as the road beyond, was blocked with vehicles—old-fashioned flys and motors, closed and open. In one of the cars a man was standing with a huge camera bracketed on the house.

“My God!” exclaimed Dr. Maclean, and then with a groan, “I suppose we must expect this kind of thing, Jenny, till we've got that child away.”

“Ay,” she answered. “This will surely show her that she can't stay here. But I'm glad she's having her breakfast in bed this morning.”

As they gazed down they saw one man after another came up to their front door, try the handle, look up at the knocker and then walk away.

“Whatever can Elsie have done to prevent their knocking and ringing the house down?”

“She has put a notice on the knocker,” said Mrs. Maclean, in a low voice. “Three London newspaper men were here at seven, it seems, but she persuaded them to go away. They told her there would be a lot of men out by nine o'clock, so she tied a label on the knocker, with 'Please do not knock or ring bell' written on it. But she has one of the kitchen windows open, poor woman, though it's a bitterly cold day, and she just parleys with them through it. We shall have a lot to thank Elsie for, Jock, when all this trouble's over.”

“I'll get up now,” he said, shivering not so much with cold as with horror at the thought of what did, indeed, lie before them.

“I've got your bath nice and hot.”

He took her hand and patted it. “Now you go down and tell Elsie that I'll deal with these gentry as soon as I'm up.”

“I've arranged for your breakfast to be brought up here on a tray. You may as well wait till you've had that.”

“Perhaps I might,” he agreed.

“They're all round about the house,” she went on, “their faces just glued to the windows trying to get a glimpse of Jean.”

The doctor had just finished his hasty breakfast when there came a knock at the bedroom door and Elsie appeared.

“Please, sir,” she said in a hesitating voice, “the three men who came very early this morning have come back. They're from big papers, and I'm thinking 'twould be best for ye to see them. I promised no one should see ye before them.”

He looked at her sternly.

“You had no business to make such a promise, Elsie. I do not wish to see anybody.”

“I'm afraid that ye'll be well advised to see them,” she said in a subdued tone; “their newspapers are read a lot in these parts, sir.”

He got up. “You're a wise woman, Elsie. I'll take your advice. Are they in my study?”

“Oh, no, sir. They'd be seen there. I've got them in the scullery.”

And it was standing in the cold, dark scullery, in which he had not been for years, that Dr. Maclean confronted the three inquisitive strangers, his anger breaking out afresh that he should be subjected to so horrible and degrading an ordeal.

As to the one thing they all so eagerly desired, he was absolutely firm.

“It is quite impossible for you to see my niece. And if you did see her, there is nothing which she could say to you that I cannot say. Ask me any questions you like, and I will try to answer them truthfully.”

And then they did ask him questions, foolish questions and wise questions, dangerous questions and harmless questions, clever questions and stupid questions! The doctor was too new to the game to ask them to read over to him what they had been writing down so busily. But at last, with infinite relief, he shook hands with each of the three and let them out, one by one, into the little yard from which ran a separate way to the high road.

He was going through the kitchen, when they were startled by a loud, imperative double knock on the knocker which, so far, no one had touched that morning. The front door bell also pealed through the house.

“You wait just inside here, sir. I'll go to the door. I've got it on the chain. No one can force their way in.”

Elsie purposely left the kitchen door open, and soon the doctor heard a stern voice say:

“Please take off the chain and admit me at once. I'm a police inspector sent down by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Ive ' [sic]come to take statements from Miss Jean Bower and Dr. Maclean.”

The tone of the speaker was not pleasant. But a moment later, to Dr. Maclean's relief, he heard the same voice apparently addressing a small crowd of men who had gathered round him. They could be seen through the window of the kitchen edging closer and closer to the now open front door.

“If you newspaper people don't show a little more good feeling and decent regard in such a case as this we shall have a Bill put through Parliament making it illegal to take any photograph or any interview in connection with any murder case as yet untried! That wouldn't suit some of you, I reckon? There's nothing doing this morning, apart from what I've come to do, so I advise you to be off.”

Dr. Maclean heard Elsie's voice: “If you'll come into the doctor's consulting room, sir, I'll go and tell him that you're here.”

“I should like to see Miss Bower.”

“Miss Bower's still in bed sir.”

“I shall have to see her in bed, if she's not inclined to get up.”

“I'm sure she'll get up, sir. Will you please come this way?”

Very different from James Kentworthy was the man whom the doctor greeted a moment later. He was tall and thin, with a clever stern face.

“My name is Fradelle, Dr. Maclean. And it is my duty to take from you and from Miss Jean Bower the statements which will be used by the Crown in the forthcoming inquiry concerning the death of Mrs. Emily Garlett.”

“I will, of course, put all the information in my power before you,” answered the doctor quietly. “But is it really necessary that you should take a statement from my niece?”

“Most certainly it is. I understand that Miss Bower is in bed. That does not mean, I presume, that you consider her too ill to give me a statement to-day?”

“No,” said Dr. Maclean, “I could not honestly say that. But the girl is terribly distressed, Mr. Fradelle.” He hesitated and then added, “She believes Mr. Garlett to be absolutely innocent.”

“So I understand,” said the other dryly.

An hour later, Dr. Maclean, getting out of the chair where he had sat while he was being interrogated, exclaimed. “I will fetch my niece, Mr. Fradelle.”

The early morning mist had cleared away; it was a brilliant sunny day, so brilliant as to seem to mock the doctor's feeling of despondency and distress.

Every question put to him had seemed deadly in its import—how different from that first interrogation from James Kentworthy!

The most relentless duel of words—and a duel it had been between those two men, shut up in that cozy, shabby, consulting room—had concerned the strawberries eaten by Mrs. Garlett the evening preceding the night of her death. At first the doctor had not seen the trend of the younger man's questions, as he had assented, without much thought, to a statement that Mrs. Garlett had been given the strawberries by her husband.

Then suddenly he had exclaimed, “You realize that I'm not speaking from knowledge, but only from hearsay, Mr. Fradelle?”

The other seemed taken aback. “How do you mean, doctor?”

“I was simply told by Miss Cheale that Garlett had probably given them to the poor lady.”

“Even so, I presume that you have no doubt Garlett did give his wife the strawberries?”

“Well”

The doctor hesitated a moment; he was tired and somewhat confused. At last he replied evasively: “Garlett strongly denies that he even saw the little dish of strawberries, and he further asserts that, knowing how delicate was his wife's digestion, nothing would have made him give them to her so late in the evening.”

Mr. Fradelle frowned. He consulted his notes.

“There seems very little doubt that the arsenic was administered in the sugar spread over the strawberries. Still, from what you now say, there seems to be no direct evidence at all as to who gave the strawberries to the poisoned woman?”

“The one person who could give you authentic information as to what happened on the evening before Mrs. Garlett's death is Miss Agatha Cheale, who was Mrs. Garlett's housekeeper-companion.”

“I hope to see this Miss Cheale as soon as I am back in London,” said Mr. Fradelle. “I made two attempts to see her the day before yesterday. I tried at the place where she has a flat, and then I went to the office where she works, but I was unfortunate both times. I take it to be unlikely that the defence have got hold of her yet?”

“They may have done so,” said the doctor dubiously, “She was on very good terms with both Mr. and Mrs. Garlett. In fact Miss Cheale is, in some way, related to Mr. Garlett. I think it would be very painful to her to be among the witnesses for the prosecution—though not more painful, I feel sure, than it is to myself,” he concluded ruefully.

“I take it Miss Jean Bower will be an unwilling witness. Dr. Maclean?”

“I know that my niece will be a truthful witness” he looked rather straight at the thin tight-lipped man who sat with his back to the light, in shadow.

“I trust so, though a woman witness is seldom as truthful—perhaps I ought to say as straightforward—as would be a man in her place. Too often your honest, truthful woman witness is such a fool that, without meaning it, she gets confused and begins to lie!”

“My niece is not at all that sort of woman,” said the doctor coldly.

Perhaps the last words uttered by Dr. Maclean prejudiced the stranger, for the glance he cast on the pale, sad-faced girl who a few moments later entered the room was far from kindly.

Jean Bower walked over to her uncle's writing-table and sat down in his big chair.

She looked such a little slip of a thing that even a harder man than was Mr. Fradelle might have been moved by her look of fragility, deep sadness, and youth. But, like so many clever people, the Crown inquisitor was one of those men who find it difficult to change their minds. He had made up his mind that Jean Bower was the villain of the piece. He felt convinced that it was for love of this girl that Garlett had committed a cruel crime. Far from having any wish to spare her, he hoped to convict her lover, if not herself, out of her own mouth.

“Miss Bower,” he began, in a rasping, unpleasant tone, “I must ask you to give me your whole attention, and I want no wordy explanations. What is required are straight, simple answers to what I think you will admit to be straight, simple questions.”

Jean bent her head. She felt not only frightened, but utterly lonely and forlorn.

“You are, I believe, aware that you are to be among the witnesses called by the prosecution, that is, by the Crown, at the forthcoming trial of Henry Garlett for the murder of his wife. I want you to understand quite clearly that you will be examined on what you tell me to-day—examined, that is, by the prosecution and cross-examined by the defence.”

Jean Bower was in the condition in which many a poor wretch must have been during those periods of the world's history when such an examination as she was about to undergo was always carried out with the aid of physical torture. While determined to say nothing that could implicate the man she loved, she felt too oppressed and bewildered to make full use of her wits.

He looked at the paper he held in his hand. “You became secretary to the Etna China Company last April? I take it that you were already acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Garlett before you obtained that appointment?”

“I did not know Mrs. Garlett,” she answered in a toneless voice. But I had seen Mr. Garlett two or three times. My aunt had taken me to call on him at the Etna China factory, and I had seen him walking about the village.”

“Come, Miss Bower”—his voice was at once stern and contemptuous—“you are, I understand, Dr. and Mrs. Maclean's adopted daughter? Do you mean to tell me that you were not acquainted with the lady who was your uncle's principal patient?”

“I lived with my father in the north of England till last February, and though I always accompanied Dr. and Mrs. Maclean on their holidays, I had not been in Terriford since I was a child.”

She looked at him quite straight.

“While I was doing war work I took no holidays. My father worked himself literally to death, as did so many men who were too old to join up. After the war he became an invalid, and I nursed him till his death, just a year ago.”

“I see. By a strange chapter of accidents you had not been to Terriford for many years till you came here to live last winter?”

“That is so.”

“But after you'd become secretary to the Etna China Company I take it you saw Mr. Garlett constantly, he being managing director of the business?”

“Yes, I used to see him quite often—not every day, but on most days.” She nearly added—“Most of my work lay with Mr. Dodson,” but something made her refrain from even making that true statement of fact.

“Now, Miss Bower”—he waited for some seconds, while she remained silent—“I'm going to ask you a question which I fear will be very disagreeable to you. I cannot force you to answer it truly, but I advise you in your own interest to do so.”

She said nothing, and he went on:

“Did Mr. Garlett, during the month that elapsed between your coming to the works and his wife's death, ever make any improper advances to you?”

Twice she opened her mouth to speak, and twice the one word “Never!” she wished to utter, would not come.

She was bitterly angered and shocked by the blunt question, and to the man who gazed into her now flushed and quivering face her silence proclaimed, if not her own guilt, then certainly that of the man who would soon be on his trial for murder.

Perhaps because he felt he had scored a great point he went on in a kindlier tone:

“I'm sorry to have to press you about this matter, but it is far better you should tell me now than have it dragged out of you when you are in the witness-box. I suppose I may take it, Miss Bower, that there were”—he hesitated, then brought out awkwardly the words—“love passages, no doubt of a comparatively harmless kind, between yourself and Mr. Garlett?”

She started to her feet.

“There were no love passages,” she cried passionately, “none, none at all! I hardly knew Mr. Garlett. Oh! do believe that! Indeed, indeed it's the truth!” More calmly she added: “The cricket season was beginning, and he was constantly away from home.”

“And yet you told me just now that you saw him most days at the factory?”

“He used to come in for a few moments to see his letters. I was generally present when he did come in, with the man who really managed the business—Mr. Dodson.”

He glanced down at the paper he was holding.

“And yet,” he observed, “slight as was your acquaintance with your employer, you walked back with him from Grendon to Terriford the day before Mrs. Garlett's death. Or do you deny having done that?”

She sat down again.

“Did I?” she said falteringly. And then she exclaimed—while he told himself that she was perhaps the best actress he had ever encountered in the course of his work—“Yes, I did! I remember it now. We came in to Miss Cheale's sitting room just when she had dismissed a servant. But for that I should not have remembered having walked home with Mr. Garlett.”

“Now that your memory has become more clear, Miss Bower, I want you to remember something else. At what time—I mean about what date—was the word 'marriage' first mentioned by Mr. Garlett with respect to yourself?” He leaned forward. “Was it before Mrs. Garlett's death, or immediately after it?”

Again she looked at him quite straight. She could see his shadowed face—to her it was the face of a sneering devil.

“The first time we actually spoke of our marriage,” she gave a quick, convulsive sigh, “was in answer to a question asked by my aunt the day after we had come to an understanding, early in November.”

“Come, come!” he exclaimed roughly, “that is what a mere man calls quibbling, Miss Bower. You know what I mean!”

“I do not know what you mean. If you mean did Mr. Garlett ever make love to me before his wife's death, I answer, 'No, never!' He has told me since that instead of liking me, as many a man may like a young woman in his employment, he disliked me. He thought me too—too—” she sought for a word, and then faltered out the word “'self-assured.' The person who liked me, who tried to make love to me, was old Mr. Dodson.”

She covered her face with her hands. “Why do you force me to say these horrible, degrading things?” she asked brokenly.

He felt embarrassed, even perhaps slightly ashamed.

“You are making my task difficult, Miss Bower. Believe me, I have no wish to make you say anything either horrible or degrading. But it is my duty to ask you certain painful questions.”

He went on, in a more conciliatory tone. “I am to take it, then, that Henry Garlett never made love to you at all till the day when he became engaged to you early last November?”

“Yes,” she said, looking up, “that is the truth.”

“You ask me to believe”—but there was no jeering touch in his voice now—“that Mr. Garlett asked you to become his wife with no preliminary love passages at all?”

“Yes,” she said steadily. “I ask you to believe that, because it is true. After Mr. Garlett's return, when we had worked together for some two months, seeing each other constantly, there came a day—a day”

She could not go on.

He said quickly, “You mean that there came a day when he realized that he loved you—that is what you want me to understand?”

She bent her head.

He got up and went and stood opposite the writing table, so that for the first time she was able to see him quite clearly.

“I formally ask you if Mr. Garlett ever made love to you before his wife's death, or ever spoke to you of marriage till within the last few weeks?”

“He never did.”

“You will be ready to swear to both those statements in the witness box?”

“Yes.”

He came round to where she was standing.

“Will you read what I have written?” he asked. “As you see, it has boiled down to very little, but I wish to be quite sure that I have got everything quite correct?”

She read down the two sheets of bold, clear handwriting.

“Yes,” she said, “that is exactly what I have said.”

She was surprised that he had put it all down so fairly, so truthfully.

“If you wish to modify or alter anything I have written down here, I will come and take any fresh statement you may wish to make. You understand that perjury is a most serious criminal offence?”