CHAPTER XXIII
WITH a loud cry of “What is it? What's the matter?” Jean, in the pitch darkness, sat up in her narrow pallet bed, and listened.
For a moment or two she didn't know where she was, and fear clutched at her heart. And then, though memory soon came back, it was accompanied by icy waves of terror, and it was with a trembling hand that she lit a candle.
It was now quite still and quiet up there under the roof of the huge old house. Then, all at once, the sounds that had awakened her began again. The sound of a loud, discordant voice—or was it two voices?—that seemed terrifyingly near.
Clasping her hands together nervously, Jean listened intently. It was a high-pitched voice—only one voice after all—uttering quick, eager, argumentative words, of which she could not catch the sense.
The candle was burning more brightly now, and she looked timorously round her. Mrs. Lightfoot, with all her kind, hearty good-nature, had never bethought herself of making the bedroom of her help even a little comfortable. It was a large garret, and the ceiling was so low that it gave its occupant a feeling of being pressed down upon. The flooring boards, which were not over-clean, were bare, though by the pallet bed lay a dingy-looking string mat. A tub and minute iron washing-stand were in a corner, and a rickety yellow-painted chest of drawers stood far away, under the dormer window, and on it was the cheapest form of toilet-glass made. Jean had laughed when she had looked at herself in it, for so distorted a view of her face had never been presented to her gaze before. But now, sitting up in bed, the thought of that distorting looking-glass gave her a feeling of horror and affright.
The one chair in the room was dirty and very shaky. On it there now stood her light, cheap, almost empty, suit-case. There were three hooks screwed into the door, but she had put her clothes on the bed, for in spite of Mrs. Lightfoot's remark, she had felt very cold....
All at once she realized that the voice she heard was Miss Cheale's voice. Leaping out of bed, she caught up her outdoor jacket and put it on; then, after listening intently, she opened her door, leaving the candle alight.
For a moment the darkness baffled her. Then she felt along the wall, and at last found the cord which ran down along the side of the dangerous, ladder-like stairs. Putting one bare foot slowly, cautiously, before the other, down she went, very, very slowly, terrified lest she should make the smallest sound.
At last her feet rested on the landing out of which opened Miss Cheale's sitting room and bedroom, and, as she stood there, the voice suddenly stopped.
Was it possible that Agatha Cheale had heard the stuffless sounds which she had made while treading with her bare feet down the wooden stairs?
Then, to her mingled fright and relief, she heard the voice begin again, speaking now loudly, now almost in a whisper.
Tip-toeing across the lobby, she crouched down outside the closed bedroom door, and there at last she heard quite clearly the words that seemed tumbling out one after an other, as if the lips that uttered them could not get them out quickly enough.
And yet those words, those sentences, were punctuated with strange pauses. It was as if the speaker were taking part in an eager, sometimes embittered, argument with an unseen opponent.
“I am speaking up. I have nothing to conceal.... A tall dark man.... I think I should.... It is a broad corridor.... No, I did not think of it, I thought him a workman.... I did not know I was free to speak sooner.”
The staccato sentences were uttered with extraordinary energy. Then with a complete change of voice came the quiet words:
“I always liked Mrs. Garlett very much.... Yes, she was invariably most kind to me. Of course Mr. Garlett was also kind and considerate, but I saw very little of him.... I was naturally with Mrs. Garlett very much more.... Undoubtedly ... as long, that is, as Mr. and Mrs. Garlett wished me to stay. Three hundred pounds is not an exceptional salary.... No communication with Mr. Garlett.... Once, just after the war.”
Then, with sudden passion, “You have no right to say that.” There came an appeal in the voice. “My lord, am I compelled to answer that question?... They were forced strawberries given by a lady who will, if necessary, confirm what I say... Miss Prince, my lord.”
And then at last, as if telling a story, and in a much more composed, quiet voice, Agatha Cheale continued:
“I put the strawberries on one side, partly because I had before me the disagreeable task of giving notice to a servant. I forgot about the strawberries till early afternoon. I then put them on a Chinese dessert dish, and took them upstairs myself. I placed them on a chest of drawers outside Mrs. Garlett's room”
Then came a long pause. Jean's heart was beating—beating.
“Yes, I will swear they were gone when I saw the man I took to be a workman in the corridor. I thought no more of them till Mrs. Garlett first summoned me in the night.... Mrs. Garlett did not say they had been given her by her husband. I will swear to that.... I'm quite aware that everything I'm now saying is being said on oath.... She said, 'The strawberries upset me. I ought not to have taken them.' She had had several visitors that afternoon.... I cannot remember who they were. She was very fond of seeing people when fairly well.”
In a low hesitating voice came the words: “Must I go into details of Mr. Garlett's sojourn in the war hospital, my lord?”... Then with a kind of cry—“He always behaved like a gentleman to me!”
There followed what seemed to the listener a very long silence, and Jean was just turning away to go upstairs, when again Agatha Cheale began speaking in an excited, defiant voice.
“Certainly not! This is the very first time I have ever seen an anonymous letter.... I am looking at it. I entirely deny that.... I can't help what any expert says.... I don't want to look at it again.... I did not know Miss Bower—she was never at the Thatched House that I know of.”
And then there followed complete silence, broken now and then by a moan from the sleeping woman on the other side of the door.
The eavesdropper stood up. She walked slowly across the landing, and made her way, hardly breathing, up the narrow stairway.
What did all that confused, broken talk portend? She tried to piece the sentences together to make sense of them, but the whole formed a hopeless jumble in her weary brain, and when she reached her comfortless bed-chamber she poured a small dose of sleeping draught into a medicine glass, and, lying down, soon fell into a troubled sleep.
At six o'clock her alarm rang out. She jumped out of bed and went over to the bathtub. Oh, how cold the water was and how cold she felt with this sorry substitute for the comfortable bathroom at Bonnie Doon! But a good rub with a rough towel made her feel a good deal warmer. She dressed quickly and went downstairs, feeling her way till she reached the hall. There was a thin line of light under the invalid lodger's door, and as she passed it Jean heard his stifled, painful cough.
Going into the kitchen, she laid and lit the fire. Then, acting on impulse, at seven she boiled a little water and took Mrs. Lightfoot a cup of nice hot tea.
“Well, child, this is very kindly of you, and no mistake! You're the first of my 'elps that 'as hever done such a thing as bring me a cup o' tea afore I got up in the morning. But there—you'll not suffer from being kind. You shall 'ave two eggs instead of the one I meant you to 'ave for your breakfast. No Chinese eggs for me! Good English new-laid, that's all I has any use for. Now, you start getting ready the breakfasts. Hall 'ave to be early stirrers and early risers in this 'ouse—hall but Miss Cheale, that is. She's not expected to be down at 'er place till near eleven.”
For the next hour Jean was kept very busy, doing the kitchen and helping with the breakfast. At last she took up Mr. Robins's breakfast tray, while Mrs. Lightfoot took up Mr. Goodbody's.
As for the mysterious gentleman who occupied the back room on the ground floor, he had a specially big breakfast—a quarter of a pound of the best butter all to himself. Jean remembered the words: 'E's paid for separately because 'e's an hinvalid. You'll 'ave nothing to do with 'im,” and sure enough in that one case Mrs. Lightfoot did not ask her to help in any way, save to carry the heavy tray to the top of the kitchen staircase.
Then, at last, the two sat down together to their breakfast, and after a few moments Mrs. Lightfoot suddenly observed:
“Did Miss Cheale gabble a bit in 'er sleep last night?”
“Yes,” said Jean in a low voice, “she did.”
“There now! But you'll soon get used to it. The minute she drops off, she is in the witness-box, poor soul! That's what's unsettling of 'er, though she do believe she'll get that villain, Garlett, off.”
Jean started so violently that the other noticed it.
“What's the matter with you? Got a pain?”
“Just a little pain,” said Jean, trying to smile.
“You'll get used to the stairs hafter a day or two. Just pour yourself hout another cup of tea and start your second hegg—that'll make you feel better.”
“I don't think I want another egg,” said Jean.
“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Lightfoot severely. “The hegg's been cooked, and you've got to eat it. I won't 'ave any waste in this 'ouse.”
“Does Miss Cheale really think she'll get Mr. Garlett off?”
“She do, indeed! She thinks she saw the murderer—a strange-looking chap 'e was—in the 'ouse that very hafternoon.”
Mrs. Lightfoot leaned forward. “But it's my belief, Bet, that she's just made that up! If so, they'll soon find it hout. She'll never save 'im, bless you! She don't know as much as I do about murder.”
Mrs. Lightfoot smiled a broad cheerful smile. “My poor 'usban' used ter say: '’Ow you can care to read about them 'orrible occurrences passes me, Jemima.' But I've made a special study of 'em from childhood.”
“But if she thinks she can prove he's innocent,” asked Jean in a trembling voice, “why doesn't she do it now? Why wait for the trial?”
“Now you're askin'!” exclaimed Mrs. Lightfoot. “But I'll answer your question truly. Miss Cheale”—she fixed her eyes on Jean's pale face—“Miss Cheale,” she repeated, “wants that man Garlett to know she's saved 'im. Then she think's 'e'll give up that girl Bower—and maybe marry 'er”
“Marry her?” repeated Jean. “How d'you mean?”
“Miss Cheale,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, “is sweet on that villain 'erself. That's been plain to me for a long time. If not, why take on so? She saved the man's arm, 'cordin' to 'er account, when she was a nurse in France, and now she means to save 'is life. She's a deep one!”
“Then she says she saw a stranger in the Thatched House?” asked Jean. She was beginning to understand much that had seemed oddly mysterious last night.
“That's what she's going to say, at any rate. One thing I will tell you, Bet Chart. She do honestly believe Garlett didn't do it. She said so again to me last night. Funny, wasn't it? She says to me: 'They say they've found the place where Mr. Garlett bought the poison. 'E never did buy any poison.'”
“You mean the thing that appeared in The Sunday Critic?” said the girl.
“Yes, that's what I do mean—but 'owever did you know it?”
“I saw the paper. A friend I stayed with the night before I came here bought it, and showed me the paragraph.”
Night and day the hidden drama went on—with the vast, dark, melancholy old house as background.
From the moment she went up to bed Jean Bower became intensely herself—that is, the unhappy, agonizingly anxious girl who was engaged to a man whom the whole world regarded as a murderer.
And then, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, she would be awakened by the now familiar sounds of Agatha Cheale talking in her sleep, and, after a short battle with herself, she would creep down to the floor below and listen to the unseen speaker rehearsing the evidence she meant to give when in the witness-box at Harry Garlett's trial for his life.
But what to the secret listener was so strange, as well as bitterly disappointing, was that Agatha Cheale's monologue scarcely altered at all, from night to night. The suggestions, assertions, indignant denials and admissions, would be repeated again and again, in almost exactly the same form of words. Indeed, as night followed night, there came a maddening monotony about Jean Bower's furtive eavesdropping expeditions down to the dark landing.
Lying awake after she had again crept into her bed, Jean would ask herself if there was any truth in the suggestion that a stranger had broken his way into the Thatched House on that fatal Saturday afternoon? And always she had to agree with shrewd Mrs. Lightfoot that there had been no stranger there. He was an invention, and a poor invention at that, of Agatha Cheale.
From seven each morning Jean Bower turned into Bet Chart, “help” to the good-natured, talkative, monstrously fat woman of whom the poor girl found herself getting fond, in a sort of way.
Now and again the “help” would hide herself behind the door of the empty front room on the ground floor to see the young lady who was the subject of so much interest and speculation to every one in the house, pass through the gloomy hall.
Agatha Cheale was exceptionally well dressed, generally in a well-cut blue-serge coat and skirt, a handsome fur tip pet, and a smart little toque on her dark hair. She had always been pale, and now her face looked absolutely bloodless. There were deep, dark rings under her eyes—those eyes which were the only beautiful feature of her thin, strong face.
Late each morning Bet Chart tidied Miss Cheale's sitting room, and “did” her bedroom; and when quite sure that Mrs. Lightfoot would not make an unexpected appearance, she would ashamedly open the drawers in the ramshackle dressing table, and try the lid of the shabby old dispatch box which stood close to Miss Cheale's bed. But the box had a patent lock, and its owner wore the key night and day, according to Mrs. Lightfoot.
As to the sitting room, it was bare and comfortless. On the big, plain writing table stood a typewriter, and to its right a wad of blotting paper, and a box of good notepaper and envelopes to match. A bookcase full of books did something to humanize the room. But Miss Cheale only used the room as a place in which to have her tray meals, and when she received her infrequent visitors.
And then, just nine days before what was to be the opening day of Harry Garlett's trial, Jean Bower did obtain conclusive evidence concerning the authorship of the anonymous letters which had first started the investigation.
She had finished dusting Miss Cheale's tidy, bare, little sitting room when some sudden instinct made her do what she had never done before. She moved, that is, the heavy typewriter which stood on the writing-table.
Under the board on which it stood lay a thin, fancy-paper covered blotting book. She opened it, to find between its leaves some sheets of thin, foreign-looking paper....
Shaking with excitement and suspense, she took up the top sheet and held it up between her eyes and the window. Then, still with the sheet of paper in her hand, she rushed up the ladder-like staircase, turned into her large bare garret, opened the attaché case where she kept a few things under lock and key, and took out the facsimile of the first of the anonymous letters which had been given to her by James Kentworthy.
Yes, there could be no doubt about it, the watermarks were the same.
She sank down on her bed, dizzy with conflicting feelings. Then Lucy Warren had been right in her reluctantly expressed suspicion! It was now certain that Agatha Cheale had written the anonymous letters which had ultimately caused Harry Garlett's arrest on the awful charge of poisoning his wife, and with a feeling of mingled excitement, horror, and triumph, Jean Bower faced what seemed to her the certainty of Agatha Cheale's guilt.
As she came back into the kitchen Mrs. Lightfoot looked up.
“Why, child, you do look bad!” she exclaimed. “I was going to ask you to go hout and get a quarter of a pound of butter, but I declare I'll do it myself! I don't want you laid up!”
She put her podgy hand on the girl's shoulder, and Jean burst into tears and began to sob bitterly, “I'm all right,” she said.
At eight o'clock Jean summed up courage to ask leave to go out. She felt she must see Sir Harold Anstey to-night. Considering the importance of what she had to tell him, to show him, he could not object to her going to his private address; a flat in Park Lane.
“I want to go out this evening on some urgent business. I hope you won't mind, Mrs. Lightfoot? Would you lend me a latchkey?”
Mrs. Lightfoot looked consideringly at the girl.
“Well,” she grumbled, “I don't suppose I shall say 'no,' though t'ain't, by rights, your hevening hout. But there! Yes, Bet, you can go.”
It was nine o'clock, and Sir Harold Anstey had just finished dinner. He had had an excellent meal and was enjoying a good cigar. But he was in a very bad temper—a rare state for him to be in—but a lady had been going to dine with Sir Harold to-night, and at the very last moment she had “chucked” him. He felt furious; also, what he was not wont to feel: jealous.
The telephone bell rang in the pantry and Sir Harold leapt up from his chair.
“A lady, Sir Harold, on the 'phone. She asked if you were alone. She wouldn't give her name. She said she'd like to come along and see you for a little while, if you were alone, and not too busy.”
“Say I shall be delighted to see her. And Gunn! I'll open the front door myself.
Dear little woman! Her excuse that she had had to go and see a sick friend had evidently been a true one.
But even to his impatient heart, the sharp electric ring came surprisingly soon.
He hurried into his hall. But when he opened the door, instead of the beautiful woman he expected to see, a slight, shabbily dressed girl stood before him.
“This is number eight,” he said shortly. “You have made a mistake in the floor.”
“No, I haven't, Sir Harold. I'm Jean Bower. I telephoned and asked if you were alone.”
“Miss Bower? So it was you who telephoned? Come in, by all means.”
Though he tried to speak pleasantly, there was a marked lack of cordiality in his voice.
“As a matter of fact I am very busy this evening,” he went on, “but of course, if you've anything important to say, I will see you now for a few minutes, rather than to-morrow morning in my chambers.”
But as he ushered her into the sitting room, the lawyer reasserted himself, and the mere man disappeared.
“And now, Miss Bower, what can I do for you?”
“I've found out that Agatha Cheale wrote those anonymous letters. I think you will agree that this piece of paper provides the proof.”
Sir Harold scrutinized closely the watermark which had been so carefully drawn in on the facsimile of the first anonymous letter. Then he held the thin piece of foreign paper up to the lamp.
“Yes—there's no doubt about it,” he said decisively.
Jean looked at him anxiously. She had felt so absolutely sure that he would be overjoyed at her discovery. Instead of that there was a grim, almost an angry, expression on his broad face.
“I fear that I am going to give you a shock, Miss Bower. The whole situation has been changed most seriously to our detriment by the fact that arsenic has been found in a house actually belonging to Mr. Garlett.”
As she was about to break in he put up his hand:
“Let me have my say out, please—and then I will listen to whatever you may have to say. I have something to tell you concerning this woman, Agatha Cheale. She lately communicated to the Prosecution a sworn statement that she saw a stranger in the Thatched House on the afternoon of Mrs. Garlett's death. She further says she saw him close to Mrs. Garlett's bedroom door. The prosecution do not believe this story, and neither does our side.”
“Yet it may be true!” exclaimed Jean desperately.
The great advocate went on as if he had not heard her:
“Now my theory is this: First, this woman, Agatha Cheale, was undoubtedly in love with Garlett; and she considered herself very much aggrieved when she learned of the man's forthcoming marriage to yourself.”
He saw Jean's face change, become discomposed, and, speaking a little less harshly, he went on:
“Come, come, you mustn't mind hearing the truth! I take it you would rather know the truth?”
She bent her head.
“Secondly, to me, and also, I may add, to my brethren of the law on the other side, it soon became practically certain that Miss Cheale had written the anonymous letters, so what you have brought me to-night simply confirms our view. Now, Miss Cheale, to the best of my belief”—he looked at her significantly—“did this out of what I must call, saving your presence, feminine spite. I am quite sure she had no idea that Mrs. Garlett had met with anything but a natural death. What she wished to do was to give Henry Garlett, and no doubt yourself, too, a very unpleasant quarter of an hour. If this theory is correct, the result of the exhumation astounded her and caused her to realize that, thanks to her spiteful action, the man to whom she seems to be still devoted is in great peril of his life. This is why she has hit on the absurd, though in such cases common, invention of a mysterious stranger.”
He stopped speaking, and in a strangled voice Jean exclaimed:
“So what I've brought you to-night is not of the slightest help, Sir Harold?”
“I don't say that! I'm glad you brought the proof to me and not to the other side, for, of course, anything that tends to discredit Miss Cheale discredits her mysterious stranger. But I should not be a true friend, I should be a cruel friend”—and now his voice did take on a far more kindly quality—“were I to conceal from you, Miss Bower, that Henry Garlett is in the very gravest danger. Till the admission made by Miss Prince”
Jean made a quick movement of surprise.
“Yes, Miss Prince has at last brought herself to admit that there was actually a considerable amount of arsenic kept by her, carelessly, in an open cupboard at the Thatched Cottage. You are, of course, aware that there was one all-important missing link in the chain of circumstantial evidence connecting Henry Garlett with the death of his wife? That link has now, I regret to say, been supplied.”
As he saw the look of agony, of despair, on her young face he hastened on:
“I do not mean by all I have said, Miss Bower, that you are to give up hope. On the contrary, if you can persuade the jury that Garlett had not fallen in love with you before his wife's death, you will have gone a very long way to destroy what, of course, the other side are relying on—Garlett's motive for committing this murder—if murder there was.”
“If murder there was?” repeated Jean uncertainly.
“Yes, for I am going most seriously into the question whether or not Mrs. Garlett committed suicide. A large quantity of white arsenic has been in Miss Prince's possession for many years. At one time, when in better health, Mrs. Garlett was constantly at the Thatched Cottage. I have found a woman who will tell the Court that Mrs. Garlett had an extraordinary horror of vermin—of rats and of mice—and I am going to raise the question as to whether some years ago she did not persuade Miss Prince to give her a small quantity of arsenic to destroy some rats which she believed were infesting a portion of the Thatched House. In that case Mrs. Garlett may well have kept some of the arsenic by her, and, in a moment of depression or of pain, administered it to herself.”
But even Sir Harold's assured voice became less assured as he put forward this unlikely theory.
He concluded after a short pause:
“The thing for you to do is to keep yourself as fit as possible during the days that are now going to elapse before the trial. Remember that everything may depend on your making a good and, as I believe, an honest impression on the jury.”