The Story of Ivy

“Tell me something about the Lextons, Mary. Where did you pick them up?” asked Lady Flora Desmond of her hostess, Mrs. Hampton. “As I looked at Mrs. Lexton during dinner, I thought I had never seen a prettier face. When I was a child, your little friend would have been what people then called a professional beauty.”

“She certainly is very pretty, and a regular honeypot! Look at her now, with Miles Rushworth?”

The speaker nodded towards the wide-open French window of the high-ceilinged, oval eighteenth-century sitting-room. She and two other women were sitting there together after dinner, on the Saturday evening of what Mrs. Hampton thought promised to be a very successful weekend party.

The window gave access to a broad stone terrace. Beyond the terrace lay a wide lawn, bathed in bright moonlight, and across the lawn sauntered very slowly two figures, that of a tall man, and that of a slender woman dressed in a light-coloured frock. They were moving away from the beautiful old country-house where they were both staying as guests, making for an avenue of beeches.

Mary Hampton went on, speaking not unkindly, but with a certain tartness: “He took her out in his motor after tea, so she might have left him alone after dinner.”

“You oughtn’t to complain, my dear! You told me this morning that you had asked the Lextons this weekend so that they could make friends with your millionaire,” observed Joan Rodney.

“You’ve the most extraordinary fate-line that I’ve ever seen⁠—and that’s saying a very great deal,” she observed.

“What I want to know,” began Ivy eagerly, “is⁠—”

“Whether there is going to be any change for the better in your life?”

The fortune-teller waited a moment, and, lifting her head, she gave her client a long measuring look. “Yes, there is going to be a great change in your life. But as to whether it will be for the better or for the worse⁠—?”

Mrs. Thrawn hesitated for what seemed to the other a long time. But at last she exclaimed, “From your point of view I should say ‘for the better,’ for I see money, a great deal of money, coming your way.”

Ivy turned crimson, so great were her surprise and joy.

“Will it be soon?” she asked eagerly.

“Very soon⁠—in a few hours from now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Mrs. Thrawn lifted her great head, and again she looked at her visitor fixedly.

“May I speak plainly? Will you try not to be offended at what I’m going to say?”

“Nothing you say could offend me,” cried Ivy in her prettiest manner. “You don’t know how happy you’ve made me!”

“I do know. But, though I don’t suppose you will ever believe it, money is not everything, Mrs.⁠—”

“⁠—Lexton.”

The name slipped out. After all, why shouldn’t she tell Mrs. Thrawn her name? Yet she was sorry she had done so a few moments later, for the fortune-teller, leaning forward, exclaimed harshly:

“Now for the powder after the jam! I sense that you are engaged in an illicit love affair fraught to you, and to others also, with frightful danger.”

“I’ll begin by telling you something I’ve never told to any living being.”

He uttered those words in so serious a tone that Ivy felt a thrill of fear, of doubt, go through her. Had he a woman in his life whom he would not, or could not, give up?

“I was twenty when my father died, and before his death we had a long private talk. Quite at the end of our talk, he made me give him a solemn promise.”

Rushworth stopped a moment. He was remembering what had been the most moving passage up to now in his thirty-five years of life. It was as if he heard the very tones of his father’s firm, if feeble, voice.

“At the time my promise seemed easy to keep. Indeed, I was surprised he thought it necessary to exact it.”

“What was your promise?” Ivy whispered, and she came a little, only a little, nearer to him.

“My promise was never to allow myself to fall in love with a married woman. Though it hasn’t always been as easy as I thought it would be, till now I have kept that promise. But now I’ve broken it, for I love you. Love you? Why I adore you, my darling⁠—”

She looked at him with a certain curiosity. “What would you do, Roger?”

“I’ve never been able to make up my mind. Of course, this Branksome story was complicated by the fact that two were in it⁠—a husband and a wife. They’d got everything they could out of the woman’s lover, so they made up their minds to do away with him. They were awfully clever, and it’s a marvel they were ever found out.”

“How did they do it?” she asked, eager at last.

“With arsenic⁠—fly papers.”

“Fly papers?”

He laughed. “Wonderful what people will do sometimes, isn’t it? Steeping fly papers in water has long been a common way of ridding oneself of a tiresome husband. There’s arsenic in almost everything we use⁠—at least, that’s what’s said.”

“Arsenic?” Ivy pronounced the word very carefully. It was a new word in her limited vocabulary.

He smiled across at her. Every moment of her presence was precious to him, so he talked on, eager too. “There’s plenty of the stuff in my surgery, at any rate. It’s a splendid tonic, as well as a poison.”

“What a funny thing!” and she smiled at him, apparently rather amused at the notion.

Looking back, for even Ivy Lexton looked back now and again to certain crucial moments of her life, she realised it must have been at that very moment that a certain as yet vague and formless plan slipped into her mind.

Gretorex turned right round and began rapidly walking towards the front door.

As a matter of fact, the door had been left open, and he wished to close it.

But the inspector believed his lawful prey intended to escape into the darkness, and a hundred suspicious, angry thoughts flashed through his mind.

What a thing it would be to have to search the downs and woods all this coming night! ’Twould be like looking for a needle in a stack of hay.

He strode past Mrs. Gretorex, and seized Roger with no gentle hand by the collar.

“I’m surprised, sir, at your trying to get away. I didn’t expect such a thing from you!”

Gretorex wrenched himself free.

“I don’t know what you mean!” he exclaimed angrily.

“Oh, yes, you do. You were making for that door.”

“I was making for the door to shut it.”

He was shaking with anger, and the two glared at each other for a moment in silence.

Then the inspector took a step forward, and laid his hand on the young man’s arm.

“I arrest you,” he said, in a voice that was not quite steady, “on the charge of having murdered Jervis Lexton on the 16th of this month.”

Roger Gretorex stood still. Then he asked: