Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE

TERRIFORD MYSTERY

BOOKS BY

MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

Life and Letters of Charlotte Elizabeth, Princess Palatine

The Heart of Penelope

Barbara Rebell

The Pulse of Life

The Uttermost Farthing

Studies in Wives

When no Man Pursueth

Jane Oglander

The Chink in the Armour

Mary Pechell

Studies in Love and in Terror

The Lodger

The End of Her Honeymoon

Told in Gallant Deeds: A Child’s History of the War

Good Old Anna

The Red Cross Barge

Lilla: A Part of Her Life

Out of the War

Love and Hatred

The Lonely House

From the Vasty Deep

The Terriford Mystery

THE TERRIFORD MYSTERY

MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

“Tattlers also, and busy-bodies, speaking things which they ought not.”

—I. Tim v. 13.

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1924

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

First Edition

THE TERRIFORD MYSTERY

PROLOGUE

Terriford village, a peaceful, exquisite corner of old England. Houses, cottages, and great raftered barns spread over a rising stretch of what was once primeval woodland. No dwelling-place is less than fifty years old and many are of much older date.

At the apex of the broad, well-kept village street stands the pre-Reformation gray stone church. It rises from what appears to be a well-tended and fragrant garden, though here and there lichened stones and crosses show it to be what old-fashioned folk still call a graveyard.

But at the time my story opens sudden death, and all the evils the most normal death implies in our strange, transitory existence, seem very far from the inhabitants of Terriford. All the more remote because the group of people who are soon to be concerned with a mysterious and terrible drama of death are now one and all happy, cheerful, and full of life and excitement. For they are present as privileged spectators at the first appearance of the great Australian cricket team.

Why, it may well be asked, should quiet Terriford village be so honoured? It is because Harry Garlett, the man who stands to the hamlet in the relation of squire, is the most popular amateur cricketer in the county and the owner of the best private cricket ground in England. Not only money, but a wealth of loving care combined with great technical knowledge and experience, has brought it near to absolute perfection—this fine expanse of English turf, framed in a garland of noble English elms and spreading chestnut trees.

Months ago in the dreary winter, when the tour of the Australian test match team was being arranged, Garlett had invited the visitors to come to Terriford immediately on landing from the boat and “play themselves in” after the long voyage. He undertook to collect a strong team of amateurs, stiffened with two or three professionals, that the Australians might have something worth tackling, and he did not fail to point out that at Terriford the visitors would most quickly become accustomed to English pitches and the soft English light, so different from the hard dry sunshine and matting wickets of Australia.

Harry Garlett knew that the merits of his private ground were well known over there, on the other side of the world, but all the same he could not feel sure. And so it was one of the happiest moments of a life which had been singularly happy and fortunate when he received the cable informing him that the Australian team would accept with pleasure his kind invitation.

To-day, on this bright spring morning, the closing day of the great match, there could be no more characteristically English scene than this mixture of country-house party, garden party, and enthusiasts for the national game.

The cricket is serious, but not so serious as to risk interfering with good fellowship, the more so that this match does not count in the tour for records and averages. The spirit of the whole affair is one of pure good sportsmanship, and the small group of newspaper experts whom Garlett has invited are all eager to see how the visitors shape and how they compare with the great Australian teams of the past.

These connoisseurs are also full of admiration for the eleven which their host has collected. It is indeed a cleverly composed combination. Youth is represented by some brilliant young players from Oxford and Cambridge, cheerful fellows who are equally likely to hit up centuries or to make the two noughts familiarly known as “a pair of spectacles.” But these lads are as active as monkeys in the field and can save seemingly certain runs and bring off seemingly impossible “catches.”

Then there is a sprinkling of somewhat older, but still young men, who have proved their mettle in the great county teams. Last, but not least, there are three professionals—men whose names are known wherever cricket is played and who are past-masters in all the subtleties of the great game.

Decidedly the Cornstalks, though the odds are slightly in their favour, will have to play all out if they are to win.

Any one who envied Harry Garlett his manifold good fortune, his popularity, his good looks, his ideal life in “Easy Street,” for he is a prosperous manufacturer as well as a famous cricketer, might argue that were it not for the long voyage from Australia the Garlett eleven would be beaten to a frazzle. But the general feeling is that it is just that handicap on the visitors which equalizes the chances and makes the match one of real sporting interest.

The pavilion is situated at the top of the cricket field and commands a splendid view of the game. But the game is not the only thing. Indeed, there are people there to whom it is not only an excuse to meet, to gossip, and to enjoy a generous host’s delightful hospitality. For, at the back of the great room where Harry Garlett’s special guests are all gathered together, is a buffet loaded with every kind of delicious food, wine, and spirits. Garlett, though himself abstemious as every keen athlete has need to be, always offers the best of cheer to his friends, ay, and not only to his friends, for bounteous free refreshments are also provided for the village folk as well as for certain cricket enthusiasts from the county town of Grendon.

And now let us concentrate on a little group of people in the pavilion, all obviously quite at ease with one another, and all bent on making the most of a memorable occasion. Very ordinary folk they are, typical inhabitants of almost any English village.

First, in order of precedence—the rector and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Cole-Wright, he kindly and far from clever, facts which make him popular, his wife clever and not over kindly, and therefore far less popular.

Then come Dr. and Mrs. Maclean. The wise physician, whose fame goes far beyond the confines of his practice, has snatched a day off from his busy life in order to be present at the closing scenes of the great match. Both he and his wife are Scotch, but they have lived for fifteen years very happily in this typical English village. They are a closely united couple, and the one lack in their joint life has lately been satisfied by their adoption of Mrs. Maclean’s niece, Jean Bower, an attractive, cheerful-looking, happy girl whose first introduction to the neighbourhood is taking place to-day in Harry Garlett’s cricket pavilion. Jean is only twenty-one, but she is not an idle girl. It is known that she did good work during the last part of the war, and she has lately been made secretary to the Etna China Company of which Harry Garlett is managing director.

As to the other people there, they include Colonel Brackbury, the Governor of Grendon Prison, his sharp-featured wife and two pretty daughters; Mr. Toogood, chief lawyer in Grendon, with his wife and daughter; Dr. Tasker, one of the few bachelors in the neighbourhood; and, last but not least in that little group who are all on intimate terms with one another, and whose affairs are constantly discussed in secret by their humble neighbours, is Mary Prince, true type of that peculiarly English genus unkindly called “old maid.”

Miss Prince is at once narrow-minded and tolerant, mean and generous, wickedly malicious, while yet, in a sense, exceedingly kind-hearted. Perhaps because her father was Dr. Maclean’s predecessor the village folk consult her concerning their ailments, grave and trifling, more often than they do the doctor himself.

There is one dark spot in the life of Harry Garlett. His devoted wife, to whom as an actual fact the whole of Terriford village belongs—or did belong till she made it over to him—is an invalid. Many months have gone by since she left the upper floor of the delightful Georgian manor house, which owes its unsuitable name of the Thatched House to the fact that it was built on the site of a medieval thatched building.

The Thatched House is a childless house, and Harry Garlett, though on the best of terms with his invalid wife, is constantly away, at any rate during the summer months, playing cricket here, there, and everywhere, all over England. So Agatha Cheale, Mrs. Garlett’s housekeeper, who is known to be a kinswoman of her employer, plays the part of hostess in the cricket pavilion. Even so, as the day wears on Miss Cheale disappears unobtrusively two or three times in order to see if Mrs. Garlett is comfortable and also to give her news of the cricket match and especially news of how Mr. Garlett is acquitting himself. Everything that concerns her husband is of deep moment to Mrs. Garlett, and she is exceedingly proud of his fame as a cricketer.

On this, the second day of the great match, the Australians have been set to make 234 runs in their second innings for victory. When the teams go in for lunch there are few, even among those to whom the finer shades of the game are as a sealed book, who doubt that they will do it pretty easily.

The pitch has worn wonderfully well, and Garlett feels a thrill of delight when he sees it roll out as true and plumb as on the first day. He thinks with intense satisfaction of all the patient care that he has devoted to this ground, of all the cunning devices of drainage lying hid beneath the level turf, and of the scientific treatment with which he has nursed the turf up to this acme of condition. Ah, money can do much, but money alone couldn’t have done that. He wants to win the match, but he emphatically does not want to owe victory to any defect of the pitch.

In such happy mood does Garlett lead his team out into the field after lunch, and the Australians start, full of confidence. But somehow, even from the beginning, they seem to find runs hard to get, harder than in their first knock.

The young undergraduates field like men inspired, covering an immense lot of ground and turning what seem certain fours into singles. Wickets fall, too. Some of the Australians open their Herculean shoulders too soon, and, beginning to hit before they are properly “set,” misjudge the ball and get caught from terrific “skiers.” But still the score creeps up. With careful generalship Garlett frequently changes his bowling, treating the batsmen to every variety of swerve and break that his bowlers can command.

The tension grows. One of Garlett’s professionals, a chartered jester of the Surrey team, forgets to play off the antics with which he is wont to amuse the crowd at the famous Oval ground, and suddenly becomes quite serious. Still the score mounts up. On the great staging beside the scorer’s box large tin numbers painted in white on a black ground show the progress of the game.

Now, the last Australian is going in. What is the score? Ah, see, the man is just changing the plates—yes, there it is! Nine wickets down for 230 runs. Only four more to make and the match is won—and lost!

What is the matter? Why is Mr. Garlett talking to the bowler? A little plan of campaign, no doubt. Every heart on the ground beats a little faster, even surely those well-schooled hearts concealed beneath the white flannels which stand out so brilliantly on the deep green of the pitch.

The newcomer takes his block. He is a huge creature with thick, jet-black beard, a good man at rounding up the most difficult steers on the far South Australian plains.

“Play!” Swift flies the ball from the height of the bowler’s swing, and our cattle tamer, playing forward, drives it with a mighty swipe. “Oh, well hit, sir!” Is it a boundary? If so, the match is won. No, no, one of Garlett’s agile undergraduates has arrived like a white flash at the right spot and at the right moment. Like lightning he gathers the ball and returns it to the wicket. Ah, a runout? No, yes, no—Black Beard has just got home. It was a narrow shave, but two precious runs have been added.

Only two more to make! Everyone is silent in the tense excitement. Again the ball flies from the bowler’s hand, and this time the Australian giant decides to go all out for a winning hit. He opens his brawny chest, all rippling with knotted muscles, and, taking the ball fair in the middle of the bat, lifts it in a huge and lofty curve which seems certain to come to earth beyond the boundary of the pitch.

But wait! Garlett is there, at extra long-on. It is the catch he has planned with the bowler. It is all over in a moment, and yet what a long moment it seems to the entranced spectators!

That little round leather ball high up against the evening sky reaches the top of its flight. Ah, it is over the pavilion! No, it is impossible! But Garlett does it, all the same. With a mighty backward leap he gets the ball into his safe hands just as it was dropping on to the seats in front of the pavilion.

Out! Our cattle tamer is out, the last Australian wicket, and the match is won—by one run!

Every one feels the curious tingling thrill that comes of having seen a feat that will become historic. Garlett’s great catch that won the Australian match for his eleven will be talked about and written about for years to come, wherever cricket is had in honour.

Garlett has picked himself up from where he fell after his terrific leap—but still, you may be sure, holding the precious ball safely to his chest—and instantly he is the centre of a throng of cheering and congratulatory friends, among whom the Cornstalks themselves are foremost.

CHAPTER I

In the star-powdered sky there hung a pale, golden moon. It was the 25th of May, and though the day had been warm and sunny, it was cold to-night, and even as early as ten o’clock most of the lights were extinguished in Terriford village.

But “the moon is the lovers’ sun”: such was the conceit which a tall, loosely built man had just propounded to the girl walking by his side on the field path which lay like a white ribbon across the four cornfields stretching between the Thatched House Farm and the well-kept demesne of the Thatched House.

The girl—Lucy Warren was her name, and she was parlour-maid at the Thatched House—made no answer. She could well have spared the moonlight. She knew that not only her clever, capable mother, but also all the gossips who made up her little world, would be shocked indeed did they see her walking, in this slow, familiar, loverlike way, with her mother’s lodger, Guy Cheale.

Not that shrewd Mrs. Warren disliked her lodger. In spite of herself she had become very fond of him. He was such a queer, fantastic—had she known the word, she might have added cynical—young gentleman.

But though she liked him, and though his funny talk amused her, Mrs. Warren would have been wroth indeed had she known of the friendship between her lodger and her daughter. And the mother would have been right to feel wroth, for, while doing everything to make Lucy love him with that fresh, wonderful young love that only comes to a woman once, Guy Cheale never spoke to Lucy of marriage.

For the matter of that, how could he speak of marriage, being that melancholy thing, a penniless gentleman? A man whose lodging at the farm even was paid for by his sister, herself companion-housekeeper at the Thatched House. There were a dozen newspapers in London which would always print everything Guy Cheale chose to write, but he liked talking better than writing, and he was in very poor health.

Lucy hated to think that the man whom deep in her heart she had come passionately to love was too lazy—or was it really too ill?—to make a living. She disliked her lover’s sister, Agatha Cheale, with a deep, instinctive, fierce dislike, and sometimes she smiled, though it was not a happy smile, at the thought of how angry Miss Cheale would be if she knew that Mr. Cheale and she, Lucy, were lovers.

“Not quite so quick, my pretty Lucy!”

Guy Cheale was panting painfully—and a rush of that pity which is akin to love filled Lucy Warren’s heart.

“I mustn’t be late,” she said nervously.

“You’re not late, Lucy”—he held up his watch close to his eyes. “It’s only twenty to ten,” and then he added, in that voice which he knew how to make at once so strangely tender, persuasive, and yes—mocking, “Let’s go into our enchanted wood for five minutes, as you won’t let me in to that drawing room of yours.”

“It ain’t my drawing room, as you knows full well. If it was, you’d be welcome to come into it,” she exclaimed resentfully.

He guided her down the path leading to the wood, and then, once they were under the shelter of the trees, he clutched her to him with a strength which at once frightened and comforted her—for it seemed to prove that he could not be as ill as he was made out to be.

“Love and life,” he muttered, “the one’s no good without the other!” He bent his head and their lips clung together in a long long kiss.

And then Guy Cheale was filled with a delicious sense of triumph and of exultation. He had won this proud sensitive creature at last—after a long, to him a breathless, exciting chase.

But all at once he felt her stiffen in his arms.

“Hush!” she whispered. “There’s some one in the wood!”

He did not relax his almost terrible grip of her, as he too, listened intently.

Lucy was right; he could hear the light, stuffless sound of footsteps sinking into the dead leaves which still, on this spring night, lay thickly spread on the path.

“Only happy lovers like you and me,” he whispered huskily. “They’re not troubling about us—why trouble about them?”

But the girl was frightened. “For God’s sake, go away, Mr. Cheale!” she pleaded in a terrified whisper.

“One kiss more, Lucy. Only one kiss more——”

But she lay inertly in his arms, all her senses absorbed in listening. How different from only fifty seconds ago!

“Lucy,” he whispered, “Lucy? We can’t part like this, to-night—the first time my goddess has yielded me her lips.”

Though full of nervous terror, she was moved by the real feeling in his voice.

“I’ll go and see who it is,” she muttered in his ear. “You stop where you are.”

“Promise to come back!”

For only answer she took up his thin right hand and laid it against her cheek; and then she crept quickly away, moving almost soundlessly along, for she knew every turn of the little wood.

At last she came back, panting a little.

“Who was it?” he whispered eagerly.

“I don’t know. They’re gone now. But I’ve not a minute left.”

He could hear by her voice that she was anxious, preoccupied, and with the strange, dangerous power he possessed of seeing into a woman’s mind he knew that she had not told the truth—that she was well aware of the identity of those other haunters of the enchanted wood. But he had no wish to share her knowledge. The good folk of Terriford, who meant so much to Lucy Warren, meant less than nothing to Guy Cheale.

“You and that tiresome old cook go up to bed as soon as you come in, don’t you?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes, we do,” she replied hesitatingly, knowing well, as she would have expressed it to herself, what he was after.

“If I give you twenty minutes,” he whispered caressingly, “it will be quite safe for you to let me into the drawing room, eh—little hawk?”

It was his supreme term of endearment—and once more she allowed him to take her into his arms, and press her with an almost terrible strength to his breast. But——

“It’s wrong,” she whispered, “it’s wrong, Mr. Cheale. I ought never to have let you into the drawing room. ’Tain’t mine to use that way.”

“That’s why I like our doing it!” he chuckled.

And then with that queer touch of malicious triumph that fascinated her, he added: “What would sister Agatha say if walls could speak?”

“Don’t you go saying that! Miss Cheale’s never in the drawing room,” she exclaimed, affrighted at the very thought. “No one ever is—now that the mistress keeps upstairs.”

“No one but you and me, Psyche!” and then he took her face between his hands and lightly kissed it. “I won’t stay long to-night, I promise—but we can’t meet to-morrow, worse luck! Your uncle’s spending the night at the farm.”

“Can’t see what you fancy about Uncle Enoch——”

“I like lawyers—they’re such rascals! Why he was telling your mother all about Mrs. Garlett’s will last Sunday——”

“He never was?”

Lucy felt very much shocked. Even she knew that in doing such a thing her uncle, Enoch Bent, confidential clerk to Mr. Toogood, the leading lawyer of Grendon, was acting in a very dishonourable manner.

“Run along now,” exclaimed Guy Cheale, a touch of rasped impatience in his voice.

And then he seized her again in his arms—only to push her away. “I’ll wait till we can kiss at ease—in the drawing room! Strange that hideous, early Victorian temple of respectability should shelter the love of two wild hawks like you and me—eh, Lucy?”

And then she left him and hurried through the wood, uncaring now of the sounds her light footsteps made. She knew she was late—it must be quite a bit after ten o’clock. But cookie was a kindly, good-natured, elderly woman, and didn’t mind waiting up for a little while. But once, when Lucy had been half an hour late, Miss Cheale had caught her, and spoken to her very severely.

A quarter of an hour later Lucy, after tiptoeing down the silent house, opened the drawing-room door, and, after closing it with infinite precaution, passed through into the dark room. Then she turned and locked the door behind her.

The white dimity covers of the heavy, early Victorian furniture by which Mrs. Garlett, the invalid sleeping just above the drawing room, set such store, made luminous patches in the big L-shaped apartment, and somehow added to Lucy Warren’s feeling of nervous unease.

Though the passionate, newly awakened side of her beating heart was burning to hear the tiny tap on the long French window which she knew would herald Guy Cheale’s approach, there was another side of the girl which hated and was deeply ashamed of allowing a meeting with her lover here.

She felt that whom she saw, and even what she did, when out of doors, under the sky, was no one’s business but her own—and perhaps, in a much lesser measure, her mother’s. She would also have felt differently had she and Guy Cheale been able to meet alone in the servants’ hall of the Thatched House. But the drawing room she felt to be ground sacred to Mrs. Garlett, so dear and precious indeed to the mistress of the Thatched House that it was never used now, not even on the rare occasions when Harry Garlett had a friend to dinner. Guy Cheale, however, had discovered that the drawing room, alone of all the ground-floor rooms of the spacious old house, had a French window opening into the garden, and he and Lucy Warren had already met there twice.

As Lucy stood in the dark room, listening intently, her nerves taut, her heart beating, there suddenly swept over her an awful prevision of evil, a sudden realization of her folly in allowing Guy Cheale to wile her heart away. She knew, alas! that he was spoiling her for the only life open to such as she—the life of an honest, commonplace, working man’s wife.

She remembered to-night with an almost anguished vividness the first time she had ever seen Guy Cheale—last February, on her first “afternoon off” in the month. She had gone home to the Thatched House Farm to help her mother with the new gentleman lodger, and, being a girl of a proud independent nature, she had come prepared to dislike him, the more so that she hated his sister, Mrs. Garlett’s strict, sarcastic young lady housekeeper. And then she had opened the door of the little farmhouse parlour, and seen the big, loosely built fair man who was to be “her fate.”

His keen, thin, large-boned face, alive with a kind of gay, plucky humour, large heavy-lidded gray eyes, and long, loose-limbed figure, were each and all so utterly unlike Miss Cheale that no one could have believed them to be what they were, brother and sister.

Guy Cheale had often reverted to the enchanted moment that had brought them first face to face; and he had told her again and again what she was never tired of hearing—how beautiful, how proud and how disdainful he had thought her.

But she knew nothing of the cruel hunting instinct which had prompted what had immediately followed her entry into the room.

“What is your name?” he had asked, and when she answered, “Lucy, sir. I’m Mrs. Warren’s daughter,” he had got up and, gazing straight into her face, had uttered the strange, poignant words—“A dying man—for that’s what I’m supposed to be, my pretty dear—ought to be given a certain license, eh?”

“License, sir?” she had repeated, falteringly.

“License in the way of love-making! I suppose you know, Lucy, that I’m said to be dying? And so I am—dying for a little love!”

That had been the beginning of it all. And though she had been, for quite a long while, what she termed to herself “standoffish,” they had become, in time, dear friends—meeting often in secret, as some dear friends are forced to do. It had not been easy for them to meet, even in secret; for there is no place in the world so full of a kind of shrewd, cruel scandal-mongering as is an English village, and it said much for the intelligence, not only of Guy Cheale, but also of Lucy Warren, that their names had never yet been connected the one with the other.

All the same, as is always the way with a man and a woman who are determined on meeting, they had seen each other almost daily. And now and again they had had a grand, a wonderful innings! Once Mrs. Warren had had to go away for a week and Lucy had been given some hours off each day in order that she might prepare the lunch and supper of her mother’s lodger.

During those days—days on which he had insisted on helping her to do everything, even to the cooking of his meals in the big, comfortable farm kitchen, their friendship had grown apace. No man knew better the way to a woman’s heart, and, posing then as her friend, and only as her friend, he had encouraged her to talk about everything and everybody that interested her—her employer, Harry Garlett, the famous county cricketer, his sickly wife, and even the country village gossip.

Even so, in defence of her heart, Lucy Warren had put up a good fight—a fight which, as the time went on, stimulated, excited, sometimes even maddened Guy Cheale. He found, with surprise and even discomfiture, that what he had begun in idle and ignoble sport, was becoming to him a matter of interest, even of importance.

This, perhaps, was why now, while Lucy Warren stood in the dark drawing room, her mind filled with tense, questioning memories, Guy Cheale, padding up and down the lawn like some huge, loose-limbed creature of the woods, was also asking himself intimate, searching questions.

He was already ruefully aware that this would probably be one of the last times that he and this poor girl whom he had forced to love him would meet, and it irked him to know how much he would miss her from out his strange, sinister life—the life which he knew was ebbing slowly but surely to a close. He had made love to many, many women, but this was the first time he had been thrown into close intimacy with a country girl of Lucy’s class—that sturdy, self-respecting British yeoman class which has been for generations the backbone of the old country.

Very soon—how soon to a day not even Guy Cheale could tell—he would have left the Thatched Farm. And oh! how he would like to take Lucy with him, even for a little while. But, bad as he was, there was yet in him still a small leaven of good which forced him to admit that he owed Lucy Warren something for the love which, if passionate, was so pure and selfless. Sometimes, when he felt more ailing than usual, he would tell himself that when within sight of that mysterious bourne from which no traveller returns he would send for Lucy, marry her, and be nursed by her to the end.

But now, on this warm May night, he put painful thoughts away, and determined to extract the greatest possible enjoyment from what could only be, alas! the fleeting present.

Treading over the grass as lightly as might be, he leaped across the narrow gravel footpath which ran round the front of the house.

And then a most untoward thing happened! Unaware that Lucy had unlatched the hasp of the long French window, Guy Cheale leaned against it, panting, and fell forward into the room—his heavy boot crashing through one of the lower panes.

He uttered a stifled oath, then stood up and, walking forward, felt in the darkness for the terror-stricken girl. For a few minutes they stood together listening intently; then, reassured, he led her over to a couch and, throwing himself down on it, he clasped her to him closely.

His arms were round her, he was kissing her eagerly, thirstily, when all at once she gave a stifled cry—she had heard the handle turn in the locked door.

“I expect it’s Miss Cheale,” she whispered. “She taxed me the other night with having a sweetheart I was ashamed of! Go away—quick! She’ll get round to the window in a minute——”

Guy Cheale leaped up and rushed across the room. Desperately he tried to find the awkward, old-fashioned catch, and just as the second door of the drawing room—a door the existence of which Lucy had forgotten—was unlatched, and the electric light switched on, he flung open the window and disappeared into the dark garden.

But the figure which advanced slowly into the L-shaped room was not that of Agatha Cheale. Lucy, petrified with shame and fear, knew it for that of the invalid mistress of the Thatched House.

Clad in an old-fashioned white dressing gown, her pallid face filled with mingled curiosity and fright, Mrs. Garlett looked like a wraith, and far more willingly would the girl, who stood before her with hanging head, have faced a real spirit.

For a long, breathless moment Mrs. Garlett, dazzled by the light, peered round her, looking this way and that. Then, “Lucy!” she exclaimed, in a tone of keen surprise and anger, and again, “Lucy?”

Turning slowly round, she called out to some one who apparently had remained in the passage outside.

“You can come in now, Miss Cheale. I was right and you were wrong. I did hear a noise upstairs—after all, my bedroom’s just over here. It was Lucy Warren—in here with a man. He has just escaped through the window.”

And then Miss Cheale, the woman whom Lucy Warren hated, feared and, yes, despised, came into the room. She gave one swift glance of contempt and reprobation at the unhappy culprit, glanced at the open French window, and, turning to her employer, exclaimed:

“I will see Lucy to-morrow morning, Mrs. Garlett. Please come up to bed at once. You’ve done a very dangerous thing in coming down like this!”

The invalid lady allowed herself to be led, unresisting, away; and then, mechanically, Lucy went over to the window and stared out, her bosom heaving with sobs, and tears streaming from her eyes.

But no kindly, mocking, caressing whisper came to comfort and reassure her out of the darkness. By this time Guy Cheale must be well on his way back to the farm.

Turning slowly, she threaded her way through the white-shrouded furniture, unlocked the door nearest to her, and walked out, forgetting or uncaring that the electric light which had been turned on by Mrs. Garlett by the other door was still burning.

CHAPTER II

It was twelve o’clock the next morning, and the sun was streaming into the pleasant downstairs rooms of the Thatched House. The only sign of last night’s alarums and excursions was the broken window in the drawing room, and of that no one but the three closely concerned were aware, for early in the morning Miss Cheale had crept downstairs, put out the electric light, and locked both the doors.

But Mrs. Garlett had been thoroughly upset by what had happened in the night, and Miss Cheale had thought it well to telephone for the doctor.

“No good to herself—and no good to anybody else, poor soul!”

Dr. Maclean was uttering his thoughts aloud, as even the most discreet of physicians will sometimes do when with an intimate acquaintance. He was speaking of his patient, Mrs. Garlett, and addressing Agatha Cheale.

There were people in Grendon who envied Agatha Cheale her position as practical mistress of the charming old house. She was known to be distantly related to its master, Harry Garlett, and that made her position there less that of a dependent than it might have been. No one else used the pretty little sitting room where she and the doctor were now standing. But Dr. Maclean—shrewd Scot that he was—knew that Agatha Cheale was not to be envied, and that her job was both a difficult and a thankless one.

As he uttered his thoughts aloud, his kindly eyes became focussed on the woman before him. She was slight and dark, her abundant, wavy hair cut almost as short as a boy’s. This morning the intensely bright eyes which were the most arresting feature of her face, and the only one she had in common with her fair-haired brother, had dark pouches under them.

Dr. Maclean told himself that she had made a mistake in giving up the busy, useful, interesting life of secretary to the boss of a London trading company.

He asked suddenly: “When are you going to have your holiday?”

“I don’t know that I shall take a holiday.” She looked at him with a touch of tragic intensity. “I’m all right, really—though I don’t sleep as well as I might.”

“Don’t be angry with me for asking you a straight question.”

A wave of colour flooded her pale face. “I won’t promise to answer it!”

“Why do you go on with this thankless job?” he said earnestly. “Within a week or two at most I could find a competent nurse who could manage Mrs. Garlett. Why should you waste your life over that cantankerous, disagreeable woman?”

And then Agatha Cheale said something which very much surprised Dr. Maclean.

“I am thinking of giving up the job in September. That’s the real reason why I’m not going to take a holiday now. You see,” she hesitated perceptibly, “I’m afraid it will terribly upset Cousin Harry—my leaving here, I mean.”

“Of course it will upset him. Thanks to you, he can go off on his cricketing jaunts with a light heart. Master Harry’s a man to be envied——”

She turned and faced him. “With a wife like that?”

“He married her, after all!”

“Why did he marry her?”

Dr. Maclean hesitated a moment. Then he answered frankly: “Harry Garlett married Emily Jones because he was a simple, good-looking lad aged twenty-two, and she a clever, determined woman aged twenty-seven who was in love with him. Old Jones was a queer, suspicious creature—the Etna China Company was a one-man concern in his day. A business friend asked old Jones to give a young man in whom he was interested a job; and there came along that cheery young chap.”

“They’ve been married thirteen years to-day.”

“God bless my soul—so they have!” exclaimed Dr. Maclean. “But the war took a great chunk out of that, for Garlett joined up at once. I remember how surprised we all were. Somehow it didn’t seem necessary then—not for a man with a stake in the world. But he was mad to go, and he was in France early in ’fifteen.”

“She says it was then that she fell ill.”

“She was always ailing—she’s a thoroughly unhealthy woman,” Dr. Maclean spoke with abrupt decision. “I was looking at Dr. Prince’s casebook the other day, and I came across her entry. She was an unhealthy child and an unhealthy girl—far too fussy about herself always. Well I remember her bringing me the War Office telegram with the news of that awful wound of Garlett’s. But she wouldn’t go to France, not she! Yet—” he hesitated—“in her own queer way she’s absolutely devoted to him.”

Agatha Cheale said in a low voice, “None of us thought he could get over that wound.”

“Why, of course!” the doctor exclaimed. “You were there, Miss Cheale, in that French war hospital. But I suppose you’d known Harry Garlett long before then—as you’re his cousin?”

He looked at her rather hard.

“I’d never met Cousin Harry till we met in that strange way in France,” she answered composedly.

“He told me once that he owed his life to you.”

“That, of course, is nonsense,” she said in a hard tone.

“He has plenty to be grateful to you for now.”

Agatha Cheale’s usually pale face became suffused with dusky red. It was an overwhelming, an unbecoming blush, and, with a quickening of the pulse, Dr. Maclean told himself that this involuntary betrayal of deep feeling answered a question which he had half ashamedly often asked himself in the last year—was Agatha Cheale secretly attached to Harry Garlett? Was that the real reason she was spending her life, her intelligence, her undoubted cleverness, in looking after his sickly, tiresome wife?

Doctors know of many hidden tragedies, of many secret dramas in being, and this particular doctor knew more than most, for he had a very kindly heart. He felt glad that Mrs. Garlett’s companion was leaving the Thatched House, though her doing so would throw a good deal of trouble on him.

After he had gone, Agatha Cheale went over to the window. There she pressed her forehead against the glass, and her eyes filled with bitter tears. For perhaps the thousandth time in the last few months she told herself that she would leave the Thatched House, forget Mrs. Garlett and her tiresome exactions, and, above all, forget Harry Garlett.

Harry Garlett? She did not require to shut her eyes to visualize the tall, still young-looking man whom the sick woman upstairs called husband. Every feature, every distinctive line about his good-looking, oftener merry than sad, alert expression of face, was printed on the tablets of Agatha’s tormented, unhappy heart.

Why was it that she, a proud woman, and, until she had met Harry Garlett, a cold woman, cared as she had come to care for this man? Garlett was not nearly as clever as many of the men with whom her work had brought her in contact during the war and since. The great surgeon whose favourite nurse she had become in the oddly managed, private war hospital, where all the square pegs had been forced into round holes, had shown her unmistakably that he was violently attracted by her dark, aloof beauty, but, far from being pleased, she had been bitterly distressed at what she had regarded as an insult.

Memories crowded thick upon her. She remembered cutting the bloodstained uniform off an unconscious form, and her thrill of surprise when she had read on his disc the most unusual name of Garlett—the second name by which she, herself, had been christened—she had never been able to discover why.

It was true, she had saved, not his life, but his bowling arm. And oh, how grateful he had been—then! At once they had fallen into the way, at first in joke, of calling each other “Cousin Harry” and “Cousin Agatha.” But there had been no love passages between them. He had at once told her that he was a married man, and very soon, also, she had come to understand that he was not “that sort.”

The war had been over some months when one day, by one of those chances which often deflect the whole of a human existence, they had run up against one another in a London street. She had asked him to come back to the modest rooms she occupied in Bloomsbury, and it was there that he had told her his wife was now a complete invalid, that she refused to have a nurse, and that it was difficult to get even a lady housekeeper who would satisfy her.

“Would you like me to try and find you some one?” she had asked. Eagerly he had caught at the suggestion, and that same night she had written and offered to come herself.

There had then taken place another interview between herself and the man who held for her so strong an attraction and appeal. It had been a rather emotional interview. Harry Garlett, filled with gratitude, had insisted that she should have a really large, some would have said an extravagant, salary, and she had revealed the existence of the clever, idle, sickly brother who was the ever-present burden and anxiety of her life.

It had been her suggestion that the people in the neighbourhood should be told that she and her employer were related. Her name was Agatha Garlett Cheale, after all. Surprised, he had yielded, reddening as he did so under his tan.

“I daresay you’re right! They’re a gossiping set of women in my part of the world.”

“Not more so than in other places,” and something had made her add: “They gossiped about us in the hospital, you know.”

“Did they? I didn’t know that!” And he had looked amused—only amused.

Her first sight of Mrs. Garlett—how well she remembered it! “Poor Emily” had not been very gracious, though in time she had thawed. The sick woman realized the difference cool, competent Agatha Cheale made to the Thatched House, and to herself Mrs. Garlett grudgingly admitted that Miss Cheale’s sense and discretion matched her more useful qualities.

To those ladies who were kind enough to call on her—and practically every lady in the neighbourhood considered it her duty to make acquaintance with Harry Garlett’s cousin—Agatha explained that she never went out in the evening. So the delicate question as to whether she was or was not to be asked out to dinner with her employer was solved once for all, in the way every hostess had hoped it would be.

As Dr. Maclean walked quickly down the short avenue which led from the Thatched House to the carriage gate his mind was full of the woman he had just left.

He did not like Agatha Cheale, yet he did feel intensely sorry for her. For one thing she must be so lonely at times, for, with one exception, she had made no friends in either Terriford or Grendon.

The one person of whom she saw a good deal was clever, malicious Miss Prince. People had wondered more than once at the link between Miss Prince and Agatha Cheale, but there was nothing mysterious about it. Though Miss Prince was acquainted with every man, woman, and child in Terriford she led a somewhat solitary life in the Thatched Cottage, a pleasant little house which formed a kind of enclave in the Thatched House property. Thus propinquity had something to do with the friendship between the younger and the older woman.

There was one great difference, however, between them. Miss Prince was what some people call “churchy,” while Agatha Cheale never went to church at all, and on one occasion she had spoken to Dr. Maclean with a slightly contemptuous amusement of those who did.

The doctor was close to the wrought-iron gate giving into the road which led to his own house when, suddenly, he espied this very lady, Miss Prince, coming toward him. She held a basket in her hand, and he did not need to be told that it contained some dainty intended for Mrs. Garlett. Like so many sharp-tongued mortals, Miss Prince often did kind things, yet her opening remark was characteristic of her censorious attitude to her fellow creatures.

“It’s a good thing that Harry Garlett’s rather more at his factory just now. If it weren’t for poor old Dodson, that Etna China business would have gone to pieces long ago! I never saw a man gad about as he does——”

Without giving the doctor time to answer, she went on: “No change in poor Emily, I suppose?” She smiled disagreeably. “I expect you’d like to have ten other patients like her, Dr. Maclean?”

At once he carried the war into the enemy’s country.

“Did Dr. Prince like that type of tiresome, cantankerous, impossible-to-please patient?”

“I know I was glad of them.”

“Very well for you who had the spending of the fees and none of the work!”

They generally sparred like this, jokingly in a sense, but with a sort of unpleasant edge to their banter.

“I don’t suppose Emily will ever get better—till she dies of old age,” laughed Miss Prince.

“As a matter of fact, she’s markedly less well than she was last year.”

Dr. Maclean didn’t know what provoked him to say that, though it was true that he had thought Mrs. Garlett rather less well than usual these last few weeks.

“It’s strange that everything in nature, having performed its work, dies, and that only we poor human beings linger on long after any usefulness we ever had in the world has gone,” said Miss Prince musingly.

“I don’t believe that Mrs. Garlett was ever useful,” he said curtly.

“Oh, yes, she was! In her queer way Emily was a very devoted daughter to that horrid old father of hers. And she’s made Harry Garlett.”

Again the spirit of contradiction seized him.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he exclaimed. “Harry Garlett’s the sort of chap who’d have got on far better as a bachelor than as a married man. His wife’s money has ruined him—that’s my view of it! There’s a lot more in Garlett than people think. If he hadn’t married that poor, sickly woman he might have done some real work in the world.”

“Dr. Maclean,” said Miss Prince abruptly, “I’m anxious about Agatha Cheale.”

“So am I, Miss Prince.”

He lowered his voice, for he didn’t want some stray gardener’s boy to overhear what he was about to say.

“You’re her only friend hereabouts,” he went on. “Do you know that she’s thinking of giving up her job? Mind you keep her up to that!”

She gave him a curious look.

“She’ll never go—as long as Harry Garlett’s here,” she said, almost in a whisper.

“Do you think Garlett will ask her to stay?”

“No, I don’t. I think he’s longing for her to go.”

He was taken aback. “Why d’you think that?”

“‘He who will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay.’”

Dr. Maclean stared at Miss Prince distrustfully. What exactly did she mean by that enigmatic quotation?

“You’re not a fool!” she said tartly. “Harry Garlett’s not the first man who’s made love to a woman—and then been sorry he had, eh?”

“You think there was a time when Garlett made love to Miss Cheale?”

Dr. Maclean’s voice also fell almost to a whisper.

“I’m sure of it! She’s never admitted it, mind you—don’t run away with that idea.”

“I don’t believe Harry Garlett has ever made love to Agatha Cheale,” said the doctor, definitely making up his mind. “I think he’s an out-and-out white man.”

Miss Prince smiled a wry smile.

“I’m positive that something happened lately which changed their relations to one another. Harry’s afraid of her—he avoids her.”

“I’ve never noticed anything of the kind,” said the other brusquely.

Miss Prince looked vexed; no gossip likes to be contradicted, and she proceeded to pay the doctor out.

“Your niece seems to be giving great satisfaction at the Etna factory,” she observed.

“I think she is—I hope she is! Jean’s a good conscientious girl.”

“And so attractive, too! Every one was saying how pretty she looked at the cricket match. Times are changed since we were young, Dr. Maclean. What would my father have said if I’d insisted on being boxed up hour after hour with an old bachelor like Mr. Dodson—or an attractive young married man like Harry Garlett?”

The doctor felt annoyed. What a spiteful woman Miss Prince was, to be sure!

“I don’t think she runs any risk with either of them.” He tried to speak jokingly, but failed.

“How about them?” she asked meaningly.

“Perhaps she’ll become Mrs. Dodson,” he answered dryly. But as Mr. Dodson was sixty-four and Jean Bower twenty-one, that didn’t seem very likely.

Lifting his hat, Dr. Maclean walked briskly on his way, telling himself that Miss Prince, like most clever people, was an extraordinary bundle of contradictions—kind, spiteful, generous, suspicious, affectionate and hard-hearted, and a mischief-maker all the time!

The subject of his thoughts hurried on toward the Thatched House. She was precise in all her ways, and she wanted to leave her little gift for Mrs. Garlett, enjoy a short talk with Agatha Cheale, and then get back to her midday meal by one o’clock.

“I’ll see Miss Cheale just for a minute,” she said to the maid—not Lucy Warren—who opened the door. “I suppose she’s in her sitting room?”

Without waiting for an answer Miss Prince went off, with her quick, decided step, through into the house she knew so well.

As the door opened, Agatha Cheale turned round quickly, filled with a sudden, unreasonable hope that it might be Harry Garlett. He had gone to the china factory this morning, though it was Saturday, and he had telephoned that he would be back to luncheon.

But she reminded herself bitterly that he never sought her out now. If he had anything to communicate to her connected with the running of the house, he always made a point of doing so at one of the rare meals they took together, in the presence of the parlour-maid, Lucy Warren.

“I’ve brought a few forced strawberries for poor Emily,” began Miss Prince, and then, lowering her voice perceptibly, she added: “I understand she’s not so well as usual?”

The other looked at her surprised.

“I see no change,” she said indifferently.

And then Miss Prince became aware that the younger woman had been crying.

“Look here, Agatha,” she spoke with kindly authority. “It’s time you had a change! You’re badly in need of a holiday. It’s all very well for Harry Garlett—his life’s a perpetual holiday.”

“He’s been working much harder than usual lately,” the other said quickly.

There came a gleam into Miss Prince’s eye.

“I think there may be a reason for that,” she said rather mysteriously.

“Any special reason?” asked Agatha Cheale indifferently.

Miss Prince hesitated. This morning, at early celebration, she had resolved that she would make a real effort to cure herself of what she knew in her heart was her one outstanding fault—to herself she called it, quite rightly, sin—that of retailing malicious tittle-tattle. But somehow she felt strongly tempted to say just one word, and, as so often happens with those cursed with her peculiar temperament, she was half persuaded that in saying what she now determined to say she would be doing the right thing.

“Of course you know that Jean Bower, Mrs. Maclean’s niece, has become secretary to the Etna China Company?”

“No, I didn’t know it.” Agatha Cheale was more surprised than she chose to show.

“How very odd of them not to have told you! I mean, how odd of Harry, and how odd of Dr. Maclean. Why, she’s been at the Etna factory for quite a month.”

“I thought the girl was well off.”

“When her father died it was found that he had only left fifteen hundred pounds. And though the Macleans have practically adopted her, she seems to have said she would much prefer to do some work than to be just idle; so Mrs. Maclean, hearing that a secretary was wanted at the Etna factory, managed to catch Harry Garlett at the office one day and asked if he would give Jean a trial. Of course he had to say ‘yes.’”

“I suppose he had,” said Agatha Cheale slowly.

Jean Bower’s attractive, youthful personality had been impressed on her in the cricket pavilion during the great Australian match. She had envied the girl, not only her bright artless charm of manner, but also the warm affection the doctor and his wife had shown her.

“I hear old Dodson is quite bewitched by her, and that even Harry himself is at the factory a great deal more than he used to be,” went on Miss Prince.

“That isn’t true about Cousin Harry.”

Agatha Cheale forced herself to smile, but in her heart she knew that Harry Garlett had gone to the factory oftener this last month than he had ever done since she first came to Terriford. As for old Dodson, he was just the kind of foolish old bachelor to be bewitched by a young girl. After being head clerk for a number of years, he had been made a partner, and now practically ran the prosperous business.

Miss Prince looked sharply at her friend.

“Why, just now you said he had been working hard lately?”

“I didn’t mean at the factory.”

“It’s all very well to be unconventional,” went on Miss Prince, “but human nature doesn’t alter. For my part I think it’s a mistake to mix up attractive girls with married men.”

“Mr. Dodson isn’t a married man,” observed Agatha Cheale.

“No, but Harry Garlett is.”

The other made no answer, and Miss Prince suddenly exclaimed triumphantly, “Why, there they are!”

Agatha Cheale turned quickly round.

Yes, Miss Prince was right. Through the window could be seen two figures walking slowly across the meadow, to the right of which stretched the little wood.

“I should have thought that Harry would have had more sense! I don’t wonder they’re already beginning to be talked about,” observed Miss Prince.

“What a lot of disgusting people there are in Grendon,” said Agatha Cheale. There was a note of bitter scorn in her voice. “It’s Saturday to-day. That’s why they’re walking back together. It’s the first time they’ve done it.”

Miss Prince would have been not only surprised but deeply shocked had she been able to see into her friend’s unhappy heart. Agatha Cheale, gazing out on those two who were just coming through the little gate which led from the cornfield into the garden of the Thatched House, had felt a surge of intolerable suspicion and jealousy sweep over her, and that though her reason told her that the suspicion, at any rate, was utterly uncalled-for and absurd.

Miss Prince looked at her wrist watch—one of her few concessions to modern ways.

“I must be going,” she exclaimed; “it’s almost one o’clock.”

She had only just left the room when there came a knock at the door. “Come in!” called out Miss Cheale, and Lucy Warren appeared.

“You said you wanted to see me before lunch, miss.”

Though the girl was making a great effort to seem calm, her lips were trembling and her eyes were swollen with crying.

CHAPTER III

Late that same evening, Dr. Maclean, his wife, and their adopted daughter, were all sitting together in the dining room of Bonnie Doon.

The Macleans had bought the charming old house soon after the doctor had taken over the practice of Miss Prince’s father, and they had renamed it after Mrs. Maclean’s birthplace.

To-night, his wife and niece being by the table, the doctor sat close to the fire smoking his pipe.

“Dr. Tasker popped in to tea to-day,” observed Mrs. Maclean. As her husband said nothing she went on: “He waited quite a long while in the hope of seeing you. I’m doubting, Jock, whether we’ve been quite fair to that young man. He spoke very handsomely of you—he did indeed.”

“I’ve no need of his praise,” said the doctor dryly.

“I didn’t say you had. All the same I hope you’ll not scold me for having asked him to supper to-morrow night. He says Sunday is such a dull day in Grendon.”

“I can’t promise to stay in for him if I’m sent for,” said Dr. Maclean, in a voice which his wife thought somewhat tiresome.

There had been a time, not so very long ago, when it was she, rather than her husband, who had disliked the young medical man who had suddenly “put up his plate,” as the saying is, on the door of almost the last house in Grendon. But Dr. Tasker had spoken to her very pleasantly at the cricket match. He had made friends, too, with Jean, and so Mrs. Maclean was now prepared to take him, at any rate in a measure, to her kindly Scots heart.

For a few moments there was silence in the room. Dr. Maclean turned himself round, and his eyes rested with appreciative affection on the bent head of the girl who even in a few weeks had so much brightened and enlivened his own and his wife’s childless home.

Jean’s hair was the colour of spun gold, and she had a delicately clear skin, giving depth to her hazel eyes. But her generous-lipped mouth was too large for beauty, and her features were irregular. Yet she looked so happy-natured, intelligent, and healthy, that the general impression produced by her appearance was that of a pretty, as well as that of a very agreeable girl.

Perhaps she felt her uncle’s grateful, kindly glance, for suddenly she looked up and smiled.

“Well, Uncle Jock?” she exclaimed, “a penny for your thoughts!”

“I wonder if I’d really better tell you my thoughts,” he answered rather soberly.

“Of course you must!” cried his wife.

She, too, put down her work for a moment on the table and looked at him.

“I’m thinking,” he said quietly, “that we won’t be keeping our pretty Jean here for long. It’s all very well her being boxed up every day in that china factory. There are always half Saturdays and Sundays, to say nothing of holidays, and young men will soon come courting at Bonnie Doon.”

Jean burst out laughing, but Mrs. Maclean felt vexed.

“Really, Jock,” she exclaimed, “what are you after saying now? I’ve no liking for that sort of joke.”

“He wouldn’t say it if he thought it true,” said her niece merrily. “I’ve been much disappointed in Terriford as regards the supply of young men.”

“Bide a wee, bide a wee,” said the doctor dryly. “A young woman never knows when she’s going to meet Mr. Right; he’s a way of appearing in the most unlikely places.”

Again his wife looked at him severely. “Jock, I’m surprised at you!”

“You’d often be surprised if you could look straight into my mind, woman,” said the doctor waggishly, tapping his pipe against the side of the fireplace. And then, as her aunt was still looking annoyed, Jean tactfully changed the subject.

“I wish you would tell me what you think of Agatha Cheale, Uncle Jock?”

“I wonder what you think of her?” he parried.

“I hardly know her. I liked her the day of the cricket match.”

“Is that the only time you’ve seen her?” asked Mrs. Maclean.

“I saw her to-day,” said Jean slowly, “Mr. Garlett overtook me after I had started walking home the field way. He suggested I should go through his garden—and then such a horrid thing happened!”

“What happened?” asked the husband and wife together.

“We were going across the lawn when we suddenly heard the sound of crying. It was coming, it seems, from Miss Cheale’s sitting room. Mr. Garlett thought it was a child who had hurt itself, and asked me to go into the house. And then we found that it was Lucy Warren who was crying—and that there was such a horrid scene going on! I’ve never seen any one look as angry as Miss Cheale looked. I thought her such a quiet person.”

Mrs. Maclean asked eagerly: “Why was she angry?”

“From what I could make out,” said Jean, “Mrs. Garlett heard the French window of the drawing room open in the middle of last night. She thought it was a burglar, and she insisted on going downstairs; so she and Miss Cheale went downstairs together, and there was Lucy Warren with a man! But he escaped by the window out into the garden before they could see who it was.”

“I don’t wonder Miss Cheale was angry!” exclaimed Jean’s aunt. “I can hardly believe such a tale of Lucy Warren. She’s such a superior-looking girl, such a pet, too, of Miss Prince’s. Miss Prince was saying to me the other day how sorry she was she had ever allowed Mrs. Garlett to have Lucy, but she felt the Thatched House situation was such a good one that she ought not to keep the girl from it.”

“Lucy will go back to her now. Miss Prince isn’t the woman to let a good maid go begging,” observed Dr. Maclean. “They didn’t say a word of all that to me this morning.” He added, “I couldn’t think what had upset Mrs. Garlett.”

“When we came in, Miss Cheale was trying to get out of Lucy who the man was,” went on Jean eagerly. “But all she would say was that she didn’t see why she shouldn’t have a talk with a friend anywhere she chose. She actually appealed to Mr. Garlett to say if she wasn’t right!”

“What did he say?” asked Mrs. Maclean.

“In a way he took Lucy’s part, for he reminded Miss Cheale that the drawing room was never used. But of course that only made her more angry—in fact, she was shaking with rage, her face was livid.”

“It was foolish of him to interfere,” observed the doctor.

“Of course I slipped away as quickly as I could,” went on the girl, “but as I went down the passage I heard Lucy call out: ‘I hate you, Miss Cheale! I hate Mrs. Garlett! I hate everybody in this house!’ Oh, it was dreadful—and I felt so sorry for them all.”

Five hours later Jean Bower lay asleep in the big, comfortable bedroom which had been made so pretty for her by her kind aunt. The girl stirred uneasily, for she was dreaming a strange, a terrible, and most vivid dream.

She was at the Etna China factory taking down letters from the dictation of her employer, Mr. Garlett. Though she had been at the factory for a full month Jean had seen very little of the managing director. But they had made friends during their walk from Grendon to Terriford, and in her dream she was enjoying the change of taking down dictation from a man who knew exactly what he wanted to say instead of from weary-brained, hesitating old Mr. Dodson. And then, suddenly looking up, she saw that, pressed against the central pane of the window behind Mr. Garlett was a face convulsed with hatred—and the face was that of Agatha Cheale!

A feeling of icy terror crept over her, for the managing director’s room was on the first floor of the building, far above the ground of the stone-paved courtyard round which the Etna China factory had been built close on seventy years ago.

With a stifled cry the girl awoke and sat up in bed, the horror of her nightmare still so vividly real that her teeth were chattering and her hands trembling in the darkness.

Then there gradually came to her the reassuring knowledge as to why she had dreamed that strange, unnatural dream. It was of course owing to her having seen Agatha Cheale, her face distorted with anger, dismissing Lucy Warren at the Thatched House yesterday morning!

But her feeling of reassurance and relief did not last long, for suddenly a stone came crashing in through the window nearest to her. Jumping out of bed she rushed across the room and threw up the lower sash of the window.

“Who’s there?” she called out, and then, “What do you want?”

To her amazement it was Harry Garlett’s voice that called back, “Please forgive me, Miss Bower. I’ve come for the doctor. My wife has been taken seriously ill. I rang the night bell, but could get no answer.”

“The night bell’s gone wrong. I’ll run and tell Uncle Jock at once——”

Leaving the window open, she hustled on a dressing gown and ran down the passage.

“Uncle Jock!” she knocked on the door as hard as she could. “Mr. Garlett has come to fetch you, for Mrs. Garlett has been taken ill——”

Mrs. Maclean opened the bedroom door. “Go back to bed, child; I’ll see to Harry Garlett.”

Reluctantly the girl did as she was bid, for she had the natural desire of youth to be in the middle of anything exciting that is going on.

To Jean Bower Mrs. Garlett was still a mere name, for she had never seen the invalid. But already, though she had only been working on and off with him for a very short time, she had come to like the man every one called Harry Garlett. She was a simple, straightforward, old-fashioned girl. From her point of view all ordinary married people love one another, and she believed her employer to be exceptionally devoted to his ailing wife. There had been a note of extreme anxiety and urgency in the now familiar voice which had come up from the garden just now.

As Dr. MacLean hurried by Harry Garlett’s side along the road leading to the Thatched House he felt a good deal disturbed. Though he had thought his patient more ailing than usual the day before, there had been nothing to indicate anything in the nature of a sudden seizure.

“D’you know exactly when your wife was taken ill?” he asked, aware that his companion’s bedroom was in quite another part of the Thatched House, some way from the rooms occupied by the ailing woman and Agatha Cheale.

“She was taken ill early in the night. But Miss Cheale thought she’d be able to manage without calling me, and then, suddenly, Emily seemed to collapse! So I dressed and hurried along to fetch you.”

They walked on in silence till they turned in through the gate of the delightful garden which surrounded the house for which they were bound, and as they hastened up the avenue, Dr. Maclean noticed that there were no lights in any of the windows. Agatha Cheale had evidently not seen fit to rouse the servants.

The two men hurried together through the dark hall into the broad corridor which ran through the spacious old house; but at the foot of the staircase the master of the house hung back.

“I don’t think I’ll go up with you,” he exclaimed. “I’ll wait in my study, Maclean. I can’t do any good up there, and it unnerves me to see Emily suffer.”

“All right!” cried the doctor hastily; and he hastened on, familiar with every inch of the way, till he reached the upstairs corridor, which, unlike the lower part of the house, was brilliantly lighted.

All at once he started back—for from behind a big wardrobe there had suddenly emerged an odd-looking figure clad in a drab-coloured ulster.

“It’s only me, sir.” The reassuring words were uttered in a frightened whisper; and with astonishment Dr. Maclean recognized Lucy Warren, the pretty parlour-maid who had got into such trouble the night before.

“Mrs. Garlett’s been moaning something awful,” she murmured, “but she’s left off now. You won’t tell her that you’ve seen me, sir, will you?”

“Not if you’ll go straight back to bed!”

The little incident made an unpleasant impression on the doctor. He told himself that the young woman might at least have gone and seen if she could do anything to help relieve her sick mistress.

And then, as he approached his patient’s room, Dr. Maclean half-unconsciously slackened his footsteps and listened.

But no sound fell on his ear; indeed the silence brooding over the brilliantly lit corridor seemed almost uncanny.

Yet the bedroom door was ajar, and, hearing his footsteps, Agatha Cheale opened the door wide, and came out into the passage, a finger to her lips.

She was dressed in a big white coverall. It accentuated the intense pallor of her face and made her slender figure look thicker than usual.

“Mrs. Garlett is asleep now,” she whispered, “but she’s been in awful pain, and I’m sorry I didn’t send for you before. I’ve always been able to manage her in her previous night attacks, but this time she’s been really very bad! I do hope—oh, I do hope, Dr. Maclean, that you won’t think I was to blame not to send for you at once?”

She was so unlike her usual quiet sensible self that the doctor felt alarmed, in spite of himself.

“I don’t suppose I could have done any good if I had come an hour ago,” he said soothingly. “I take it she overate herself last night?”

“She did indeed—that’s what upset her, of course.”

As he moved toward the now open door he told himself, not for the first time, that it was strange that Agatha Cheale, in this one matter of diet, seemed powerless to control his patient. But there it was! Like so many people with delicate digestions, Mrs. Garlett had always had a fanciful, queer, greedy kind of appetite. Sometimes she would eat hardly anything for days together, and then she would grossly overeat herself.

“I suppose,” he said in a low voice, “that you’ve given her brandy?”

“Yes, I have—but it hasn’t done her any good.”

Agatha Cheale still spoke in an agitated, almost hysterical, whisper.

And then, for no particular reason, though he remembered doing so afterwards, Dr. Maclean asked Agatha Cheale a casual question: “Has her husband seen her?”

“No, he thought it best to go off at once for you.”

At last, together, they walked through into the sick woman’s room.

Mrs. Garlett’s bedchamber was the largest in the house, and, like the drawing room below, was somewhat overcrowded with heavy early Victorian mahogany furniture.

Coming out of the brightly lit corridor Dr. Maclean, for a moment, saw nothing, for the one electric lamp which was turned on was heavily shaded. But for the fact that he knew where every chair and table stood, he would have knocked into something.

“Do turn on another light,” he whispered rather crossly. “I can’t see at all!”

Obediently she turned on the two naked lights hanging above the dressing-table, but the big curtained four-post bed in which the sick woman lay remained in deep shadow.

“Before I see her, tell me exactly what she ate last night,” said the doctor in a low voice.

Standing opposite Dr. Maclean, just under the two bright naked lights, Agatha Cheale, her face pale and strained, told her story.

“About seven last evening I went to see Miss Prince for a few minutes and, while I was away, from what I can make out Mr. Garlett came up to sit with Mrs. Garlett before dressing for dinner. Unfortunately some forced strawberries which Miss Prince had brought in the morning had been taken up and left in the corridor outside. Mr. Garlett seems to have brought them in here—I suppose to show them to Mrs. Garlett. She said she would like to eat some of them then, before her supper. He stupidly allowed her to do so, and she ate them all—a plateful—with probably a lot of sugar added. So of course I wasn’t surprised when she called out to me about two hours ago that she felt ill!”

“Did she take anything after the strawberries?” asked the doctor.

“Of course she did. She began to feel hungry about 8.30 and then she had her supper—a nice bit of grilled fish and some stewed apples. But her supper didn’t do her any good on the top of the strawberries——”

“I don’t suppose it did,” agreed the doctor dryly. “And now let me have a look at her——”

As he took a step toward the bed Agatha Cheale suddenly put her right hand on his arm.

Surprised, he stopped, and she whispered hesitatingly: “I’ve been wondering—I suppose you wouldn’t like to have a second opinion?”

He shook his head decidedly, secretly very much surprised that her nerve should so far have given way. What good could a second opinion do in a case of severe indigestion? Why, the idea was absurd! Then he reminded himself that Agatha Cheale was not a trained nurse—in spite of her war experiences.

He walked quickly across to the sick woman’s four-post bed, lifted the heavy, stiff, silk-lined calendered chintz curtain, and then turned on the light in a reading lamp which stood on a small pedestal table.

Mrs. Garlett was lying on her back in the middle of the big bed, and Dr. Maclean, taking up the lamp, leant for a long, long moment over his patient.

Then he turned, with a blanched face, and still unconsciously holding the lamp in his hand, to the woman who stood waiting over by the dressing-table, the light beating down on her tired drawn face.

“She’s not asleep—she’s dead,” he said quietly.

“Dead! Not dead? Oh, don’t say she’s dead!”

Agatha Cheale’s voice rose into a kind of shriek.

The doctor put the lamp down. He took her hand and held it firmly in his.

“Hush!” he exclaimed, kindly and yet authoritatively. “I’m sorry to have given you such a shock, Miss Cheale, but I’m not so surprised as you seem to be. Her heart was in a very bad state. You have nothing to reproach yourself with—you have been wonderfully good and patient with her, poor soul.”

“Can nothing be done?”

She was looking at him with an extraordinary expression of horror and of pleading on her face.

“Nothing,” he answered gravely.

There was a pause; the doctor dropped the hand he had been holding in so firm a clasp.

“Miss Prince’s dish of strawberries killed this poor woman as surely as if she had taken a dose of poison,” he said grimly.

“You will never let Mr. Garlett know that, will you?” she whispered.

He made no answer, and perhaps she saw by his expression that he was telling himself that even the most sensible women are sometimes foolishly sentimental, for a little colour came back into her face.

“Shall I go down and tell him—or will you?” she asked, in a voice that had suddenly become composed.

“I’ll tell him, of course.”

To his relief he saw her eyes become suffused with tears.

“We little thought yesterday morning that this would be the solution of your problem,” he said feelingly.

“It’s a horrible, horrible solution!” she exclaimed violently.

Again Dr. Maclean made no answer, for he did not, could not, agree with her. To his mind, the death of Mrs. Garlett was bound to turn out a blessing, not only to the young woman who had tended her so faithfully, if unlovingly, for over a year, but also to the dead woman’s husband.

Hard cases make bad law; Dr. Maclean was no advocate of easy divorce, but to his mind there was something intensely repellent in the marriage of a strong healthy man to a hopeless invalid. Deep down in his heart the honest Scotsman knew what would have happened to himself had he been in the shoes of Harry Garlett. He knew that his flesh and blood would not have borne such a difficult, unnatural situation, and he had long admired the young man’s straight, simple, clean way of life. Thanks to that dish of early strawberries, Harry Garlett would now be able to remake his life on happy, natural lines.

Slightly ashamed of such thoughts coming at such a time, he glanced at the young woman before him. Would she now become the real mistress of this delightful house? The doctor suspected she would make a try for it. But he could not help hoping that the newly made widower would in time meet with a happier fate than marriage with this secretive and, he suspected, very jealous-natured woman. Dr. Maclean liked Harry Garlett well enough to hope that, after a decent interval, this now mournful house would be filled with gay, wholesome, girlish laughter, and the patter of little feet.

And while these secret thoughts were rushing through his brain Agatha Cheale was standing motionless, a look of stark terror on her bloodless face.

“Go into your room,” he said at last, “and try and get a little rest.”

Together they left the room of death, and the doctor quickly made his way downstairs through the still, silent house.

Rather unreasonably, it gave Dr. Maclean somewhat of a shock to find Harry Garlett comfortably stretched out in an easy chair, reading a novel. But as the doctor advanced into the room the master of the Thatched House leaped to his feet.

“Well!” he exclaimed, “I hope you’ve made her more comfortable, Maclean? I’m sorry to have dragged you out like this, but Miss Cheale was so very much upset and worried——”

Then something in the gravity of the doctor’s face pulled the speaker up short. He added quickly: “Isn’t she so well? Would you like me to get Tasker?”

Dr. Maclean took a step forward; he put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder:

“Garlett, I’ve a sad thing to break to you, man——”

He waited a moment, then said quietly: “Your poor wife is dead—an obvious case of heart failure following an attack of acute indigestion.”

“Dead?”

As Harry Garlett repeated the word his face became deeply, deeply troubled. “She seemed so well, for her, last evening,” he said slowly.

The doctor answered in a low voice: “You should have resisted her wish for those strawberries.”

Harry Garlett looked puzzled.

“I never gave her any strawberries, Maclean. There are no strawberries yet—it’s much too early.”

It was the doctor’s turn to be surprised.

“I understood from Miss Cheale that you had shown your wife a dish of forced strawberries brought her by Miss Prince, and that then she had insisted on having them before her supper.”

“I never saw any strawberries, and I was only with her for a very few minutes.”

“Then one of the maids must have given them to her,” observed the doctor. “But if it hadn’t been that dish of strawberries, it would have been something else. It’s clear from the state she was in that anything might have caused her death.”

As if hardly knowing what he was doing, Harry Garlett sat down again.

“I—I can’t believe it,” he muttered.

“As far as the poor soul could be made happy, you made her happy, Garlett,” said Dr. Maclean feelingly.

“I wonder if I did—I wonder if I did! You must have often thought it strange that I was away so much, Maclean. But honestly—it was poor Emily’s own wish.”

He was speaking with deep emotion now, staring down at the floor.

“After I left the army, it took me some time to realize how really ailing she was, though, as you may remember, I did at that time stay at home a good deal. And then one day she sent me a note by hand to the factory——”

He looked up. “That note, Maclean, was my order of release! I have kept it, and I should like you to see it some day. In it she said that she wanted me to be happy—that Dodson was quite up to looking after the business, and that she did not want me ever to feel that I couldn’t do anything which would add to my innocent pleasure in life—because of her state.”

Dr. Maclean was more touched than he would have thought possible.

“Dear me,” he exclaimed, “that was very decent of her!”

“It was,” agreed the other, “it was indeed, Maclean. And she meant every word of what she wrote. It was only yesterday, our thirteenth wedding-day, that she said to me, ‘I don’t like your spending a week-end at home. It doesn’t seem natural, my dear.’ Thank God I did—thank God I did!”

“I think everything has gone very much better here this last year,” said the doctor thoughtfully.

“How d’you mean?”

“I mean because of Miss Cheale.”

The other did not answer for a moment, and then he said in a low voice:

“That’s true in a way, though I don’t think Emily liked Miss Cheale. I have at times regretted having agreed that she should come.”

“They weren’t the kind of women who would naturally take to one another,” answered Dr. Maclean.

“And yet my wife quite liked that worthless brother of Miss Cheale’s. He actually came to tea with her the other day.”

“Mrs. Garlett always liked men better than women,” said the doctor dryly. He had at once guessed the identity of Lucy Warren’s drawing-room visitor, and it had amused him to picture “poor Emily’s” wrath had she even dimly suspected the fact.

He added, after a pause: “Your wife was a generous sort, Garlett—I mean about money.”

“Yes, she was that, certainly.”

Both men remained silent for a moment. It was true that the poor woman now lying dead upstairs had always shown herself generous about money, though not, excepting to her husband, about anything else. But now was not the moment to recall her cantankerous and narrow outlook on life.

“Well,” said the doctor at last, “I must be going now. I’ll leave a note in her letter-box for Miss Prince as I go by. It will be just as well for Agatha Cheale to have a friend with her this morning; she has had a terrible shock.”

“She must have had,” said Harry Garlett; but he did not speak with his usual hearty kindliness.

The doctor looked at him rather hard. Then he again put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

“Look here, my friend, I know you’ve been a good husband to that poor soul. But you’re still a young man, and a new chapter of your life has begun.”

“I don’t feel like that,” muttered Harry Garlett in a low voice.

“Of course you don’t! But still it’s the truth.”

He added, measuring his words: “If I were you I should go away at once, as soon as the funeral is over, for a real holiday—such a holiday as you’ve never had. Don’t come back here till Christmas! Dodson’s getting a very old man; you’ll soon either have to manage the business yourself or get another partner, so take a holiday while you can get one.”

CHAPTER IV

Poor Emily Garlett’s funeral took place on a beautiful bright spring morning. The broad sunny street of Terriford was filled with motors and carriages, and quite a concourse of people had come out from Grendon, as well as from the surrounding villages, to testify their respect for popular Harry Garlett, both as famous cricketer and as a generous employer of labour.

Every one saw him, for he followed his wife’s coffin on foot. So also did the various other people closely concerned with the departed lady.

Agatha Cheale was ashen pale, but looked very attractive in her close, nunlike bonnet and severely plain black dress. The few who knew him noticed that Miss Cheale’s brother was not there; but Mrs. Warren could have told them that her lodger had left the farm two days ago, so recovered in health, so blithesome, so merry, that, though still unnaturally thin, he was scarcely the same man as the pale, coughing, queer, and clever gentleman who had come to her last February.

Dr. and Mrs. Maclean, accompanied by their niece, walked a little apart from Miss Prince and Miss Cheale. Lucy was not with the group of servants all clad in handsome black at their master’s expense. She had left the Thatched House the afternoon after Mrs. Garlett’s death, and to-day she had elected to stay at home to mind the farm. This had enabled Mrs. Warren to be present at the funeral, leaning on the arm of her brother, Enoch Bent, head clerk of Mr. Toogood the lawyer.

Little by little the mourners all passed through the lych-gate into the ancient churchyard. The rector had a good voice, and tears rose to many eyes as he read the noble, solemn words of the burial service.

It was remembered afterward that Harry Garlett, though he looked sad, was absolutely composed. When the burial was over he lingered for a few minutes talking to the rector, doubtless in the hope that the crowd would disperse. Then he quietly walked down the short, broad village street, and so through into the beautiful garden of the house which somehow he had never quite regarded as his property, if only because it was there that he had first known his wife, and where, as people sometimes unkindly put it, he had “hung up his hat” when he married, instead of taking his bride to a new home.

It is fortunate indeed that men and women cannot read each other’s thoughts, for, truth to tell, during the whole of his wife’s funeral service, Harry Garlett’s mind had been most uncomfortably full of another woman.

To this woman, none other than Agatha Cheale, he had written a formal note that morning saying he would like to see her after the funeral for a few minutes. And now he wondered whether she expected him to go to Miss Prince’s house, where she had been staying the last few days, or whether he would find her waiting for him in the Thatched House in the room which, till his wife’s death, had been known as “Miss Cheale’s room.”

He went into the empty hall, took off his hat, but still wearing his great coat, hurried down the passage. Then, after a moment’s pause, he knocked at the door.

A quiet voice said “Come in,” and as he entered the room he saw Agatha Cheale standing by the empty fireplace. All the little intimate possessions which cause a room to be associated with one personality had been cleared away. Already his late wife’s companion looked, as well as felt, a stranger in this house where she had spent so secretly dramatic, while so openly calm, a year of her life.

And now she gazed with sunken, burning eyes at the man who stood before her. How well he looked, how young, how strong!—his life, which in the last few days she had come to realize would never be shared by her, open before him. Deep in her unhappy, tormented heart there had survived up to to-day a glimmer of hope. True, he had obviously avoided her during the last few days, but might not that be owing to his undoubted affection, or rather respect, for his late wife? Now that faint glimmer of hope died as she gazed into his set, almost stern, face.

There welled up in her heart a terrible tide of that acrid bitterness which is born of thwarted love and ambition. But being a brave as well as a proud woman, she only said: “I’m glad it was such a fine day—that makes such a difference to a funeral.” And he answered eagerly: “Yes, indeed!” grateful for her commonplace words.

With an obvious effort, he exclaimed: “I want to tell you how grateful I feel for all you did for my poor wife. Your being here has made all the difference this last year.”

She said nothing, and, speaking more quickly, he went on: “I have to thank you for myself, as well as for poor Emily. It was such an infinite comfort, each time I went away, to feel that I was leaving my wife with someone I could trust, as I knew I could trust you.”

He waited a moment, and as she still remained silent while looking at him with a terrible fixed look of—was it reproach?—he took an envelope out of his pocket.

“I have made up the enclosed cheque,” he said awkwardly, “to the end of the year. I am glad to say Emily left you a thousand pounds. So I do hope you’ll manage to get a good rest before you start work again. From something Miss Prince said the other day, I gather you’re taking a post connected with some kind of Russian business house.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, “they were the people I was with before I came here, and they’ve often asked me to come back. It’s interesting work, and I’m in general sympathy with their objects.”

“Bolshevik objects?” he suggested with a half smile, and without meaning what he said. But she, without a glimmer of an answering smile, replied: “Yes, Bolshevik objects.”

A look of bewilderment came over his open face.

“I had no idea that you and your brother shared that sort of view!” he exclaimed, “deep as I know is your attachment for him.”

“We agree as to politics,” she answered, as if the words were being forced out of her.

And then at last, almost as if reluctantly, she took the envelope from his hand.

“Thank you for this,” she said coldly, “and for telling me of Mrs. Garlett’s unexpected thought for me. I do not want a holiday, but now I may be able to send my brother abroad this next winter, if he lives as long.”

“I was coming to that,” said Harry Garlett quickly. “I’m going away for a long holiday—certainly till Christmas, perhaps longer. But I’m keeping the household here together, and I’ve been wondering whether your brother would come and stay at the Thatched House as my guest, at any rate through the summer.”

She shook her head.

“I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Garlett, that his coming here is out of the question. I’m afraid, nay, I’m certain, that he was the man Lucy Warren let into the drawing room that night——”

A look of anger and disgust flashed into his face. So she had succeeded in rousing him at last?

She sighed, a weary, listless sigh.

“As I think I told you long ago, my brother’s one real interest in life is what he calls ‘falling in love’—and always with some entirely unsuitable person.”

Harry Garlett softened; he remembered very well his surprise when she had first told him about the unprincipled sickly brother whom she yet loved so dearly, and of whom she was, in a sense, proud.

“I feel grieved,” he said feelingly, “that you have this real anxiety always with you; I wish I could help you with it.”

“No one can help me with it. I knew he was bound to get into a scrape with some woman here.”

“What an extraordinary way to go on!”

“Extraordinary to you, no doubt. But you are a Galahad, Mr. Garlett.”

Her words were like the lash of a whip: he grew red under his tan, and looking at her straight for the first time during this, to him, most trying conversation, “I’m a very ordinary chap,” he said deliberately.

Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Harry Garlett turned and looked unseeingly out of the window. He was longing for the uncomfortable interview to end, and it was with relief that he heard her say:

“I must be going back to the Thatched Cottage now. Good-bye, Mr. Garlett, and thank you for all your kindness.”

“Good-bye and good luck!”

He tried to wring her hand, but it felt like a lump of dead, cold flesh.

All at once the door opened behind them. “Agatha? Oh, here you are!”

It was Miss Prince.

“I beg your pardon,” she exclaimed, glancing sharply from the one to the other.

“We were just saying good-bye,” said Harry Garlett quickly. “And I’ll bid you good-bye, too, Miss Prince, for I’m going away this afternoon, and I don’t expect to be back this side of Christmas.”

“Good gracious, man! Are you going round the world?”

“I haven’t made up my mind what I’m going to do.”

“And who will look after the factory?”

“Dodson and Miss Bower. Come, Miss Prince”—his look challenged her—“you’ve never credited me with doing much of the work there, eh?”

CHAPTER V

Harry Garlett was lying on the bank of a Norwegian fjord. It was a beautiful warm September day. He felt well in soul and body, and intended to give himself three more months’ good holiday.

With just a touch of reluctance he opened a packet of letters which had followed him to this remote, delicious place. Old Dodson’s letter, doubtless a brief dictated summary of what had been happening at the factory, was, as usual, addressed in the girlish handwriting of Jean Bower.

The sight of that handwriting made his thoughts stray for a while to the place which he still called “home.” He was indeed a lucky chap to have such a steady old soul as Dodson, and such a thoroughly nice, sensible young woman as was Jean Bower, looking after the business from which he drew part of his large income.

He opened the envelope and then, as he read the typewritten sheet, his face clouded with deep and even deeper dismay.

Dear Mr. Garlett,

I hope you will not think I am exceeding my duty in writing to tell you that I am becoming very anxious about the state, not only of Mr. Dodson’s health, but also of his brain.

It seems a shame to interrupt your holiday, but I really don’t know what to do. I am supposed to be the only person who has any influence over Mr. Dodson, but I have very little influence indeed, none where the real conduct of the business is concerned. My uncle agrees with me that you ought to know the state of things as soon as possible.

Believe me to remain, yours sincerely,

Jean Bower.

He got up from where he had been lying so luxuriously in the long grass, feeling as if he hadn’t a care in the world. There was evidently nothing for it but to go home and face out a difficult and disagreeable situation. And yet he felt sharply annoyed with Jean Bower. No doubt she was exaggerating as to old Dodson’s condition. But there it was; he couldn’t neglect such a letter as that! He told himself that he had been a fool to leave a girl in so responsible a position.

This was why his friends and neighbours welcomed Harry Garlett back in their midst full three months before he had been expected home.

In such a place as Grendon everybody is interested in every other body’s business. As soon as he had come back Harry Garlett had sent off Jean Bower for a short holiday, and soon, to his mingled amusement and annoyance, he found he could hardly take a step down the High Street without some good-natured gossip telling him how splendidly the girl had managed poor crazy old Dodson! Even his head foreman seemed quite lost without her, and, as a matter of fact, things didn’t begin going right again till she came back, and in her quiet and diffident, yet competent, way, began to “put him wise” with regard to all those matters which Dodson had always tried to keep jealously in his own hands.

And then, as the days went on, Harry Garlett began to find himself taking a keen, even an excited, interest in his work. The business which had meant little to him in the old days now gripped and absorbed him, or so he honestly thought, to the exclusion of all else.

Times were bad, every one in the country economizing, going in more and more for the cheap, rather than for the good, and the china made in the Etna works had never been cheap, though always good. And soon it became known in the town that Harry Garlett was trying to prove what even now few people believe—that is, that homely, everyday objects can be cheap and beautiful at the same time.

Never had time gone by so quickly as with these two eager workers! In the old days time had hung sometimes very heavily on Harry Garlett’s hands during the late autumn and winter months. But now he found there were not hours enough for all he wanted to do.

With the brain side of the business increasing at the rate it was doing, it became necessary to engage a new shorthand writer, and at the suggestion of Jean Bower, the daughter of a local solicitor killed in the war was given the coveted post. This was considered a kindly and generous act on Miss Bower’s part. Most young women in the position in which she found herself would not have cared to have another girl, younger, most people would have said prettier, than herself, sharing her secretarial position.

But, as a matter of fact, Jean no longer took down letters. Almost at once, though neither she nor Harry Garlett realized it, she had slipped into the position of a partner. They were a happy family at the Etna China works. “All jolly and friendly together,” as the head foreman expressed it.

And then, late in November, a word was uttered which changed, for ever, both their lives.

It was Sunday evening, and Harry Garlett was on his way to supper at Bonnie Doon. He went out often to dinner, having a large circle of acquaintances, but he generally had supper with the Macleans on Sunday, and as it was with him a dull, solitary day he used to look forward very eagerly to the evening. Since his return home, on the pretext that he was still in mourning, he no longer accepted invitations for week-end visits.

To-night, as he passed the Thatched Cottage, Miss Prince came running out of her door; it was almost as if she had been waiting for him.

“Harry!” she exclaimed. “May I walk a few yards with you? I want to ask you a favour.” Inconsequently, she added: “Your wife and I were lifelong friends, you know.”

She began walking along the road by his side, anxious to be quite out of earshot of her maid, who, by the way, was Lucy Warren. Lucy had always been a favourite of Miss Prince, and, to Agatha Cheale’s indignation, after the girl’s dismissal from the Thatched House, she had at once taken her back into her own service.

“Well, Miss Prince, what can I do for you?”

Harry Garlett never felt quite at ease with the gossiping spinster. They had once, years ago, had a real quarrel. He had caught her trying to make mischief between himself and his wife, and though they had formally “made it up” neither really liked the other.

“If and when Jean Bower gives up her job at the Etna works, I do beg you, Harry, to offer the position to Agatha Cheale.”

“Agatha Cheale?” Harry Garlett repeated the name mechanically.

His whole mind, aye, and his whole heart, were full of the first words she had spoken—“If and when Jean Bower gives up her job——”

“Have you any reason for thinking that Miss Bower is going to give up her position?”

He felt—he could not see, for it was dark—that Miss Prince smiled. It was a smile he knew and had always hated, for it generally presaged on her part the saying of something spiteful and unpleasant. But, whatever it was she was about to say, she now seemed in no hurry to say it.

“Well,” she said at last, “you go to the Macleans so often I should have thought you must have guessed what’s in the wind?”

It was not true that he went often to Bonnie Doon. As a matter of fact he had a curious distaste in seeing Jean Bower in the company of her uncle and aunt, for the reason that they two had now many interests in common that they could not share with outsiders—however kind those outsiders might be.

“In the wind, Miss Prince? I don’t understand what you mean.”

“If you were living where I live, on the road, you’d notice how often Dr. Tasker goes in and out of Bonnie Doon. Why, it’s as good as a play! There was a time when the man would hardly put his foot in Terriford village. We were supposed to belong to Dr. Maclean—and we did, too. There wasn’t much love lost between them before Miss Jean came along—but now they’re kissing kind! I’m expecting to hear of Jean’s engagement to Dr. Tasker any day.”

Harry Garlett fenced with his tormentor. “I now see your point about Miss Cheale,” he said quietly, “but I doubt if she would give up her work in London.”

“She gave it up before to please you.” Her tone was significant, though he could not see her meaning look. She added hastily:

“Agatha is devoted to this place, and so I thought I would take time by the forelock. Once it’s known that Jean Bower is leaving the factory, there’ll be plenty of people anxious to work their idle, silly daughters into her pleasant job. If you are wise, Harry Garlett, you will bear Agatha Cheale in mind.”

“I will, indeed, Miss Prince. Thank you for mentioning her.”

Miss Prince turned back toward her house, while Harry Garlett walked on, in a turmoil of astonishment and, yes, of bitter, intolerable jealousy.

Jean Bower and that red-haired brute, Tasker? Why, the mere thought of their names being associated in the way he had just heard it done made him feel beside himself with anger.

He quickened his footsteps, even now unaware of what was the matter with him. Indeed, as he went up the drive leading to the Macleans’ front door, he seriously told himself that his feeling of utter dismay was owing to the loss Jean would be to him from a business point of view.

A most miserable evening followed. Whenever Harry Garlett had a chance of doing so he would stare furtively, his heart full of jealousy and suspicious misery, at Jean Bower’s bright, animated face.

He wondered whether Tasker had been there on Friday afternoon? The day before yesterday Miss Bower had asked for the afternoon off—a most unusual thing for her to do.

Jean? What a lovely unusual name! Till this evening she had been “Miss Bower” even in Harry Garlett’s inmost thoughts. Henceforth she would always be Jean....

He was so silent, so constrained in his manner, that the doctor and Mrs. Maclean noticed that something was wrong. But they were, as Jean’s aunt expressed it afterwards, a hundred miles from suspecting the truth. By both these good people Harry Garlett was still regarded as the newly made widower of “poor Emily,” and as for their dear little niece, they were secretly happy in the belief that she would soon be Mrs. Tasker, settled within a pleasantly easy distance of themselves, with her future assured, even if the young medical man, whom they had regarded with such very different feelings till a few months ago, were not exactly a hero of romance. Tasker was proceeding in his wooing in a leisurely, cautious manner, but neither of the onlookers suspected the truth—the truth being that he felt as if there were an invisible, but strong, barrier between the girl and himself.

The next morning Jean was ten minutes late in arriving at the factory. As a rule she was five minutes early. But some one had come to Bonnie Doon with a cut hand, and the doctor, who generally motored her into Grendon, had wished to attend to the injury himself.

Those ten minutes had seemed to Harry Garlett an eternity. That she who was always early should be late, seemed to his jealous, excited fancy to confirm Miss Prince’s outspoken hint, and when at last she did come in, with a half-smiling apology, he turned on her roughly.

“I hope that you won’t be delayed like this again, Miss Bower, however good the reason. It gives a bad example,” and she was frightened, cowed, by his look of mingled anger and contempt.

Each of them got through his and her morning work with difficulty—Jean often on the point of tears.

What had happened to her kind, considerate employer, the man with whom, in her guilelessness, she had thought herself almost on the terms of a younger sister?

At last, at about a quarter to one, he turned on her with: “And what do you see to admire, Miss Bower, in Dr. Tasker?”

It was a monstrous, an outrageous, question, and the colour flew into her face.

She turned away and answered in what she meant should be a cheerful, chaffing voice, though she felt not only astounded, but hot with anger.

“What makes you think I admire Dr. Tasker, Mr. Garlett?”

He said, “I’m told you do,” in a short, cutting voice.

This time she remained silent, and after pretending for a moment or two to be busily engaged in correcting the proofs of a new trade catalogue she put her pen down and turned to walk toward the door—no longer mistress of herself.

Harry Garlett leaped to his feet, and before she could reach the door he caught her up and masterfully—yet, oh how gently—took her in his arms.

“Jean! Don’t be cruel,” he whispered. “Surely—surely you know I love you—adore you—worship you?”

For a long moment they gazed into each other’s eyes, and then his lips sought and found her soft, quivering mouth....

Early that afternoon—it was the first of December—Jean went home and quietly told her dismayed aunt that she and Harry Garlett loved one another. She admitted that it was very strange that neither of them had known it before to-day, but she went on to say that now they did know it, they were very, very happy.

Poor Mrs. Maclean! For the first time in her life she felt as if she could not cope with a situation—and she prayed for the doctor’s return home.

But when he did come in, tired out, from a difficult case, he only said grumpily: “So that was what was the matter with him yesterday? We were fools not to have foreseen it,” and telephoned to ask Harry Garlett to supper.

How different was this evening from that spent by them all the night before! Even Mrs. Maclean, staid Scots body that she was, caught fire at the great shaft of pure white flame which seemed to envelop those two who had now become lovers.

To her husband she might mutter that it was only just over six months since “poor Emily” died, but to herself she kept saying how wonderful, how uplifting, even only to watch, was this ecstatic passion between a man she had secretly imagined incapable of love, and her matter-of-fact, capable, merry little Jean.

Dr. Maclean was far from pleased. He kept wondering, ruefully, what he should say to Tasker. The man would undoubtedly be bitterly disappointed. Nay, more, he might feel that he hadn’t been treated quite fairly.

The doctor was also uncomfortably aware that there would be “talk,” and almost as if his wife were able to see into his mind, just before Harry Garlett at last got up, Mrs. Maclean suddenly exclaimed:

“There’s one thing I’m minded to say, Harry. I’m afraid Jean mustn’t go to the factory any more—not till you’re married, that is.”

As both the girl and her lover exclaimed against the cruel decision, Dr. Maclean clinched the matter.

“Your aunt’s quite right,” he said firmly. “Grendon’s the greatest place for gossip in England.”

“We don’t mind gossip.”

Dr. Maclean looked gravely at the two fine-looking young people standing before him in the lamplight.

Harry Garlett had never looked his age, and now, to-night, he looked years younger than yesterday. As for Jean, not only her radiant face, but her supple, graceful figure seemed transfigured—she looked a lovely ageless nymph no sorrow or decay could touch.

“I fancy that even you would mind being spied on and sniggered at,” said the doctor dryly.

And so there began for those two who loved one another so dearly a strange period of mingled pain and bliss. They hated to be apart, and yet they were not allowed to be together in what seemed to them both the only seemly, natural way—that in their joint everyday work.

Mrs. Maclean showed what even Jean considered an almost absurd fear of what even the people of Terriford might say. She did not like the lovers to stray outside the large garden and paddock of Bonnie Doon, and she ordained that “for the present” the engagement should remain private.

Small wonder that at the end of about ten days Miss Prince asked inquisitively: “Why has Jean left off going to the factory?”

“Jean has only had a few days’ holiday since she first went there,” answered Jean’s aunt evasively.

But Miss Prince shook her head. “I don’t know why you should hide the truth from me, Mrs. Maclean? It’s been plain for a good while what was the matter with Harry Garlett. I knew it before he knew it himself! But I didn’t believe that the girl liked him. I thought she preferred Dr. Tasker. Well, well! Poor Emily has soon been forgotten——”

After some three weeks of this state of things had gone on, Dr. Maclean suddenly said to his wife: “There’s nothing for it but to get them married! There’ll only be more talk if they don’t.”

And Mrs. Maclean answered with something like a groan: “There’ll be a lot of talk if they do.”

“Yes, but what’s to be done, my dear? The poor fellow has never been in love till now, so he doesn’t know how to behave——”

And so it was that at last it was decided that the two should be married on the nineteenth of December, by special license, very quietly, not to say secretly, in Terriford village church. They would then go to London for a week’s honeymoon, and, during that week, Dr. and Mrs. Maclean would tell all their neighbours and friends what had happened.

The doctor and his wife reminded each other that there was something about Jean which attracted even cold people. She had such a bright, happy, eager nature. As for Harry Garlett, he was always ready to do anybody a good turn, and also, as a great cricketer, was very popular. Though some old-fashioned people might be shocked by so early a second marriage, every one knew that his late wife had been an invalid for years.

There was only one person to whom, for a reason he would have found it difficult to define even to himself, Harry Garlett felt bound to announce his forthcoming marriage. This was Agatha Cheale.

In answer to his brief letter, there came one even briefer:

Dear Mr. Garlett,

I am interested in your news, and I trust you will be as happy as you deserve to be.

Yours sincerely,

Agatha Cheale.

CHAPTER VI

“I am the most fortunate man in England! I am the happiest man in the world!”

As he swung along in the bright winter sunshine on the field path which formed a short cut to the town, again and again these words seemed to hammer themselves, in joyful cadence, on Harry Garlett’s brain.

What we call the human heart is full of the strangest twists and turnings, and so, though Garlett’s heart was full of Jean Bower, he threw an affectionately retrospective thought to his late wife. He and “poor Emily” had never had a really cross word during those long, quiet years before the war, when, most fortunately for himself, he had not even dimly apprehended what the passion of love can mean in a human life, and how it will make beautiful, and intimately delicious, even the most prosaic facts of day-to-day existence.

He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past ten. In just twenty-four hours from now he and Jean would be starting for their one week’s honeymoon in London.

His face softened. There came upon it a great awe. God! How he loved her. Every moment they spent together he seemed to discover some new, hitherto hidden beauty of mind, soul, or body in this wonderful, still mysterious, but wholly delightful young creature who not only allowed him to worship her but—miracle of miracles—returned his passion.

Such were the disconnected but wholly contented thoughts which filled half an hour of the last easy, unquestioning, and, as if for an immortal moment, ecstatic morning of Harry Garlett’s life.

With no premonition of coming pain or evil Jean Bower’s fortunate lover passed through the big paved courtyard of the Etna China factory. He walked quickly into the early Victorian marble-papered hall and so past the office where sat two clerks, into the high square room which had been for so long known to the good folk of Grendon as “Mr. Dodson’s room.”

His letters lay unopened on the shabby leather-covered writing table, and as he sat down he saw that on the top of the pile was an unstamped envelope marked “Private.” Opening it, he read:

The Red Lion, Grendon,

December 17th.

Sir,

I propose to call on you to-morrow at eleven with regard to an important matter. Will you please arrange to be in at that time?

Yours faithfully,

James Kentworthy.

He stared down at the sheet of paper, trying to remember if he had ever heard the name Kentworthy before. But no, it meant nothing to him. Whoever this Kentworthy might be he had no business to take it for granted that he, Garlett, would be here, waiting his convenience, at eleven o’clock!

He got up and went into the outer office.

“If a Mr. Kentworthy calls, I will see him. But say that I can only spare him a few minutes, as I am very busy.”

As it was striking eleven, the door opened with: “Mr. Kentworthy, sir,” and at once, with some surprise, Harry Garlett recognized in his visitor a stranger he had seen walking about Terriford village during the last week or so.

The first time he, Garlett, had noticed him, this gray-haired stout man had been standing in the road just outside the gate of the Thatched House, chatting with one of the gardeners. On another occasion he had seen the same person looking at the inscriptions on the graves in the beautiful churchyard, of which the high-banked wall bounded the top of the broad village street. Also, this man whose name he now knew to be Kentworthy had passed him more than once on the narrow field path along which he had walked so joyously this morning.

“I have only just read your note, Mr. Kentworthy, for I was late this morning. What can I do for you? I’m afraid I cannot spare you much time, for, as you see, I haven’t even opened my letters.”

His burly, substantial-looking visitor came forward and stood close to him.

“I may take it that you’ve no idea of the business which has brought me here, Mr. Garlett?”

He looked straight into the face of the man he was addressing, and Harry Garlett felt just a little disconcerted by that steady, steely stare.

“No,” he said frankly, “I have no idea at all of your business, but I have lately seen you walking about Terriford village, so I take it that you have some association with this part of the world?”

“This is my first visit to Grendon,” said the other slowly, “and I was sent here, Mr. Garlett, on a most unpleasant errand.”

Again he looked searchingly at Garlett, and then he went on, speaking in a deliberate, matter-of-fact voice:

“I am a police inspector attached to the Criminal Investigation Department, and I was sent down here, about a week ago, to make inquiries concerning the death of Mrs. Emily Garlett, your late wife.”

Harry Garlett got up from his chair; he was so bewildered, so amazed, and yes, so dismayed, at what the other had just said, that he wondered whether he could have heard those strange, disturbing words aright.

“Concerning the death of my wife?” he repeated. “I don’t understand exactly what you mean by that——?”

James Kentworthy did not take his eyes off the other’s face. Long and successful as had been his career in the Criminal Investigation Department, he had never had a case of which the opening moves interested and, in a sense, puzzled him so much as did this case. He asked himself whether the man now standing opposite to him, whose face had gone gray under its healthy tan, was an innocent man, or that most dangerous and vile of criminals, a secret poisoner?

“From some information recently laid before the Home Office, it seems desirable that the cause of Mrs. Garlett’s death should be fully ascertained,” he said slowly.

Harry Garlett sat down again.

“On whose information are you acting?” he asked.

“That, for obvious reasons, we are not prepared to divulge,” answered the other coldly. And he also sat down.

Harry Garlett’s mind was darting hither and thither. Curse the gossips of Terriford! He had known them to create much smoke where he had felt convinced there was no fire—but never, never so noisome a smoke as this.

His heart became suddenly full of Jean—his darling, innocent little love. Such a child, too, as regarded the evil side of human nature, with all her common sense and practical cleverness. The thought of Jean almost unmanned him, but, in a flash, he realized that if only for her sake he must face this odious inquiry with courage and frankness.

“What is it you desire to know concerning my late wife’s death?” he asked.

“Although Mrs. Garlett’s death was exceedingly sudden, there does not seem to have been any question of an inquest,” observed the man Garlett now knew to represent all the formidable and mysterious powers of the C.I.D.

“There was not the slightest necessity for an inquest,” was the quiet answer. “Dr. Maclean, who had been my wife’s medical attendant for many years, saw her the day before she died.”

Mr. Kentworthy took a thick, small, notebook out of his coat pocket, and opening it, began reading it to himself.

“I am aware of that fact,” he said, without looking up, “and of course my next step will be to call on Dr. Maclean. But before doing that I thought it only fair to come and tell you of my inquiries, Mr. Garlett.” He looked up. “Have you any objection to giving me an account of your wife’s death—as far as you can remember the circumstances? Let me see—it’s only seven months ago, isn’t it?”

Again Harry Garlett made a mighty effort to pull himself together. He had all your honest man’s instinctive, absolute trust in justice. No one believed more firmly than himself that “truth will out, even in an affidavit,” but even so, though he was not exactly an imaginative man, he did feel as if the gods, envious of the wonderful happiness with which his cup had been filled up to brimming over till a few moments ago, had devised this cruel, devilish trick....

“I am quite willing to tell you everything you wish to know,” he said frankly. “But there is very little to tell, Mr. Kentworthy.”

“It is a fact, is it not, that your wife was a lady of considerable means, and that she gave over to you the greater part of her fortune quite early in your married life?”

Garlett flushed. “That is so. But I beg you to believe that that was by no wish of mine. In fact, as I can prove to you, I remade my will at once, leaving the money back to her in case I predeceased her.”

James Kentworthy smiled. In spite of himself he was beginning to like Harry Garlett, and even to feel inclined to believe, to hope, he had been sent to this sleepy, old-world country town on a wild-goose chase.

“Look here!” he exclaimed, “I don’t want you to be on the defensive with me, Mr. Garlett. If, as I trust will be the case, these inquiries of mine show that everything occurred in—well, in a regular and proper manner, no one will be more pleased than I shall be. I am not trying to catch you out in any way.”

Garlett’s face lightened. “Thank you for saying that. But—but I feel so bewildered, Mr. Kentworthy.”

“I understand that. Still, in your own interest I beg you to tell me, as clearly as possible, whatever details you may remember as to your wife’s sudden death. I propose to make a shorthand note of all you say, and then, after I have transcribed it, to ask you to read it over and sign the statement.”

He waited a moment, then added:

“I need hardly say that if you would prefer to ask your solicitor to be present, I shall raise no objection.”

“I would far rather say the little I have to say to you alone,” exclaimed Harry Garlett eagerly. “I have a very strong reason for hoping that the matter will never be known to any one but to us two—and, I suppose I must add, to Dr. Maclean?”

“Of course I shall have to see Dr. Maclean,” answered the police inspector. “But now, Mr. Garlett, go ahead! I would, however, suggest that you give orders that we be not interrupted. A great deal depends on your statement, as well as on that of Mrs. Garlett’s medical attendant. If they both prove satisfactory, the Home Office will not issue what it is always reluctant to do—an exhumation order.”

“An exhumation order?”

As he repeated those ominous words, there was a tone of utter dismay and horror in Harry Garlett’s voice, and the older man threw him a quick, suspicious glance. Why did the suggestion of an exhumation order cause Emily Garlett’s widower such unease? Then he reminded himself that, after all, an absolutely innocent man might well quail before an ordeal which, whatever the precautions taken, was bound to become public.

“That would obviously be the next step,” he said reluctantly.

Harry Garlett took up the telephone receiver which stood on his writing-table. “I am not to be disturbed on any account,” he called through.

And then, settling himself squarely in his chair, he faced his tormentor:

“Ask me any questions you like, Mr. Kentworthy,” he said, “and I promise to answer them fully and truthfully.”

The police inspector moved his chair a little nearer to the writing-table.

“I understand, from the few inquiries I have been able to make, that Mrs. Garlett was always in delicate health?”

“That is so; indeed my wife may be said to have been born delicate. She told me once that she never remembered feeling really well. Her parents made a very late marriage, and she was an only child.”

“She was a good deal older than you were, was she not?”

Harry Garlett reddened. The fact had always been a sensitive point with him.

“I was twenty-two when I married, and my wife, at twenty-seven, seemed in my eyes still quite a young woman. She was very slender, and, at that time of her life, did not look more than twenty.”

“And I suppose I may assume that it was a marriage of affection on both sides?”

A deeper flush came over Harry Garlett’s face. Though he had an open, cheery manner, he was in some ways a very reserved man. It was, therefore, with obvious, though restrained, emotion that he answered, in a low voice:

“My mother died when I was a child, and I had no sister. My father failed in business when I was a lad of fourteen, and a godfather paid for my later education. Until I came to Grendon I had hardly ever spoken to a young lady of refinement. At once the Thatched House became to me what I had never known, a home, and its young mistress my—my ideal of womanhood.”

“I see,” said the other man, touched by the candid admissions. “Then I take it, Mr. Garlett, that yours was a love marriage?”

“In spite of my wife’s ill-health, and our disappointment at not having children, I doubt if any married folk ever led a happier and more placid existence than we did—till the war,” answered Harry Garlett earnestly, but, as the other thought, a little evasively.

“My wife took the greatest pride and pleasure in my success as a cricketer. Yet she was so far from strong that, even in the old days, she could seldom sit out a match.”

“I know that you were the third man in Terriford to join up in August, ’14,” observed Mr. Kentworthy, “but that, I take it, did not mean that you were not completely happy at home?”

“Indeed, it did not! I felt that every fit man, in a position to do so, ought to join up at once. As for my wife, she was one of those old-fashioned women who approve of everything their husbands do.”

“Very few of that sort about now,” said Mr. Kentworthy, smiling.

“Well, my wife was one of those few! I told her how I felt about it all, and she said no word to stop me. And yet I have every reason to believe that she went through a real martyrdom while I was at the front——” He waited a moment, then concluded: “And when the war came to an end, and I settled down at home again, I realized that she had become a permanent invalid.”

“A terrible thing for a man of your age,” observed Mr. Kentworthy thoughtfully.

Harry Garlett made no answer to that comment. Had he ever felt for poor Emily a tithe of what he now felt for the girl who was to become his wife to-morrow, the condition in which he had found her on his return home would indeed have been a terrible thing. But with Emily, his relations, though good, kindly, even in a sense, gratefully affectionate, had not been such, even before the war, as greatly to affect him. But that, after all, was entirely his own and most secret business.

Thank God—he was thinking of Jean now, not of Emily—he had played fair in the great game of life. Tempted? Of course he had been tempted. Once, at least, more fiercely than he cared to remember now. But he had fought, beaten down temptation, remaining not only in deed but even in word, faithful to his marriage vow.

He came back with something of a mental start to the matter in hand.

This was the first time he had ever spoken, in an intimate sense, of his married life to any human being, and he was surprised to feel that, instead of finding it difficult, it was, in a sort of way, a relief.

“People may have told you, Mr. Kentworthy, that my wife was not a good-tempered woman,” he said earnestly, “but all I can say is, she was the most devoted and generous-natured of wives to me. I am aware that among my neighbours I was criticized for being a good deal away from home. No doubt I was selfish, absorbed in the game to which I give so much of my life during the summer months, but it was always with her eager encouragement that I went about and lived the kind of life I did live.”

“Mrs. Garlett must have been a most exceptional woman,” said the other, and he spoke with no sarcastic intent.

“She came of a long line of high-minded, God-fearing people—her old father was proud of the fact that he was descended from a man who at one moment had been Cromwell’s right hand.”

He, Harry Garlett, hadn’t thought of that for years. Yet, what was perhaps more singular, poor Emily’s personality, at once so commonplace and yet, in a sense, forceful, became suddenly more present to him than it had ever been since the last time they had talked together, on the evening of their thirteenth wedding-day.

“I may take it that there was never even a passing cloud on your married life?”

“Never a cloud!”

Harry Garlett added impulsively, “I don’t want you to think me a better man than I am. I did not always find it an easy situation——”

The other cut him short: “I accept what you said just now—that you two were happier, if anything, than the average married couple?”

“Yes, I think we were—in fact, I’m sure we were.” He spoke with sober decision.

“Now, tell me something about last spring. Did you think Mrs. Garlett more ailing than usual?”

“No,” said Garlett frankly, “I did not. She always made an effort to appear bright during the comparatively short times we were alone together, but, as I have already told you, she had become a complete invalid.”

He went on in a rather lower tone: “I wonder if you will understand when I tell you that she treated me, of late years, more as a loving mother treats a dear son than as a wife treats her husband——”

Both men remained silent for a moment, and the police inspector made a note in his book.

“Now, concerning the night your wife died? I understand the date was May the 28th, the time early on a Sunday morning.”

“The 27th of May was the thirteenth anniversary of our wedding-day,” began Harry Garlett. “And I’m ashamed to say I had forgotten it. But my wife remembered. And I found a gift, as a matter of fact, this gold cigarette case”—he took a small plain gold case out of his pocket—“waiting for me on my breakfast plate that Saturday morning. I then altered a plan I had made for going away for the week-end, and I decided to come home at one o’clock and spend as much of the day as was possible with my wife.”

“You were not alone during that walk back to your house?” suggested Mr. Kentworthy, in an indifferent tone. “You were, I believe, with a young lady.”

“A young lady?” echoed Harry Garlett, surprised. “I don’t think so.” And then suddenly he exclaimed: “You’re quite right—but how very odd that any one should have remembered it! I walked back with Miss Bower, the niece of my wife’s medical attendant, Dr. Maclean. But she went on to her home—she lives with the Macleans—and I had a tray lunch upstairs, with my wife.”

“Were you at home all that afternoon?”

Again it was as if Harry Garlett were making an effort to remember.

“I think so,” he said slowly. “No, I’m wrong! I went to a tennis party. My wife generally rested in the afternoon. But I was back a little after six o’clock, and I sat with her for some time.”

He knitted his brows, trying hard to remember what had happened, and slowly half-forgotten incidents started into life.

“There was a question of some fruit, some forced strawberries that a friend had brought that morning. The lady who was then acting as our housekeeper and as my wife’s nurse, thought I had given Mrs. Garlett the strawberries in question. But that was a mistake. She certainly ate them, so one of the maids must have given them to her. The matter is of some moment, for, as Dr. Maclean will, I think, tell you, it was this fruit which indirectly led to her death. Strawberries generally disagreed with her, but she was very fond of them, and as these were small Alpine strawberries I suppose she thought it would be all right.”

“When did you first become aware of your wife’s serious condition?”

“It must have been about four o’clock in the morning when Mrs. Garlett’s nurse-companion called me. She said my wife was in great pain and had asked if she could have some morphia. So I dressed and went at once for the doctor, who lives about a quarter of a mile from my place.”

“And then?”

“I had some trouble in rousing Dr. Maclean, but I think we were back in my house well under half an hour——”

“Had Mrs. Garlett become worse?”

“My wife could not bear for me to see her in the sort of state in which I understood she was then. So I waited downstairs in my study, and about—well, I don’t think it could have been more than twenty minutes after he had come into the house, Dr. Maclean came down and broke to me the fact that she was dead.”

“Had she died while you were fetching the doctor?”

“I don’t know—I don’t think so. I was terribly upset, and I asked no questions. Though she was an invalid, she always seemed, in a way, full of life—a steady, if a low, flame. And she had seemed so well, so happy, that afternoon! But wait a bit. I have forgotten something. My wife had had a disagreeable shock. One of our servants had admitted her sweetheart into the house the night before—as a matter of fact into the drawing room, which has a French window opening into the garden. Mrs. Garlett heard sounds, and thought there were burglars in the house. She actually went downstairs herself, and caught the girl red-handed, as it were. I remember suggesting to Dr. Maclean that the shock—for she was very particular about such things—might have affected her heart. But he didn’t think so.”

He stopped speaking. Mr. Kentworthy was busily writing, and Harry Garlett stared at his visitor’s bent head. Though assuring himself that it would be “all right,” he felt an eerie feeling of apprehension wrapping him round.

“I thank you for the straightforward way in which you have answered my questions,” said the police inspector, getting up from his chair, “and now I propose to see Dr. Maclean.”

“Would you like me to make a telephone appointment for you with him?” asked Garlett. “He’s a very busy man.”

“Why, yes, I should. But I hope you won’t think it unreasonable of me to ask you to give him no hint as to my business?”

“You will hear everything I say to him,” answered the other quickly.

He took his telephone receiver off. “Put me through to Dr. Maclean’s house.”

James Kentworthy, who was now standing close to the writing-table, heard the answer: “Miss Bower is already on the line, sir; we told her you didn’t want to be disturbed—shall I put her through?”

“Yes, please.”

And then, unmindful of the presence of a stranger, more unmindful no doubt because James Kentworthy was still so entirely a stranger to him, Harry Garlett put his whole heart into the question he breathed into the receiver.

“Is that you, my dearest?” And then—“I want to speak to the doctor.”

The other heard, as from afar off, a bright, happy voice exclaim: “He’s in the meadow with Aunt Jenny! I’ll run along and get him. But you’d better hang up the receiver, for I’m afraid it’ll be full five minutes.”

Garlett hung up the receiver, and again faced his visitor.

“I should like to tell you, Mr. Kentworthy, that I am just about to be married.”

“Just about to be married?”

The police inspector wondered if he had kept out of his voice, not only the surprise, but the dismay which he felt at this to him astounding disclosure.

“My fiancée is the niece of Dr. Maclean. She was on the telephone just now.”

“The young lady who, for a while, was your secretary?”

In spite of himself, there was a note of deep disappointment in the voice in which Mr. Kentworthy asked the question.

Harry Garlett instinctively straightened himself.

“Miss Bower became secretary to the Etna China Company—not my personal secretary—just before my wife’s death.”

There was an awkward silence between the two men.

“I see,” said Mr. Kentworthy at last. “I see, Mr. Garlett.”

But, as a matter of fact, he felt as if he had walked from the bright sunshine into an evil-smelling fog. Quite a number of pages in his thick little notebook bore the heading “Miss Jean Bower.”

“Is the date of your wedding fixed?”

“Well, yes, it is.” Harry Garlett hesitated, then exclaimed impulsively—“We are to be married to-morrow morning, by special license! No one, however, knows that fact excepting the vicar and his wife, and, of course, Dr. and Mrs. Maclean.”

Again there followed a strange, painful silence.

“I take it you will postpone your marriage till this matter is thoroughly cleared up?” said the police inspector at last.

As the younger man, dismayed, made no immediate answer, the other added: “I should do so, in your place, Mr. Garlett.”

Before he could speak the telephone bell rang and Harry Garlett took up the receiver and in a falsely cheerful tone—a tone with which, alas, James Kentworthy was painfully familiar as a result of his life work—he called out: “Is that you, Dr. Maclean? Garlett speaking. Would you be in if Mr. Kentworthy, a gentleman who wants to see you, on urgent private business, were to come along now? Yes? Right!”

He hung up the receiver. “Dr. Maclean will see you at once.”

Both men got up.

“One word before you go, Mr. Kentworthy.”

“Yes, Mr. Garlett?”

Try as he might, he could not bring back the kindly tone into which he felt he had been betrayed during the latter part of their conversation.

“I suppose the only thing that would set the matter absolutely at rest would be the exhumation of my wife’s body?”

“That is so—obviously,” answered the other, briefly.

CHAPTER VII

Within an hour of his having left the Etna factory, James Kentworthy got up from his chair in Dr. Maclean’s consulting room.

The man who had come down to Terriford to make these delicate inquiries was honest and conscientious, set on finding out the truth and nothing but the truth. Also, this was to be his last official investigation, and he had every reason for hoping that it would be a short business. The moment it was over he was to retire from the service and start for himself as a private inquiry agent. He was, therefore, sincerely glad that the conversation he had had with the late Mrs. Garlett’s medical man had been, from his point of view, thoroughly satisfactory.

During the first few minutes of his interview with Mr. Kentworthy, Dr. Maclean had been so indignant and so shocked when he realized his visitor’s business, that he had been very unwilling to give the police inspector any information. But he had soon realized that this was a mistake on his part, and by the end of their conversation the two men were on excellent terms the one with the other.

And now that their long talk was, as they both thought, drawing to an end, Dr. Maclean said earnestly:

“I do hope, Mr. Kentworthy, that I have been able to convince you not only that Mrs. Garlett died a natural death, but that my friend Garlett himself was for long years an exceptionally good husband to the poor, sickly woman?”

“You have convinced me,” said the inspector frankly, “that Mrs. Garlett’s death was almost certainly a natural death. But I cannot pledge my superiors in any way, and the best thing would be for you to come with me to London to-night and see the gentleman in charge of the case to-morrow morning.”

Dr. Maclean stood up.

“There’s one more thing I feel you should know, though it has nothing directly to do with the matter in hand.”

Mr. Kentworthy stiffened into quick attention.

“My wife’s niece, Jean Bower, is just about to be married to Harry Garlett. As a matter of fact, the wedding has been fixed to take place to-morrow——”

A quick inward debate took place in the Inspector’s mind. Should he imitate the other’s frankness? He made up his mind that it was his duty to do so.

“I am aware of that, Dr. Maclean, for Mr. Garlett told me the fact himself. I hope you won’t be offended when I say that I regret very much that he did not wait a little longer. After all, it’s a very short time since Mrs. Garlett’s death.”

“She died in May, and we are now in December!” exclaimed the doctor with some heat. “And remember—I speak as from man to man—that the woman had been Garlett’s wife only in name for many a long year.”

“I do remember that,” said James Kentworthy slowly. “But ask yourself, Dr. Maclean, how so quick a second marriage would strike ordinary people—who knew nothing of the special circumstances of the case?”

“But every one here, in this neighbourhood, does know the circumstances,” objected the doctor.

Each word this stranger had uttered in the last few moments had been said again and again in the last month by Dr. Maclean to his wife. But he was not going to admit anything of the sort now, even to himself.

Hardly knowing what he was doing he sat down again, and Mr. Kentworthy did the same.

Leaning forward, the police inspector said earnestly: “You must remember, sir, that what we, in our line of inquiry, are always looking for, is—motive.”

“Motive?” repeated the doctor. “I don’t quite follow what you mean, Mr. Kentworthy.”

“I need not tell you—a doctor—that in the vast majority of cases the death of a man or woman is always of interest, and very often of considerable benefit, to some human being?”

“I see your point,” said the other uneasily.

“In this case,” went on Mr. Kentworthy, “I soon realized that money had played no part at all in the matter I had been sent to investigate.”

He stopped abruptly, hardly knowing how to frame the unpleasant fact he wanted to convey.

At last he said frankly: “You must admit, doctor, that Mrs. Garlett’s death released her husband from a very trying position. It made him a free man.”

“That’s true. Yet I ask you to believe me, Mr. Kentworthy, when I tell you most solemnly that Harry Garlett never longed, even unconsciously, for that sort of freedom. He is a man’s man in daily life; he never seemed in the least interested in women; and there was never the slightest breath of scandal about his name.”

The police inspector looked at him gravely.

“I am sorry to say that you are mistaken, Dr. Maclean. You are evidently not aware that there has been a great deal of gossip, not only since Mrs. Garlett’s death, but even before her death, concerning Mr. Garlett and the young lady to whom he is now engaged.”

Dr. Maclean jumped up from his chair.

“I deny that! I deny it absolutely!”

His eyes flashed, he struck his writing-table with his hand.

“What devils some women are! Why, my poor little niece had only just become secretary to the Etna Company when Mrs. Garlett died——”

“She took over her new duties on the 26th of last April,” observed the inspector quietly, “and, from what I can make out, there seems no doubt that Mr. Garlett, who up to then had much neglected his duties as managing director, leaving everything, it appears, to his partner, a certain Mr. Jabez Dodson, began going daily to the Etna China factory.”

Dr. Maclean sat down again. He felt far more disturbed than he would have cared to acknowledge, even to himself.

“I suppose,” he said slowly, “that it would not be fair to ask you the source of this absolutely untrue and poisonous gossip?”

“I don’t say it would be unfair—but I am sure you will understand that it would not be right of me to oblige you.”

“Do you mind telling me exactly what it is you have heard?—narrowing down the point to what you have been told happened before Mrs. Garlett’s death?”

Mr. Kentworthy began to feel sorry he had said anything about that side of his investigations. He had been tempted into indiscretion by his liking for this man, and his growing conviction that Harry Garlett’s wife had died an absolutely natural death.

It was as a friend of these foolish, if honest, people that he had just said what he knew was true. After all, it was perhaps just as well that they should know the kind of gossip floating about.

“The most serious thing I have heard,” he said quietly, “is that your niece and Mr. Garlett occasionally met secretly, late at night, in a little wood which forms part of Mr. Garlett’s property.”

Dr. Maclean stared at the speaker with growing anger and astonishment, and the other, pursuing his advantage, as even the kindest men are sometimes tempted to do, went on—

“I have actually spoken to the person who saw them there on at least two occasions.”

Again Dr. Maclean got up. “You have actually found a man or woman who declares that he or she saw my niece, Jean Bower, and Harry Garlett, under the compromising circumstances you have described?”

“No,” exclaimed the other quickly. “I cannot say that the person in question mentioned Miss Bower. What she said—I admit it is a woman—was that she had twice seen Mr. Garlett and a young lady in the wood forming part of the Thatched House property, and that, on the second occasion, she overheard something like an altercation between the two. Garlett’s companion burst into tears and reproached him, from what I can make out, for his coldness to her.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Dr. Maclean.

He sat down again, heavily. He felt suddenly years older.

“Having said so much, I think it is only fair to you to read the exact words I put down after seeing the young woman in question.”

“Young woman? Then the author of this infamous lie is not Miss Prince?” said the doctor to himself as he listened to the inspector beginning to read from his notebook.

“It was one day late in April, I cannot fix the date. When I got to the little wood I saw Mr. Garlett and a young lady walking down the path. I did not want them to see me, so I hid behind some laurels. I think from what I could make out, they were talking about the war. There was no love-making that I could see.”

“You must understand,” explained Mr. Kentworthy, looking up, “that the person in question did not give me this connected account that I have read out. I had more or less to drag out of her these apparently unimportant details.”

“There is nothing there about a quarrel or tears,” observed the doctor.

“We are coming to that,” said the other quietly.

“It must have been exactly a week later,” he read on, “that I was there again. I wondered if I should see them, and sure enough I did! It was a moonlit night, so I could see their figures clearly. I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying, for I was afraid of going too near, owing to its being so much more light than it had been the time before, but I did hear Mr. Garlett speaking as if he thought it was wrong of them to be there together at all. He begged the lady’s pardon ever so many times, and seemed a good deal distressed. As for her, she was sobbing bitterly, and kept saying, ‘I am very tired, or I shouldn’t be upset like this.’”

“I may as well read you the impression the story made on me at the time,” said Mr. Kentworthy, and he went on with his notebook:

“I pressed her again and again to give me some indication of who the young lady was. I cannot believe her assertion that it was a stranger to her. But she persisted in her statement that though she knew the man was Garlett she did not know his companion. If this is true it follows that Garlett’s companion was some woman who had come out either from Grendon or perhaps from an even greater distance to spend an hour with him. Note: Make inquiries as to how he spent his time, and with whom, during his frequent absences from home before his wife’s death.”

“You cannot be surprised,” he added looking up, “that I feel everything points to Mr. Garlett’s companion in the wood having been the young lady with whom he is now on the eve of marriage.”

“I suppose I can’t expect you to agree with me,” said Dr. Maclean, “when I say that I am convinced that the story is entirely false from beginning to end. I know my niece never met Harry Garlett secretly at night, or, for the matter of that, in the daytime. Only his own admission would make me believe that Garlett met any woman in such compromising and dangerous circumstances.”

Mr. Kentworthy remained silent. It was clear he did not accept the other man’s view of the story.

Suddenly the doctor pressed the electric bell on his table, twice, sharply: “I’m going to send for my niece,” he exclaimed.

Mr. Kentworthy started up.

“That’s not fair,” he cried. “That’s not playing the game!”

“Bide a wee, man. I’m not going to do anything unfair. I simply want you to see the child. I’ll give her a message for my wife.”

A moment later the door opened and Jean Bower ran in.

“Yes, Uncle Jock? What——” and then she stopped short. “I beg your pardon. I did not know you had any one here.”

“Mr. Kentworthy—my niece.”

The two shook hands, and as he looked keenly into her fresh guileless face and noted, as only a trained eye would have done, the dozen little details which go to differentiate one type of modern girl from the other, James Kentworthy told himself that Dr. Maclean had shown a sure instinct in thus obliging him to see Harry Garlett’s betrothed.

The experienced police inspector was not a susceptible man, and he was one whose work habitually caused him to see the ugliest side of feminine human nature. Yet he would have staked a great deal on the probability that the girl now before him was as pure and essentially simple-hearted as had been the mother whose memory he cherished. He made up his mind that Harry Garlett’s mysterious companion had almost certainly not been this young woman.

“I want you to tell your aunt, my dear, that I have unexpectedly got to go to town to-night.”

“Oh, Uncle Jock!”

Jean looked very troubled and dismayed. “I’d better ’phone to Harry at once, hadn’t I?”

“Yes, do, my dear. But first tell your aunt. She’d better send a note to the vicar—that is if you want me to be present at your wedding.”

She reddened deeply. How very strange and odd of Uncle Jock to speak of to-morrow’s secret ceremony before a stranger.

“Of course we want you to be there. Why, we shouldn’t feel married if you weren’t there! We’ll put the wedding off for a day or two.”

She tried to speak lightly and, turning, left the room.

“There!” exclaimed Dr. Maclean. “D’you see that girl meeting a married man in a wood at night? She’s the most self-possessed, dignified little lassie I’ve ever met! Not that she is lacking in feeling. She’s devoted now, to that man, and,” he went on, speaking with a good deal of emotion, “I hope to God she will never know of this horrible, if it was not so serious I should say this ridiculous, business.”

Suddenly the telephone bell on his table rang. He took up the receiver.

“I said I was not to be disturbed”—and then in a very different voice—“Garlett?”

“Has the man who called on me this morning gone? I feel I must see you.... Yes, I’m still at the office. Where else should I be?... Somehow the horror of it all seems to grow and grow on me.... For the first time in my life I feel as if I don’t know what I ought to do!”

The doctor felt dismayed. It was clear that the invisible speaker was painfully excited and overwrought.

“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” he called back soothingly. “My interview with Mr. Kentworthy has been quite satisfactory, and I’m going up to London to-night to see the people concerned to-morrow morning. Best not say too much over the telephone, my dear fellow. Bad breaks will come in business, as we all know.”

He hung up the receiver.

“Garlett’s thoroughly rattled!” he exclaimed. “D’you see any objection to his coming up with us to-night and going to the Home Office to-morrow morning?”

The other hesitated.

“Frankly, I shouldn’t advise that. If you, as Mrs. Garlett’s medical attendant, can convince my chiefs that she died a natural death, the whole matter will be dropped.”

“I understand that, and I’ll make him follow your advice,” said the doctor. “But what I can’t make out—what I would give a good deal to know—I suppose you know and won’t tell me?—is what started this damnable inquiry?”

The eyes of the two men crossed.

“There are such things as anonymous letters,” observed Mr. Kentworthy dryly.

“Anonymous letters?”

Surprised though he felt, he told himself that he had been a fool not to think of that solution of the mystery.

“I didn’t know,” he muttered, “that poor Garlett had an enemy in the world. But I suppose you can’t run any business without making some bad blood.”

“I suppose you can’t,” agreed the other. “But one thing I will tell you. The letters in question were never written by a factory hand.”

He leant forward and instinctively lowering his voice, he went on:

“Can you think of any one who bears Mr. Garlett a grudge? Having said so much I think I may go a step further and say that we have no doubt at all that it is a woman.”

“A woman?”

Again the doctor’s suspicions swung around to Miss Prince.

“I understand that before his wife’s death Mr. Garlett went about a great deal?” went on the other thoughtfully.

“That’s true. Garlett’s a very good fellow, and very popular. As a famous cricketer he knew people more or less all over England, and the only kind of business he really did for the Etna China works was that of sometimes acting as a sort of glorified commercial traveller.”

“That being so, Dr. Maclean, don’t you think it possible that he may have formed some kind of connection which he gave up as, queerly enough, a good many men do give up such friendships after a wife’s death?”

“In this strange world of ours,” said the doctor reluctantly, “everything is possible. But I would have staked a good deal that that particular thing was never true of Harry Garlett. I take it you have seen the anonymous letters in question?”

The police inspector quietly opened his black attaché case.

“I see no reason why I should not show the letters to you now!” he exclaimed. “I feel certain the originals will be submitted for your inspection at the Home Office. I, of course, have only a set of facsimiles.”

The doctor’s face, which had been very grave, livened into eager curiosity.

Mr. Kentworthy came up to the writing table.

“This was the first letter. It was not addressed to the Home Office. It was sent to Scotland Yard.”

While he was speaking he had put his hand over the sheet of paper; now he lifted it, and Dr. Maclean saw a large sheet of paper marked I. Drawn in pencil was a curious conventional design, under which ran the words—“Water-mark of the original (foreign) paper.”

Then, written in block letters in very black ink, he read the following:

THE WRITER FEELS IT HIS DUTY TO DRAW THE ATTENTION OF THE HEAD COMMISSIONER OF POLICE TO CERTAIN MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING THE DEATH, ON THE 28TH OF LAST MAY, OF MRS. EMILY GARLETT AT THE THATCHED HOUSE, TERRIFORD VILLAGE. MRS. GARLETT WAS THE WIFE OF HENRY GARLETT, OWNER AND MANAGING-DIRECTOR OF THE WELL-KNOWN GRENDON ETNA CHINA FACTORY. THOUGH THE DEATH WAS VERY SUDDEN, NO INQUEST WAS HELD.

“This reads like a man’s letter,” observed Dr. Maclean.

“It was meant to read like a man’s letter,” said Mr. Kentworthy. “But we believe it to be the work of an educated woman.”

The doctor went on staring at the sinister epistle. What dread secret of love or hate—or was it only poisonous malice—lay behind these roughly ink-printed words?

“Here is the envelope. You will notice that the postmark, which by the way has been drawn in, for it was too obliterated for any other method to be of use, shows the letter to have been posted in London just a month ago. For what it is worth I may remind you that almost any educated man would realize that such a communication should be sent to the Criminal Investigation Department of the Home Office, and not to Scotland Yard.”

“What happens,” asked Dr. Maclean, “when such a thing as this is received?”

“By long experience we are well aware that such a letter is likely to be only one of a series—and sure enough, four days later, came this second letter!”

The speaker pushed aside the first sheet of paper he had laid down, and put in its place another.

“This surely is from an uneducated person?” exclaimed Dr. Maclean.

He was now gazing at a most peculiar looking script, marked 2.

“Not necessarily,” said Mr. Kentworthy. “But whether written by the same individual or not, this was undoubtedly written with the left hand. It is extremely difficult for any handwriting expert, however clever, to identify a letter written with the left hand with the writer’s ordinary right-hand script. There are as a rule certain similarities, but those proceed from the brain rather than from the mechanical action of the hand.”

“I think I understand what you mean,” and, bending down, he read the following long comma-less sentence:

It’s a shame the police took no notice of what happened at The Thatched House when poor Mrs. Garlett died she died in agony her husband was carrying on at the time with more than one girl the doctor’s niece could tell you why poor Mrs. Garlett’s doctor made no fuss people have asked why no inquest echo answers why?

“What an abominable thing!”

Dr. Maclean’s eyes flamed with anger. “I hope to God that neither my niece nor Harry Garlett will ever see this vulgar, hateful letter.”

“I can reassure you on that point,” said the other earnestly. “Under no consideration are these kinds of communications brought into a law case,” and, as he saw a shadow pass over the doctor’s face:

“Not that I think there will be a law case. Since my talk with Mr. Garlett this morning, and with you during the last hour, I believe that all this trouble has been caused by some hysterical woman who has a grudge against Mr. Garlett.”

Dr. Maclean muttered: “I only wish I had the writer of this letter here.”

“Perhaps you’d rather not see the other letter?” said his visitor, half smiling.

Human nature was always surprising James Kentworthy, and now he was amused in spite of himself. Dr. Maclean had taken the first anonymous letter calmly, but the moment he himself had been brought into the matter he had evidently felt very differently.

“Of course I’d rather see it!” he exclaimed brusquely, and the police inspector put it down before him.

No. 3 was written in block letters.

THE WRITER OF THE LETTER DATED NOVEMBER 25TH ADVISES THE HEAD COMMISSIONER OF POLICE TO ASK MR. HENRY GARLETT TO RENDER A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING HIS WIFE’S DEATH.

“I think,” said Dr. Maclean hesitatingly, “that I know who wrote two of those letters.”

“You do?” Mr. Kentworthy leaped to his feet.

“I suspect,” said the doctor, “that the writer is a certain Mary Prince, the daughter, I am sorry to say, of the medical man from whom I bought my practice.”

“The lady who lives at the Thatched Cottage?”

Mr. Kentworthy felt sadly disappointed. He was convinced the doctor was on a wrong track.

“I feel sure it is she,” Dr. Maclean spoke with growing energy and conviction. “Miss Prince is a most malicious woman. She has never liked Harry Garlett, and I know she has been genuinely shocked at his thought of remarriage. She actually guessed how things were between him and my poor little niece before they knew it themselves.”

“Believe me, you are on the wrong track, Dr. Maclean. I had a talk with this very lady two days ago, and though I don’t think she has a pleasant disposition, if she is really the writer of these letters then she entirely took me in.”

“Did she know why you were here?” asked Dr. Maclean.

“Good heavens, no! I hope you won’t be shocked when I confess that I told her I was distantly related, through her mother, to the late Mrs. Garlett. On the strength of this statement she asked me to tea, and we had a long talk. She is a shrewd, clever woman, though I admit a dangerous gossip. By the way, there is one person who, I gather, was actually with Mrs. Garlett when she died. I mean a certain Miss Agatha Cheale, who is a friend of this Miss Prince. How about her, Dr. Maclean?”

Unconsciously the doctor stiffened.

“I don’t know that there is anything to say about Miss Cheale. She was distantly related to the Garletts. Mrs. Garlett’s death was a real misfortune for her, for although the poor lady left her a thousand pounds, she was actually receiving a salary of three hundred pounds a year.”

“When was she here last?” asked Mr. Kentworthy suddenly.

“She came down for a week-end visit to Miss Prince about a month ago, and I think she is coming for Christmas. A capable, intelligent young woman, but I don’t think she could add anything to what I have told you—the more so, that although she was in a war hospital in France, she is not a trained nurse.”

“Well, I’ll be going now. Shall we meet at Grendon station at five o’clock and travel together?”

“By all means.” The two men shook hands cordially.

“I hope you will be able to forget all about this business after to-morrow,” said the police inspector earnestly.

But Dr. Maclean felt very sick at heart when he finally shut the door on his unwelcome visitor, and turned his steps reluctantly toward the dining room where he knew his wife, and probably Jean with her, was likely to be.

As he opened the dining-room door he saw with relief that Mrs. Maclean was alone.

“What signifies the message Jean brought me just now?” she exclaimed. “Why must the marriage be put off, even for one day, Jock? Surely you can postpone going to London till to-morrow afternoon?”

“I’m the bearer of bad news,” he said heavily.

Mrs. Maclean stood up.

“What’s the matter?” she asked in a frightened tone.

As her husband remained silent, she went up to him, and gave his arm a shake:

“Jock? You’re frightening me! Have you found out anything about Harry Garlett? D’you mean you think the marriage will have to be broken off?”

She added, “The child’s fair daft about him!”

“There’s no question of breaking off the marriage,” he said quickly. “In fact, if I had my way Jean should not be told anything—beyond the bare fact that her wedding must be postponed for a day or two.”

And then, before he could say anything further, the door behind them burst open and Harry Garlett rushed into the room.

His face was drawn and haggard—he looked years older than he had done that morning.

“I hoped to catch that London detective here—but I hear he’s gone. Look here, Maclean. I’ve had time to think over what I ought to do, and I’ve decided to go to London at once and clear the matter up.”

“What matter have you to clear up?” asked Mrs. Maclean.

Garlett walked straight over to where she was standing and looked at her fixedly:

“I am suspected of having murdered my wife, Aunt Jenny,” he said in a hard, matter-of-fact voice, “and from what I can make out that suspicion will never be laid to rest till they have dug up the poor creature and satisfied themselves that she died a natural death.”

The colour drifted from Mrs. Maclean’s healthy face.

“Is what he says true?” she asked, turning to her husband.

“Yes and no,” he answered in a measured tone. “It’s true that Harry has some deadly enemy who is trying to fasten this awful charge on him. But my talk just now with a man named Kentworthy who was sent down from the Home Office——”

“The Home Office?”

Mrs. Maclean was an intelligent woman, and the words struck a note of sharp fear in her breast.

The doctor went on: “I’ve just had the fellow here for over an hour, and I think I’ve convinced him that the—well, the suspicion, if you can go so far as to call it that, is absolutely groundless.”

Harry Garlett broke in: “But did Kentworthy tell you what I forced him to admit to me—that nothing short of an exhumation will really settle the matter, and that unless that takes place the matter may be raised again at any time?”

A tide of dismay welled up in Dr. Maclean’s heart. He suddenly realized that what this wild-eyed man, who looked so little like the happy, still young lover of this morning, was saying, was only too true.

Even so he forced himself to exclaim: “You take an exaggerated view, Harry. All I ask you to do is to await the result of my interview with the Home Office people.”

Harry Garlett was staring at the speaker, a look of terrible perplexity as well as acute suffering on his face.

“In any case, I suppose you would admit that our marriage will have to be postponed?” he said slowly.

“Well, yes, I’m afraid it must be—for a day or two.”

And then Mrs. Maclean broke in:

“Before you even decide on that I think you ought to consult Jean. After all, she’s the person most nearly concerned, isn’t she? Though perhaps—” she hesitated painfully, “we need not tell her the reason for the postponement?”

Garlett turned away and stared out into the wintry garden, and there was such a look of anguish on his face that Mrs. Maclean suddenly felt a rush of intense, overwhelming pity for him.

She went across to where he was standing and put her hand gently on his arm. But he made no response.

Dr. Maclean cleared his throat: “Perhaps I’d better go and tell Jean what has happened? I don’t see how we can hope to keep it from her.”

But the unhappy man roused himself: “No!” he said violently, “I’ll tell her myself—I’d rather she heard it from me.

He turned to the doctor. “I know how kind you are——” his voice broke, “but I feel that she ought to hear this vile thing from me——”

“I think that’s true, Jock,” said Mrs. Maclean quietly. “So now I’ll go and find the child.”

She was walking to the door when Garlett asked suddenly: “Where is Jean? Out of doors? I’d rather speak to her there.”

“I’ll see you’re not disturbed.”

Jean Bower was already on her way back to the house when Harry Garlett caught sight of her. She was walking quickly, her whole figure instinct with the joyous buoyancy and grace of happy youth.

When she saw her lover she stopped short, pleased and yet surprised, for he had told her that he was not coming back from the factory till late afternoon.

And then, as he hurried up to her, there swept over her a feeling of sharp misgiving.

“Is anything the matter?” she asked affrightedly.

He took hold of her arm and guided her to a brick path which was now, to them both, filled with delicious associations, for it was here that they had always come, during the few short weeks of their secret engagement, to be alone together. Closed in on either side by old yew hedges, it was the only part of the Bonnie Doon garden really sheltered from prying eyes. Often, nay almost always, their first, their only, kisses, on any given day, were taken and given here, between those high, impenetrable walls of living green. To Jean the yew hedge walk had become holy ground.

And so, as they turned the corner, the girl’s heart began to beat quickly. Here it was that Harry always turned with a sudden, passionate movement, and took her in his arms. But to-day her lover hurried her along the uneven brick path until they reached the extreme end of the shadowed walk.

Then, and not till then, he stopped, and faced her with the words: “We can’t be married to-morrow——”

He had meant to add, “I am suspected of having poisoned my wife.” But he found he could not utter the hateful words. They would not come.

And Jean? Gazing up into his haggard face she felt a mingled rush of intense relief and deep, exultant love and tenderness. It moved her to the soul to think that the postponement of their marriage could make him look as he was looking now. But she was quickly, painfully, undeceived.

“A man came to see me at the works this morning to tell me that there seems to be some doubt as to the cause of Emily’s death.”

Her face filled with deep surprise and dismay, but no suspicion of what his words implied crossed her mind. All she did understand was that what had happened had given this man who was so entirely her own, a terrible shock.

“Why should that make any difference to our being married to-morrow morning?” she asked in a low voice.

“Because neither your aunt nor your uncle would wish you to be married to a man suspected of murder.” He spoke with harsh directness.

“Murder?” Jean Bower’s eyes flashed. She did not shrink, as he had thought she would do; instead she threw herself on his breast and pressed close up to him, putting her arms round his neck.

“If that is true, but I don’t believe it is true, then I want to marry you at once—to-day rather than to-morrow, Harry. Oh, my love, my own dear love, don’t look at me like that!”

His arms hungrily enfolded her, but he shook his head determinedly. “Till the whole thing is cleared up, we’ve got to face this trouble separately.”

“No! No! No!” she exclaimed, looking up eagerly, piteously, into his drawn face. “Not separately, but together, Harry.”

And it was he, not she, who broke down as she pressed up closer to him, for, to her agonized distress, he pushed her away and broke into short, gasping, hard sobs.

“I can’t come back to the house,” he said at last. “Tell your uncle I’ll meet him at the station, my darling.”

She saw he was making a great effort over himself, and very gallantly she “played up.”

“All right, I’ll tell him. But Harry?”

“Yes?” he said listlessly.

“You’ll go now and get something to eat. Promise?” and for the first time her lips quivered.

“I promise.”

Again he took her in his arms. Their lips met and clung together. At last, “Oh, Jean,” he whispered brokenly, “do you think we shall ever be happy again?”

“Of course we shall,” she said confidently.

And then she walked with him through the wintry, bare garden to the field where there was a gate which gave into the road leading to Grendon. There they did not kiss again. They only shook hands quietly.

CHAPTER VIII

The scene shifts to London—London, so indifferent, so cruel, so drab a city to those whom she is stranger, not mother.

Harry Garlett and Dr. Maclean had gone to a city hotel where they felt sure that they would run little risk of meeting any one from their part of the world.

And it was there, within sound of what he vaguely felt to be the comforting roar of London’s busiest traffic, that Garlett paced up and down a big private sitting room in the cold, foggy atmosphere of a December afternoon, while he waited for the doctor’s return from the Criminal Investigation Department of the Home Office.

At last he stopped and looked at his watch. But for the cruel man or woman who had written the anonymous letters of which Dr. Maclean had told him, he and Jean would by now have been man and wife. He reminded himself drearily that he had forgotten to cancel his order for the small suite of rooms overlooking the Thames where they were to have spent their Christmas honeymoon. Well, so much the better! It gave him a little satisfaction to know that the rooms which were to have been the scene of his ecstatic happiness were empty of life, of joy, of laughter, for at least a little while.

The door of the darkened room burst open, and Dr. Maclean’s hearty voice exclaimed exultantly: “Our trouble’s over! The Home Office is going to take no further action in the matter——”

Then he shut the door, turning on, as he did so, the electric light.

“I had a great stroke of luck! One of the two men sent to examine me was an old fellow-student of mine, a fellow called Wilson, an Aberdeen chap. It made everything easy, of course.”

Putting his hat down on a table, he came close up to the other man.

“My God, Harry, don’t look like that! The trouble’s over, man—don’t you understand?”

“You’re a good friend, Maclean. I’ll never forget how you’ve stood by me in this thing——”

“Nonsense!” he said strongly. “I was as much in it as you were—your poor wife was my patient, after all. I signed her death certificate.”

“I want to ask you a question—and I trust to you to answer it truly,” said Harry Garlett in a low, tense tone.

“Ask away, man!”

The doctor said the words jokingly, but he felt hurt and disappointed—tired, too. He had put every ounce of power he possessed—and there was a good deal of power in Jock Maclean—into the difficult interview he had just carried through so successfully.

“Did you obtain an assurance that the inquiry into the cause of Emily’s death would never be reopened?”

Harry Garlett’s question made Dr. Maclean feel acutely uncomfortable. It seemed to bring back, echoing in his ears, the last words that old friend of his, Donald Wilson, had uttered: “The matter is now closed, Maclean—unless, of course, anything in the form of real evidence be tendered us.”

So it was that for a fraction of a minute he remained silent.

“I take it they gave you no such assurance?”

“How could they do such a thing?” exclaimed the other. “Come, Harry, be reasonable!”

Garlett started once more his restless pacing up and down the now brightly lit room; then, all at once, he turned on the older man.

“I consider myself entitled to such an assurance, and I won’t be satisfied with less. The greatest indignity that can be put on an innocent man has been put on me. You weren’t present during my interview with that police inspector, Kentworthy! At first the man scarcely took the trouble to conceal his belief that I was a murderer.”

As the other uttered an impatient exclamation, he added: “Can’t you see what it would mean to me, to Jean, to feel that awful possibility always hanging over us? I’ve made up my mind to go to the Home Office myself to-morrow morning. If they refuse to give me an assurance that the matter is closed once and for all, I shall insist on my right to an exhumation order.”

“Then you will do a stupid, as well as a very cruel and selfish thing,” said the doctor sharply.

“Cruel? Selfish? I don’t follow you——” And as the other remained silent he went on, in a low voice, “Again I ask you to try and realize what it would mean—not only to myself but to Jean—if, after we had been married say six months, or a year, we suddenly learnt that an exhumation order had been issued.”

Dr. Maclean began to feel thoroughly angry.

“Pull yourself together, man,” he said sharply, “and don’t go havering on as to what might happen—I am thinking of what will certainly happen if you follow the course you propose.”

Harry Garlett stared at Dr. Maclean. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean that you’ve really only been considering yourself in this matter. You’re not really thinking of that poor little girlie who loves you——”

“I am thinking of her—only of her!”

“You’re doing nothing of the sort. If you had only yourself to think of you might insist on settling this horrible matter at once for all in the drastic way you propose. But to do so now would be a cruel wrong to Jean.”

He waited a moment, then, speaking very solemnly, he went on:

“Most people are convinced of the truth of that evil old proverb, ‘There’s no smoke without fire.’ The fact that your wife’s body had been exhumed, and certain portions of that poor body submitted to certain tests by a government expert, would never be forgotten.”

“I suppose that’s true,” said Garlett slowly, and Dr. Maclean pursued his advantage.

He put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder, “For God’s sake, let the matter rest. As things are now I regard it as practically certain that this painful business will never be known beyond just our four selves.”

“Our four selves?” repeated Harry Garlett uncertainly.

“Of course, man! Myself, my wife, Jean and you.”

There was a long pause, and Dr. Maclean, with intense relief, believed that he had gained his point. But suddenly Harry Garlett exclaimed:

“It’s no use, Maclean! I can’t see it as you do. I shall go to the Home Office to-morrow morning.”

“I suppose you agree that Jean has a right to be consulted before you take a step that may cloud all her future life?”