“Tell me exactly what it was this man asked you, and what you said to him, my pet?”
He tried to make his voice sound confident and reassuring.
“I can’t tell you everything over the telephone. It would take too long. He wasn’t really disagreeable. In fact, we ended up quite good friends. But he said it was his duty to find out the truth, as that horrible man—you know whom I mean?”
“No,” he called back rather sharply, “I have no idea whom you mean! Can’t you speak plainly, darling? No one is in the least likely to be listening over the wire.”
And then she breathed the one name that she did breathe during that strange, to Gretorex that terrible and ominous, telephone conversation.
“I mean Dr. Berwick, of course. He told them, I suppose, about you.”
“Who do you mean by ‘them’?”
“The people at Scotland Yard.”
“But what could Dr. Berwick tell anybody about me?”
“That you used to come to the flat—that we were friends.”
And then, in an imploring voice that was scarcely audible, she murmured:
“You won’t give me away, dear? You will never let anyone know that—”
Interrupting her he exclaimed, “There’s nothing to give away! You and I have only been friends—nothing more.”
He felt a thrill of relief when she said, in a more natural tone:
“That’s exactly what I said. I mean that’s what I told the man who came from Scotland Yard. I think he did believe me at last, but—”
“Yes?” asked Gretorex anxiously. “But what, my dear?”
“I was silly enough to let out that you had been rather fond of me, in a sort of a way.”
“I’m sorry you did that. I’m afraid that was a mistake. I mean—”
“I know what you mean! The moment I’d said it I saw what a mistake I’d made! But he spoke as if he already knew such a lot, or at any rate, some part of it.”
He said patiently, “What part of it?”
“That even if I didn’t care for you, you had been very fond of me.”
“I don’t see that our private affairs are anyone’s business but our own,” he said savagely.
She answered despairingly, “Neither do I. But there it is! I know he’ll talk about me to you.”
Gretorex felt as if he were living through a hideous nightmare. What could, what did, all that Ivy had said, and was saying, mean?
“There’s something else I must tell you and warn you about, before I ring off. The man actually asked me, darling, if I’d ever been to see you—I mean alone. Of course I said no, that I had never been alone to see you. Why should I? But I did tell him about the time I came to tea with Rose Arundell, when Captain Chichester came too. The man from Scotland Yard is sure to ask you about that—at least I’m afraid so.”
“About my tea-party? Why should he?”
“No, no,” she cried shrilly.
Then, in a low tone, she uttered the words, “He’ll certainly ask you whether I ever came to see you alone, at Ferry Place. Don’t you understand?”
“I hear what you say. But everyone we know is aware that we’ve been great friends. There’s no mystery about it.”
“That’s what I said. And also that you were so fond of—you know who, and he so fond of you.”
To that Gretorex made no answer. In a sense it was true that poor Jervis Lexton had become quite fond of him, and that this was so had made him feel wretched and ashamed.
“Forgive me for having worried you, dear—”
There was something—he would not even to himself use the words—cringing, even abject, in the tone in which she uttered that poor little sentence.
He answered at once, “You could never worry me, my darling! I can’t help thinking there’s some queer, spiteful enemy of yours, some cruel woman, behind all this?”
She cried hysterically, “It’s a spiteful, cruel man! It’s Dr. Berwick—I know it is!”
“But why d’you think that, darling?”
Gretorex waited a moment, then asked in almost a whisper, “Was he fond of you? Did he make love to you?”
She was so long in answering his question that, for a moment, he thought they had been cut off. Then he heard the muffled reply, “Not exactly, though of course he liked me. But—but he hated you! I do know that.”
“I see,” and he thought that he did.
“Dr. Berwick wouldn’t sign some kind of a certificate which nurse says a doctor always has to sign when a person dies,” she went on. “You know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why they had what is called a postmortem, and found out my poor sweet had been—” her voice faltered.
It was, even now, like a blow between the eyes for Gretorex to hear Ivy call Jervis “my poor sweet.”
Again she waited a while then he heard her whispered, agitated, half-question:
“I do so wonder what that man will say to you? I feel so horribly nervous.”
He said impatiently, “I don’t suppose he’ll say much. But of course it’s the business of the police to get in touch with everyone who can throw even a little light on a mysterious death.”
“You’ll be very, very careful?”
For the moment he could not think what she meant.
Then, with a painful feeling of self-rebuke and fear, he hastened to reassure her, “Of course I will! Not that there’s anything to be careful about.”
“I must go home now,” and he heard her blow him a kiss.
She hadn’t done that for—it seemed an eternity to him.
He hung up the receiver, went across to his writing-table, and sat down. He must think hard, and prepare some sort of story. But even now he could not imagine why his name, his personality, were being brought into this mysterious affair of Jervis Lexton’s sudden death.
Jervis Lexton’s death caused by poison? And the police already making inquiries? The whole story sounded incredible to Roger Gretorex. He told himself that of course some extraordinary mistake had been made. But whose mistake?
His mind turned at last to Dr. Berwick. He
