“Not the necklace?”
Jane Raytham smiled contemptuously.
“The necklace! As if I cared for that. I’m making a clean breast of everything—up to a point. The necklace you saw at the house last night—”
“Was a copy; I know that,” said Leslie quietly. “An exact replica of the real emerald chain, and valueless! When you didn’t bother to put it back in the safe, I guessed.”
Eye met eye, each striving to read the other’s thoughts.
“What else did you guess?” asked Jane Raytham, after a long silence, and then: “No, no, don’t tell me. I want to feel that nobody knows that—nobody! You will tell me that I am trying to create a fool’s paradise myself, and I’m a moral coward—I wonder if I am?” And then, obliquely: “Have you seen Peter?”
“I saw him last night, yes. He knew nothing about the murder—not so much as you,” said Leslie.
The woman ignored this challenge.
“I wonder how much you do know, Leslie?”
It was a strain to ask the question. Even as she had her reservations, so also had Leslie Maughan. The truth must come from Jane Raytham or not be truth at all.
“I know you were being blackmailed; that the necklace you gave was part of the price; the twenty thousand pounds, which I imagine was all you could raise in cash, was the other part. I guess also that Druze was a blackmailer. Am I right?”
Jane nodded; there was a perceptible brightening of her face as though, fearing to hear worse, she was experiencing relief at the limitation of the girl’s knowledge.
“How long have you been paying?”
She did not answer, and Leslie repeated the question.
“I don’t know. Quite a long time.”
Another silence. The truth was not to come yet, then: only a measure of it.
“Do you want to tell me any more?” she asked.
Jane Raytham drooped her head. She wanted to tell—just as much as this frank and friendly girl knew, hoping against hope that the more precious secret would remain with her, and yet almost praying that Leslie Maughan would suddenly drag forth the grisly skeleton and expose it to her eyes.
“Yes—I want to, terribly! But I shan’t. I can’t bring myself to put things into words. And I want your help—how badly I need it! But, my dear, you’re police, part of the machinery of Scotland Yard. I’ve told you too much already. I shall be living in a flutter of fear all day—”
“I’m Leslie Maughan in this flat,” said Leslie, smiling. “Just a sort of little sister of the human race! But I’ll warn you that I am determined, as far as I can, to find the murderer of that wretched woman. Short of that information you can tell me anything.”
Jane shook her head ruefully.
“I don’t know who killed Druze. I will not swear that, but I will tell you on my word I don’t know; I do not even suspect. Anita wanted to know. I called on her this morning; she is like a woman distraught. I never knew she felt so deeply; the police have been there to inquire whether Druze called. I suppose you told them last night what I had told you. Poor Anita! She was terribly fond of Druze, who was once in her service. She always contended that he hadn’t been and talked about him as though he were the merest stranger. But that, I think, was her pride—she hated the thought that she had ever been so poverty-stricken that she was obliged to let him go—her, I mean: the habit of years takes a lot of breaking. I have thought of Druze as a man and spoken of him as a man so long that it is difficult to get out of the trick.”
“One question I want to ask you, Lady—Jane, I’d better call you. It will be almost as difficult a habit to get into. Did Druze forge Lord Everreed’s name, as Peter Dawlish thinks he did?”
Jane Raytham shook her head.
“That is impossible,” she said simply.
“Why impossible?”
The answer took Leslie Maughan’s breath away.
“Because she could not read or write!”
X
“Druze was illiterate, but, like all illiterate people, had acquired a certain form of culture and was very clever to conceal this misfortune. I think, in fact I know, she had the schooling of an average child, but she was just incapable of learning—the Council Schools and even the Public Schools are full of people like that, of girls and boys familiar with the most obscure sciences who have never tasted these elementary arts.”
Leslie thought quickly.
“Her signature was on the passport?”
“I wrote it,” said the surprising woman. “She told me she wanted to go across to France for a weekend trip and asked me if I would sign the passport form. That was only a few weeks ago, so it is fresh in my mind. Now tell me what I am to do? The police will come to me, and I am prepared to tell them the truth, though I cannot see how I can help them.”
“The whole truth?” asked Leslie significantly.
Jane Raytham looked at the girl for a long time before she answered.
“As much as I’ve told you—not as much as you guess,” she said in her even voice.
Leslie carried her cup of coffee to the desk.
“Would you like me
