“That’s true,” said Jean, “and yet”—her face clouded over—“and yet, Rachel, they’ve left no stone unturned—one might almost say that literally—to find arsenic in the Thatched House.”
Rachel North took her friend’s hand. “You will want all your wits about you during this experiment that you are going to try. If you allow yourself to be unnerved by what has been published by that paper then I’m afraid you’ll injure your chance of success. From all you tell me, I agree with you that that woman Agatha Cheale knows far more than she has chosen to tell. Her behaviour after Mr. Garlett was committed for trial—I mean her behaviour in coming down to see Miss Prince—is to my mind almost an indication that she knows something she is unwilling to reveal. Now I wonder—perhaps you’ll be shocked at what I’m going to say, Jean—I wonder if Miss Cheale—well, to put it plainly, was fond of Mr. Garlett?”
Jean looked at Rachel.
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I’m afraid Miss Cheale did care for Harry, and it’s because I can’t help suspecting that she had something to do with the writing of those anonymous letters that I’m going to the house where she is living. She’s only seen me twice in her life. I feel sure she won’t know me again, and, as I’ve already told you, Sir Harold Anstey thinks it is all-important that I should find out who wrote those letters.”
“I agree,” said Rachel quickly. “Whoever wrote those letters was either instigated by the most fiendish spite, and simply wanted to make Mr. Garlett miserable for nothing, or else he or she must have known that if an exhumation should take place arsenic would certainly be found in Mrs. Garlett’s body.”
“I think Agatha Cheale wrote those letters to make Harry wretched—to punish him for not having loved her. If I thought she knew Mrs. Garlett was poisoned, then I should regard her as——” she broke off in what she was going to say, and the other exclaimed, “A—murderess? Yes, that’s the only logical conclusion!”
CHAPTER XXII
“Can you tell me the shortest way to Coburg Square?”
“It’s round by the Foundling Hospital. I’m going that way myself, so you’d best come along with me.”
The man peered through the dark fog-laden air into the young pale face looking up at him from under the brim of a singularly unbecoming plain brown straw hat. He was an old bachelor who never, if he could help it, spoke to a woman, but he had been mollified by the sweetness of her voice.