The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 17

EAN walked on, Harry Garlett's letter, still unopened, in her hand, till she came to a little wood which she knew would be almost certainly deserted.

Once in the now leafless wilderness, she began walking slowly, her feet sinking into the sodden, fallen leaves, longing and yet dreading to know what Harry had written to her.

At last she slowly opened the square, official-looking envelope. Written across the top were the words: “Read and passed by J. C. Brackbury, Governor of H. M. Prison, Grendon.”

She was used to that sentence, but somehow to-day the pain and shame that such a letter as she supposed she was going to read, an intimate love-letter, should have been seen by any other eyes than her own, brought a new anguish.

She unfolded the big, plain sheet of notepaper, and at once she saw that there was no beginning or end to the letter. The fact that this was so gave her a quick, frightened feeling of foreboding.

Jean Bower put the letter back in its envelope and thrust it in her bosom. She walked through the wood on to the now deserted stretch of downland that had been turned into a golf course by the enterprising municipality of Grendon.

Beyond the course there were a few pretty houses which now, in the deepening twilight, were being lighted up, and all at once Jean, in the midst of her agonized and bewildered questionings, remembered that in one of these houses lived Mr. and Mrs. Toogood and their only daughter. She remembered having gone there last August with her aunt to call on Mrs. Toogood.

She quickened her steps, and striking across the links, soon reached Mr. Toogood's house.

In answer to her ring, a maid opened the door.

“Is Mr. Toogood back yet from his office? Could I see him?” asked Jean. “I won't keep him five minutes, but it's very urgent!”

“The master never sees any one on business out of office hours.”

Then, suddenly, the young woman realized who the visitor was, and a thrill of joyful excitement ran through her.

“Why, it's Miss Bower, isn't it? I'm sure Mr. Toogood will see you, miss.”

She led the way to a comfortable-looking library. A big fire was burning, and gratefully Jean sank into an easy chair.

Burning with curiosity and excitement, the girl hurried off to the dining room, where her master, while enjoying his tea, had been telling his wife and daughter every detail of Harry Garlett's appearance before the magistrates and his committal for trial.

The maid was not lacking in a certain dramatic instinct, so when she came into the dining room she shut the door and said demurely:

“A young lady to see you, sir.”

Mr. Toogood looked up sharply. “No one on business, I hope?”

“It's Miss Jean Bower,” announced the girl in a hissing whisper. “She do look miserable! I though you'd see her, sir. She only wants to see you for five minutes, and says it's very urgent.”

“Jean Bower!” exclaimed Mrs. Toogood. “And all by herself? You're sure the doctor's not with her?”

“Of course I'm sure, ma'am.”

And then Miss Toogood broke in: “I wonder what she's come to say! I wonder whether she poisoned Mrs. Garlett, and whether she's come to confess it to Father? Jimmy Danetree says that they ought to have called her as a witness this morning”

“I forbid you to discuss Harry Garlett's affair with young men,” interposed her father sharply.

He was on his way to the door, and though he too felt excited, he thought he knew what Jean Bower had come to tell him. Indeed he was sure that she had come to say that her engagement was at an end, and to ask him to make that fact known as widely as possible.

He walked into his study and held out his hand.

“Well, Miss Bower? I'm glad that you've come here to-night, instead of to my office to-morrow morning. Now that's the very first time I've ever said that to any client of mine—and I feel quite sure I shall never say it again! Sit down, my dear young lady; I think I know the business that has brought you,” and his voice became very kindly.

“I don't think you can know why I have come,” she said in a low voice.

“I think I do, for I had a talk with Mr. Garlett just before we went into the police court this morning. He told me he'd written you a letter which he was going to ask your uncle to deliver in case he was committed for trial. He did not show me the letter, but he told me what was in it.”

“Eve come to ask you a very important question,” said Jean in a firm tone. She fixed her eyes on the shrewd face of the man standing before her.

“I ask you—and I want you to answer as if you were on oath, Mr. Toogood—will it do Harry good, or will it do him harm, if I break my engagement now?”

The lawyer felt annoyed, as well as very much taken aback. For one thing, he could not tell by her manner whether she wished his answer to be “yes” or “no.” So he answered her evasively:

“I know that Mr. Garlett strongly wishes the engagement to be broken off, Miss Bower. He spoke very frankly to me this morning, and he said he hoped with all his heart that you would do as he wished.”

“I realize all that,” she answered, with what was for her a curious and most unusual touch of irritation in her voice. “But I am not thinking of what he wishes me to do. What I want you to tell me is what will be best for him.”

And then suddenly she saw into Mr. Toogood's mind.

“Surely,” she exclaimed, “you don't think that I wish to break our engagement?”

With a pitiful little smile she added slowly: “To do that would break my heart, but I will, if you tell me that's it's honestly the best thing for Harry.”

He was so touched, so surprised at her woods, that he felt he would like to take her in his arms and hug her.

What a splendid girl she was, and that even if she had allowed her employer, the husband of poor ailing Emily Garlett, to make love to her in his wife's lifetime! She deserved to know the truth—the real truth.

“About that,” he said decidedly, “I can set your mind at rest. Though I should not like to be quoted as having said it, I haven't a doubt that, in as far as public opinion plays any part in a great law case, the fact that you have remained faithful to Mr. Garlett can do him nothing but good.”

Jean sighed convulsively, and tears of relief began running down her face.

“We take our stand on Garlett's absolute innocence,” continued the lawyer. “We wish to prove that he hardly realized your existence till some months after his wife's death. That is the point on which you will have to try and convince judge, jury, and the very clever gentleman who will lead the Prosecution for the Crown. Now it is obvious to me that if you set out to do that as the woman who loves the prisoner in the dock, and absolutely believes in his innocence, that fact will give your words far more weight than if you come into court admitting that you have broken off your engagement.”

“Then why,” she whispered, “did he write me this letter? In spite of the loving things he said in it toward the end, I felt a sort of dreadful doubt, as if he no longer cared for me”

“No longer cared for you?” exclaimed Mr. Toogood, wiping his spectacles. “Why, my dear young lady, it's entirely for your sake that he wrote that letter. Didn't you understand that? He won't be allowed to see any of the newspapers after to-day, but up to to-day the Governor stretched a point. But it was no kindness, for some of the things the papers printed made him feel simply frantic. He was awfully upset at some article which said that you thought his wife had committed suicide. He wanted to have it contradicted!”

“I never saw any statement of that sort,” said Jean astonished. “I can hardly believe they can have dared to say such a thing. Of course I feel sure that Mrs. Garlett did not commit suicide.”

“Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. Quite frequently it happens that a man takes his own life when every one round him would have sworn him utterly incapable of doing such a thing. If that is often true of a man, it is truer of a woman, for your sex is far more sensitive than mine, Miss Bower.”

“May I write an answer to Harry here?” said Jean.

He put a sheet of paper before her on his writing table, and taking up a pencil she wrote quickly:

“And now,” observed Mr. Toogood, “I'll just put my boots on again, and see you home.”

“Indeed, you'll do nothing of the kind!” exclaimed Jean, and this time she really smiled. “I'm not a bit afraid. Besides, it isn't really dark.”

She took his hand and squeezed it.

“You've never made anybody happier than you've made me to-day,” she said.

When Jean Bower slipped quietly back into Bonnie Doon, she amazed them all—those three kind folk who felt so unhappy and anxious about her, her uncle, her aunt, and Elsie—by being bright, cheerful, and full of courage and hope.

After a few minutes she went up to her bedroom. The writing table there was one of the few things she had brought from her old home. She went over it, and taking up an envelope, slipped Harry Garlett's letter inside it. Then she wrote outside: “In case of my death I wish this envelope to be put in my coffin, over my heart”—and then she placed it in a drawer where she knew it would be found at once, should she die while still an inmate of the house where she had known such intense joy and such bitter sorrow.

After the first burst of excitement following the day of Harry Garlett's appearance before the magistrates and his being committed for trial, all mention of the Terriford Mystery dropped gradually out of the newspapers; for weeks, sometimes even months, elapse between the committal of a man charged with murder and the actual opening of the legal drama which is to decide whether he is to enjoy life and freedom, or suffer a hideous and shameful death.

But though from the point of view of the public the case temporarily disappeared, there were still innumerable men and women all over England who seemed to find it impossible to banish the story from their minds. Many of the people with whom Jean had drifted into acquaintance during her life, and especially during the course of her war work, wrote to her with either strong interest or sympathy. But she received other letters of a very different character, and terrible letters some of them were, so venomous and cruel in their wording that they seemed as if inspired by personal hatred. A typical example ran as follows:

Of the letters written to her by people known to her there was only one that seemed to bring a touch of comfort to her sore heart.

It came from a girl, Rachel North by name, with whom she had worked for eight months in a war hospital. They had drifted into something very like close friendship during that time, but, as so often happens in life, though they had each made an effort to keep up their friendship by correspondence, the letters had become fewer and fewer on either side, and had now ceased for nearly a year. Thus Jean was the more touched when she received the following letter from her friend:

This was the only letter that Jean had cared to keep, and after answering it she had put it carefully away. It had comforted her, if only because it had been written by some one who had gone through in a smaller measure the anxiety, the anguish, and the suspense she was going through now.

Though the world at large had suspended its interest in the Terriford Mystery, that was not the case in this neighbourhood. There the excitement was kept alive by all sorts of happenings. The chief of these was the occasional appearance of James Kentworthy, and his eager attempts to get hold of any shred of evidence that would help his client. But in spite of his efforts he found no one who could throw even a glimmer of light on the apparently unsolvable problem of Emily Garlett's death. The one weak link in the evidence against Harry Garlett, from the point of view of the prosecution, continued to be that up to the present no arsenic had been traced in any form to his possession. Inquiries were still being made all over England, and especially where Garlett had been either playing cricket or acting as a glorified commercial traveller to the Etna China factory. But so far these inquiries had yielded nothing.

Mr. Kentworthy had built great hopes on an interview with Agatha Cheale; but though on two occasions he had managed to force himself into her presence, she had, while coldly civil, replied to his questions: “I have been subpoenæd by the prosecution, and I understand that it would be quite out of order to give you any information. Besides, I could only tell you exactly what I told them.”

With Miss Prince he had again become on surprisingly friendly terms. They often discussed the case, and to him she always professed she kept an open mind. Yet Mr. Kentworthy felt sure that she knew something not to Harry Garlett's credit. Once or twice he had thought her on the point of confiding to him what this was. But at the last moment she always quickly drew back, and made up her mind to be silent.

But if on friendly terms with Miss Prince, the inquiry agent was not on friendly terms with Lucy Warren. Again and again he tried to make the girl amplify her former statement to him. But all she would say now was: “Pm very sorry I said anything to you about it! Maybe it was not Mr. Garlett at all that was in the wood. It's easy enough to make a mistake at night.”

She looked unhappy, scornful, and embittered with life, and one day he casually received a hint as to why that was so, from the village postmistress:

“There be some as says Miss Cheale's brother, the gentleman who was Mrs. Warren's lodger at the Thatched Farm made up to Lucy. If that's so, he's gone and left her high and dry! Mind you, I don't say that it's true, but there be some as says so.”

He decided that there must be something in it. The girl looked as if she had been crossed in love.

At last it seemed as if Mr. Kentworthy had left the village for good. He had done everything that could be done there in the way of inquiry and suggestion, and he made up his mind to investigate the whole case from the angle of Harry Garlett's life as a popular cricketer, welcome in many a great country house, and indeed everywhere where the national game has its experts and devotees.

But he had been gone only some ten days when there arrived for Jean Bower the following letter:

Jean made up her mind at once that she would act on Kentworthy's second thoughts. She decided, therefore, to go by herself to London, and, without giving him any notice, call at the famous barrister's chambers on the chance of seeing him.

So the two people, whose anxious loving scrutiny of her day by day was sometimes more than she could bear, were disturbed and surprised when she suddenly observed:

“I want to go to London next Monday by myself. I've got a friend who will put me up for the night. I don't want to tell you why I'm going, so please don't ask me. But you will be glad to know that it is something I'm doing with the full approval of Mr. Kentworthy.” And then suddenly she grew very red. “I ought not to have said that,” she exclaimed in a distressed tone. “Will you try and forget it, and never, never tell any one?”

She looked from one to the other.

“Very well, my dear. But be careful. Mr. Toogood told me the other day that he had a great horror of anything like amateur”—the doctor hesitated a moment and then said, “spying.”

“I'm not going to spy,” said Jean, and she looked hurt.

“Well, well, my dear, forgive me for saying that! But you know what I mean? I don't want you mixed up with any of Kentworthy's dirty, if necessary, work”

“Not if it helped Harry, Uncle Jock?”

“Not even if it helped Garlett, my dear.”

She turned away, and he knew that she would stick at nothing that would help the man she loved.