The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
AS SHE walked away from the great advocate's chambers Jean Bower felt happier than she had felt since the terrible morning when Harry Garlett had been arrested in her presence on the charge of murder.
Though she felt certain that her forthcoming interview with Garlett would not bring the result Sir Harold evidently expected it to do, yet, deep in her heart, she was full of joy at the thought of seeing the man she loved. Her heart had hungered for him, and nothing but the knowledge that he shrank from seeing her in the shameful place where he was now strictly confined had prevented her making an effort to see him. It was an infinite comfort to feel that it was now her duty to do so.
She had deliberately sent no word of her approaching return to Bonnie Doon, and when she went out of Grendon station, where she had always been met by either her uncle or her aunt, even by Elsie if neither of them could come, there swept over her a curious feeling that henceforth she must live her life alone, if only because of her promise to the man on whose instructions she was now acting.
Quickly she walked away from the station, intent on seeing Mr. Toogood, so that her interview with Harry Garlett should be arranged as soon as possible.
But when she turned into the High Street of the busy country town she became aware that she had been recognized by certain of the people who had passed her, and by the time she had reached the lawyer's office some ten to twenty men and women were dogging her footsteps.
She began to feel like a hunted thing, and oh, the relief of finding herself in the hall of the house where she had come with her uncle on the day her lover had been arrested.
This time Jean was shown straight into the room where Mr. Toogood, the last time she was here, had remained closeted with her uncle for so long.
She went, as was her nature, straight to the point.
“I have made up my mind to ask for an order to see Mr. Garlett,” she said quietly. “And I should be grateful if you would tell him, Mr. Toogood, that it is because I have to speak to him on a matter of importance that I'm doing what I know he does not wish me to do.”
“I've always thought his attitude as to that quite unreasonable,” said the lawyer in a decided tone.
“How would you like Mrs. Toogood or your daughter to see you in prison?” asked Jean in a low voice.
“There's something in that—especially as I suppose you realize, Miss Bower, that you won't see Mr. Garlett alone?”
“I thought perhaps that as I want to see him on private business, I would be granted the privilege of seeing him alone.”
He shook his head.
“There is no country in the world, Miss Bower, where such privileges are extended to a prisoner under remand. I, as Mr. Garlett's legal adviser, have free private access to him. But you cannot expect the same privilege. Whatever you have to say to him will be said in the presence of two warders.
He saw that this was a great surprise to her, and she looked deeply troubled.
“I'll tell you what I'll do,” he exclaimed. “I'll put the case to the Governor. I suppose you've met him?”
“I remember that he was in the cricket pavilion at that big match last May, and I even had a talk with him. But I don't suppose he'll remember me.”
“You do yourself an injustice!” exclaimed the old lawyer gallantly. “I expect Colonel Brackbury remembers you very well indeed. In any case I will put the matter to him personally. I take it, Miss Bower,” he looked at her hard, “that you really require to see Mr. Garlett on business?”
“I would willingly tell you why I wish to see him, but I have given my word to tell no one.” She hesitated, and then, “I have been asked to put a certain question to him.”
“Kentworthy making the poor girl do his dirty work,” thought Mr. Toogood. Aloud he observed:
“Well, my dear young lady, I'll see what can be done. I know the Governor will stretch a point if he can. He is on very cordial terms with your uncle, and I seem to remember that he's a regular cricket maniac. Funny, isn't it, that such things should make any difference? But they do! I've found out that the lawyer who doesn't allow for the oddities of human nature makes a great mistake—I mean professionally. I hope you've left every one quite well at home, eh?—I mean at Bonnie Doon?”
“I've been in London,” she answered, “so I haven't seen them since the day before yesterday.”
“That fixes it!” said the lawyer to himself. “I wonder what Kentworthy wants that poor girl to get out of Garlett? Surely he's never told her to find out who was in the wood with him? That would be hard on her. Yet he may be beginning to see what I've always seen, that Garlett's one hope is to bring some other woman into the case.”
They both got up; he strolled across to his window, and saw with dismay that a crowd had gathered below on the broad pavement, waiting for the heroine of the Terriford Mystery to appear.
“Haven't you got a car?” he asked, surprised.
“I thought of walking home.”
“No need to do that,” he said kindly. “I'll telephone and ask my daughter to bring our car along. She'll get you to Bonnie Doon in no time! Meanwhile, will you go into the other room for a minute? I have a private message to give her.”
Slightly surprised, Jean did as he asked her. Then, when he had got through to his house, he said: “Is that you, Kitty?”
“Yes, Father.”
“I want you to run the car along here. Are you listening?”
“Listening hard, Father!”
“Good! Now don't come through the High Street. You've got to make your way somehow into Juniper Alley, to the back of this house. There's a crowd gathered at the front door waiting for that poor child, Jean Bower, to come out. I want to get her away without any one seeing her. You'll only have to drive her to Bonnie Doon. It won't take you long.”
Then he brought his young visitor back to his room.
“Now, look here, my dear, we've got about ten minutes before my daughter can be here, and I haven't had an opportunity of seeing you alone since we met—you remember when? I want to tell you to be of good heart! It's a tremendously important point on your side—I wonder if you realize how important?—that no arsenic has been traced to Harry Garlett's possession. What's more, poor Mrs. Garlett was poisoned with white arsenic. We've got one of the biggest poison experts in the world ready to go into the box and swear that Mrs. Garlett was poisoned with pure arsenic, not arsenic extracted from some article in common use.”
She looked at him gratefully, but remained silent.
“Then there's another point,” he went on. “A great deal has been made of those strawberries which were eaten by Mrs. Garlett on the fatal evening. As a matter of fact, no one saw her eat them, and no one has the slightest idea who brought them into her room. It's very unfortunate that your uncle conveyed the impression, as he certainly did, that he knew as a fact that Mrs. Garlett received those strawberries from her husband's hand. He knew nothing of the kind.”
“I've never been able to understand the question of the strawberries, and why so much importance has been attached to them,” said Jean Bower in a low voice.
“Importance has been attached to them,” said the lawyer decidedly, “because they seem to have been the only vehicle by which the poison could have been administered. The Prosecution have two witnesses ready to swear that they saw the small dish of strawberries, sprinkled thickly with powdered sugar, outside Mrs. Garlett's door at five o'clock, and that at seven o'clock the dish was no longer there.”
“How strange,” said Jean in an oppressed tone.
“Mr. Garlett denies having even seen the strawberries. The lawyer who took Miss Cheale's evidence on commission received from her the assurance that she did not know who had given Mrs. Garlett the fruit—she simply assumed that it must have been Mr. Garlett. Sir Harold Anstey—you will remember I told you about him last time you were in this room—will certainly make the most of the fact that no one knows what happened to those strawberries! Not only the fruit, but the dish, one of a set of four, disappeared from the top of the chest of drawers where it was known to have been that afternoon. The apparent obliteration of the dish is a very curious circumstance.”
“I suppose it is,” said Jean doubtfully.
“That odd occurrence, coupled with the fact that no purchase of arsenic has been traced to our friend, will certainly be an important point in his favour, so you must keep up heart.”
“I try to,” said Jean. “I'm feeling happier”
She stopped short. She had nearly said “now that I have seen Sir Harold Anstey.”
Mr. Toogood looked at his watch.
“Kitty will be waiting for you now.” He opened the door, and then, to her surprise, said a little hurriedly: “No, not downstairs, but upstairs, Miss Bower! My daughter prefers driving up to the back of the house.”
As he uttered these lying words, he was leading her up the staircase, she bewildered but obedient. When they reached the top story he led her down a passage, and then they walked silently down what had been the back stairs of the old mansion when it was a dwelling-house. Once on the ground floor, he took her rapidly through a small paved court into a kind of little alley, where the car stood waiting.
“Good-bye, Miss Jean! I'll see if I can catch the Governor to-day, and then your interview will take place, if it can be managed, to-morrow morning.”
It was not often that Mr. Toogood felt a pang of curiosity. As a rule, lawyers know too much, not too little, of their clients' affairs. But he did wonder very much what it was that Kentworthy had asked Jean Bower to find out. He felt sure that she would fail in her task. Harry Garlett was the last man to be persuaded to say anything he did not wish to say, and if he had indeed been holding clandestine meetings in the wood with some woman whose name he alone knew, he would certainly not “give the lady away.”
Mr. Toogood chuckled a little as he found his way back to his room, remembering that his good friend, Colonel Brackbury, Governor of His Majesty's Prison at Grendon, had said to him only two days before:
“I feel interested in Jean Bower. I thought her a most attractive girl! We had quite a talk at that cricket match last spring. I should very much like to see her again.”
Late that same afternoon Elsie put her head through the door of the dining room of Bonnie Doon.
“Ye're wanted on the telephone, Miss Jean.”
“Would you rather I went, my dear?” asked her aunt kindly.
“I'll go,” said the girl quickly. “I think I know who it is.”
And, sure enough, it was Mr. Toogood.
“It's all right, Miss Bower. If you will be at the prison at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, the Governor will himself be present at your interview with Mr. Garlett. He says he will keep out of earshot. I hope you are pleased.”
“I am indeed,” she called back, “and very grateful to you!”
And then she walked back slowly to the room where her uncle and aunt were sitting. She was sorry, now, that she had not confided to them her intention of seeing Harry Garlett, but she had shrunk from doing so, for she knew they were hurt with her for concealing the reason of her visit to London.
As she opened the door she said abruptly: “I am going to see Harry to-morrow morning. I called at Mr. Toogood's office on my way home and arranged it.”
As neither of them spoke, she went on, catching her breath a little:
“Try not to mind my not being able to tell you why I want to see him. I've promised not to do so—but it is important. It may make a difference at the trial.”
There was a pause, and then Mrs. Maclean said a little coldly:
“Neither your uncle nor I wish to interfere in your private affairs, my dear. You are grown up, and you have a right to do as you please. But your uncle has a very wide knowledge of life, and I think you would probably find that, in the long run, it would be worth your while to take him into your confidence.”
Jean burst into bitter sobs, and her aunt got up from her chair and put her arms around her.
“Come, come, don't be offended, childie! It's only that we're so anxious—that's all. The matter's so terribly important, not only to you but to your uncle—perhaps you don't quite realize that, eh?”
“How d'you mean?” exclaimed Jean, glancing from the one to the other.
“Well,” said Dr. Maclean slowly, “I've not said anything about it, for I've known that your trouble, my dear, has been much, much greater than mine. But of course this terrible affair is a fearful blow to my professional reputation. And though for a little while people will be eager to see me—after I've been badgered and worried like a rat worried by a terrier, in the witness-box—the better class of my patients are sure to say: 'Better not send for old Maclean. D'you remember that stupid mistake he made over the death certificate of that patient of his who was poisoned?'”
“I didn't realize all that. Oh, how sorry I am that Fve brought all this awful trouble on you!” exclaimed Jean, looking from the one to the other of them with unhappy, haunted eyes.
For the first time since this great trouble had come on them all, they separated that evening not on their usual affectionate, open terms, the one with the other. And it was after a night spent wide awake in bitter self-communing that Jean got up early the next morning.
“I'll breakfast with you in the kitchen,” she said to Elsie. “I've got to be at the prison by ten o'clock, and I should like to get out of the house before my uncle and aunt come downstairs.”
The modern prison of Grendon was built at a time in the nineteenth century when there was still but small reverence for historic buildings. Within the vast enclosure surrounded by walls five feet thick still stands the mound crowned by the ruins of a Norman keep known to antiquaries as Grendon Castle. And close to that high mound rises the mediæval mass of brick and stone locally called the Old Prison. To the imaginative historian that house of woe, long emptied though it be of suffering humanity, is of far greater interest than are the remains of the castle.
Last, but, from the point of view of the townspeople, by far the most important, within the same vast enceinte is the eighteenth-century pillared building where the county assizes are always held, and where many a famous trial has taken place. But the public doors to the Assize Court are reached from without the great walls, some way from the jealously guarded entrance to the modern prison, and to the vast space in which it stands.
Till comparatively lately, the public were freely admitted to what is still called the Castle yard, and public meetings of deep import to the state were held there. But now it is difficult to obtain even permission to visit the Castle ruins and the Old Prison.
Jean Bower had walked quickly through the keen morning air, and so, being full half an hour early, she paced up and down for what seemed a long time under the stout walls; at last, when her watch told her it was a quarter to ten, she rang the bell of the small postern door cut into the great gate.
There came the sound of footsteps on stone flags, the clanking of big keys, and then the door was opened by a gray-haired man in uniform.
Taking the admission order from her hand, he glanced over it, and looked at her with quickened interest.
“You're a bit early, if I may say so,” he said kindly, “but you follow me, miss, and I'll see what I can do.”
As she walked under the vaulted gateway, past the quaint little opening which evidently led into her guide's home, Jean found herself on the edge of a vast paved enclosure.
To her left rose the huge mound, and in front of the mound, as if cut out of the paving stones, was a round lawn of closely cropped turf.
Then, gradually, she became aware that behind a row of tall, now leafless, plane trees was a strange-looking building of dark red brick and gray stone. There was something stark and desolate about the irregular outline which showed sharply clear against the pale blue of the winter sky.
Her companion followed the direction of her eyes.
“Ay, that's the Old Prison,” he observed. “Folk used to come from a long way to go over that place, but now it isn't shown—ever. But as you've got a few minutes to spare, miss, maybe you'd like to have a look at it?”
He took her assent for granted, and slowly they began walking straight toward what Jean now knew to be a very famous place—famous if only because it had been the first prison visited by Elizabeth Fry.
“Where is the real prison?” she asked hesitatingly.
“You turn yourself right around-about and you'll see it clear enough.”
She turned quickly, and beyond the Castle mound, far to the right, she saw a large, commonplace-looking yellow brick building which reminded her of a modern factory. The knowledge that Harry Garlett was there gave her a stab of pain. Quickly she turned away and once more stared at the sinister-looking Old Prison, and it was with a thrill of surprise that she saw that the low doors giving access to the dark, grimy-looking building were all wide open.
“I should be afraid to come here at night,” she exclaimed. “That place looks as if it were haunted.”
“You're not the only one to say that. My wife wouldn't go in the Old Prison not after dark—for a hundred pounds! It's said that on All-Hallows Eve one 'ears groans and awful moanings agoing on the whole night. However, I've never been there to see, and bless you! people are sure to say them sort of things about that sort of place. Now you come along—and I'll show you what many a lady in Grendon would give a good bit to see.”
He moved on, his bunch of keys clanging in his big hands as he walked, till they came right up to the widest of the low entrances to the deserted building.
The black oak iron bound door had been champed back to the wall, leaving the way in clear.
“I'd best go in first,” said the porter; and Jean, following him, found herself almost at once in pitch-darkness, groping along a narrow passage. Suddenly he took out of his pocket and turned on an electric torch. But that only seemed to make more dense the thick-feeling blackness, though it enabled Jean to see that on each side of the passage were tiny, windowless cells. Was it possible that human beings had ever been confined in such holes as that?
They walked on and on along the lightless, airless burrows, and once the girl stumbled badly on the uneven earthen floor.
At last the porter stayed his steps and held up his hand; she saw it gleaming redly against the bright white light cast by his torch.
“This is the place folk most wants to come and gloat over,” he observed in a half joking tone.
They were on the threshold of a low vaulted chamber, and a moment later he and Jean were standing in the middle of the otherwise empty, windowless crypt-like room, by what looked like an enormous kitchen table, excepting that it was made of stone. Jean's guide threw the light of his torch right on to the gray, stained surface, and she saw that into the stone two deep ruts had been cut, one each way.
“Folk were drawn and quartered on this 'ere table,” he explained, “and not so very long ago, missie! The last lot done 'ere was a batch of what they called 'the rebels,' those Scotchies who reckoned they wanted another king. Just before my time they used to keep 'ere, careless-like on the table, the big knife and fork with which they quartered the poor wretches. But now they're put away in what's called Grendon Museum.”
As if talking to himself, he went on musingly: “'Anging's a sight more merciful than the old ways they 'ad of doing men and women to death. That I always will maintain. But a 'anging's a gruesome sight. Maybe we'll have time for me to take you just round to see the gallows. Leastways you won't see much! Only a kind of platform, you know—that's where they're turned off. It's just off the new prison.”
And then the good man felt considerably startled, for the girl he had supposed to be by his side staring down at the stone table had disappeared!
He flashed his torchlight round the stone walls, and with relief perceived that she was leaning up against the side of the arched entrance which gave into the black passage way.
Her face was drawn, and very pale, and all at once he remembered her relation with the man who, it was confidently expected by most of the people connected with Grendon Prison, would be the next poor wretch to be “turned off.”
“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, “I oughtn't to have said that. I clean forgot about your friend, missie. What a fool I am to be sure!”
There was a tone of deep dismay and regret in the voice in which he uttered these words.
“I'm all right now,” Jean said faintly. “I suddenly felt queer. I think the air must be very bad in this place.”
“Of course it is,” he agreed, “no draught through.”
And then he went on, this time in a very serious voice, “As I've said so much, miss, I'll say just one thing more to ye”
“Yes?” she said questioningly, standing away from the door. She had no idea what he was going to say, and yet somehow she felt horribly afraid.
“'Anging, as now practised,” he observed, “is a very merciful form of death. It isn't 'anging at all, so to speak—they just breaks the poor chap's neck and it's all over in a second! 'E don't know it's 'appening till it 'as 'appened—if you take my meaning?”
She “took his meaning” only too well, and, with a wild wish to escape from her now torturing thoughts, she turned out of that awful room of death, and almost ran along the cavernous way and so out into the fresh air.
Her guide followed, uncertain whether he had been right or wrong in saying what he had last said to her. “But there!” he said to himself, “the poor little missie may be glad to remember it some March morning.”
But when he saw her face in the daylight, he exclaimed, “Dang me! The wife's right! I do talk too much—that I do.” And then, shamefacedly, he added: “Best say nothing of my having shown you a bit of the Old Prison, eh? I mean to the Governor?”
“Of course I won't,” she murmured.
Soon they reached the great gate, and then the man took hold of Jean Bower's arm.
“Mary Ann,” he called out.
A tall thin woman came out: “Yes?” she said acidly, “what d'you want, John?”
“Give this young lady a drop o' that brandy I've got in the cupboard. Give it her neat—no water, Mary Ann! That Old Prison of ours 'as turned 'er over queer.”
The woman gave a quick look at Jean, and then she ran indoors. A moment later she came back, a small glass in her hand.
Hardly knowing what she was doing, the girl gulped down the brandy. Almost at once she felt better, and the colour came back into her face.