“So what I’ve brought you to-night is not of the slightest help, Sir Harold?”
“I don’t say that! I’m glad you brought the proof to me and not to the other side, for, of course, anything that tends to discredit Miss Cheale discredits her mysterious stranger. But I should not be a true friend, I should be a cruel friend”—and now his voice did take on a far more kindly quality—“were I to conceal from you, Miss Bower, that Henry Garlett is in the very gravest danger. Till the admission made by Miss Prince——”
Jean made a quick movement of surprise.
“Yes, Miss Prince has at last brought herself to admit that there was actually a considerable amount of arsenic kept by her, carelessly, in an open cupboard at the Thatched Cottage. You are, of course, aware that there was one all-important missing link in the chain of circumstantial evidence connecting Henry Garlett with the death of his wife? That link has now, I regret to say, been supplied.”
As he saw the look of agony, of despair, on her young face he hastened on:
“I do not mean by all I have said, Miss Bower, that you are to give up hope. On the contrary, if you can persuade the jury that Garlett had not fallen in love with you before his wife’s death, you will have gone a very long way to destroy what, of course, the other side are relying on—Garlett’s motive for committing this murder—if murder there was.”
“If murder there was?” repeated Jean uncertainly.
“Yes, for I am going most seriously into the question whether or not Mrs. Garlett committed suicide. A large quantity of white arsenic has been in Miss Prince’s possession for many years. At one time, when in better health, Mrs. Garlett was constantly at the Thatched Cottage. I have found a woman who will tell the Court that Mrs. Garlett had an extraordinary horror of vermin—of rats and of mice—and I am going to raise the question as to whether some years ago she did not persuade Miss Prince to give her a small quantity of arsenic to destroy some rats which she believed were infesting a portion of the Thatched House. In that case Mrs. Garlett may well have kept some of the arsenic by her, and, in a moment of depression or of pain, administered it to herself.”
But even Sir Harold’s assured voice became less assured as he put forward this unlikely theory.
He concluded after a short pause: