The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 9

EN long days, including the quietest Christmas ever spent in Bonnie Doon, and then on the second day of the New Year—“A letter for you, Miss Jean, from the Thatched House.” Elsie's dour face softened as the girl eagerly tore open the envelope.

Jean remembered that a telegram had come for her uncle a few moments ago. Now telegrams were always being delivered at Bonnie Doon, but some secret instinct now seemed to tell her that this time the telegram had had some thing to do with her lover and his affairs.

She walked into the doctor's study, and when he saw who it was, he opened the top drawer of the writing table at which he was sitting, and slipped something into it.

“Well?” he said, looking up, “Well, my dear, what d'you want?”

She came close up to the table, and he was dismayed to see how sad and suffering was the expression on her young face.

“Uncle Jock,” she said in a low voice, “Harry has just sent me word that he can't come this evening. I suppose” and then she stopped short; somehow she could not bring herself to say the horrible words. But at last she whispered: “I suppose they are going to dig up poor Mrs. Garlett's coffin to-night?”

Dr. Maclean rose from his chair; he put his arm round the girl's shoulder. “Yes,” he said quietly, “you have guessed aright, Jean. The exhumation is to take place to-night, and Harry and I will both, of course, be present.”

He could feel her trembling, and he saw her right hand open and shut.

“You must remind yourself,” he went on, “that what is going to be done to-night marks the beginning of the end—as far as Harry's painful ordeal is concerned. You and I know—indeed I am convinced that even those who have ordered the exhumation feel as sure of it as we do—that the result will be nil; that is to say, from our point of view, absolutely satisfactory.”

“I know that,” she murmured in a strangled voice. “But I don't feel as if that knowledge made the shame of it any easier to bear—now.”

He felt startled. It was the first time that Jean had admitted that there was any shame to be faced.

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed vigorously. “Think what you would be feeling—what I should be feeling—if we had the slightest doubt about the matter?”

She had moved away, and was looking at him with wide-open eyes.

“I—I don't understand,” she stammered.

“Forget yourself and Harry for a moment.” He felt that a touch of sternness, even of roughness, would do the girl good just now. “Think of what the innocent friends, ay, and lovers, of a real murderer must feel when the net is slowly but inexorably closing round him. Supposing you half suspected, or a quarter suspected, or even a hundredth part suspected—the man you love?”

The girl smiled; but it was a wan, pitiful smile.

“I can't imagine such a thing. And you know I can't, Uncle Jock.”

“Are you going to answer Harry's note?” he asked abruptly.

“Do you think I ought?”

“I do! I think you ought to write him a cheerful brave letter, reminding him that this is the beginning of the end, and that within a very short time you and he will have come out from the darkness into the sunshine.”

She went straight round the writing table, and leaning down, drew a sheet of notepaper toward her. She wrote:

And then, after she had addressed the envelope, she put her hands over her face, and burst into a passion of anguished sobs.

Sheltered by the heavy pall of a dark winter night, Jean Bower, six hours later, crept out of the garden door of Bonnie Doon into the lonely country road which led to Terriford churchyard. It was a bitterly cold, as well as a dark, night, but it was not the cold and darkness which made her tremble so violently that she found it difficult to shut the front door behind her.

For almost the first time in her life she was doing a thing which she believed to be wrong. She knew that not only her uncle and aunt, but also her lover, would be profoundly distressed and shocked by what she had long ago secretly determined she would do—that is, share, in as far as was possible without his being aware of it, Harry Garlett's horrible ordeal.

After an evening during which none of the three had spoken of what was filling all their minds and hearts, she had waited in her bedroom, trying to read, until close to midnight. Then there had come the sound of the front door shutting softly behind Dr. Maclean, and, allowing him a good quarter of an hour's start, she had crept down the stairs, and followed him.

Jean's eyes soon became accustomed to the darkness, and when she knew herself to be close to the wrought-iron gate which led into the grounds of the Thatched House, she waited a moment, scarcely daring to breathe, for she felt that it would be terrible for her, and horribly painful to them both, were she to meet Harry Garlett on the way to his sinister tryst.

As she walked up the broad, now deserted, village street, at the top of which were the church and churchyard with only fields and country lanes beyond, there was a red glow over the sky, and she could see the roof and clock-tower of the church outlined against it. She told herself, vaguely, that a house must be on fire somewhere far away, but the thought scarcely stirred her, so intent was she on the dreadful thing that was about to be done.

When she came close up to the lych-gate she stayed her steps and listened intently. But there was neither stir nor sound, and she reminded herself that Mrs. Garlett's grave lay the other side of the church and so even in daylight was completely hidden from where she was now standing.

She had moved a step forward, her foot kicking aside a stone as she did so, when all at once a bull's-eye lantern was turned full on her. Giving a stifled cry of surprise and fear, she waited, shrinkingly, for a stern inquiry as to her name and business to follow. But to her mingled relief and amazement it was a kindly, if a gruff, voice which came out of the darkness.

“Well, missie? Come to see the fun, I suppose?”

“The fun?” Could the still invisible man have said “the fun”?

Then the lantern was lifted a little, and by its gleaming light she saw a burly figure dressed in a plain chauffeur's uniform. Slowly he turned his lantern round, and then she became aware that drawn up under an evergreen oak over hanging the banked-up churchyard wall was a huge police motor-car.

Again the man spoke, but this time it was in a whisper: “If ye'll promise not to cry out, or faint, or do summat silly o' that sort, I'll get you a good sight of it all”

“Thank you very much,” she faltered, feeling overwhelmed with shame and confusion.

He went on: “Though 'tis a gruesome sight, sure-lye, for a young gal to want to see? But there! I've been young myself, and I can mind when I wanted to see every earthly thing there was to see, 'owever fearsome”

“I should like to see it,” she whispered back in a trembling voice, “but only if I can do so without being seen by any one who's there.”

“Trust to me, missie! I'll make that all right,” he said reassuringly. “They'll be much too busy over their job to trouble about you or me. You come right through 'ere.”

He half pushed, half led her through the lych-gate, and turning his lantern toward the ground, slowly preceded her, as they threaded their way between the gray and white gravestones.

“I've brought a party of six,” he muttered huskily, “and apart from the grave-diggers, and the undertaker's little lot, there's the corpse's doctor, so I understand, as well as the fine gentleman who did 'is poor lady in.”

Jean Bower stayed her steps.

“You mustn't say that—for Mr. Garlett is innocent of having done any wrong.”

She felt convulsed with pain and anger, though her words were whispered quietly enough.

The man turned round. “Every man and every woman, too,” he muttered huskily, “is hinnocent, as we well knows, until found guilty. But it stands to reason, don't it, that this kind of thing ain't done for nothing? 'E 'as got a nerve to be 'ere to-night at all—'e needn't 'a been.”

A moment later, turning round again, he asked with sudden suspicion, “You've nothing to do with 'im—eh? You're not an interested party, eh?”

And then Jean Bower, who had never told a lie, lied. “No, I'm just a visitor to Terriford,” she murmured.

Reassured, he went on, keeping near the low wall, as far from the church as was possible.

Suddenly a turn in the narrow way between the graves left the church to their right, and Jean saw before her what she had come to see, and instinctively she clutched hold of her companion's strong arm and clung to it, feeling sick and faint.

Lighted by two big flares, whence had come the curious glow which Jean had thought caused by a distant fire, a group of men were moving about close to, and just below, the walls of the old stone church; and stretching in dancing, shadowy lines on the gravestones round, the men's shadows came and went in queer, grotesque shapes.

Moving very slowly, her companion advanced nearer and nearer to the strange, uncannily silent scene, at which Jean, gathering a desperate courage from within herself, stared with affrighted eyes. Then all at once she saw the man whose image filled her heart.

Harry Garlett was standing almost exactly facing her, at the head of Emily Garlett's open grave. He seemed quite incurious of what was being done, for he was staring straight before him, his bare head flung back.

“The Home Office gent 'as 'is back turned to us,” whispered Jean's companion. “'E's 'ere to see that there's no tampering with the poor lady's remains.”

The girl pressed forward, shrouded in a darkness which was made the more intense by the bright light shed by the flares beyond, and, gradually, she began to realize exactly what was taking place in the lighted-up space before her.

Four men, two on each side of what looked like a deep, narrow trench, were exerting all their strength to lift the coffin up out of what Jean knew to be the freshly opened grave of Harry Garlett's wife. And, after what seemed to the agonized watcher a long, long time, they succeeded in their task. Then there came the sound of heavy, muffled footsteps; out of the darkness stepped two other men, and the six together placed the coffin on to a hand bier which Jean had not noticed before.

“They'll take her to that cottage yonder: I helped to get it ready for 'em,” muttered her companion hoarsely.

“What cottage?” she asked, surprised.

“Not better than a dog kennel!—but good enough for the gentleman from London—him what they call a hanalist—'e who's the cause of many a 'anging,” whispered the man.

And then Jean remembered that on the other side of the churchyard wall, standing in a field, was a kind of shanty which she knew had been condemned, largely owing to her uncle's efforts, as unfit for human habitation some months ago.

She forced herself to ask what was to her an all-important question.

“Is it there that they'll find out what Mrs. Garlett died from?”

“Lord, no!” he exclaimed, astonished at such ignorance, “that's a long business—that's done in London.”

“Then what will they do there?” she asked, puzzled and disappointed, and with no prevision of his answer.

“Well, missie, what'll be done in that cottage over there won't be a pleasant job. I'm glad I'm not in it.”

“What are they going to do?” she breathed.

“They'll take parts of the lady's inside and put them into jars. Then the poor soul will rest once more in her coffin. Meanwhile, that which 'as been removed (if you take my meaning) will be taken away to London, and it's according to the report of the gentleman I pointed out to you just now whether the 'usband will get off scot-free or whether he'll swing.”

He uttered the dreadful words in a matter-of-fact tone, and Jean turned suddenly sick and faint.

“Will you help me back to the gate?” she muttered. “I don't want to stay here any longer.”

“Not just a few minutes more?” he asked, disappointed. “If you goes now, you'll miss the most hinteresting part of the whole affair. They're just going to unscrew the coffin, and take her out, and it isn't as if we was near enough to see anything that 'ud frighten you”

But, already, Jean had turned and was blindly making her way back, among the gravestones, toward the lych-gate.

She was bitterly, bitterly sorry now that she had come. She felt that as long as she lived the memory of to-night would remain most presently and horribly vivid to her, and she knew that it was a memory of shame and horror she must ever bear alone.

“Don't 'e look like a murderer?”

“Course he does—he is one!”

Harry Garlett turned sharply round. For a moment his weary face, his shrunken eyes, glanced quickly this way and that, seeking to find out who had uttered those cruel words.

It was the day following the night of the exhumation, and market day in Grendon. On the high paved sidewalk there paced up and down, jostling one another, a crowd of men, though here and there a woman, a farmer's wife or daughter, mingled in the throng.

And then all at once Garlett realized that as he stepped quickly along, people were pointing him out to one another, and that many of them were staring at him, some furtively, but the majority with an eager, pitiless stare of almost savage curiosity.

A boy selling the local daily, a small sheet called The Grendon News, came bounding along, and he could hardly hand the paper out quickly enough to those who had not already got it in their hand.

Harry Garlett called out: “Here, boy, I want that paper!” and at the sound of his harsh voice the men round him all fell silent, and stared at him with a more pitiless curiosity than before.

He took the paper, paid the boy, and held it out. Right across the little local sheet, in as big type as had been set out the declaration of war in August, 1914, ran the words “Exhumation of Mrs. Emily Garlett.”

He walked on, hardly knowing what he was doing, and yet horribly aware that his fellow townsmen and country neighbours were now forming a lane, leaving the way clear for him alone on the pavement.

Not a face smiled in greeting, not a hand was stretched out to him of the many hands there which had so often grasped his in kindly friendship, or in fervent admiration of his cricketing prowess.

At last he reached what he believed would be to him a place of refuge. But as he turned into the great square courtyard of the Etna China factory, he saw faces glued to every window-pane.

His coming had been heralded, and all these people with whom he had been on such happy, friendly terms till yesterday, were now staring at him as if he were some terrible wild beast.

But having gazed, as they hoped furtively, their fill, they melted quickly away from the windows. He was, after all, their employer, the master of their destinies, until?

He hurried into the hall, and turned into the clerks' room. “Any one called yet?”

“No, sir, no one.”

The man who spoke to him looked much as usual, the other clerk had a foolish, nervous grin on his face.

He walked on into his own room, took off his hat and coat, sat down, and forced himself to open the letters which lay as usual piled on his desk.

Then he telephoned through to the room where his young lady shorthand writer must be awaiting his summons. But there came no answer to his call.

He waited five minutes, then tried to get through to her again—without result. Then he got up and went to the clerks' room. “Where is Miss Faring?” he asked.

His head clerk hesitated a moment. “Miss Faring's mother brought a note about half an hour ago, sir. I'm sorry I forgot it.”

He handed his employer a black-bordered envelope, and Harry Garlett, walking out of the room, opened the note in the hall.

Terrible things said about Jean and himself? This was a far greater, a more agonizing, blow, than anything he had yet experienced.

He walked into his room and, careless of possible interruption, sat down and buried his head in his hands.

Jean—the subject of low, coarse gossip? Jean—the subject of odious innuendo?

He started up and began walking up and down the room. The fearful ordeal of last night, the horror attendant on his recent hideous progress through the High Street—everything was forgotten in the news conveyed in Mrs. Faring's letter.

Garlett was a proud and sensitive man. He had put aside, as he would have done a noxious sight or smell, those half questions put to him by James Kentworthy, the detective, concerning his relationship with Jean Bower. But now the memory of those questions, those veiled insinuations, came back, and with that memory the agonized realization that Jean Bower had been even then suspected as providing the motive for an otherwise motiveless crime.

But, fortunately for most of us at some time of our lives, work has to be done—whatever betide. So at last the unhappy man sat down and began the tedious task of answering with his own hand the letters which otherwise he would have dictated. As he did so, he found himself, for the first time in his life, struggling with two distinct currents of thought—the one superficial, concerning the letters he was writing; the other still passionately concerned with the news contained in Mrs. Faring's letter. In vain he now tried to assure himself that his and Jean's ordeal was bound to be a short one, and that once the Government analyst's report was published he would be able to take up life again exactly as it had been.

Well he knew, now, that life could never be the same again. If he remained at Terriford he realized that even if he lived to be a very old man, there would always be somebody ready to point him out as the man who had been suspected of having murdered his first wife for love of the woman who had become his second.

Though he had arrived very late at the factory, he had never spent a morning there which seemed so long and dreary. None of his usual business associates came in to see him, no one even rang him up on the telephone. It was as though a desert had been created round about him, and bitterly he felt the humiliation, the degradation, of it all.

At one o'clock he got up, and, putting on his hat and coat, went into the clerks' room: “I shall not be here this afternoon,” and then painfully he hesitated. Yesterday he would have added, “Should you want me—get through to Bonnie Doon,” but that stinging sentence in Mrs. Faring's letter stopped his saying that.

“Should you want me,” he said quietly, “I shall be at the Thatched House after three o'clock.”

He had tried to speak, to look, as usual, but he knew that he had failed.

In the hall he waited irresolutely. No, he would not go out, as usual, through the courtyard, as perhaps another kind of man would have done. Grimly he told himself that, in a sense, he accepted defeat. He felt he could not face again the stares of his workpeople and of his fellow townsmen.

Taking a rusty key off its hook, he walked through the now empty shuttered rooms which had once been the home of his wife's parents. He hurried through the silent, cobwebbed kitchen into the narrow, sunless garden. A door at the bottom of the garden led into an alley which was an unfrequented and generally more or less deserted way of getting out of the town.

He hurried through the door, and once out there he felt as if he breathed a lighter air. And yet, as he hastened along, it seemed to his excited fancy that he could hear the busy murmur of voices, cruel, spiteful, eager voices—all talking of him, of his poor dead wife, and, hideous thought, Jean.

At last, after passing through some mean and sordid streets, he reached the open country, and the clean, keen air worked something like a miracle in his tortured brain. By the time he opened the front door of Bonnie Doon he was almost himself again, filled with joy at the thought of seeing Jean, the only human being to whom he could pour out his heart, and who could bring him comfort.

Elsie, the cook, came quickly out of her kitchen.

“Eh, Mr. Garlett,” she exclaimed, “I've been watching for ye! D'you mind going into the doctor's study? Miss Jean's not down yet.”

“She's not ill?”

“No, no—only tired. Don't ye fash yourself,” said the good woman.

And then the door of the doctor's study opened.

“Come in here, Garlett, just for a minute, will you?”

Was it his fancy, or was Dr. Maclean's voice cold—cold to sternness?

“Jean was in the churchyard last night,” began the doctor without any preamble. “She didn't mean us to know—but my wife got it out of her—and it's smashed her up. I've given her a soothing draught, and I want her to stay in bed quietly all to-day. I meant to ring you up, but we didn't expect you till this afternoon.”

He spoke in a low, preoccupied tone. “I'm sure you'll understand, my dear fellow,” his voice softened as he used the affectionate appellation, “that I think it's best you shouldn't see her to-day. You'll see her to-morrow, no doubt.”

Harry Garlett remained silent. He was sick with horror at the thought that Jean had been in the churchyard.

“Why did you let her come last night?” he asked roughly.

“I let her come?” repeated Dr. Maclean sharply. “It's the last thing I should have thought her capable of doing. It's the first time her aunt and I have found her out in doing anything deceitful or—well, I can only call it indelicate! But there, she felt half distraught. It's fortunate that it's only a fortnight now—it may be three weeks at the longest—before everything will be cleared up.”

“And how are we to get through the fortnight or three weeks?” asked Garlett hoarsely.

His mind was full of what had happened that morning, but he told himself with relief that of what was apparently being said in Grendon Dr. Maclean knew nothing.

“Come, come, man—show a little courage! You've a long life of happiness and prosperity before you. How few can say that!”

“I know that I'm not reasonable,” muttered Garlett.

“But there's one thing, Harry”—the older man bent forward and laid his hand on the younger man's shoulder. “There's one thing, my boy, I'm minded to say to you, and I expect you to take it in a sensible, upright way.”

“I'll try to, sir.”

“Both Mrs. Maclean and myself feel very strongly that during this time of waiting you should see very little of Jean. We haven't the heart to say you're not to meet at all, though we think that would be the best plan. But we do think you should do nothing to give cause for any talk or gossip—even in the village.”

As Garlett made no answer, the doctor went on reluctantly, “I can hardly bear to bring myself to soil my lips with what, however, I feel must be said. You are probably not aware that there has been talk about you and Jean?”

“I was not aware of it till this morning,” said Garlett in a low, shaky voice, “though of course Kentworthy asked me some strange questions.”

“Ay, so he did me! Even here there's been, it seems, a lot of poisonous gossip. I've traced one story direct to Miss Prince—a story of how you and that poor girl upstairs walked home on the day before your wife died.”

“Did we?” said Harry Garlett in a dull voice. “I'd forgotten that. I daresay we did. For the matter of that I've walked home from Grendon to Terriford with most of our neighbours in the last thirteen years, including Miss Prince herself.”

“I know that,” said the doctor quickly. “But to come back to the matter in hand. I don't want to be unreasonable, but I do hope that you will both behave—well, how can I put it?—with sense and discretion. After all, it isn't very long to wait; you'll be married within less than a month from now, and then you'll be together for always. Till you're married, I'm quite sure you'd best see as little as possible of one another.”

“I quite see what you mean, and I daresay you're right.” He was beginning to feel himself a pariah.

“I'll be going back to the Thatched House for lunch,” he went on forlornly, remembering vividly how only yesterday he had been pressed to come to-day to this house from which he now felt he was being expelled.

“I think that will be best,” said Dr. Maclean uncomfortably. “I'll telephone through and say you're coming along.”