The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 20

EAN BOWER sat in the waiting room of what was called the New Prison. Though she was clad in a warm fur cloak which had just been given her by her uncle and aunt, she felt dreadfully cold. She was miserably anxious and uneasy as to her coming interview with Harry Garlett. How could she ask the man she loved so degrading a question—how make him understand the great importance all those concerned with his defence attached to what she took to be a lying bit of low gossip?

The door of the waiting room opened and Colonel Brackbury walked in.

“Miss Bower? I had the pleasure of meeting you early last May.” And then he shook hands with her warmly. But although he was touched at his visitor's look of deep sadness and at the pallor of her young face, he hardened himself to say that which he knew must be said.

“I have stretched a great point in assenting to your wish for what practically amounts to a private interview with Henry Garlett. I must ask you to give me your solemn word of honour that you will not hand him, or try to convey to him, anything surreptitiously. Also that you will not make the slightest attempt to approach him.”

“To approach him?” echoed Jean uncertainly.

“There will be a table between Mr. Garlett and yourself. You must not stretch across it and try to shake hands with him, for instance.”

“I quite understand, and I promise to do what you ask.”

“Some time ago a lady was allowed to see her husband, who, like Mr. Garlett, was as yet untried. Although a warder was present at the interview she managed, unseen by the warder, to roll along the floor toward her husband a small ball containing a dose of prussic acid.”

He looked at her significantly, but Jean made no comment. It was to her as if she was living through some awful nightmare.

“I understand that you desire to see Henry Garlett with reference to some matter concerning his defence?”

She answered in a strangled tone: “But for that I should not have asked to see him.”

“I should like you to know,” he said kindly, “that we are doing everything we can to make Mr. Garlett comfortable. In our country a man is accounted absolutely innocent until he is adjudged guilty. Apart from the irksomeness of the confinement, and the not being able to see his friends freely, Mr. Garlett is leading much the same life as he would lead outside, were he, what of course he is not, a recluse. I am taking special pains to see that he has good and nourishing food.”

And then, rather to his surprise, for he really knew very little about human nature, Jean Bower began to cry.

“Come, come,” he said dismayed, “this won't do! You must do your best to hearten him up, you know.”

“I will,” she whispered, “I will indeed.” And then she added a pathetic word. “I didn't think you would be so kind.”

“I'm not kind,” he exclaimed testily. “I'm only doing my duty. There! That's right”—for she was trying to smile.

And then they started walking down what seemed to the girl interminable cold, clean, bare passages. But at last they passed through a baize door into what had once been the Governor's official residence before the pleasant villa which the Brackburys occupied had been built, and where were now situated the prison offices.

The Governor opened the door of a large room and courteously stood aside to allow her to pass in. And then suddenly Jean, through a mist of blinding tears, saw Harry Garlett.

He was standing close to the wall behind a long narrow table to her left. For a moment she thought him unchanged; and then she saw that all the healthy, outdoor-man look had gone, and that there was an awful air of strain in the eyes which seemed the only thing alive in his pale set face.

A fire was burning at the other end of the room, but it was very cold, and the atmosphere was full of the musty feeling of an uninhabited room.

Colonel Brackbury brought over a chair for Jean to sit upon. Then, looking from the girl to his prisoner, he said: “And now I will leave you to your talk, Miss Bower. You see that door over there? I shall be close to it, reading my paper, and I shall not be able to hear anything you say unless you raise your voices.”

He walked quickly down the long room, and Jean sat down on the chair he had provided for her.

For a few moments neither of them said anything. She sat, with downcast eyes, trying to repress the tears which would come in spite of her effort to keep them back, while he, poor wretch, gazed at her, all his soul in his sunken eyes remembering.

At last she whispered: “You don't mind my having come? There is a real reason, Harry, or I would not have done it.”

“It was only because I didn't feel I could bear the thought of your coming to such a place that I wrote as I did,” he answered in a low voice. “But, oh, how glad I am to see you now.” Sinking his voice yet further, he whispered, “My darling, darling love.”

She felt as if the sobs she must repress would strangle her utterance. But at last she managed to say: “I have come to ask you to tell me something” She stopped, not knowing how to word her stupid, her unnecessary, her insulting question.

“Yes,” he said eagerly. “Ask me anything in the world, Jean.” And then, as she at last looked up, and he saw the lines that pain and acute suspense had written on her face, he gave a low groan.

“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed, “I can't bear your looking like this, Jean. Mrs. Maclean told me you were quite well.”

She said quietly: “I am quite well. But I lay awake last night thinking of to-day. I'm so afraid”—she waited, then began again—“I'm so dreadfully afraid that you'll be angry—that you won't understand. But the question I've come to ask you is supposed to be so important. And yet? Oh, Harry”

He broke in: “What is it? Come, Jean, you've nothing to be afraid of! You could never make me angry—surely you know that? Whatever you ask me I'll answer truthfully.”

“The other side have a witness,” she murmured in a low strained voice, “who will swear that she saw you at night in the wood which joins part of your garden, with a young woman.”

Instead of the quick, contemptuous denial she had felt so absolutely certain would come, Harry Garlett remained silent for what seemed a long time.

Then he asked: “Who is the witness?”

“Lucy Warren.”

His face had turned a dull red, and, as if not knowing what he was doing, his hands began nervously drumming on the table before him.

“Lucy Warren says the person you were with was a stranger to her,” added Jean slowly, and she saw a look of intense relief flash over his worn face.

“Well, my dear,” he said gently, “what is it you wish to ask me?”

“I want to know,” she said in a trembling voice, “whether what she says is true.”

Before he spoke she knew from the look on his face what his answer, if he spoke the truth, must be. And her heart was contracted, for the first time in her life, with a passion of anguished jealousy.

She looked at him fixedly, and something of what she was feeling showed in her set face and wide-open eyes.

At last he said slowly, as if the words were indeed being dragged out of him:

“Yes, it is quite true that I was there twice at night, and with a woman. But the fact has nothing remotely to do with my forthcoming trial for murder. So you must not ask me who the woman was, Jean. It would be most unfair to drag her into this terrible business of mine. I am sure you will understand that?”

He was looking at her straightly, but speaking with obvious embarrassment and unease.

“Of course I was a fool to do a thing so likely to cause poisonous gossip,” he went on. “But you will believe me when I tell you, before God, that it was not my fault. There are certain things concerning his past life that no plan has the right to reveal, even to his nearest and dearest.” 1

Then more confidently he exclaimed, “Jean? You do understand—you do agree that it would be a shame to bring some one who has nothing to do with the matter at all into such a case as mine will be?”

“Of course I agree to that,” she whispered. “And yet, Harry, and yet?”

She looked at him so imploringly that for the first time he leaned forward, in his eagerness, across the table which separated them, and there came a warning cough from the distant half-open door.

He straightened himself quickly, and over his face she saw flash a painful look of impotent anger.

She said desperately, “You really feel you ought not to tell who was with you that night in the wood—not even to me?”

“Not even to you! I'm not a quixotic fool, my darling. If I thought it would make the slightest difference, of course I would obtain permission from the person in question to reveal her identity. But it would make no difference. It would simply”—he stopped, then choosing his words carefully, he concluded—“draw a hateful, vulgar red herring across the path. I'm afraid that is the object of the people who want me to give you the name of this lady who was with me in the wood.”

As she made no answer to that, he looked at her searchingly.

“I have a right to ask you to believe that I did nothing of which I am now ashamed.”

And then there fell on them a long, long silence. Jean felt overcome, dazed with miserable suspicions. It was as if this man whom she still loved with so absorbing a passion had suddenly revealed himself as being quite other than what she had thought him.

Again there came the sound of a little cough, followed by the rustling of a newspaper being slowly folded up.

Jean did not look round, but she could hear Colonel Brackbury coming toward them.

“Miss Bower, I'm afraid your time is up.”

He looked at his prisoner. “Come round to the end of the table, Garlett. I know Miss Bower would like to shake hands with you.”

He turned away, deliberately, and then Harry Garlett took the poor girl in his arms.

“I swear to you,” he whispered brokenly, “that you have been my only love.”

She raised her face, her lips, to his. “I do know that—God bless you, my own darling!”

And then quickly they fell apart, for with a warning “Hm! Hm!” the Governor, without turning round, exclaimed, “Come along, Miss Bower.”

Jean Bower walked away from the prison gate in a maze of such misery as she had not believed a human being could feel. For the first time in her life she realized what some people learn very soon, and others never learn at all, even if they live to be quite old people. This is that we do not know, with any real knowledge, even those whom we most passionately love and trust.

She had felt so sure, so absolutely certain, that the story of Harry Garlett's meeting a woman in the wood was a malicious lie! And now she knew that it was true, and that there was some strange, painful mystery behind it.

She had seen his pale face flush, and the look of embarrassment, almost of shame, with which he had muttered: “There are certain things about his past no man has the right to reveal—even to his nearest and dearest.”

Her mind hastily surveyed the young women known to her who lived in and about Grendon. There were at least a dozen with whom Harry Garlett was on easy terms of acquaintanceship. But no young people had ever come openly to the Thatched House. Mrs. Garlett did not care for girls, and Agatha Cheale was well known to have no friends, with the exception of Miss Prince.

She walked on, threading her way as if blindly through mean, and shabby streets, and, as she looked furtively to the right and left, she knew that in every one of those little houses there were people who were honestly convinced that Harry Garlett had poisoned his wife for love of her. Small wonder that she hurried on till at last she was in the open country, with not a creature in sight. There, standing on a field path, she stopped and burst into bitter tears.

Crying did her good; it seemed to lift something of the load weighing on her despondent heart. She dried her eyes, vaguely telling herself that she would walk on till she felt too tired to go on—then, turning back, she would in time reach Terriford village.

She had been walking for close on an hour, her nerves sensibly soothed by the fresh air, when all at once she saw in front of her a farmhouse which she knew to be the home of Lucy Warren.

The sight of this place reminded her that her next painful task must be to see Lucy Warren, to try to persuade the girl to tell her that thing which it was so vital she should know, and which yet she knew Harry Garlett hoped she would never know. There are people—perhaps more women than men—who delight in discovering that which those about them do not wish them to know. But Jean Bower was the exact opposite. She had an acute—some people might have said an absurd—sense of honour. It would have seemed to her dishonest to try and worm a secret, even a little secret, out of a child.

She wondered uneasily how she could see Lucy Warren without Miss Prince becoming aware she had done so. And then fortune favoured her, for, as she took the turn which would soon bring her to Terriford, she saw Lucy Warren coming toward her.

The two met in the middle of the field path, and Jean saw an eager look leap to Lucy's eyes. Lucy would have passed any other young lady by with a curt nod, but this particular young lady was not only always kindly, and even friendly, in her manner, but was also the heroine of the most exciting affair which had ever happened in the recollection of the whole neighbourhood.

“Lucy! I am so glad to meet you” and then Jean held out her hand.

The other grasped it warmly. “You do look bad, miss!” she exclaimed, real concern in her voice.

“I feel very tired,” faltered Jean.

“Won't you come to the farm and rest a bit? There's only Mother there.”

“I'd rather stay out here. Oh, Lucy, I know that you have it in your power to help Mr. Garlett!”

With the caution always shown by the more intelligent of her class when face to face with the unknown, Lucy Warren remained silent for a while, gazing, however, fixedly into Jean Bower's troubled face.

“How might that be?” she asked at last.

“The gentleman who is to defend Mr. Garlett says it's all-important to find out who was with him in the wood the night you saw him there,” answered Jean in a trembling voice. “I do implore you to tell me who it was, Lucy?”

“I promised Mother I wouldn't say nothing,” said Lucy hesitatingly.

“But your mother's a good woman! She wouldn't want you to keep anything back that might save an innocent man!” cried Jean wildly.

“I always said to Mother that I should have to say summat—sooner or later.”

Jean stared at the girl in breathless suspense.

“The young lady as met Mr. Garlett in the wood,” said Lucy at length, “was Miss Cheale.”

“Miss Cheale? Are you sure of that, Lucy?”

There was deep disappointment, instinctive relief, and a touch of incredulity in the way in which Jean Bower repeated the name of the young lady who for a year had been an in mate of the Thatched House.

Lucy moved a little closer to Jean Bower.

“Us servants,” she said meaningly, “knows a lot more than we're meant to know. We all knew well enough that Miss Cheale fair doted on Mr. Garlett—though he was always trying not to see it. Why sometimes she'd be talking about him in her sleep!”

Jean Bower's face, from pale became very red. Could this be true? Or was it only an example of the kind of vulgar, dangerous gossip of which she now knew village life to be ever full?

“What I'd like to ask Miss Cheale,” went on Lucy in an excited voice, “and what ought to be asked her, is why she told them lies about them strawberries?”

“Lies?” repeated Jean in an oppressed tone. “I don't understand, Lucy. What lies did Miss Cheale tell?”

“She told your uncle, miss, that Mr. Garlett had given the missus some strawberries that had been left for her by Miss Prince. Well, that was just a lie! Them strawberries were there on a chest of drawers in the corridor outside Mrs. Garlett's room in the early afternoon. I saw them there myself. Then they just vanished off the chest of drawers—long before Mr. Garlett went into Mrs. Garlett's room. I can swear to that! I happens to have a special reason for remembering it, for he said to me, 'Lucy, will you please go in and ask Mrs. Garlett if she can see me now?' And I says, says I, 'No, sir, I don't feel I can do that. The missis is so angry with me about last night.' So I went and got the housemaid to go in—that's why it remained so plain in my mind.”

“You mean,” said Jean slowly, “that the strawberries disappeared early in the afternoon.”

“Ay, that's what I do mean,” said Lucy confidently. “They were there, a good 'elping, not more, on one of them small dishes belonging to the best dessert service.”

“Who do you think gave them to Mrs. Garlett?”

Lucy hesitated. “If it comes to that, the missus may have got them for 'erself.”

“I thought she never went into the passage.”

“She came downstairs in the middle of the night spry enough,” said the girl bitterly. “Besides, there's nothing to prove she got the poison with them strawberries—it's only a idea.”

But Jean was hardly listening, for her mind was full of something very different.

“You are quite sure, Lucy, that it was Miss Cheale who was in the wood with Mr. Garlett?”

“I'm more than sure. I saw 'er quite plain.”

“Then there's nothing more to be said. But I'm bitterly disappointed,” said Jean sadly. “Somehow I had hoped that whoever was in the wood with Mr. Garlett would—” she did not quite know how to frame her meaning—“would, well, provide a clue,” she ended.

Lucy gave an odd glance at Jean. She felt very sorry for Dr. Maclean's niece.

“Miss Cheale was in the village the very day Mr. Garlett was sent for trial,” she muttered.

“That's impossible,” said Jean quickly, “she was ill in London that day. Her evidence had to be read. She couldn't have been anywhere near Grendon.”

“She was at our place—at the Thatched Cottage—early that afternoon, and in an awful state, too! I heard her tell Miss Prince that she knew Mr. Garlett was innocent.”

“You heard her say that?”

“Yes, I did,” went on Lucy excitedly, “and don't you forget that it was Miss Cheale who always saw to Mrs. Garlett's food.”

She had got it out now, that suspicion, that almost certainty, that hope, that had long tormented her.

“But why,” asked Jean in an oppressed, bewildered tone, “should Miss Cheale do such an awful thing?”

She felt as if she was living through one of her terrible nightmares.

“Miss Cheale,” said Lucy firmly, “thought that if she could get Mrs. Garlett out of the way Mr. Garlett maybe would marry her.”

“I can't believe that, Lucy.”

“Anyway, she was terribly upset when she heard that you and him was going to be married. She took on awful! I heard what she said to Miss Prince, though they thought as how I was out, I had come in, unbeknown to them, and heard it all. Again and again she asked: 'But is it true, Mary, or just gossip?' And Miss Prince, she kept on saying: 'It is true, Agatha, only too true; I asked Mrs. Maclean, and she admitted it.' Then she says, 'You must pull yourself together, and call on your pride.'”

“D'you think it would be any good if I went in to Miss Prince and asked her about Miss Cheale?” asked Jean in a hesitating tone. “I mean, couldn't she ask Miss Cheale what she meant by saying that she knew that Mr. Garlett was innocent?”

A look of terror came into Lucy's face.

“Oh, miss, you won't go and do that? It would get me into terrible trouble! They're such friends—she'd never say a word against Miss Cheale, I know she wouldn't! Why, Miss Prince had a letter from her this very morning. That's why I'm here now. Miss Cheale wrote as how the woman who keeps the place where she's living in London can't get any help, and Miss Prince thought my sister might go—just to oblige. Not much! But of course I couldn't but say I'd ask.”

“Can you give me Miss Cheale's address?” asked Jean in a stifled tone.

Lucy began hunting in the narrow pocket of her ulster.

“Not that you'll get anything out of her! She's an artful one—she is!”

She held out a crumpled piece of paper.

Jean Bower gazed down at the piece of paper now in her hand for some time. Lucy was looking at her anxiously, not liking to speak. Had she been wise to confide her great secret, her frightful half-suspicion of the woman she hated, to this young lady?

At last Jean turned round.

“Lucy,” she said, “I'm going to trust you with a secret.”

She spoke with a touch of solemnity which impressed the girl.

“I'm going to London to take this situation offered by”—she looked again at the paper—“Mrs. Lightfoot.”

“You never are!”

“It's my only chance of getting at Miss Cheale—of finding out anything she may know. I don't believe—I can't believe—that she had anything direct to do with the poisoning of Mrs. Garlett. But she may know who did it. And now I want to know if I may go to the Thatched Farm and write out two telegrams, one to Mrs. Lightfoot, the other to a friend of mine with whom I mean to spend to-night in London. Would you take them for me to the post office?”

“That I will,” said Lucy.

As they walked toward the farm together, it was as if there sounded loudly in Jean's ear the words Sir Harold Anstey had uttered a couple of days ago: “Find the man or woman who wrote those anonymous letters, and I promise to save your lover's life.”

Jean Bower now felt that she knew who had written those letters.