“There was a family living in Devonshire named Druze.”
Briefly she retailed all that the clergyman had told her, and all she had learnt from subsequent inquiries.
“Annie Druze was in reality Anita. Alice was Arthur Druze, and Martha, the younger of the two, eventually became Mrs. Dawlish. The three girls were very stanch friends. They had made some sort of compact in their childhood to stand together through thick and thin, and that is the only creditable aspect of their subsequent careers. Annie went abroad as a lady’s maid, and scraped an acquaintance in some way with an impecunious scion of an Italian family and married him. Martha had a training in a hospital, became a maternity nurse, and was subsequently called in to nurse Peter’s mother with her first child.
“Alice, the middle sister, joined her sister in Java, where the prince had taken some minor position. I have had a long talk with Martha, and she tells me that Alice Druze became Arthur Druze as the result of a masquerade. She went one night to a fancy dress ball dressed as a man, and nobody guessed her identity. The possibility may have occurred to Anita, as she had become, that in this guise her sister would be of use to her, for there is little question that even so long ago Anita was engaged in blackmail. There is proof that she blackmailed a Government official of Java, and there is the record of a complaint made to the English police in ’89, when she returned to this country, from the wife of one of her victims. And she did not stop at blackmail. Martha—who, to save her own skin, has betrayed everybody—says that she had forged three bills of exchange to her knowledge. It is established that it was Anita who forged Lord Everreed’s signature, and, taking advantage of Peter being out of the way, got Druze to cash the cheque, the proceeds of which were divided between the two sisters. Whether she did this out of sheer wickedness and with Martha’s knowledge in order to ruin Peter, or whether she was in low water, I cannot discover. Martha suggests the latter reason, and swears that she knew nothing about the forgery until later. I have my own opinion.
“Anita was distinctly acquainted with Jane before Peter knew her, but she did not become interested in her until after her marriage and return to England. The arrest of Peter coincided with Anita learning that Lord Raytham, a very rich man, was anxious to marry Jane, who in some mysterious fashion had disappeared. Anita guessed the cause and went in search of and found her. She learnt of Jane’s condition and kept by her, her object being to persuade her to marry Raytham, so that she might profitably exploit the new Lady Raytham. She tried to persuade Jane that her marriage wasn’t legal, hoping that the girl in her desperation would commit bigamy and be under her thumb for the rest of her life. But Jane made one desperate attempt to free herself from the marriage. She went to Reno, applied for a divorce, and that divorce was granted.”
“Granted?” Jane’s voice was shrill, almost a scream. “It was not granted, Leslie; it was refused—!”
“It was granted. Your decree was made absolute. I have a cablegram from the clerk of the court to that effect—it arrived last night. Naturally, Anita did her best to prevent the divorce, because, if it were given, she had practically no hold except the child, which was subsequently taken away by her sister and handed to Mrs. Inglethorne, who for four years was in Martha’s employment. When she found she couldn’t stop the divorce, she induced Jane to go out of court whilst the judge was giving his decision. Her car was waiting at the door of the court, and Jane was sitting in it, waiting for the verdict. It was not until Anita came out of court and joined her in the car that Jane learnt that the divorce had been refused. She married Raytham, believing that she was a bigamist, and yet finding poor sort of comfort in the belief that there had been some sort of irregularity in her marriage which made it invalid.
“For seven years Jane Raytham has been paying toll to the blackmailer, supposedly the man who had charge of the child, in reality to Anita Bellini and her sister.
“Immediately after her return from America, Jane went to Appledore, her time being very near at hand. It was then that Martha was called in, and the poor girl learned that white-aproned nurse was the terrible Mrs. Dawlish whom Peter hated and feared. This was the beginning of Jane’s time of torment which endured until a week ago. Then Druze, as I will call her, got scared. I think I was the person responsible. My inquiries about the twenty thousand pounds that had been drawn from Jane’s bank, information which came to Scotland Yard in quite a normal way, frightened her and she decided to go abroad, getting as much money as she possibly could before she left.
“Jane gave her her emerald chain, and with this Druze went off to interview her sister. There was some little quarrel as to the division of the spoils. Anita, who was the stronger of the two, snatched the chain from her sister’s hands, never expecting that the woman, infuriated with drink and anger, carried a pistol. In the struggle which followed, Druze was shot, but in some miraculous fashion still retained her hold of the square emerald. I can only imagine that Anita was so beside herself with grief that she did not make a search. In a panic she had the body put on the car and taken to the lonely spot and left there. But new clues were coming to light every day. Mrs. Inglethorne
