“I’ve done no good!” she exclaimed as she walked into the sitting-room of the lodgings in Ebury Street where she and Enid Dent had taken refuge, after spending two or three days with a kind friend who, they had soon discovered though no word had been said, considered Roger almost certainly guilty.
The girl looked dismayed, for it had been at her suggestion that Mrs. Gretorex had gone to Duke of Kent Mansion.
Enid Dent now felt convinced that Ivy Lexton held the key to the mystery of Jervis Lexton’s death. She had never seen this woman whom she now knew that Roger loved, but she had formed a fairly clear and true impression of Ivy’s nature and character. Hatred, as well as love, has sometimes the power of tearing asunder the most skilfully woven web of lies.
And then there began for them all what seemed an interminable time of waiting. And all those nearly concerned with the case, apart from Ivy herself, felt almost a sense of relief when the winter day at last dawned which was to see Roger Gretorex stand his trial at the Old Bailey.
XV
During the night which preceded the day when Ivy Lexton was to appear as chief witness for the Crown, she lay awake, hour after hour, dreading with an awful dread the ordeal that lay before her.
Her chattering, excited circle of friends had all unwittingly terrified her with their accounts of how Gretorex’s counsel, Sir Joseph Molloy, was apt to deal with a witness. And in the watches of the night, Ivy, shivering, saw herself faced by that ruthless cross-examiner.
What was this formidable advocate going to say to her, to get out of her, by what one of her admirers had laughingly called “his exercise of the Third Degree?”
For the first time the widow of Jervis Lexton realised how insincere and how shallow were the sympathy and the cloying flattery with which she was now surrounded. Only two human beings seemed really sorry at the thought of what was going to happen to her tomorrow—Lady Flora Desmond and Philip Paxton-Smith.
The concern manifested by her solicitor made Ivy feel sick with apprehension. He had spent hours with her trying to teach her what she had to say; that is, what to admit, what to deny, during her cross-examination.
It was plain, dreadfully plain, to her, that Paxton-Smith was very much afraid of how the great Sir Joseph Molloy would treat her when he had her in his power.
Again and again, during that long winter night, she asked herself with terror whether Sir Joseph could have found out anything with regard to her past relations with Roger Gretorex.
She knew Gretorex far too well to suppose, even for a moment, that he had given her away. But the short interview with Roger’s mother, though she, Ivy, had appeared to come out of it so well, had left a frightening impression. And she shivered as she recalled the terrible expression which had come over Mrs. Gretorex’s face when making to her the appeal which she had rejected with words implying that she, too, believed the man who loved her had been guilty of a terrible crime.
Ivy even asked herself with a kind of angry resentment, in the darkness of the night, why Roger Gretorex had not done this thing of which he stood accused?
Her own set, the men and women round her, all seemed to think it natural, in a sense, that he should have done it. And yet, though he had had many opportunities of ridding himself of Jervis Lexton, in the days when he had been so much with them, and though the only bar at one moment which had stood in the way of his happiness had been the life of Jervis Lexton, the thought of doing such a thing had evidently never even occurred to his mind!
Looking back, Ivy knew that there had been a time last winter when, had she then become a widow, she would have married Gretorex. She had been—how curious to remember that time now, though it was less than a year ago—infatuated with the splendid-looking young man who loved her with so intense and passionate a devotion.
She remembered, also, how reckless she had been in those old days. Anyone but Jervis would have suspected the truth. Thank God, she hadn’t known Miles Rushworth, even slightly, during those mad weeks of what she had called her love for Roger Gretorex. Rushworth would have guessed, nay more, he would have known, what was going on.
Had Roger’s mother suspected the truth? Almost certainly, yes. If Mrs. Gretorex thought it would help Roger, she would of course tell the famous advocate who was now fighting for her son’s life what she believed had been the real relations between her son and the woman who was to be the chief witness against him.
Always it was to Sir Joseph Molloy, the man whose name she had never heard till, say, a fortnight ago, that Ivy’s thoughts turned with dread, during those endless hours of darkness when she tossed this way and that through the long night.
Nurse Bradfield had had a terrible time in the witness-box. Indeed, she had confessed to Ivy last evening that Sir Joseph could have made her say black was white and wrong right! He had dwelt with sinister insistence on the short time that she, Mrs. Lexton, had been left alone with Mr. Lexton on that fatal last afternoon; nay, more, he had almost gone so far as to imply that, had Nurse Bradfield been faithful to her trust and had not gone out for those few minutes, Jervis Lexton might be alive today. Also he had called her “Woman!” She had even appealed to the Judge to protect her—not that that had
