“What’s the matter?” said the solicitor.
“Young lady askin’ urgently for you, sir.”
The shapeless figure looked up, and he caught the spangle of gold hair in the lantern-light under the little tight hat.
“Mr. Murbles, please come. Bunter rang me up. There’s a woman come to give evidence. Bunter doesn’t like to leave her—she’s frightened—but he says it’s frightfully important, and Bunter’s always right, you know.”
“Did he mention the name?”
“A Mrs. Grimethorpe.”
“God bless me! Just a moment, my dear young lady, and I will let you in.”
And, indeed, more quickly than might have been expected, Mr. Murbles made his appearance in a Jaeger dressing-gown at the front door.
“Come in, my dear. I will get dressed in a very few minutes. It was quite right of you to come to me. I’m very, very glad you did. What a terrible night! Perkins, would you kindly wake up Mr. Murphy and ask him to oblige me with the use of his telephone?”
Mr. Murphy—a noisy Irish barrister with a hearty manner—needed no waking. He was entertaining a party of friends, and was delighted to be of service.
“Is that you, Biggs? Murbles speaking. That alibi—”
“Yes?”
“Has come along of its own accord.”
“My God! You don’t say so!”
“Can you come round to 110 Piccadilly?”
“Straight away.”
It was a strange little party gathered round Lord Peter’s fire—the white-faced woman, who started at every sound; the men of law, with their keen, disciplined faces; Lady Mary; Bunter, the efficient. Mrs. Grimethorpe’s story was simple enough. She had suffered the torments of knowledge ever since Lord Peter had spoken to her. She had seized an hour when her husband was drunk in the Lord in Glory, and had harnessed the horse and driven in to Stapley.
“I couldn’t keep silence. It’s better my man should kill me, for I’m unhappy enough, and maybe I couldn’t be any worse off in the Lord’s hand—rather than they should hang him for a thing he never done. He was kind, and I was desperate miserable, that’s the truth, and I’m hoping his lady won’t be hard on him when she knows it all.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Murbles, clearing his throat. “Excuse me a moment, madam. Sir Impey—”
The lawyers whispered together in the window-seat.
“You see,” said Sir Impey, “she has burnt her boats pretty well now by coming at all. The great question for us is, Is it worth the risk? After all, we don’t know what Wimsey’s evidence amounts to.”
“No, that is why I feel inclined—in spite of the risk—to put this evidence in,” said Mr. Murbles.
“I am ready to take the risk,” interposed Mrs. Grimethorpe starkly.
“We quite appreciate that,” replied Sir Impey. “It is the risk to our client we have to consider first of all.”
“Risk?” cried Mary. “But surely this clears him!”
“Will you swear absolutely to the time when his grace of Denver arrived at Grider’s Hole, Mrs. Grimethorpe?” went on the lawyer, as though he had not heard her.
“It was a quarter past twelve by the kitchen clock—’tis a very good clock.”
“And he left you at—”
“About five minutes past two.”
“And how long would it take a man, walking quickly, to get back to Riddlesdale Lodge?”
“Oh, well-nigh an hour. It’s rough walking, and a steep bank up and down to the beck.”
“You mustn’t let the other counsel upset you on those points, Mrs. Grimethorpe, because they will try to prove that he had time to kill Cathcart either before he started or after he returned, and by admitting that the Duke had something in his life that he wanted kept secret we shall be supplying the very thing the prosecution lack—a motive for murdering anyone who might have found him out.”
There was a stricken silence.
“If I may ask, madam,” said Sir Impey, “has any person any suspicion?”
“My husband guessed,” she answered hoarsely. “I am sure of it. He has always known. But he couldn’t prove it. That very night—”
“What night?”
“The night of the murder—he laid a trap for me. He came back from Stapley in the night, hoping to catch us and do murder. But he drank too much before he started, and spent the night in the ditch, or it might be Gerald’s death you’d be inquiring into, and mine, as well as the other.”
It gave Mary an odd shock to hear her brother’s name spoken like that, by that speaker and in that company. She asked suddenly, apropos of nothing, “Isn’t Mr. Parker here?”
“No, my dear,” said Mr. Murbles reprovingly, “this is not a police matter.”
“The best thing we can do, I think,” said Sir Impey, “is to put in the evidence, and, if necessary, arrange for some kind of protection for this lady. In the meantime—”
“She is coming round with me to mother,” said Lady Mary determinedly.
“My dear lady,” expostulated Mr. Murbles, “that would be very unsuitable in the circumstances. I think you hardly grasp—”
“Mother said so,” retorted her ladyship. “Bunter, call a taxi.”
Mr. Murbles waved his hands helplessly, but Sir Impey was rather amused. “It’s no good, Murbles,” he said. “Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.”
So it was from the Dowager’s town house that Lady Mary rang up Mr. Charles Parker to tell him the news.
XVII
The Eloquent Dead
Je connaissais Manon: pourquoi m’affliger tant d’un malheur que j’avais dû prévoir.
Manon Lescaut
The gale had blown itself out into a wonderful fresh day, with clear spaces of sky, and a high wind rolling boulders of cumulus down the blue slopes of air.
The prisoner had been wrangling for an hour with his advisers when finally they came into court, and even Sir Impey’s classical face showed flushed between the wings of his wig.
“I’m not going to say anything,” said the Duke obstinately. “Rotten thing to
