Jean Bower came up closer to him. Somehow she no longer felt afraid of this big, to her singularly unattractive-looking, man.
“We all like Mr. Kentworthy, and I am sure he is honest. But oh! he is not a clever man, Sir Harold. The only thing that makes me happy to be with him”—tears came into her voice—“is that even now he does believe Harry to be innocent. He really does—I do wish you believed it too!”
He was taken aback, touched, and rather amused, by her frankness.
“How dare you accuse me of not believing in the innocence of a man I’m going to defend?” he exclaimed half jokingly. “Of course I believe my client to be innocent until he is proved guilty!”
“Sir Harold,” she said piteously, “tell me if I can help Harry in any way? Is there nothing—nothing that I can do? I would do anything.”
“Sit down,” he said briefly.
She sat down, and he began walking up and down the room. Though she did not know it, that was a good sign. It showed that he was becoming really interested, putting his powerful mind to the solution of a problem that was not, after all, as simple as he had believed it to be.
If this girl told the truth—if her relations with this man she now passionately loved had been what she had just sworn them to have been before his wife’s death—then what could have been Garlett’s motive in poisoning the poor woman? He was also impressed by the detective Kentworthy’s belief in Garlett’s innocence.
Sir Harold Anstey had had a great deal to do with Kentworthy in another murder mystery case and it had been Kentworthy’s passionless, honest, clear evidence in the box which had hanged Anstey’s guilty client. Kentworthy might not be a clever man—not the Sherlock Holmes every young lady expects a detective to be—but his opinion, especially when it was in favour of a man actually under arrest on a charge of murder, was of great value in the famous barrister’s eyes.
“This is going to be a very difficult, complicated, and anxious case,” he said at last. “All the more difficult because it appears so absolutely simple.”