“Very well,” he says, recovering himself. “Now tell me what happened next.”
“We was married then, sir. He’d fixed it all up before I came.”
Her face suddenly relaxes; it becomes almost cheerful as she adds:
“Of course he’d known all along that nothing he’d done would make any difference to me.”
Sir Harold goes on in a matter-of-fact tone:
“The moment the marriage had been solemnized, he insisted, I understand, on your sending for what I may call an unofficial witness?”
“Yes, sir. The minute the clergyman and all that was gone, he made me call the landlady of the place where he was living—Mrs. Lightfoot’s her name. She had got quite fond of him before I came. She was the marriage witness—leastways one of them. He says to her: ‘Mrs. Lightfoot, I’ve something to tell you. It’s very grave—you’ve got to remember it. Maybe you’ll be sworn and asked about it.’ Then he told her what he had told me.”
“You mean he repeated to her the statement that he had poisoned Mrs. Emily Garlett?”
The witness again became almost inaudible, but it was evident that she had answered, “Yes, sir.”
“I understand, Mrs. Cheale, that it was not till the day before his death that he succeeded in persuading you to send for a commissioner for oaths?”