XII

As Ivy stepped down out of the telephone box, after her conversation with Roger Gretorex, she felt, though partially relieved, yet at the same time agitated and still terribly frightened. She was, indeed, so much affected that she did not even notice the admiring glance thrown at her by a man in the next box.

Her interview that morning with Inspector Orpington and his subordinate⁠—for he had brought with him a sergeant⁠—had made her feel sick with fear. True that, after she had answered with apparent frankness the first probing questions put to her, she had felt, as she almost always did feel with any man with whom life brought her into temporary contact, that the inspector was beginning to like her and to sympathise with her. But, even so, she had experienced this morning what she had never experienced before⁠—not only a sensation of abject fear, but also as if she were becoming entangled in a horrible, close-meshed net.

During a brief visit to Paris, in the old days when she and Jervis still had plenty of money to burn, she had gone with a gay party to the Grand Guignol. There she had seen acted a terrifying little play which showed the walls of a room closing in on a man. That was exactly how she had felt during the long examination and cross-examination she had endured this morning.

One of the things that had made her feel so dreadfully frightened was that the two men from Scotland Yard had not begun their investigations by seeing her, the widow of the dead man. They had first interviewed Nurse Bradfield, and then the cook.

While this had been going on, Ivy had waited in the drawing-room, sick with terror and suspense, wondering what the two women were saying about her. At long last, the strangers had come into the drawing-room, looking very grave indeed.

And now, as she walked back to Duke of Kent Mansion, choosing instinctively a roundabout way, Ivy kept living over again that strange, even she had realised momentous, interview.

The inspector had gone straight to the point. When had she, Mrs. Jervis Lexton herself, last been in the company of her husband before his unexpected death? After an imperceptible pause, during which she was wondering fearfully if Nurse Bradfield had remembered all that had happened on that sinister last afternoon, she had answered the question truthfully. She said that she had been with Jervis after luncheon, while the nurse had gone out for a short time.

When Ivy had made this admission, there had come a look of alert questioning on the inspector’s face, for Nurse Bradfield had not mentioned that fact, which indeed she had forgotten. And then it was, on seeing the sudden change of countenance on the part of her inquisitor, that Mrs. Jervis Lexton had gently volunteered the statement that, after she herself had gone out, the sick man had had another visitor that afternoon, a friend of her own and her husband’s, a young man named Roger Gretorex, who was a doctor.

She had allowed, and consciously allowed, herself to look embarrassed, as she made what sounded like an admission. As she had intended should be the case, the inspector had at once run after that hare. But she had not bargained for what had followed immediately⁠—insistent questioning as to her own and her husband’s relations with the man who had been, with the exception of the cook and the nurse, the last person to see Jervis Lexton alive.

How long had they known Dr. Gretorex? Did they see much of him? What had been her own relations with him? When, for instance, had she herself last seen him before the death of Jervis Lexton?

At last, when she was beginning to feel as if the meshes of the net were becoming smaller and smaller, he had “got out of her,” so Ivy put it to herself, that Roger Gretorex cared for her far more than a bachelor ought to care for the wife of a friend.

Nevertheless, everything would now have been “quite all right” from Ivy’s point of view if it had stopped there. But to her dismay and surprise, Inspector Orpington suddenly began on quite another tack.

In spite of the fact, which he assured her he accepted as true, that she had rejected with indignation Dr. Gretorex’s advances, he suggested that it was odd that her own and her husband’s friendship with the young man had gone on. He “presumed” that Lexton had known nothing of Gretorex’s unwelcome attentions to Mrs. Lexton? Ivy had reluctantly admitted that that was so. And, as he pressed her, with one quick, probing question after another, she saw, with a clear, affrighted, inward vision, that what she had intended should be a molehill was growing into a mountain.

At last had come the most alarming query of all⁠—had she ever been to see Dr. Gretorex at 6 Ferry Place?

All the questions put to her she had answered with apparent ease and frankness. And, as to the last, she explained that she had gone to Dr. Gretorex’s house with a great friend of hers, a lady who had then been a widow, a Mrs. Arundell, but who had married again, and was now in India. They had been accompanied by a young man who was a friend of Mrs. Arundell.

As to going out with Roger Gretorex, she had done so only occasionally, and never since he had confessed he loved her. No, never since her husband’s illness.

How deeply thankful was Ivy Lexton that she had really seen so little of Roger Gretorex of late!

And then, all at once, the inspector had said something which had made, as she put it to herself, her heart stand still.

“I suppose there is a surgery attached to the house in Ferry Place?” he had remarked, speaking his thought aloud. And it had been those words, as to the probable existence of a surgery, that had suddenly made up her mind for her as to the line she would take concerning Roger Gretorex and their relations to one another.

Did Ivy Lexton then realise the full import of what she had done? Most certainly not. Subconsciously she was aware that her avowals, her timorous admissions as to his passion for her lovely self, could do Gretorex no good. But her only object had been to shift, at any cost, suspicion from herself.

There had been an interval, perhaps as long as a quarter of an hour, when she had been alone with Inspector Orpington. He had sent away his sergeant into the dining-room next door. At the time she had not known why.

Then he had spoken to her kindly, yet in a very solemn, searching tone, adjuring her to be frank, and to tell him of any knowledge, or even suspicion, she might harbour in her mind. But though every word he said added to her secret terror, that terror which was at once tangible and vague, for she knew nothing of the law, she had been wary, and very clever, in her answers.

Then the other man had come back, and to her surprise and horror she found she was expected to sign a statement.

“You had better read it over,” the inspector had said quietly.

And Ivy had read it over, hardly realising what it was she was reading, but having the wit to know that this man from Scotland Yard had played fair by her.

Though in a sense Ivy had said nothing of any importance, apart from that fatal admission of Roger Gretorex’s love for her, Orpington had left the flat well satisfied. He believed he now had the threads of what had seemed at first such a mystery, all clutched up into his hands. Incidentally, at the end of that long searching inquisition he had reconstituted every moment of the last day of the dead man’s life.

But as he had got up to leave, he had suddenly returned to the fact that Mrs. Lexton had been with her husband alone on that last afternoon of his life. That the inspector evidently attached importance to this fact brought back all Ivy’s terrors. But her remarkable powers of dissimulation stood her in good stead, and she again gave a pathetic little account of those few last minutes with her husband.

“I don’t quite know how long it was. Time went by quickly, for I thought he was better; and we had a little chat, making up our minds where we would go when he was well enough to have a change.”

“Did he have anything to drink⁠—a dose of medicine while you were with him, Mrs. Lexton?”

“Oh, no! Nurse was not out long enough for that.”

And then it was that Orpington made his one mistake. Not that it made any difference at all in the long run. But, unconsciously, he had been affected by Ivy’s soft, feminine charm, as well as by her fragile loveliness.

“Of course we shall let you know the result of our investigations as soon as I have concluded my inquiries. As for Dr. Gretorex, I shall go and see him as soon as I have had something to eat.”

See Roger? Roger, who was so truthful, so incapable of telling even a white lie?

The knowledge that Gretorex was going to be subjected to a searching examination made her turn faint with fear. Had she been guilty of folly, and worse than folly, in admitting, nay, in volunteering the information, that Roger loved her? Within herself she debated that question. If Orpington had suspected the truth, then, of course, she had been wise. But had he⁠—had he?

In any case, the warning of Gretorex had seemed the only thing to do, and on the whole she now felt strengthened, comforted, by his unquestioning faith.

As at last she went up in the lift of the Duke of Kent Mansion, she heard quick, light steps running up the stairs, and she shivered with apprehension. But it was only a telegraph boy, and as they arrived together at the door of the flat, she asked quickly, “Is the name Lexton?”

“Yes, ma’am, ‘Mrs. Lexton,’ ” and he handed her the telegram.

In her bedroom she tore open the buff envelope and looked first at the signature:

Just read with great concern result postmortem. Have cabled John Oram solicitor instructing him to afford you all help financial and other on my behalf. Sister dangerously ill or would return at once myself. Please keep me acquainted with any developments. Deepest sympathy.

She burst into hysterical tears of relief. Nothing, surely, could happen to her now that Rushworth had come to her help?

Always Ivy Lexton had been sheltered, guarded, lifted over the rough places of life by men⁠—men who had been conquered, pressed into her service, by that alluring quality which means so much more than beauty. But not one of the many men to whom she had cause to be grateful in her life had been in the powerful position of Miles Rushworth, as regarded either character or wealth.

She lay down on the comfortable couch which stood at right angles to her pretty bed. It was the first time she had ever done so, for she was a strong young woman, in spite of the air of delicacy which added so much to her charm in the eyes of many people, women as well as men. But she felt tired⁠—dreadfully, consciously tired, today.

She closed her eyes and, deliberately, she lived over again Rushworth’s last long, passionate embrace on the yacht. It was as if she heard spoken aloud his ardent, brokenhearted words, “If only you were free!”

Well? She was free now, even at what she was beginning to realise might be a fearful cost. Even so, it could only be a question of months, perhaps of weeks, before she became Rushworth’s wife.

She opened her eyes and smiled for the first time that day, a radiant, secretly confident smile.

Leaping off the couch she read through Rushworth’s long telegram again.

John Oram? What a curious name. Being a solicitor, he must be on the telephone. She would ring him up immediately after she had had lunch, and ask him to come and see her.

Going into the hall, she called out, in almost a joyous voice, “Nurse? Here I am! I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Nurse Bradfield came slowly down the corridor. The events of the last few days had aged her, and Ivy was struck by her sad, bewildered expression. She secretly wondered why Nurse Bradfield looked so old and unlike herself? Nurse Bradfield, lucky woman, had nothing to be afraid of.

Ivy Lexton never knew all she owed to the woman who had tended Jervis Lexton through his last illness. When Inspector Orpington had done with the nurse, he had formed, albeit unconsciously, a very definite view of the dead man’s widow. Thus, even before he had seen Ivy, he had accepted Nurse Bradfield’s view of young Mrs. Lexton’s nature and way of life. That is, he regarded her as selfish, feather-headed, and extravagant; but good-natured, easygoing, and quite incapable of planning and of executing such a crime as that which had brought about her husband’s death.

That Jervis Lexton had died as the result of a foul crime on the part of some man or woman who had a strong motive for wishing him to be obliterated had appeared plain to the man in charge of the case, even before he had interviewed any of the people concerned with it.

But if Ivy, unknowingly, had reason to be grateful to Nurse Bradfield, Nurse Bradfield just now had cause to be very grateful to Ivy. It meant a great deal to her that she could stay on here, in this luxurious flat, living in quietude and comfort, instead of going back to the hostel which was her only “home” between her cases.

She had already learnt, and great was her dismay thereat, that she would become an important witness for the Crown, should the mystery be so far cleared up as to bring about a trial for murder. Small wonder that today she felt too upset and too disturbed to eat, and she watched, with surprise, Ivy’s evident enjoyment of the good luncheon put before them.

The nurse was the more secretly astonished at the newly made widow’s look of cheerfulness because she was well aware that “little Mrs. Lexton” was most uncomfortably short of money.

All that morning, and especially during the latter half of that morning, there had come a procession of tradespeople to the flat requesting immediate payment of their accounts. Some of them had been interviewed by the cook, others by Nurse Bradfield herself. As for Ivy, she had absolutely refused to see any of them. “I have no money at all just now,” she had observed sadly. “But of course everybody will be paid in time.”

Nurse Bradfield had even begun to wonder if she would ever be repaid a certain ten pounds which she had lent Mrs. Lexton a few days before. But she was not as much troubled by that thought as some of Ivy Lexton’s fairly well-to-do friends might have been. She even told herself that, after all, she was now receiving far more than ten pounds’ worth of comfort and quiet.

As if something of what she was thinking flashed from the nurse’s mind to hers, Ivy said suddenly, “I shall have plenty of money soon, Nurse. And the moment I’ve got anything I’ll give you back that money you were kind enough to lend me.”

There was a tone of real sincerity in her voice, and Nurse Bradfield felt reassured.

“I only want it back,” she said quietly, “when you can really give it me conveniently, Mrs. Lexton. Of course ten pounds is a good deal of money to me. But now that I know poor Mr. Lexton was not insured, I realise that things must be very difficult for you.”

“It’s going to be quite all right,” exclaimed Ivy impulsively.

Oh! what a difference to life Rushworth’s cable had made! She felt almost hysterical with joy and relief.

And then, as there came a ring at the bell, she said quickly to the maid who was waiting at table, “Do tell whoever it is that I shall be able to pay up everything soon⁠—I hope even within the next few days.”

But this time the visitor was not an anxious tradesman. He was a tall, thin, elderly man, with a keen, shrewd face, who gave his name as “Mr. Oram.”

After a few moments spent by him in the hall, he was shown into the drawing-room, there to wait for the lady concerning whom he already felt a keen curiosity.