The Story of Ivy · Chapter 22 (1/2)

XXII

As he walked up the gangway of the cross-Channel boat at Calais, Miles Rushworth’s heart was full of two women. The one was his dead sister, the other Ivy Lexton, the woman to whom he was hastening, and whom he expected to see today. Every fibre of Rushworth’s being longed consciously, hungrily, thirstily, for Ivy.

It was a source of real grief to him that these two could never now meet and love each other. He had been painfully aware that his sister hoped he would marry her own dearest friend, Bella Dale, and he had not dared to speak to her of Ivy.

During his long, dreary journey home he had often asked himself if all she had gone through had changed her from the deliciously pretty, kindhearted, rather irresponsible little creature he remembered her as being, into a more serious woman. Not that he wanted Ivy different. To him she was already absolutely perfect. But her letters had grown shorter, as his had grown longer, and vaguely they had disappointed him.

Roger Gretorex? How often had Rushworth tried to visualise the young man who had committed so dastardly a crime in order to set free the woman he had loved hopelessly, and without return, from the degradation of being tied to such a waster as had been Jervis Lexton.

Though even the South African papers had been full of the wretched fellow’s photographs, proving that he had a singularly handsome face, Rushworth had no clear vision of him. Also, Ivy had never once mentioned him in any of her letters.

Suddenly that fact, Ivy’s absolute silence concerning Gretorex, struck him as being strange. He also realised, what he had not realised till now, that poor lovely Ivy could not but be, all her life long, even after she changed her name, a marked woman. She would be always pointed at, and that wherever she went in English-speaking lands, as the heroine of a great cause célèbre.

Yet stop! In the circumstances, would it not only be right, but reasonable, that she should marry him, Miles Rushworth, almost at once? He would beg her, entreat her, to consent to an immediate marriage. And then he would take her away in his yacht to the South, to some quiet place where they two could be hidden in a trance of love, while people forgot the sordid story of the murder of which she had been the innocent cause.

It was a fine winter day, though bitterly cold, so the homecoming traveller found himself a comfortable spot in a sheltered place, on the upper deck of the steamer, where was just room for three.

Two deck-chairs were already occupied, one by a big man with whose powerful, humorous face Rushworth felt he was vaguely familiar, the other by a delicate, fragile-looking, little grey-haired lady. The third chair was unoccupied, and so he sat down in it.

Perhaps because he was in a sentimental mood today, he felt queerly moved when he saw that, under their rug, the big man was holding the hand of the grey-haired little lady. They were talking together eagerly, happily; obviously, so Rushworth told himself, an old-fashioned husband and wife, never so happy as when they were together.

His heart swung back to Ivy Lexton, and to the bliss of their coming meeting.

Poor, precious darling! What a terrible ordeal she had been through! He would regret all his life, all their joint life, that he had been far from her during the weeks that had followed the strange death of Jervis Lexton.

And then⁠—for a moment he thought his ears had misled him⁠—he heard that very name of “Lexton” uttered aloud by the man sitting one from him.

“That Lexton affair? Come now. If you really read your loving husband’s letters⁠—I sometimes suspect that you don’t, you naughty little thing⁠—well, there’d be nothing left to tell you! It’s hunting I should be today, instead of coming to meet an ungrateful woman.”

“I want to know what’s happening now, Joe. Also, most of all, what led to the extraordinary reprieve on the very day this man was to have been hanged?”

A reprieve? Miles Rushworth felt a sudden rush of anger and surprise. He was, of course, aware that Roger Gretorex, the man whose name and personality he loathed, and for whom he felt he would ever feel an intense, retrospective horror, was to have been hanged this very morning. That fact had been stated in both the daily papers which are published in English in Paris.

If it was true that there had been a reprieve that morning, how had this stranger already become aware of the fact?

“You know I told you, Eileen, long ago, that the poor chap had refused to appeal?”

“Yes, I remember that,” she murmured.

“Well, there seemed nothing left to be done! I was in despair, and it was only the day before yesterday that by⁠—well, I suppose old-fashioned folk like you would call it an intervention of Providence, some astounding new evidence was produced. And what’s more, I’ve been proved right!”

And there was a tone of triumph in the, now low, organ-like voice.

“D’you mean that what you half suspected was true all along, Joe?”

She had turned her head round, and was gazing up into her husband’s face.

Rushworth saw the big man bend his head as jovially he exclaimed, “Bedad! I think we’ve got her cold!”

A tremor ran through the lady. “What a horrible expression,” she murmured.

“Still, so far there’s something lacking, me dear, and it’s causing me a bit of anxiety.”

“What’s that, Joe?”

“Motive!” the man exclaimed, in a voice that had become suddenly grave. And then he went on: “I don’t mind telling you that everything fair and⁠—well, a bit near the wind, also, was done to try and find out if our lovely, clinging Ivy had another man in tow. She is a”⁠—the speaker sought for something in place of the Biblical word trembling on his lips, but he gave it up, and said instead:

“We heard that there was one chap who went about with her a good deal last autumn, and who was far more often at Duke of Kent Mansion than Gretorex ever was. But though we ran him to earth and gave him⁠—at least I hope so⁠—a pretty bad quarter of an hour, it was clear that he would never have married her, not if she had been a hundred times free! Also, though he’s a gay bachelor, and manages to give his lady friends a scrumptious time, he’s not a rich man, and our practical little Ivy wants money, money, money all the time.”

“Then what’s going to be done now? You don’t want your man, if he’s really innocent, to languish in prison half his life,” observed the little lady shrewdly.

“I do not,” he answered, in his rich, Irish voice. “What’s more, I want to shift that noose. Once we get her in the dock I’ll see there’s no recommendation to mercy; trust me for that! The woman’s a double-dyed murderess. She poisoned her husband, and she as good as hanged her lover.”

“You haven’t got her in the dock yet, and maybe you never will,” said his wife calmly.

“Hold on! Hold on! Did you ever see me miss a kill I’d set my heart on? There’s another woman whose neck I’d like to wring⁠—that of an old charwoman, who, if she’d told the truth when Gretorex was first arrested, might have made all the difference, for there would still have been time, then, to find out something.”

“Has that poor, pretty woman had a chance of saying anything for herself?” asked his wife slowly.

“That artful little Jezebel is staying with a woman friend in the country at present, and the police are determined that everything is to be OK this time. It’s for hell she’s making⁠—” and he laughed a jolly laugh. “Ivy’s held all the cards in her hand up to now, but she’s going to lose the rubber.”

“I do wonder, Joe, what her motive can have been⁠—her husband had just got a good job, hadn’t he?”

For a few moments the speaker remained silent, then he said in a singular voice:

“If Gretorex had hanged this morning, I’d have betted a hundred to one that within a year we should have seen, in all the papers, a paragraph announcing that the beautiful Mrs. Lexton, whose husband had died in such tragic circumstances, was about to be married very quietly to Mr. Dash, a gentleman of great wealth and considerable position!”

Rushworth moved slightly in his seat. He felt as if, within the last few minutes, the whole world, his world, had stopped going round, and that when it began again it would be in quite a different world that he would find himself.

“Then you think it will come out, now, that Mrs. Lexton was in love with some man⁠—?”

“I don’t think anything of the kind! My view is that among the innumerable young fools who have made love to her in the past year or two, she marked down some rich man as a possible husband, were she only free. One thing we learned only the other day. This was that two or three years ago she did her best to persuade that rotter Jervis Lexton to consent to an arranged divorce. He refused, unluckily for himself, for, though he was a poor mutt, he adored his wife. She’s the sort of woman over whom men go fantee⁠—”

“It’s unlucky that you can’t put a name to the happy man, Joe! Eh, my dear?”

“Unlucky? I should think it is unlucky! Still, someone’s been supplying pretty Ivy with plenty of money during the last few weeks.”

“It’s strange she wasn’t suspected.”

“Of course she was! But not by the right people. My word, Eileen, she is a clever little woman! You should have seen her in the witness-box! Why, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But she overplayed her part. I think a good many people found it difficult to believe that she’s been what she made herself out to be⁠—a kind of plaster saint.”

“Is there any evidence to show that she was not that?” asked Lady Molloy quietly.

“There you go! Hate to believe anything of a certain sort about a woman! You’re a regular suffragette. A cold-blooded poisoner, yes⁠—but naughty? Oh dear no, not that, if you please.”

Half to himself, he added, “She wrote Gretorex two letters the poor chap’s servant got out of his paper-basket and pieced together. The minute I’d read ’em I knew there’d be a reprieve!”

“Why?”

“Because Eddie Law is a highly moral man. He loathes the sins he’s not inclined to.” Sir Joseph added candidly, “Most of us do, me dear.”

As Rushworth walked down the gangway at Dover two or three of his fellow-passengers nudged one another and smiled. They thought he was “a sheet in the wind,” for he did not seem to know quite what he was doing, or where he was going.

The moment Mr. Oram received the wire informing him that the execution of Roger Gretorex had been postponed, he hurried back to London, full of surprise and curiosity.

What an amazing⁠—he almost felt it to be, even now, an unbelievable⁠—story, was that told him with deferential clearness and dryness by Alfred Finch.

“God bless my soul!” he repeated at intervals.

And then at last, with some magnanimity, he observed, “Then you were right, Finch, and I wrong, all along. Though I thought her a vain little fribble, murder is the last thing I’d have suspected that young woman capable of.”

“I didn’t suspect her either, sir. I was looking for a man⁠—the successor to Dr. Gretorex in the lady’s affections. The police believe they’re on the track of what may be styled Mrs. Lexton’s motive. It’s a man, right enough! Orpington wouldn’t tell me his name. He simply said he was very rich, and seemingly infatuated with her.”

He gave the old solicitor a rather odd look. But that gentleman did not take up the challenge, though all Rushworth’s cables, both to Ivy and to the lawyer himself, had been traced. And Mr. Oram had just become aware of the fact.

“Well⁠—well⁠—well⁠—”

“I suggest, sir, that you appeal to Sir Edward Law to consider the release of Dr. Gretorex on licence. The letter which he wrote to Mrs. Lexton⁠—you have a copy of it here⁠—which someone, I suspect one of the maids at the flat, sent anonymously to the Home Secretary, though one can’t exactly call it evidence, makes it clear to any impartial mind that our man was absolutely innocent of the whole business. As soon as she got busy, Mrs. Lexton wanted him out of the way. That’s as plain as a pikestaff. After all, he is a doctor, and he might have spoilt her game. Also he must have known, if he stopped to think a bit, that she had had access to the poison.”

“More fool he to go to the flat on that last day,” said Mr. Oram crustily.

It was that fact which, as soon as he had learnt it, had seemed to fix the guilt definitely on Gretorex.

“He was dotty about her! When a chap’s in that peculiar condition, sir, it’s as if he can’t keep away,” murmured Mr. Finch.

And then, it might have seemed irrelevantly, he observed: “Mr. Rushworth will be back in London in a day or two. Earlier, if he travels overland from Marseilles.”

But even Alfred Finch felt a thrill of surprise when that same afternoon he was told that Mr. Rushworth was closeted with Mr. Oram. Indeed, he made a quick mental calculation. Either this must mean that their important client had come to Mr. Oram’s office straight from Victoria Station, or that he had flown from Paris.

Mr. Finch would have given a good deal to have been present at the interview which was taking place within a few yards of where he was working on a tiresome right-of-way case.

Mr. Oram’s head clerk had never much liked Miles Rushworth, and he could not help smiling to himself, as he considered the very awkward position in which that gentleman would find himself, if he was called as a witness for the Crown, as he most certainly would be if Mrs. Lexton were ever put on trial for the murder of her husband.

Alfred Finch knew that something of a most incriminating nature had been found in Ivy’s bedroom, when the flat in Duke of Kent Mansion had been searched yesterday. He thought it probable that this consisted of a series of letters between Mrs. Lexton and Miles Rushworth. Even a man of huge wealth does not give something for nothing to an attractive woman.

Lawyers are apt to overlook the exception which proves the rule in life.

Had Mr. Finch been able to look through a blank wall, he would have seen Mr. Oram sitting at his writing-table, and looking across it straight at Miles Rushworth. And could he have heard what was being said, he would have realised that his employer was speaking in a tone that was, for him, oddly hesitant and uneasy.

“I’m sorry to say, Rushworth, that I’ve no doubt at all but that there’s been a terrible miscarriage of justice. I take it that you knew comparatively little of Mrs. Jervis Lexton, even though her husband was in your employment?”

Miles Rushworth made a conscious effort to appear calm and unconcerned. But he failed in that endeavour, and was aware that he failed.

“I knew them both fairly well,” he answered at last.

Mr. Oram began playing with a paper knife. He was wondering how much the man who sat there, with overcast face, and anxious, frowning eyes, was concerned with this horrid business.

“What’s going to be the next move, Oram? I take it that you’ve been informed?”

“Well, yes, I have been informed, though quite unofficially. The⁠—ahem! authorities are very naturally perturbed. An innocent man was very nearly hanged. It was, in fact, a matter of hours⁠—”

Should he tell this old friend and client the truth? All his life long John Oram had cultivated caution, and technically he was now bound to silence. But he made up his mind that he owed the truth to Rushworth. Even now the solicitor had no suspicion of how really close had been the relations between the woman he now believed to have been a cold-blooded murderess, and this man whom she had so completely deceived. He was aware of how carelessly generous Rushworth could be and often was.

Still, a glance at his client’s face, now filled with a painful expression of suspense and acute anxiety, showed that this matter was of great moment to him.