“I didn’t know you knew him then?”
“Oh, yes! When he lived in Westmoreland, I had a practice not far away. That’s a long time ago now. Nearly twenty years.”
I sighed. Twenty years ago Griselda was five years old. Time is an odd thing…
“Is that all you came to say to me, Clement?”
I looked up with a start. Haydock was watching me with keen eyes.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” he said.
I nodded.
I had been uncertain whether to speak or not when I came in, but now I decided to do so. I like Haydock as well as any man I know. He is a splendid fellow in every way. I felt that what I had to tell might be useful to him.
I recited my interviews with Miss Hartnell and Miss Wetherby.
He was silent for a long time after I’d spoken.
“It’s quite true, Clement,” he said at last. “I’ve been trying to shield Mrs. Lestrange from any inconvenience that I could. As a matter of fact, she’s an old friend. But that’s not my only reason. That medical certificate of mine isn’t the put-up job you all think it was.”
He paused, and then said gravely:
“This is between you and me, Clement. Mrs. Lestrange is doomed.”
“What?”
“She’s a dying woman. I give her a month at longest. Do you wonder that I want to keep her from being badgered and questioned?”
He went on:
“When she turned into this road that evening it was here she came – to this house.”
“You haven’t said so before.”
“I didn’t want to create talk. Six to seven isn’t my time for seeing patients, and every one knows that. But you can take my word for it that she was here.”
“She wasn’t here when I came for you, though. I mean, when we discovered the body.”
“No,” he seemed perturbed. “She’d left – to keep an appointment.”
“In what direction was the appointment? In her own house?”
“I don’t know, Clement. On my honour, I don’t know.”
I believed him, but –
“And supposing an innocent man is hanged?” I said.
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No one will be hanged for the murder of Colonel Protheroe. You can take my word for that.”
But that is just what I could not do. And yet the certainty in his voice was very great.
“No one will be hanged,” he repeated.
“This man, Archer -”
He made an impatient movement.
“Hasn’t got brains enough to wipe his finger-prints off the pistol.”
“Perhaps not,” I said dubiously.
Then I remembered something, and taking the little brownish crystal I had found in the wood from my pocket, I held it out to him and asked him what it was.
“H’m,” he hesitated. “Looks like picric acid. Where did you find it?”
“That,” I replied, “is Sherlock Holmes’s secret.”
He smiled.
“What is picric acid?”
“Well, it’s an explosive.”
“Yes, I know that, but it’s got another use, hasn’t it?”
He nodded.
“It’s used medically – in solution for burns. Wonderful stuff.”
I held out my hand, and rather reluctantly he handed it back to me.
“It’s of no consequence probably,” I said. “But I found it in rather an unusual place.”
“You won’t tell me where?”
Rather childishly, I wouldn’t.
He had his secrets. Well, I would have mine.
I was a little hurt that he had not confided in me more fully.
CHAPTER XXVI
I was in a strange mood when I mounted the pulpit that night.
The church was unusually full. I cannot believe that it was the prospect of Hawes preaching which had attracted so many. Hawes’s sermons are dull and dogmatic. And if the news had got round that I was preaching instead, that would not have attracted them either. For my sermons are dull and scholarly. Neither, I am afraid, can I attribute it to devotion.
Everybody had come, I concluded, to see who else was there, and possibly to exchange a little gossip in the church porch afterwards.
Haydock was in church, which is unusual, and also Lawrence Redding. And to my surprise, beside Lawrence I saw the white strained face of Hawes. Anne Protheroe was there, but she usually attends Evensong on Sundays, though I had hardly thought she would today. I was far more surprised to see Lettice. Churchgoing was compulsory on Sunday morning – Colonel Protheroe was adamant on that point, but I had never seen Lettice at evening service before.