CHAPTER X
A FORTNIGHT to the day after the exhumation of Mrs. Garlett, Dr. Maclean, after reading his necessary letters, walked through the hall into the kitchen.
“Elsie,” he said abruptly, “I want your good help. First, go and tell your mistress that I require to see her about something urgent and private. Then get hold of Miss Jean and make her stay with you in here till I have done with your mistress.”
The woman, an old and trusted friend by now, just nodded her head. “Ay,” she said, “I'll do all that.”
A few moments later Mrs. Maclean hurried into her husband's study. “What is it?” she asked breathlessly. “You shouldn't frighten me like that, Jock. 'Secret and urgent' indeed!”
“Lock the door,” he said briefly.
She turned the key in the lock, and came over close to where he was sitting. “What is it, Jock?”
He did not answer for a moment, and then he said very quietly: “Harry Garlett did poison his wife. He is to be arrested to-day, and we must manage to get Jean away, if it's in any way possible, before that happens.”
She stared across into her husband's set face, but, though utterly amazed and horror-struck, she uttered no exclamation of surprise. She simply waited to hear more.
“Well,” he said irritably, “well, Jenny, did you expect this?”
“I expect it?” she exclaimed. “I expected it as little as you did. But what makes you so certain, Jock? Is there no loophole of escape?”
And then she muttered as to herself, “It's the child I'm thinking of. What will happen to Jean—if this is true?”
“She'll have to go through with it,” he said grimly. And then he handed her a letter. It was marked “Private,” and ran as follows:
- Dear Maclean,
- I feel I owe it to our old friendship to inform you that Garlett is to be arrested to-morrow on the charge of having murdered his wife. I may add, for your own information, that our man has found five grains of arsenic, the largest amount ever given in his experience. It had actually penetrated the graveclothes inside the coffin.
- I hope you won't think it impertinent on my part to suggest that you would be wise to send your poor young niece as far away as may be. How about Iona? Should she be required to give evidence, which I hope will not be the case, she could always come back.
Yours in frantic haste,
Donald Wilson.
There was a postscript:
- Of course I have no business to write you this letter. I'm doing it for old times' sake. You may care to know that Kentworthy, though shaken, still believes that Garlett may be innocent. K. has left the Government service. It might be as well for Garlett to employ him in getting up his case. His address is 100 Chancery Lane.”
Mrs. Maclean read the letter twice through. Then she handed it back to her husband.
“You'll never get Jean to go away,” she said quietly. “She wouldn't believe Harry Garlett guilty if an angel from heaven came and told her he was.”
“But he is guilty!” exclaimed Dr. Maclean, striking the table with his hand.
“I don't think you have any call to say that yet,” observed his wife.
“I shan't say it out of this room till I have to get up and say it on oath in the witness-box,” he said sombrely.
“Oh, Jock! Will you have to do that?”
“Of course I shall,” he answered bitterly—“and be known for the rest of my life as the medical man who was bamboozled into giving a wrong death certificate.”
Dismay kept her silent. Till this moment she had only thought of Harry Garlett, and of how all this would affect Jean. She now realized what it would mean to her husband.
She suddenly went very pale, and Dr. Maclean felt queerly touched. He got up and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.
“Come, come, woman,” he said a little huskily. “Things are never as bad as they look! Many a better man than I has made that kind of mistake. As for Jean, she's young yet. She'll get over it, never fear.” As his wife remained silent, he added: “It isn't as if we'd been improvident—if need be we can leave Terriford.”
“No,” said Mrs. Maclean in a low tone, “we must stay and face it out. But as for Jean, we'll have to make some plan. She won't go away now—not a hope of it. But if yon man's hanged we'll get her right away; I mean to some place where no one will have heard about this awful thing—to my sister in New Zealand, or to the MacPhersons in San Francisco.”
He looked at her, amazed. This was foresight with a vengeance. Why, she had already tried, judged, condemned, and, yes, hanged, Harry Garlett!
“Till this morning,” he said with a groan, “I would have staked my life on yon man's innocence.”
And then Mrs. Maclean said something which startled her husband.
“It's all so strange,” she said musingly, “because, as you well know, Jock, he hardly knew our Jean then.”
“It had nothing to do with Jean!” he said violently. “For God's sake, Jenny, put that horrible idea out of your mind. The truth is—I can say so to you—Emily Garlett had become impossible, intolerable”
“If the man's a murderer, you're just trying to find excuses for him,” she said dryly.
“Not excuses,” said Dr. Maclean sharply, “but a reason for his mad and wicked act—yes.”
“And now,” said his wife slowly, “which of us is to tell the child, and what will be the best way to break it to her?”
“I think,” said the doctor hesitatingly, “that you had better tell her, my dear.”
“Perhaps I had, for she's a bit afraid of me, and she hasn't a shadow of fear of you!”
But they might have saved themselves the trouble of their painful little discussion, for, when they went into the kitchen, they found that Jean had left the house without saying where she was going.
“I think she saw by my face that there was trouble afoot,” admitted Elsie regretfully, “for she just looked at me and said, 'You can tell them I've gone up to the village.'”
“I hope she hasn't gone to the Thatched House,” said Mrs. Maclean in a dismayed tone.
“That is just where I feel certain she has gone,” said the cook positively. “It's all over the village, Mrs. Maclean, that they will be arresting Mr. Garlett this morning. But the poor wean don't know that.”
Driven by some instinct which she would have shrunk from analysing, Jean Bower was hurrying toward the Thatched House.
It was the first time she was going there alone; but she had been through what had seemed to her a time of measureless suffering this last fortnight, and now had come the breaking point. She felt she must see Harry Garlett—and alone.
“Jean! Jean! Stop!”
It was Miss Prince's familiar voice, and unwillingly the girl turned and stood at bay.
“You mustn't go to the Thatched House this morning, my dear.”
A feeling of exasperated anger filled Jean's already overburdened heart.
“I have something very important to tell Harry before he starts for the factory,” she said quickly.
“I doubt if you'll find him at home. He probably slept at the factory”
The older woman looked into the girl's flushed, rebellious face, with genuine pity and concern.
“I think you ought to know, my dear, that the police came out to the Thatched House while Harry was out last evening. They ransacked everything, and turned out every drawer in the place.”
“Why—why did they do that?” asked Jean falteringly.
Probably for the first time in her life Miss Prince remained silent in answer to a question. She had already heard the rumour that Harry Garlett was to be arrested this morning.
“Let me go to the Thatched House,” she exclaimed, “and if Harry is there I'll ask him to come out here and speak to you. I don't think you ought to go there alone, in any case. Think what people would say?”
“I am going there,” said Jean firmly, “and I hope you won't think me rude, Miss Prince, if I say that I don't care at all what people say.”
Without waiting for the other's answer, she began to run, leaving Miss Prince staring after her.
But after she had gone through the wrought-iron gate, she saw that a little way up the broad path leading to the house the Terriford village policeman was standing, as if barring the way.
Now Jean knew the young man well, for he had an invalid mother whom she sometimes visited.
“Have you business up at the house, miss?” he asked hesitatingly.
She answered, “Of course I have, Jackson, or I shouldn't be going there,” and walked firmly on.
And then, all at once, with a leap of sudden joy she saw Harry Garlett standing by the open front door of his house. The sight of him brought a feeling of comfort, of reassurance, to her burdened heart. But as he came forward to meet her, she realized that he was in a state of painful excitement and anger.
“I tried to get through to your uncle about half an hour ago,” he exclaimed, “but Elsie said he was out. I wanted to tell him myself of the dastardly outrage committed here last evening! It scared away the cook and her daughter, so I'm alone here.”
He hurried her into the hall, and then throwing his arms round her, he strained her to him.
“It makes all the difference having you with me”
Poor Jean! Since this great trouble had come upon them all, Mrs. Maclean had seemed to think it almost unseemly for the lovers to be alone together. Even the yew edge walk had become, by her plainly expressed wish, forbidden ground.
It was wonderful to be alone with him like this, heart to heart, and lips to lips; almost too wonderful to be true.
But at last the girl gently withdrew herself from Garlett's enfolding arms.
“What happened last night?” she asked.
“I suppose I'm a fool to mind,” he answered. “You are the only thing that matters to me now, Jean. But I'd better tell you about it, for you will have to know some time.”
“Yes?” she said, and taking up his hand she laid it against her cheek. Though the mere fact that they were alone together brought with it deep comfort as well as a hidden ecstatic bliss of which she was half ashamed, she yet felt not only frightened, but terribly perplexed. What did this that had happened last evening portend?
“The moment I'd turned the corner on my way to Bonnie Doon the police came and ransacked everything here. I'll show you the state in which those brutes left my study!”
“Who did all this?” she asked.
“I met the Grendon inspector of police and his two underlings at the gate, as I was coming home last night, and he said that they had acted on instructions from London. D'you mind seeing my study, Jean? Everything is exactly as they left it. I want Dr. Maclean to see it—the rector, too! Of course I shall send in a claim for compensation.”
She followed him through the empty house, and then, at the door of what had been an orderly, even a luxurious, room, she stopped, amazed at the sight before her.
The cupboard doors of a large Chippendale bookcase were wide open, and the books had been roughly turned out of the shelves and lay all over the floor. The drawers of the writing table were drawn out as far as they would go, and the top drawer, which had been locked, had been wrenched open with some rough instrument.
As a girl Emily Garlett had collected shells, and her small shell cabinet had been kept in this, her husband's study. Even that had not been spared rough desecration. The cotton wool on which the shells had rested had been thrown out, and lay in wads on the carpet.
“This is the worst room,” said Harry Garlett quietly. “But my bedroom's in a pretty queer state, too, and as for the dining room, you'd think burglars had been in it!”
“Did they say what they wanted to find?” asked Jean wonderingly.
“They made a regular mystery of it, and yet they were fools enough to ask that poor old cook and her daughter if they had found any packets of gray or white powder about!”
“Gray or white powder?” she said uncertainly.
“Not salt or pepper—arsenic!” he said bitterly.
Then he again took her in his arms, and kissed her with a passion that half frightened her.
“God! What should I do if I hadn't you?” he muttered.
She clung to him, and for a moment they forgot their great trouble.
“Oh, Jean, my darling, darling love—it's been hell this last fortnight!” he whispered. “D'you know that we've never been alone since we came back from London?”
“They've been very cruel—though they meant to be kind,” she said in a choking voice.
“Did you feel them cruel?” he whispered.
As only answer she pressed more closely to him, and again in that disordered, desecrated room, it was as if Heaven wrapped them round.
It was Jean who heard the sound of footsteps echoing across the hall; and they had only just time to start apart when a loud voice called out: “Is any one in this house? We are looking for Mr. Henry Garlett” And two men in uniform burst through the half-open door.
They looked taken aback when they saw that the man they sought was not alone, and the elder of the two came up close to where Harry Garlett was standing by Jean Bower's side.
He asked civilly, “Can I speak to you in private?” he hesitated, and then added the word, “sir.”
Harry Garlett exchanged a quick look with the man, and then he turned to Jean. “Will you go outside, into the garden? I'll join you in a few minutes.”
“Yes, miss, that's what I advise you to do. You go out into the garden,” the police inspector spoke in a very kindly, respectful, pitying tone.
But Jean had moved closer to her lover's side. She took his arm, and held it firmly.
“Say what you want to say to Mr. Garlett here,” she said. “I'm not going to leave him.”
“I'm sure the gentleman would rather we had our talk by ourselves, miss.”
Garlett said in a low voice, “He's right, my dear. I do beg you to leave me.”
She shook her head. “I can't,” she said piteously. “Don't be angry with me, Harry.”
He tried to smile. “Nothing could make me angry with you, my darling.”
“Now, miss, can't I persuade you to go out into the garden?”
“No,” said Jean. “I'm very sorry, but you can't.”
“I'm sorry, too,” said the man. “But duty is duty.”
He put his hand lightly on Harry Garlett's free arm.
“I now arrest you,” he said solemnly, “on a serious charge—that of having murdered your wife, Mrs. Emily Garlett, on the twenty-seventh of last May.”
It was the first time that such a duty had fallen to Inspector Johnson, and he looked far more moved than did the man he had just put under arrest.
“I must warn you,” he went on, “that anything you say henceforth may be used in evidence against you.” And then inconsequently, he added: “Have you nothing to say, Mr. Garlett?”
“The only thing I have to say,” said Harry Garlett, “is that I am innocent.”
He gently freed his arm from Jean Bower's detaining hand. “You must go home now,” he said quietly, “and tell your uncle and aunt what has happened.”
He turned to the inspector. “I take it, Mr. Johnson, that I shall be allowed all reasonable opportunities of seeing my friends?”
“That is so,” said the man.
Then he made a sign to his subordinate, and they both turned their backs while their prisoner and the girl who loved him bade each other a silent, apparently an unemotional farewell.
But when she got out of doors, in front of the house, Jean suddenly turned faint and giddy; it was as if her mind became a blank. She covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God,” she prayed, “make me keep my reason—and help me to help Harry.”
Then, with steady steps, she walked on, past the pitying young policeman, and past the closed car in which she vaguely realized her lover was about to be taken to Grendon prison.