“I hope to see this Miss Cheale as soon as I am back in London,” said Mr. Fradelle. “I made two attempts to see her the day before yesterday. I tried at the place where she has a flat, and then I went to the office where she works, but I was unfortunate both times. I take it to be unlikely that the defence have got hold of her yet?”
“They may have done so,” said the doctor dubiously, “She was on very good terms with both Mr. and Mrs. Garlett. In fact Miss Cheale is, in some way, related to Mr. Garlett. I think it would be very painful to her to be among the witnesses for the prosecution—though not more painful, I feel sure, than it is to myself,” he concluded ruefully.
“I take it Miss Jean Bower will be an unwilling witness, Dr. Maclean?”
“I know that my niece will be a truthful witness——” he looked rather straight at the thin tight-lipped man who sat with his back to the light, in shadow.
“I trust so, though a woman witness is seldom as truthful—perhaps I ought to say as straightforward—as would be a man in her place. Too often your honest, truthful woman witness is such a fool that, without meaning it, she gets confused and begins to lie!”
“My niece is not at all that sort of woman,” said the doctor coldly.
Perhaps the last words uttered by Dr. Maclean prejudiced the stranger, for the glance he cast on the pale, sad-faced girl who a few moments later entered the room was far from kindly.
Jean Bower walked over to her uncle’s writing-table and sat down in his big chair.
She looked such a little slip of a thing that even a harder man than was Mr. Fradelle might have been moved by her look of fragility, deep sadness, and youth. But, like so many clever people, the Crown inquisitor was one of those men who find it difficult to change their minds. He had made up his mind that Jean Bower was the villain of the piece. He felt convinced that it was for love of this girl that Garlett had committed a cruel crime. Far from having any wish to spare her, he hoped to convict her lover, if not herself, out of her own mouth.
“Miss Bower,” he began, in a rasping, unpleasant tone, “I must ask you to give me your whole attention, and I want no wordy explanations. What is required are straight, simple answers to what I think you will admit to be straight, simple questions.”