“It does look nice, ma’am, don’t it? Cook says as how you looked bewitching while you was giving evidence,” ventured the girl.
“I wasn’t thinking of how I was looking,” said Ivy.
And indeed this was the truth. As she had stood up there, the target of all eyes, she had only thought of her coming cross-examination by Sir Joseph Molloy.
And then the girl made a mistake, and she knew that she had done so as soon as she had said the words.
“It does seem sad about that poor Dr. Gretorex, don’t it?” she exclaimed.
For at once Ivy burst into tears—angry, frightened tears. It was too bad, too bad, when she herself had succeeded this morning in entirely banishing Roger from her mind, that he should be thus stupidly, cruelly, thrust into it again.
“Oh, ma’am, I’m so sorry! Please forgive me!” And the tactless young woman almost ran out of the room.
Nurse Bradfield came in to see what was the matter. She looked wan and worn. Unlike Ivy, she had not slept the previous night; unlike Ivy, the face of Roger Gretorex, especially his expression as he had uttered, in answer to the awful question, the quiet words, “Only that I am innocent,” rang in her ears.
She had felt then, and she still felt now, a most painful sensation of doubt.
Was it possible, was it conceivable, that Gretorex was innocent after all, and that her patient had secretly done himself to death?
Every nurse comes across strange and most unexpected happenings in the course of her work. And Nurse Bradfield, though in a sense she had had an uneventful career, had yet been more than once very much startled and surprised by the astonishing things people will sometimes do.
She sat down, now, on the bed, and put her arms round the slender figure, still shaken by angry, frightened sobs.
“I know how you’re feeling, Mrs. Lexton,” she whispered. “I, too, can’t get Dr. Gretorex out of my mind. But there’s still a chance, you know, that something may be found out, even now. I mean between now and his appeal. Mrs. Berwick told me last night that she knows some great friends of Sir Joseph Molloy, and that he honestly does believe Dr. Gretorex to be innocent. She says that Sir Joseph is going to leave no stone unturned to try to prove his innocence. He’s in a terrible state about it all, and he was very distressed at Dr. Gretorex refusing to give evidence on his own behalf.”
“But you think he did it, don’t you, nurse?”
Ivy lifted her tear-stained eyes and gazed at the older woman.
“I did think so,” muttered Nurse Bradfield. “And even now I can’t see any other explanation. You and I know quite well that Mr. Lexton was not the sort of man to do away with himself.”
“Of course he wasn’t!” exclaimed Ivy, with a touch of indignation.
The nurse sighed. “Such extraordinary things do happen in life,” she observed.
“What is it Sir Joseph Molloy thinks he can find out? Did Mrs. Berwick tell you that?” asked Ivy.
She put the question in a careless tone, but she really wanted to know; indeed she was very, very anxious to discover what it was that Sir Joseph Molloy meant to do.
“What he says he means to find out,” said the nurse, “is whether there wasn’t some other person in the world who had a motive for getting rid of Mr. Lexton, besides Dr. Gretorex. He’s got a sort of an idea that there must have been someone else—someone who’s not been thought of yet—someone whose name didn’t appear in the case.”
And then was heard a hesitating knock on the door, and the maid came in again, looking very much subdued.
On the silver salver lay what had become Ivy’s daily cable from South Africa.
She saw a curious look flash over Nurse Bradfield’s face. As a matter of fact, those daily cables were a source of much interest and speculation to the household, now composed, apart from Ivy, of three women. It was the more mysterious as Mrs. Lexton never left those thick telegrams lying about. The daily cable always disappeared within a comparatively short time of her receipt of the buff-coloured envelope.
Ivy did not open the envelope. She put it on a little table by the side of her bed, and went on talking and listening.
“Everyone in Court admired the way you gave your evidence, Mrs. Lexton. Mr. Paxton-Smith told me you were the best witness he had ever had. Indeed, he said that you were just perfection! Not too shy, and not too bold. So clear, too! Every word you said could be heard, even where I was sitting.”
And then the speaker added, with considerable heat, “Some of the people there seemed to me like hyenas! Blood—blood—blood—that’s what they wanted, the horrid ghouls! Why, there was a man just behind me who said he hoped that Sir Joseph would make mincemeat of you—”
“I know that some of them wanted that,” murmured Ivy.
“The story goes,” went on Nurse Bradfield, “that Dr. Gretorex begged Sir Joseph to leave you alone.”
“I wonder if he did?”
That had not occurred to Ivy. But now, of course, she knew this to be almost certainly the reason Sir Joseph had been so—so unlike what everyone had expected him to be.
And then there did come over her a little glimmer of gratitude. Yes, Roger certainly loved her. No one would ever care for her as he cared. She remembered, now, his having once said that he would go through any torture in order to save her a moment’s pain. Well? Poor Roger hadn’t really gone through torture exactly—that sort of thing has been given up long ago, luckily. Still, it was very touching that, even in his own time of danger, he
