“I want you to tell me in your own words,” he said impressively, “the story of your acquaintance with Henry Garlett, and what led up to your engagement.”
Quietly, straightforwardly, and, he began almost to believe, quite truthfully, Jean told the simple story of that which had come to her to mean everything in the world.
After she had finished Sir Harold leaned forward.
“If I accept all this as true, I must ask you a most important question, Miss Bower. Who can have had the smallest motive for wishing this lady out of the way? Remember that in such a case as this, it is not enough to say, ‘This man did not do it.’ You must, if you can in any way bring it about, be able to declare, ‘But that man did!’ I suppose we may put aside the idea that Mrs. Garlett committed suicide?”
“I suppose we may,” said Jean Bower, but she spoke with a certain hesitation which he was quick to detect.
“Have you any doubt of it?” he asked eagerly. “Did the poor woman suffer great pain? What was her mental state? Can we rely on her doctor to give evidence favourable to Mr. Garlett?”
“Dr. Maclean, who attended Mrs. Garlett, is my uncle,” said the girl slowly. “I know that he believes, as does Mr. Garlett himself, that such an idea as suicide never even crossed her mind.”
Sir Harold Anstey felt both perplexed and irritated. He told himself that there is after all such a thing as being too truthful, too scrupulous.
“That’s a great pity,” he said dryly. “If you could persuade your uncle, Miss Bower, to given even a slight hint that his patient was sometimes very depressed and, if not suffering actual pain, was yet in constant discomfort, it might be a very great help to me in saving Mr. Garlett’s life.”
He was still absolutely convinced that his client was guilty, but somehow he was beginning to feel very, very sorry for this pretty young creature with whom he was holding this curiously unemotional conversation. While she had been telling him the story of her acquaintanceship with the man she now loved, he had suddenly realized that it was pent-up passion, not lack of feeling, that made her speak in so still and quiet a voice.