“Look here, Maclean! I don’t forget the night that you and I spent by our boy’s beside just before he died—or how good you were to me and to my poor wife. That’s why I’m going to do my very best to help you, and to shield that unfortunate girl. But I feel I owe you the truth, and I’m afraid—nay, I’m more than afraid—I’m sure that if Garlett committed this awful crime he did it for love of your niece. Even now he can think of nothing else! When I saw him in the prison this morning the first thing he said to me was: ‘I want you to convey a message to Miss Bower, Toogood. I want you to explain to her that I don’t want her ever to come here—to this horrible place.’”
Dr. Maclean opened his mouth to speak, and then he shut it again.
“And that wasn’t all! While I was trying to get out of him something which might be of value when he is brought up before the magistrates, his mind was so full of Miss Bower that he really could hardly attend to what I was saying!”
“They’ve hardly seen one another, and never alone, since the exhumation of Mrs. Garlett’s body,” observed the doctor in a low voice.
The lawyer stared at him.
“They were alone in the Thatched House this morning,” he said abruptly. “I mean when Garlett was arrested.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true,” said the doctor firmly.
“My dear Maclean, it is true. The Inspector came in about quite another matter, and gave me the most moving account of how he found them together in that empty house. He said it would have melted the heart of a stone to see the way the poor girl behaved. She wouldn’t leave Garlett—she clung to him—he said it reminded him of stories he had read of couples in the Indian Mutiny.”
“My God!” exclaimed the doctor, “I knew nothing of this——”
The lawyer pursued his advantage.