“I wish you’d wired, Roger. Enid was coming in to late supper; but I’ll put her off—”
“You needn’t do that, mother. It’s true I’ve come down to tell you of something rather unpleasant that’s just happened to me. But the telling of it won’t take long. Please don’t put off Enid. In fact I shall be glad to see her, and I may have to go back to town by the last train.”
He followed her across the wide hall which formed the centre of the old house, and so into a lobby which led to the charming sitting-room which had always been associated in his mind with his mother. They both sat down there. But he waited a moment before he began his story and then in the telling of it he chose his words with painful care.
“A very odd thing has happened, mother, and I felt I should like to tell you about it at once.”
“What is it that has happened, Roger?”
As he said nothing, she went on quietly, in a matter-of-fact tone: “Whatever it is, I know quite well that you have not been to blame in any way.”
“Well, no, I don’t think I have been to blame. And yet, well, mother, I’ve not been—” and then he stopped dead.
For the first time in his life he felt afraid. The extraordinary story he had come to tell suddenly took on gigantic proportions. Until today, though he had felt discomfort, and something akin to shame, sometimes, when with Jervis Lexton, Roger Gretorex and Fear had never met.
“You remember,” he said at last, “my friend Ivy Lexton? She came down here for a weekend last winter.”
“I remember Mrs. Lexton very well,” answered Mrs. Gretorex in a tone of studious detachment.
As her son had uttered the name of the woman he called his friend, a feeling of fear coupled with a sensation of painful jealousy filled the mother’s heart. Remember the beautiful woman she had instantly known, without his telling her so, that Roger loved? There had scarcely been a day in the last few months when she had not remembered, with a sensation of discomfort, lovely Ivy Lexton.
“Jervis Lexton, Ivy’s husband, fell ill about three weeks ago—”
And then again Gretorex felt as if he could not go on.
“What has happened is put as clearly, here, as anything I can tell you!” he exclaimed at last, and he handed her the evening paper containing Ivy’s photograph.
She took the paper from his hand, and she was in such haste to see what it was that her son did not dare to tell her himself, that she did not wait to put on her spectacles.
Holding the sheet right under her reading lamp, she read the ominous paragraphs headed “A Kensington Poisoning Mystery” right through.
“Well,” she said at last, “and in what way, Roger, does this concern you? Were you acting as Mr. Lexton’s medical attendant?”
He answered at once, “I’m glad to say I was not. In fact I only saw the poor chap twice during the whole course of his illness. He was being looked after by a very good doctor, a man called Berwick.”
She said again, “Then in what way does this horrible story concern you, my dear?”
There followed a long pause, and all at once a certain suspicion rushed into Mrs. Gretorex’s mind.
“Is it possible,” she said at last, in a very low voice, “that your friend Mrs. Lexton is suspected of having poisoned her husband?”
Roger Gretorex leapt to his feet.
“Good God—no, mother! Whatever made you think of such a thing?”
“I don’t know. Forgive me, Roger.”
For the first time in her life she felt that her son was looking at her with something like—oh, no, not hatred, but anger, furious anger, in his blazing eyes.
He repeated the cruel question: “Whatever made such a monstrous idea come into your mind?”
She faltered, “It was foolish of me.”
“More than foolish—and very unlike you, mother,” he said harshly.
Then he moved his chair closer to hers, and stretching out his hand, he took hers.
“Ivy was the best of wives to Jervis Lexton,” he said in a low voice. “Lexton ran through a large fortune, and then, instead of trying to get a job, simply idled about, and lived on his friends. He was a complete wastrel.”
“Then isn’t what the paper says true?” she asked in bewilderment. “I mean about his having joined the firm of Miles Rushworth? I thought the Rushworths were shipping millionaires?”
“So they are. And it’s quite true that Lexton had just got a job in the Rushworths’ London office. He was well connected, and had a lot of good-natured friends who were always trying to get him something to do. However—” and then he quoted the familiar Latin tag concerning ill words of the dead.
She gazed across at him. His dark face, now convulsed with feeling, was partly illumined by the lamp which stood on a low table between them.
“Is it conceivable, my son—”
Then she, like him, stopped short, afraid to utter the words she was going to say.
“Yes, mother?”
His voice had suddenly become listless. He had dropped her hand, and was lying back in his chair. He was feeling spent, worn out.
“Have you any reason to suppose, my boy, that you are in danger of being accused of having poisoned Jervis Lexton?”
He straightened himself, got up, and then gazed down into her pale but still calm face, and she saw that he looked, if surprised, yet unutterably relieved.
“Yes, mother! That is what I came down to tell you. But what made you hit on the truth?”
Should she tell him the reason why that frightful thought had come into her mind? After a moment of indecision, she decided that she ought to do so.
“Can’t you guess why that fearful suspicion came into my mind, Roger?”
His eyes fell before her sad, steady, questioning gaze.
She went on slowly, “I said a word to you the evening of the day you brought Mrs. Lexton down here. I suppose you didn’t take
