Читать книгу The Case for the Crown - Fred M. White - Страница 7

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The frozen horror that gripped Cecil's heart and seemed to hold her numb and helpless to the very soul left her brain clear and alert enough. Even in that very first moment of peril she was quick to see the danger. She could read it in the startled look on Barclay's face, in the eyes of a man who had known her from childhood, and had been one of her best and most stalwart friends.

"What does it mean?" she murmured. "My dear old friend, I am prepared to swear to you—"

The rest of the words died on her lips in very hopelessness. She did not require any words from Barclay to show her where she stood. She knew, too, as well as if she had been present at the time, that the missing dose from the fresh bottle of medicine had been administered to her husband in her absence, and that the dose had been fatal. She knew, too, that she would be accused of secretly administering it to him, that she had purchased the freedom which everybody knew she longed for at the cost of Robert Molyneux's life.

"What can I say?" she asked.

"As a friend, everything," Barclay said. "At least, that is the advice I should give you in ordinary circumstances."

"Then you don't think I am innocent?"

"Isn't it rather early to talk of innocence or guilt?" Barclay asked. "My dear child, I have known you all your life. I have always been your friend, as you know. And no one fought harder to save you from this ill-favoured marriage than I. But you must see that their are times when silence is almost a duty. I mean, towards yourself. Tell me what you like, or as little as you please. The less I know the less I shall be able to say at the inquest. I am not addressing you now as a friend, but as a man of the world."

"Oh, what do I care for all these subtle distinctions!" Cecil cried. "I am a desperate and unhappy woman, and the only thing that I crave is sympathy."

"God knows you have it, my dear," Barclay murmured.

"Oh, yes, yes, I know. Pray forgive me. But why should I not speak? I am innocent, even in intent. I have told you everything, I have told you how I administered the last dose in the old bottle to my husband in the presence of Barton. I brought you here to prove it. Had I been guilty, should I have been mad enough to open that drawer under your eyes and show you the damning evidence that you hold in your hand? Should I not have destroyed it? And if I had planned this crime should I have been insane enough to have procured this second bottle of poison from Metcalfe, the chemist who always makes up our prescriptions? Why, I should have gone a long way for that: and if I had not brought you here to-night I should not have read in your eyes the doubt and sudden horror that you could not conceal. Don't you believe me?"

"Heaven knows I do. And, in a way, I am glad that you can see the position in which you stand. There must be some explanation for this, an explanation which, doubtless, you will be able to make to the coroner. Perhaps you will be able to prove an alibi. You may be in a position to state that from the time when you administered the drug to the moment that Barton found his master lying dead, you never saw him. If that is so—"

Cecil made no reply. The alibi would have been easy enough, but then, how many people would have understood it? She had been in the garden all the time saying good-bye to Godfrey Coventry. But what would be the use of that? There would be spiteful tongues only too willing to say the worst. There would be those again prepared to believe that here was a hideous crime concocted between an injured wife and her guilty lover. There would be thousands ready to believe that Godfrey had come forward and committed a deliberate parjure to save the woman he loved from her just punishment.

"Well," Barclay asked impatiently. "Well?"

"I cannot do it," Cecil said after a long pause. "What you suggest is impossible. All the same, I have my own idea. You know what a life mine has been. It is not for me to blacken the character of the dead. But I am firmly under the impression that Robert planned all this in that diseased mind of his. By some means he discovered where the prescription was hidden, and obtained possession of it. He managed to get it made up, and after administering himself a second dose hid the bottle in my desk. He would argue that if it was not fatal his scheme would convince me that in future I need not be quite so particular to follow instructions. If it did kill him, then I should run a chance of being accused of murdering him. He planned it all deliberately in that diseased mind of his. He hated me, and this is his method of striking at me from beyond the grave. Oh, I know it's a horrible thing to say, but Robert was quite capable of it."

Barclay listened to all this in silence. Knowing something of his dead patient, he was not inclined to disagree with Cecil's theory. He sat there, turning the little bottle over in his hands, then his eyes suddenly became fixed on the label and an exclamation broke from his lips.

"Why, this medicine was not made up by Metcalfe at all," he said. "It is not Metcalfe's label, but Johnson's. I had not noticed it before."

"Is that so?" Cecil asked. "Of course, Metcalfe would not make up that prescription for anybody but me, which fact must have been known to the person who stole it. The more we go into this, the more complicated it becomes. But don't you think this fact is rather in my favour?"

For a little while longer they sat there talking till at length Barclay aroused himself from his painful thoughts and suggested that long before he should have called up the Inspector of Police on the telephone. The Inspector came presently, grim and silent, and listened coldly and professionally to the story that Cecil and her companion had to tell. He made no comment, there was nothing to be judged from the expression of his face. He made a few notes coolly.

"There is nothing more to be done for the present," he said. "But there will be an inquest here to-morrow morning, of course. Meanwhile, if you have no objection, madam. I will go through the usual formality of searching the body."

It was merely a formality, and nothing was discovered beyond the dead man's watch and chain and sovereign purse, together with a few odds and ends, and in the right-hand pocket of his dress trousers an old-fashioned diamond ring in an antique setting. The Inspector handed it gravely to Cecil.

"You know this, madam?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," Cecil replied. "It has been in my husband's possession a long time; in fact, it belonged to a Chinese friend of his. He gave it me before we were married, and I have always worn it till to-night. After dinner my husband lost his temper over some foolish dispute we had and ordered me to take it off my finger, which, in a moment of petulance, I did. He must have slipped it in his pocket, and forgotten all about it. Did you think you had made a discovery?"

"In cases like this one never knows, madam." the Inspector said. "Your explanation is perfectly satisfactory, but I will retain all these things for the moment. If you have no objection. It is a mere formality."

"As you please," Cecil said wearily. "If you have no more questions to ask. I should like to leave you now, for I am utterly overcome, and quite worn out."