After Nurse Bradfield had left the room, and after Ivy’s light breakfast had been brought in and arranged on the bed-table, she broke open Rushworth’s cable.
My sister died yesterday. Sailing for home the day after tomorrow. Will keep you advised by wireless of exact date of my return. I have been thinking of you night and day.
Rushworth coming back now, almost at once? Small wonder that a feeling of ecstasy flooded Ivy Lexton’s whole being. She had gone through a terrible ordeal, but that which was already in sight would make up for everything.
She jumped out of bed and locked her door. Then she went over to the fireplace, and watched the flimsy sheets curl up and become thin and black in the flames. After the first, she had always burnt each of Rushworth’s cables as soon as she had read it through. Somehow it seemed to her safer to do so.
Unlocking the door, she rang for the maid to put on her bath, for she wanted to go out and telegraph to Miles Rushworth.
It was half-past ten when Ivy came back to the flat.
“There’s a young lady to see you in the drawing-room, ma’am,” said the maid.
Ivy walked into the room smiling, for she expected to see waiting for her one of the many women belonging to her old, idle, easy life. Why shouldn’t they go out together shopping, and then come back to lunch?
But the smile froze on her face, for it was a stranger who rose and confronted her. Certainly a stranger, and yet somehow she had a disturbing feeling that she had seen her visitor before, and in disagreeable circumstances.
Then all at once, with a feeling of sharp annoyance, she realised that this was the girl who had been sitting with Mrs. Gretorex during the concluding hours of Roger’s trial yesterday. And when she, Ivy, and Roger’s mother had met face to face in a corridor of the Old Bailey, the stranger had been there too.
“I hope you’ll forgive my coming in this way without having first asked if you would see me,” said Enid Dent. “But the matter is very urgent, Mrs. Lexton, and the time is short, very short, between now and Roger Gretorex’s appeal, otherwise I feel sure Mrs. Gretorex would have come herself. Unfortunately, she is ill today.”
As Ivy still said nothing, only looked at her with an expression of fear, and yes, of dislike, on her lovely face, Enid exclaimed desperately, “I am sure you would do anything to help Roger Gretorex, Mrs. Lexton?”
And then Ivy did what all through her life she had often done, when in doubt. She burst into tears.
“Of course, I’d do anything,” she sobbed, “anything I could do! But what can I do? I’ve gone through such an awful time. No one knows what I’ve gone through, or how miserable I’ve been. No one thinks of me!” she ended hysterically. “I feel as if I hadn’t a friend in the world—”
Enid went up close to her, and touched her on the arm.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a troubled tone. “I know how terrible it must have been for you yesterday.”
She felt ashamed of what she had been led to believe by Mr. Finch an hour ago. It seemed incredible to her that the poor little creature before her, now trembling with emotion, could have acted the cruel part Alfred Finch and Sir Joseph believed she was acting, shielding the real murderer of her husband, and condemning an innocent man to a frightful death.
Ivy saw that she had made a good impression, and she became gradually calm.
Her one object was to get rid of this tiresome girl quietly. It had been stupid, very stupid, of the maid to allow a stranger to come in and wait, without knowing anything of her business. After all, this girl didn’t look in the least like one of her, Ivy’s, smart friends. Enid looked, to her critic’s practised eyes, a country bumpkin dressed in a plain and by no means expensive, if well-cut, coat and skirt.
“I suppose,” she said politely, “that you’re poor Mrs. Gretorex’s companion?”
“Yes,” answered Enid, “I am her companion. I’ve known her all my life; and I’m very, very sorry for her.” And then her voice, too, broke.
“What is it that Mrs. Gretorex thinks I can do?” asked Ivy in a timorous voice.
As the girl, who was struggling with her tears, answered nothing to this: “Of course I’d do anything if I thought it could be of any good,” she concluded.
And then, suddenly, she had an inspiration.
“People seem to forget all about poor Jervis,” she said in a hurt tone. “After all, he was my husband, and I was very fond of him, Miss—?”
“Dent,” said the other quietly. “My name is Enid Dent.”
And then she moved a little farther away from the still fur-clad little figure, for those words, uttered in so pathetic a tone, had suddenly brought Roger before Enid Dent. Roger, God help him, had loved, perhaps still loved, this woman.
“Well, Miss Dent, no one ever thinks now about poor Jervis, do they?”
That had been a remark made to Ivy by Paxton-Smith a few days ago, and she had been struck by the truth of it.
Enid felt a tremor of discomfort flash across her burdened heart. It was quite true that though his mysterious death had formed the subject of a great and searching inquiry, none of them, now, gave any thought to Jervis Lexton, the unfortunate young man who had certainly been poisoned by someone masquerading as a friend.
“I do know how you must feel about that,” she said in a low voice. “But it’s only natural for Mrs. Gretorex, and the friends of Roger Gretorex, to be thinking of him rather than of your husband, Mrs. Lexton. You see, we who have known Roger all his life, are absolutely convinced that he is innocent.”
And then Ivy, whose nerves were on edge, suddenly made, in her
