Chapter IV: Part 4

Of course I quite see your point of view. Indeed I absolutely agree in a sense with every word that you have written to me. We have done wrong in allowing ourselves to love one another, and when I say “we” I really mean I Roger Gretorex, not you, Ivy Lexton. You were, you are, the purest and best woman I have ever known.

I can swear before God that, had you been even moderately happy, I would have killed myself rather than have disturbed your peace. My only excuse, not for having loved you--of that I am not at all ashamed--but for having let you know that I loved you, is that when we first met you had begun to find how bitter a loveless life can be.

You say you feel you ought never to come again to Ferry Place. I bow to your decision, dearest, and I will say that you are right in having come to that decision, even though it causes me agony. Thank you for saying I may still write to you, and that you will sometimes telephone to me.

Your devoted
Roger Gretorex.

Berwick read the letter right through. Then he handed it to his wife.

“Janey? I want you to tell me what you think of this! Both of the writer, I mean, and of the woman to whom this letter was written?”

Slowly, with her husband closely watching her, and feeling, it must be admitted, ashamed of what she was doing, Janey Berwick read Roger Gretorex’s letter to Ivy Lexton right through.

Then she looked across at her husband, and her face bore an expression that a little surprised him. He had expected it to be filled with the wrath and disgust he felt himself.

“This is written with a man’s heart’s blood,” she said at last. “There must be more in this little Mrs. Lexton than you think, Angus. Surely this letter cannot be in answer to one sent by a silly, frivolous woman?”

“I wonder,” he said gloomily, “what their real relations have been. This letter might, of course, mean one of two things.”

She was reading the letter once more, slowly and carefully. At last she looked up. “I am inclined to think----” then she stopped and exclaimed, “I don’t know what to think, Angus!”

“What were you going to say just now?” he asked quickly.

“I was going to say that I’m inclined to think that their friendship has not been innocent. That was what I was going to say; but even in these last few moments I’ve turned right round! Now I would say in all sincerity, my dear, that I think it very probable that there’s been nothing but passionate love on his side, and I suppose grateful affection on hers. She evidently doesn’t care for her husband; so much is quite clear.”

“No one would ever think so, from her way of speaking of him. The only time I’ve ever seen them together they seemed on the most affectionate terms. He was calling her ‘darling’ all the time, and she called him ‘dear old boy,’ and seemed genuinely very much worried about him.”

“At any rate she’s now made up her mind to do the right thing,” said Janey Berwick gravely. “One can’t but honour her for that, when one remembers----”

She smiled, a curious little smile.

“Yes, my dear? Out with it!”

“After all, it is very delightful to be loved,” she said softly, “and this poor young chap evidently adores her.”

“Now comes a difficult question: what am I to do with this letter? I wonder if I ought to send it back to her----”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t send it back to her. If she’s the sort of woman you’ve described her to be, it’s quite likely she’ll never discover that she sent it you by mistake.”

“Ought I to put it in the fire?”

“I don’t think you ought to do that. It doesn’t belong to you. You’ve no right to destroy it. Wait a day or two, dearest, and see what happens. She may ask you if you have got the letter? Then you can give it back to her. I’ll keep it if you like, Angus. We’ll put it in an envelope and I’ll address it to myself. If I keep it in the secret drawer of my old desk over there, only you and I will know where it is.”

Chapter Seven

A long, long week went by, and it was now the evening of the 16th of November. Nurse Bradfield had been out for an hour after lunch, and while she was out Ivy had “looked after” Jervis. She made a point of doing this at some time of her day, though it was always over-full.

Being both good humoured and good natured, Nurse Bradfield fell in easily with any plan proposed by her patient’s wife. She had become very fond of Jervis Lexton, and, though aware of Ivy Lexton’s selfishness and innate frivolity and levity, she was yet attracted, in spite of herself, by the younger woman’s beauty, and what was in very truth an exceptional charm of manner, and what some of Ivy’s friends called her cheeriness.

Nurse Bradfield would have been surprised indeed could she have looked into Ivy Lexton’s mind, and seen how often and how anxiously that mind was occupied with herself.

Often the nurse would be touched and gratified by the consideration with which she was treated, and her comfort studied. It was no wonder that she, on her side, never even thought of insisting on her right to a certain amount of rest and exercise. She was no longer a young woman. She had few friends in London, and this day nursing job with a pleasant young couple was an agreeable interlude in her often anxious and hard-working life.

So on this early afternoon Ivy and Jervis had what her patient afterwards weakly described to his nurse as a quiet, nice little time together.

Then Ivy had gone out to a bridge-party, and now she had just come in, leaving herself barely time enough to dress and go out again.

To the young day-maid who hovered, timidly, admiringly, about her, Mrs. Lexton sadly expressed her regret at being in too great a hurry to see Mr. Lexton, even for a minute.

Hurry was the word to-day. She was hurrying over her dressing as she never hurried before, and, while she made up with feverish haste, there was a strange look on her lovely face. She even noticed that she did not look “quite the thing,” as she gazed at herself in the looking-glass, and she tried, but it was a failure, to smile, reassuringly, at herself.

She had turned away from the dressing-table and had just slipped her frock over her head, when there was a knock at the bedroom door, and Nurse Bradfield came in.

“I feel anxious about Mr. Lexton,” she said in a worried voice. “I don’t like his colour. Will you ’phone for the doctor, Mrs. Lexton? I hate leaving Mr. Lexton, even for a moment!”

Ivy of course murmured a word of assent. Then it was as if her heart bounded in her breast. Had it come at last--her order of release?

She felt a spasm of terror shake her being. Also a sensation of abject fear of hard-faced, cold-mannered Dr. Berwick.

This morning she had discovered the envelope containing the prescriptions which she believed she had sent the doctor a few days ago. And as she stared at it, puzzled, she suddenly remembered--remembered, with a sharp stab of dismay, thrusting Gretorex’s letter into an empty envelope which she herself, in the early days of Jervis’s illness, acting on Dr. Lancaster’s fussy advice, had marked “Prescriptions.” Fool, fool that she had been!

There was that in the lovely, sensitive face of her patient’s wife that caused the nurse to run forward and put her arms round her.

“Don’t be so upset, Mrs. Lexton! We’ll have the doctor round in a few minutes. Though he’s not my sort, Dr. Berwick is very clever, and maybe he’ll think of something to bring him round--quick! But do please now ’phone at once!” And she almost ran out of the room.

But Ivy did not go over to the side of the bed where stood the telephone. Instead, she went and sat down again in front of the pretty dressing-table. She shrank with terror from the thought of sending for Dr. Berwick “all in a hurry, like this.”

Oh! What had made her give that large, that dangerous, dose of the--the stuff, to Jervis to-day? He had felt weak, weak and what he oddly called “spent.” So she had mixed him a stiff brandy and soda. And the doing of that had seemed such a good opportunity for… Ivy did not end the sentence, even to herself.

Again, why wasn’t Roger Gretorex in London? What a fool she had been to let him go for a long week-end down to Sussex to his tiresome mother. There was such support in his unquestioning love, in his adoring devotion, especially as he no longer asked her, with pleading, ardent, burning words of longing, to go to that horrid little house in Ferry Place.

At last, slowly, and with dragging steps, she went over to the telephone and rang up the doctor’s house.

To her relief it was a woman’s voice, kindly, gentle, which answered.

“My husband is away. He won’t be back till to-morrow morning. Mr. Lexton less well? I’m so sorry. I’ll have a message sent round at once to Dr. Singleton, who always takes over Dr. Berwick’s work. He only lives two doors off, and his telephone is unluckily out of order.”

Ivy waited for what seemed to the other a very long time.

“Are you sure he’ll be able to come at once?” she asked.

There came the slightly impatient answer, “I can’t be sure of that, for Dr. Singleton may be out. But he’ll come as soon as he can.”

“We want someone at once,” and the voice sounded so sad, so woeful, that Mrs. Berwick, at the other end of the telephone, felt ashamed of the suspicion she had harboured about young Mrs. Lexton ever since the night she had read Roger Gretorex’s love-letter. It was, however, a suspicion she had kept to herself. Even if these two had been lovers, they were so no longer. And in any case it was none of her business.

But what was this Mrs. Lexton was saying?

“There’s a doctor living in Duke of Kent Mansion. I think I’d better try and get him, don’t you? My husband is so very ill. Nurse is quite frightened!”

Without waiting for Mrs. Berwick’s assent, Ivy hung up the receiver.

She felt very much less afraid than she had felt just now. Surely fate was playing into her hands? She told herself that it was really a most fortunate thing that Dr. Berwick happened to be away.

She went out into the hall and listened. But no sounds were coming from the sick man’s room.

Timorously she called out, “Nurse!”

She was afraid to open Jervis’s bedroom door, for she was determined not to see him. To do so, she told herself, would do him no good, and only make her feel miserable.

The kitchen door, situated some way off, at the end of the long corridor, swung open, and the nurse appeared, a jug of boiling water in her hand.

“I’m coming,” she called out, “I’m coming, Mr. Lexton. Is the doctor here already?”

“Dr. Berwick has gone away till to-morrow morning. Shall we try and get the doctor who lives in number 1A, downstairs?”

“Oh, I don’t think Dr. Berwick would like us to do that! He was so disagreeable about that nice Dr. Gretorex. Surely Dr. Berwick has someone who takes his patients when he’s away? I never heard of such a thing as a doctor leaving his patients unattended! But I’ve thought of something to give Mr. Lexton that may ease the dreadful pain. He seems a little better now.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Ivy fervently. And she was glad. It hurt her, made her feel wretched, when she had time to remember it, to think of poor Jervis suffering.

As time had gone on, Nurse Bradfield had liked Dr. Berwick less and less. He had such a short, unpleasant way with him. Also, she was too experienced not to have quickly seen that he was both puzzled and irritated by his patient’s lack of reaction to his treatment. Once or twice she had thrown out a feeler about this. But he had rebuffed her, almost rudely, while yet giving her strict instructions never to leave her patient alone, and always to administer herself the food and the medicines prescribed. This had surprised, and even offended her.

Not only had the nurse become fond, in a way, of beautiful Mrs. Lexton, but for Jervis himself she had now almost a tender feeling. He was such a real gentleman, giving as little trouble as he could, and even when in sharp pain invariably patient and good-humoured.

“I suppose you’d like me to stay in to-night?” asked Ivy nervously.

Nurse Bradfield hesitated.

“I don’t think you need, really. It isn’t as if you could do anything, Mrs. Lexton? I can manage quite well; and if I think it necessary I can always send cook for the doctor in the flat downstairs.”

So Ivy went off, with a sensation of intense relief, to a theatre-party, composed of a young married woman of much her own age and two men. Her own special escort was a good-looking bachelor whom she had met since her return to London, and with whom she spent a great deal of what she called her spare time.

She determined to banish Jervis from her mind, and, in quite a short time, she succeeded. After all, he was “a little better,” and Nurse Bradfield was kindness itself.

Ivy had abstained from saying to which theatre she was going, and after an amusing evening spent in laughing at a really funny farce, the four went on to supper at the Carlton.

Her new man friend drove her home at almost one in the morning, and she lingered for quite a long while in the deserted hall of the Duke of Kent Mansion, bidding him farewell. When at last he went off she felt quite “good,” for she had only allowed him one kiss.

Lightly she ran up the stairs, for the lift stopped working at midnight. But when she reached the landing outside her front door, Ivy Lexton did not at once put her latchkey in the lock. Indeed, she waited for quite a long time. At last, however, she did put the key in the lock, and slowly she turned it.

Then she gave a stifled cry of surprise, for Nurse Bradfield was sitting in the hall, waiting for her.

There was a look of great distress, almost of shame, on the nurse’s kind face. She got up, and looked straight into the now terrified eyes of the merry-maker.

“I’ve bad news for you--very bad news, Mrs. Lexton.”

She waited, hoping the other would say something that would imply she understood what that bad news must be.

But Ivy remained silent, staring at Nurse Bradfield with terror-filled, dilated eyes.

“Mr. Lexton took a very serious turn for the worse about half-past ten. I sent at once for the doctor downstairs, but he was out; and--and----” she did not finish her sentence. “I don’t think anything could have saved him. His heart gave way--that’s what it was! He looks so young, so boyish, so peaceful.”

The tears came into her eyes. “Would you like to see him?”

“Oh no! I--I couldn’t!”

The newly-made widow burst into tears, and the older woman led her tenderly to her bedroom, and helped her to undress.

“I’ll never forget how kind you were to my poor darling--and to me, too, nurse. I hope to be able to prove my gratitude some day,” whispered Ivy, after the other had tucked her up in bed.

Nurse Bradfield was touched. She forgot how selfish she had secretly thought little Mrs. Lexton’s conduct had been, in practically insisting on going out this evening. She only remembered thenceforth her pretty ways, her sweet manner to her poor husband, and the easy good nature which always made her willing, when she happened to be at home, to arrange some little treat for her husband’s kind nurse.

That night Ivy lay for a long, long while with eyes wide open in the darkness. What had just happened filled her with a kind of awe. She had not known how easy and simple is the passage from life to death.

She reminded herself how very kind, how good a pal, she had always been to poor Jervis, and how happy he had been these last two months, owing to Miles Rushworth.

Dear, delightful, generous Miles Rushworth! The thought of him brought a rush of joy, as well as comfort, in its train.

At last a great peace descended upon her. All the terrors which had assailed her during those infrequent moments when she had been, by some strange chance, alone, during her husband’s illness, had vanished as if they had never been.

As she looked back she shivered at the thought of how frightened she had sometimes felt. And yet, after all, she knew now that there had been nothing to be really frightened about.

Roger Gretorex had been right as to what he had said, on that evening she still remembered so well. At the time she had thought it horrid of him to imagine such a thing as that--she let what he had suggested stay undefined. No need surely to put it into ugly words, even to herself. All the same, she did bring herself to face the comforting fact that, if rather horrible, it was certainly true. A great many more people are undoubtedly helped out of life than stupid, unimaginative folk suppose. As to those who--well--help them to leave a world which has no further use for them, they certainly, as Roger had declared, “got away with it,” often with marvellous success.

True, that disagreeable Dr. Berwick had been puzzled--he had said as much to her. But she had got on much better with him during the last couple of days, since, in fact, he had seen that she really could not endure the sight of poor Jervis’s sufferings.…

The word “death,” which means so much to the great majority of men and women, meant very little to Ivy Lexton. Indeed, she felt, as she lay there in the darkness, that this man who had been her lover-comrade had only gone away out of her life on a long journey--a journey from which, however, he was never to return. The fact that she had planned that journey, that it was owing to her direct action that he had gone from the world he found on the whole so pleasant, would and must, not only remain hidden, but in time be forgotten even by herself.

In a way, she was forgetting it already as she turned to her cloudless, sunny future--to the delightful existence she would henceforth lead, first as the fiancée, and then as the wife, of Miles Rushworth.

Run straight? Of course she would run straight! For one thing, Rushworth wasn’t the sort of man with whom it would be safe to run crooked. For all his odd ideas, and to Ivy his ideas as to morality were indeed singular, she realised that he had his weather eye very much open. She would henceforth have to be what to herself she vaguely called “a good woman.” But then, how easy it is to be a good woman when one has a hundred thousand a year!

Chapter Eight

After a good night of deep, healthy sleep, Ivy Lexton awoke. She sat up in bed and then, all at once, she remembered.…

Her first sensation was one of intense, almost painfully acute, relief. True, she would still have, for just a little while, to play a part. But playing a part was to her second nature. Now and again, but very rarely, in moments of suspense, and now and again in moments of panic, there would appear before a pair of astonished eyes another woman altogether to the every-day Ivy.

She slid out of her comfortable warm bed and softly opened the door of her bedroom, to see that the grandfather’s clock in the hall marked a quarter past nine.

The kindly, fussy old cook came out of her kitchen, and when she saw the slender figure, clad in diaphanous pale pink ninon trimmed with lace, standing half-in half-out of the door, she hurried down the passage and whispered, “Go back to bed, ma’am! I won’t be a minute in getting you a cup of tea. I scarcely slept a wink all night, I was that upset. Mr. Lexton was such a nice young gentleman.”

“Thank you very, very much, cook!”

Tears, genuine tears, rose to Ivy’s eyes. What cook said was so true--Jervis had been “such a nice young gentleman,” especially during this painful illness. It seemed so strange to think of him as gone, for ever, from a world which on the whole had treated him so kindly, and of which he had been so contented a denizen. Ivy did not put the thoughts which haunted her mind in those words, but that was the purport of them.

After she had had her breakfast, she began to feel oddly restless, and so, earlier than was usual with her, she got up and dressed. Nurse Bradfield, it appeared, was still asleep.

The newly-made widow hesitated as to what she should wear. Finally she decided on a pretty black georgette frock she had bought from a friend who had started a profitable little business in French models, some of which she cleverly managed to smuggle over from Paris.

After she had put it on, Ivy looked at the reflection of herself in the long narrow panel of looking-glass set in the wall at right angles from the window. Yes, the dress was charming, and looked just right.

She ran across to a walnut-wood chest, and took out of it the hat she had bought yesterday. For the first time, since she had come into the flat last night, she smiled. The little hat was so chic, really chic! And it made her look so--well, why not say it to herself?--so absolutely lovely.

Slowly, reluctantly, she took off the hat, and then she went into the drawing-room.

The blinds were still drawn down. How strange! Then she remembered why they were drawn down.

She wandered about the room, feeling just a little dazed. Should she telegraph for Roger Gretorex? It was so stupid of his mother to have given up the telephone. No one could be so poor as that; it was just meanness and affectation! But if she wired she knew he would come back at once. She also knew that she could trust him to take off her shoulders all worrying, maybe even unpleasant, arrangements.

And yet the fact that she was now a widow would certainly make Roger “tiresome.” So unfortunately certain was this that she felt it better to leave him alone, at any rate for the present. Also she was a little afraid of seeing him just now. After all, owing to his being a doctor, he had such an uncanny knowledge of--of poisons, and of their effect on the human body.

She sat down; then she got up again, and at last she began moving about restlessly.

Suddenly she told herself that she might as well sit down and write to Miles Rushworth. It could be quite a short letter. He would of course remember that in her very last letter she had said that poor Jervis was worse, and that she was feeling anxious.

She wondered how long it takes for a letter to get to South Africa. And then with a sensation of relief came the thought that she could cable. It would be quite natural for her to do that as, after all, her husband had been in Rushworth’s employment.

She went over to the writing-table, and, sitting down, drew a telegraph form towards her. She would write it out, and then take it herself to the post office. She didn’t feel, somehow, like sending a cable to Rushworth over the telephone. That is the worst of living in a flat. Everything one says may be overheard, especially from the hall.

But instead of taking up a pen, she put her elbows on the table and gazed in front of her.

There had suddenly come over her a most unexpected sensation of loneliness. Oh, if she had one good man friend who wasn’t in love with her, and who would help her through the next few days! She did so shrink from--from everything. Laying her head on the table, she began to sob with self-pity.

The door opened, and the nurse came in. Ivy looked up.

“I’m so miserable! So miserable! I don’t know what to do!”

“Don’t you worry about anything, Mrs. Lexton. Dr. Berwick will be round pretty soon. I telephoned to his house just now, and left a message for him. Mrs. Berwick was shocked to hear our dreadful news. She said she was expecting the doctor back any minute now. I expect Dr. Gretorex will be in some time to-day, too. Surely he’ll see to all the things that have to be done.”

“All the things?” Ivy looked timorously at Nurse Bradfield, and shivered.

The other saw her look of dismay. “Poor little thing,” she said to herself, “she’s not much more than a child, after all.”

Aloud she said, “I thought of going out presently. Not for long”--fear had flashed into Ivy’s face--“only just for a few minutes.”

She added kindly: “I shouldn’t try to write, if I were you, Mrs. Lexton. I’d just lie down and have a rest. I don’t suppose you’ve had much sleep?”

Ivy answered plaintively, “I lay awake all night. You see it was such a shock, nurse, such a dreadful shock,” and she thought that what she said was true.

In a way it had been a dreadful shock, for Ivy had never come face to face with death. She had been still a pupil at a fashionable school when her father had killed himself.

The nurse led her to the comfortable sofa. “You lie down here.”

Ivy obeyed, wondering why she felt as she did feel--so thoroughly upset and unnerved.

She had been lying down perhaps ten minutes when she heard the now familiar knock of Dr. Berwick. She started up, and what natural colour she had left her cheeks. Angrily she told herself that it was stupid to feel frightened. There was nothing to be frightened about.

The door opened, and the doctor strode into the darkened room. He turned a frowning, preoccupied face on the newly-made widow. Then, when his eyes rested on the tear-stained little face, his expression softened.

“I’m more sorry than I can say that I happened to have been away all yesterday, Mrs. Lexton. I only came back this morning.”

Ivy began to cry, and again he felt touched by her evident distress.

“Sit down, Mrs. Lexton. Do sit down. I’m afraid you’ve had a terrible shock.”

“A dreadful, dreadful shock!” she sobbed, “I had no idea that Jervis was so ill.”

“Last time I was here he was certainly better,” he said quickly. “You thought him better too, didn’t you?”

“I did. I did indeed.”

She was trembling now, and though she was consciously playing a part, her emotion was still genuine.

She sat down on the sofa and the doctor drew up a chair and sat down too, a little to her surprise.

“If you feel up to it,” he said, “I want to ask you a few questions. I mean as to what happened yesterday?”

She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. “I can’t tell you very much, for I was out a great deal yesterday. But nurse never left Jervis, not for one moment. She’s been most awfully kind, and----”

He cut her short, brusquely. “I know she’s a good old thing. What I want to know is whether Mr. Lexton received any visitor or visitors yesterday?”

“Visitors?” She looked at him in surprise. “Not that I know of. He was far too ill.”

In a tone which he strove to make light, he observed, “I thought that your husband might have seen Dr. Gretorex for a few moments.”

The colour rushed into her face.

“He can’t have seen him. Dr. Gretorex is in the country.” Then, a little confusedly, she added, “At least, I’m nearly sure that he is.”

“Ah, well, then he can’t have come in, of course.”

A knock sounded on the door, and Nurse Bradfield came into the room.

Ivy welcomed her presence. Looking up into the kind face, now full of sympathy, she exclaimed:

“Dr. Berwick has been asking me if my husband saw anyone yesterday? But I’m quite sure Jervis wasn’t well enough to see anyone.”

“Mr. Lexton only had one visitor,” said the nurse quickly, defensively, “and that was Dr. Gretorex.”

“I thought,” said the doctor, turning sharply on Ivy, “that you said just now that Dr. Gretorex was in the country?”

“He was to have been in the country, staying with his mother for a long week-end.”

There was no mistaking Ivy’s look of surprise. Not that she thought it mattered, one way or the other, whether Roger Gretorex had come in or not yesterday.

“At what time was he here?” asked Dr. Berwick.

The nurse waited a moment. “I suppose it would have been about four o’clock. He didn’t mean to see Mr. Lexton.”

Said Dr. Berwick grimly to himself, “Oh, didn’t he?”

Nurse Bradfield went on, a little nervously: “He asked for Mrs. Lexton, and when he heard that she was coming in soon--you said you wouldn’t be out long,” and she turned to Ivy--“he said he would come in and wait. After he had been in the drawing-room about ten minutes, he rang for the maid and asked to see me. I told him I thought Mr. Lexton on the whole better, and then he inquired if Mr. Lexton would care to see him. He said he couldn’t stay long, as he had a train to catch----”

Dr. Berwick said negligently, “Did you leave them alone together, nurse?”

“Yes, I did, doctor, for I knew they were great friends. Dr. Gretorex thought Mr. Lexton less well than the last time he had seen him. In fact, he saw a great change.”

“Did he tell you that?”

She replied quickly, “He told me that he thought him very far from well, and that he was distressed at the change he saw in him.”

“You never told me all that,” said Ivy plaintively.

“I ought to have done, Mrs. Lexton. But the truth is I was too upset, when Mr. Lexton took a turn for the worse, to remember anything.”

“I’m sure seeing Roger Gretorex for a few moments can’t have done him any harm,” said Ivy gently. “They were great friends.”

But as she made that commonplace remark, she flushed again, remembering Roger’s highfalutin’ letter--what a fool she had been not to destroy it at once!

“So I understood on that occasion when Dr. Gretorex, from my point of view, most improperly began to prescribe for him,” said the doctor, in a tone which, even to himself, sounded trenchantly ironic.

Meanwhile Nurse Bradfield, supposing that for the present the doctor had done with her, had turned towards the door.

“I should be obliged, nurse, if you would wait in the dining-room for a few moments. I should like to speak to you on my way out.”

“Certainly, Dr. Berwick.”

The good woman told herself with a touch of contempt that he could have nothing of any moment to say to her. She had done her duty, and more than her duty as a day nurse, to poor Jervis Lexton.

As she shut the door, Dr. Berwick turned to his late patient’s widow.

“In the circumstances,” he said, in a slow, emphatic tone, “I am afraid, Mrs. Lexton, that there must be a post-mortem.”

“A post-mortem?” repeated Ivy falteringly. “What is a post-mortem, Dr. Berwick?”

She was trying to remember what it was exactly that Roger Gretorex had said about a “post-mortem.” Much that he had said, during that conversation which had meant so little to him, and so much to her, was almost terribly present to her mind. But her memory as to that alarming word or expression had become dim.

Ivy Lexton had always remained, until to-day, most comfortably ignorant of all the terrible, strange, and awful things that now and again occurred outside her own immediate little circle of people and of interests.

The newspaper reports of a really exciting “society case,” of the kind which amused and intrigued her special set of friends, amused and intrigued her too; though only if there was nothing going on at the time in her own life of infinitely greater moment. As to what is called, often erroneously, “a murder mystery” she had never felt any interest at all.

Her look of innocent inquiry at once effaced from Dr. Berwick’s mind what might have been described as a gossamer suspicion which he had now and again entertained, during the last ten days, with regard to his patient’s wife.

He did not answer her question at once. Instead he asked her slowly, “I suppose you have some man relative who can see to everything for you? Though I advise that no arrangements be made to-day.”

“No arrangements?” She looked at him surprised. “Does that mean----” she waited for a moment, then went on, “that poor Jervis’s funeral cannot take place as soon as nurse thought it might?”

“Nurse? What did nurse say?” he asked quickly.

She realised at once that she had made a mistake in mentioning nurse.

Ivy was only clever with regard to those men--they were in the great majority--whom she instinctively knew to be strongly attracted to her lovely self.

“Nurse seemed to think that the funeral could be on Thursday,” she answered in a low voice.

“Nothing can be settled till the post-mortem has taken place, Mrs. Lexton. Once the cause of death has been ascertained, the funeral can, of course, take place at once.”

Ivy had moved away while he was speaking, and she was now standing by the writing-table, with her back to the window.

Slowly, mechanically, she repeated: “The cause of death?”

Though she uttered the four words in her usual voice, there had suddenly swept over her a sensation of intense terror.

“I’m sure that you feel quite as anxious as I do, Mrs. Lexton, to know what can have brought about your husband’s death in so sudden and mysterious a fashion,” said Dr. Berwick earnestly. “I have not concealed from you that to me this case, ever since I took charge of Mr. Lexton, presented more than one puzzling feature.”

Though, unlike his wife, he felt quite sure that the attractive, silly young creature before him had never returned Roger Gretorex’s love, she had certainly been foolishly imprudent. With indulgent contempt he told himself that she was the sort of woman who always likes to have an adoring swain hanging about her.

“I think it more than likely,” he said, getting up, and speaking far more lightly than before, “that nothing untoward will be discovered as a result of the post-mortem--which, by the way, simply means an examination. But still, if only for my own satisfaction, and I’m sure that my feelings will be shared by Dr. Lancaster, I should like to be able to put what is the truth, rather than a mere guess, as to the cause of Mr. Lexton’s death on the certificate.”

Again he had uttered those awful words--_the cause of… death_.

She forced herself to say, with a look of childish appeal, “I daresay you’ll think it strange, Dr. Berwick, but this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever been even in the same house where----”

She stopped, and he supplied the end of her sentence.

“--there has been a death? That is not so strange as you may think, Mrs. Lexton. Some people go through a long life without coming in contact even with serious illness.”

“It’s that which makes it all so dreadful,” and again she melted into tears.

She was telling herself that if they really found out anything as a result of--what was that strange, terrifying term?--the post-mortem, then this hard-faced man standing there might make a great difference, perhaps all the difference, to her being, well, worried.

Her look of appeal, her tears, did touch the doctor. He asked himself idly what age this lovely little woman could be? She looked so amazingly young. Not a day over twenty! But she must, of course, be much older than that, for Jervis Lexton had talked on one occasion as if they had been married quite a long time.

Ivy felt the wave of kindly feeling, and was reassured.

“I shall be so lonely now,” she said plaintively.

“Have you no woman friend who would come and stay with you, Mrs. Lexton? In any case, you ought to communicate with your husband’s lawyers. I suppose Mr. Lexton’s life was insured?”

“No, Jervis was not insured.”

She looked surprised at the question.

“He quarrelled with his lawyer last year,” she added forlornly. “And our one really great friend, Miles Rushworth, lives at Liverpool, but he is in South Africa just now.”

“You mean the owner of the Rushworth Line?”

“Yes, my husband was in his London office. I’m going to cable to Mr. Rushworth. It’s so dreadful to feel I’ve no one to turn to.”

“I should think Dr. Gretorex might be able to help you?”

He uttered the commonplace words in a tone he tried to make matter-of-fact. Still, he threw her a quick look, and he did become aware that the half-question had disturbed her. Though how much he had disturbed her he was never to know.

She turned to the writing-table, and began piling the papers which lay on it to one side, and then there rose before her inner vision a view of Roger Gretorex’s surgery as it had looked on that evening when she had been surprised, just for a moment, by his old charwoman. She saw again the jar labelled “Arsenic” standing on the deal table.

“I’m not quite sure where Dr. Gretorex is just now. Besides, he’s so dreadfully busy.”

Dr. Berwick reminded himself that the poor little woman had undoubtedly been trying to put an end to Gretorex’s infatuation. Gretorex’s own letter had proved that. So it was decent of her not to send for him just now.

“I must be going, Mrs. Lexton, for I have a great deal of work to get through this morning.”

He took her hand in his, and then he felt startled, for it was icy cold. Poor, pretty little thing! She had evidently had a more serious shock than he had supposed. In her own childish way she must have been really fond of that feckless, yet not unattractive, chap.

True, she had been no more use in the sick-room than an officious, affectionate child would have been! And only this last week he had thought it oddly heartless of her to have been out almost the whole of every day. But he realised, now, that she had never before come in contact with serious illness.…

However, there could be no doubt as to her real grief and sense of loss. There were black lines round her long-fringed, violet eyes; marks of tears still stained her roseleaf-tinted cheeks. And--and she was really so lovely that now, when bidding her good-bye, he did hold her hand maybe a thought longer than he need have done.

“Get out of doors all you can,” he said feelingly. “Go and walk in Kensington Gardens now, till lunch time. And don’t worry about anything! As far as will be possible, I promise to save you all trouble and anxiety.”

She gave his strong hand an affectionate squeeze.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, doctor, I shall never forget how awfully kind you’ve been.”

Till a few moments ago she had thought Dr. Berwick very unkind, but Ivy Lexton was dowered with so great a power of self-deception that she really did believe what she had just said.

As the doctor was going quickly through the hall, Nurse Bradfield came out of the dining-room.

“You wanted to see me, Dr. Berwick?”

“Did I? Well, I don’t think I need trouble you after all, nurse. Wait a moment, though. I’d just like to have your address. I suppose you are leaving here to-day?”

Nurse Bradfield was genuinely surprised. She had felt so sure that the doctor thought but poorly of her; and she on her side had no wish to nurse under him again. Still, one never can tell! She took a card out of her handbag, and handed it to him.

“There’s going to be a post-mortem,” he said suddenly, and then he looked at her hard. Had she had no suspicion of anything being wrong?

Her evident astonishment answered his unspoken question even before she said in a surprised tone: “Have you any doubt yourself, doctor, as to the cause of Mr. Lexton’s death?”

He nearly replied: “The greatest doubt! In fact, I don’t feel I can sign the death certificate.”

But he checked himself. It wouldn’t do for her to go and frighten that poor little woman. After all, his suspicions might be--he certainly hoped they were--absolutely unjustified.

And then it was her turn to astonish him.

“I hope Mrs. Lexton won’t be put to any great expense,” she murmured. “In spite of this lovely flat, and her wonderful clothes, I’m afraid they were very poor. In fact, Mr. Lexton, when he was wandering so much these last two days, talked a lot about money, and seemed to blame himself very much. But I should say that it was she who was extravagant!”

“Extravagant?” said the doctor, surprised. “Is Mrs. Lexton extravagant? I should have thought she had very simple tastes.”

Nurse Bradfield smiled to herself. “Men are soft where a pretty face is concerned,” she reminded herself tolerantly.

Then aloud she said: “Mrs. Lexton spends a great deal of money over her clothes--and I know that she is a good bit in debt. There was a man here the day before yesterday who said he wouldn’t go away till he was paid. But he had to, at last, for she wasn’t in till midnight. We must hope that Mr. Lexton was well insured.”

“He wasn’t insured at all,” said the doctor shortly. “I asked Mrs. Lexton, for had he been, she ought at once to have informed the insurance company.”

For the first time in his professional life Dr. Berwick went home in what he himself described as “the middle of his round.”

Mrs. Berwick saw the motor draw up outside their little house, and running out into the hall she opened the front door.

“Darling!” she cried, “did you forget anything?”

“No, Janey, I forgot nothing. But I’ve got to arrange for a post-mortem, so I thought it better to come back here, rather than ring up from a call office.”

She saw that he was excited and disturbed, and, being a wise woman, she asked him no questions. But she was not surprised when, instead of going straight off to the telephone, he turned into their sitting-room, and shut the door behind him.

“Janey?” he said slowly. “You know that that poor chap Lexton died last night? Mrs. Lexton, as usual, was out. She came in to find him dead.”

“How dreadful!”

“He was better, it seems, in the morning--very much better. Then Roger Gretorex came in and sat with him some time alone or so I gather from the nurse.”

There followed a long, pregnant silence between the husband and wife. Then there came over Mrs. Berwick’s face a look of terrible dismay.

“D’you mean that you suspect----?” And there was a world of horror in her voice.

“I don’t suspect anything,” he answered sharply. “And I certainly don’t want you to put words into my mouth, or even thoughts into my mind. There’s going to be a post-mortem, so we shall soon know part of the truth, at any rate.”

She waited a moment, and her voice sank almost to a whisper.

“Then Mrs. Lexton consents to a post-mortem?”

“Her consent was not asked,” he said brusquely. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Janey. If there’s been any foul play, she’s not in it. I’ve thoroughly satisfied myself of that.”

“But Roger Gretorex? A doctor? How terrible!”

“I know,” he muttered. “But, Janey?”

“Yes, dear?”

“I think it’s ninety-nine chances to one against my half-suspicion turning out to be the truth. What with his impudence in prescribing for my patient, and that queer love-letter of his--well, I’m prejudiced against the chap.”

“I’m not surprised at that,” she breathed.

Indeed, she, Janey Berwick herself, felt strongly prejudiced against Roger Gretorex.

Chapter Nine

Roger Gretorex had gone back to his consulting-room after a long morning’s round. He loved his work, yet to-day his heart was not in it, for he was extraordinarily excited, and moved as he had never before felt moved in his twenty-eight years of life.

He had come up early from Sussex by a workman’s train, and had found waiting for him an undated and unsigned note in Ivy Lexton’s handwriting:

I’m not quite sure if you are in London; but I know you will be very sorry to hear that Jervis died suddenly last night.

I hardly know what I am doing--the shock has been so great. Nurse says his heart must have given way. I would rather not see anybody for a little while.

Now that his morning’s work was over, he was free to commune with his own thoughts, and to dwell on what the future now held for him--a lifetime of bliss with the woman whom he worshipped, and who had given him the greatest proof of her love a woman can give a man.

His cherished darling was free--free to become, after a decent interval had elapsed, his adored, honoured wife in the face of the world! He thanked God that he had never let his mother know the truth concerning their past relations. He thanked God again that the only time the two had met had been in those early days when he and Ivy had just been friends, and when he, at any rate, had thought that so they would remain.

True, his mother was far too clever, too devoted to him, her only child, not to guess, even then, that he was in love with Ivy. She had even ventured to say a word to him as to the danger of too close a friendship with a married woman. And he had bitterly resented it. He remembered her words, and his answer, “You’re wrong, mother. Ivy Lexton is the best and purest woman I have ever known!”

No wonder that, as he had gone in and out of the poor dwellings of his patients this morning, he had asked himself, again and again, how long it would be before he and Ivy could declare their love?

He remembered a war widow in their neighbourhood who had married again within four months of her husband’s being killed. Still, the world is very different in peace-time from what it is in war-time. All he would have to consider would be his own mother’s sense of what was right and fitting.

Ivy’s friends? His sensitive lips curled in disdain. They would scarcely be surprised if she re-married a week after her husband’s death!

Then, suddenly, there came over him a feeling which, to such a man as Roger Gretorex, was painfully like shame.

Jervis Lexton had been something of a wastrel and all of a fool, but the young man had also been, according to his lights, a good husband. It was not Jervis’s fault that Ivy had never loved him. Her heartless, money-loving mother had forced her into the marriage when she was almost a child. Such was the story she had told Gretorex, and that story he implicitly believed.

He told himself that the only decent thing to do, now, would be to write her a short note of regret and sympathy, as cold and colourless as hers had been.

How he longed, how he ached, to see her! But it was clear she wished to see no one, not even him, the one closest to her, yet.

The long morning of pent-up emotion, and of really hard work, had tired him out--made him feel, too, suddenly very hungry. He got up and took his hat off the peg on the door, intending to snatch a hasty meal at a restaurant in Victoria Street hard by.

Then, just as he was turning towards the door, the telephone bell rang. With a feeling of irritation he took up the receiver.

“Yes?” he called out impatiently.

And then there came over him a thrill of intense joy, for the voice which said in a tremulous tone, “Is that you, darling?” was Ivy Lexton’s voice.

She had not called him “darling” once, since her return to London, and that though he knew she often used the endearing term, even to the pet dogs of her women friends.

“Of course it is,” he answered tenderly. “How are you, dearest? A little less tired and”--he forced himself to add the word--“unhappy?”

And then he heard her voice again; but now it was full of a kind of cold urgency.

“I’ve something so dreadfully important to say to you--are you alone in the house?”

“Absolutely alone,” he called back reassuringly.

He did not count Mrs. Huntley, the old woman who lived a door or two off, and who “did” for him, as anybody.

“Please don’t say my name, and I won’t say yours. Telephones are tapped sometimes, and I’m so--so frightened,” came the whispered words.

There followed a long pause, and Gretorex suddenly felt filled with an unreasoning sensation of acute apprehension. There had been that in Ivy’s tremulous tones which he had never heard there before--a note of horrible fear.

“Are you listening?” came at last the beloved voice, sounding now startlingly near.

“I can hear you perfectly.”

“Something so dreadful has happened! I don’t know how to tell you. It’s so--so strange. You’d never guess what it was!”

He tried to curb his anxiety, his suspense, his impatience.

“What is it that has happened?” he asked quietly.

Again there followed a long unnatural pause. Then, at last, Ivy Lexton breathed the words:

“The doctors found out yesterday that poor--you know who I mean--did not die what they call a natural death.”

“Not a natural death?” he repeated in a tone of amazement. “What do you mean, darling?”

“They say he died of some kind of poison.”

“Poison! D’you mean he committed suicide?” he asked incredulously.

“Oh, no, they don’t think that.”

Then, in a tone of great relief, she added: “But I suppose he may have done so.”

Gretorex felt not only exceedingly surprised, but inexpressibly shocked as well.

“I should be very loth to believe that,” he said at last.

“What I really want to tell you is that a dreadful man has been to see me this morning. He’s only been gone about half an hour. I was afraid to telephone from my own--” She waited a moment, then uttered the word “house.” “I’m speaking from a call office.”

“What did the man say? Who was he?” he asked.

“He had to do with the police and he said he was going to see you as soon as he’d had something to eat. I said you generally went to your club to lunch, and that you wouldn’t be back before three.”

“Why should he want to see me?” Gretorex said wonderingly.

“He seemed to know so much about you. So much”--her voice sank--“about _us_. He asked me such funny questions, darling. Of course I told him--I told him,” her voice faltered, “that you were just a great friend of mine and of--you know of whom?”

“So I am. So I was----”

But Roger Gretorex was no fool, and his whole being had become flooded, these last few moments, with an awful sensation of dismay and foreboding.

“Tell me exactly what it was this man asked you, and what you said to him, my pet?”

He tried to make his voice sound confident and reassuring.

“I can’t tell you everything over the telephone. It would take too long. He wasn’t really disagreeable. In fact, we ended up quite good friends. But he said it was his duty to find out the truth, as that horrible man--you know whom I mean?”

“No,” he called back rather sharply, “I have no idea whom you mean! Can’t you speak plainly, darling? No one is in the least likely to be listening over the wire.”

And then she breathed the one name that she did breathe during that strange, to Gretorex that terrible and ominous, telephone conversation.