Below Suspicion Read Online Free PDF Page B

Butler," interrupted the judge in a steely voice. "At the same time, Mr. Lowdnes, you might make your meaning clear."
    "Beg-ludship's-pardon," counsel said grimly. "I shall try to do so."
    Then out poured the ugly story of Mrs. Taylor's rage, of the will, of the five-hundred-pound bequest, and of Mrs. Taylor's scream: "I know a young lady who'll get no bequest now, just as soon as I ring my solicitor." Mr. Lowdnes was well satisfied.
    "Now, Mrs. Griffiths, we come to the morning of Friday the 23rd. You have stated, I think, that you and your husband—as well as Emma Perkins the cook—occupied rooms over the coach-house?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "Will you just look at the surveyor's plan, there? Perhaps the jury will wish to consult their plans too. Thank you."
    There was a long rustling as plans were unrolled.
    "Was it your custom, every morning at eight o'clock, to go from the coach-house to the back door? And there be admitted by the prisoner, who unlocked the door for you?—I think you nodded?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "And the prisoner unlocked the door for you on the morning of February 23rd? Just as usual?"
    "Yes, sir." Then the witness stiffened, and her faded blue eyes opened wide. "Oh! I almost forgot. There was something else—"
    "Something else, Mrs. Griffiths?"
    "Yes, sir." The pink flowers on the hat bobbed determinedly. "The key wasn't in the lock that morning."
    Silence. Mr. Lowdnes blinked at her.
    "Will you explain that statement, please?"
    "It wasn't in the lock." She told him, simply but insistently. "The
    key was a-laying on the floor in the passage, inside the door. And Miss EUis had to pick it up and put it in the lock before she could open the door."
    There was a mild sensation. The judge, who had been taking down his notes in longhand and in a notebook as big as a ledger, glanced round at her.
    ("If Butler," muttered a voice among the whispers, "can prove somebody got into that house with another key. . . .")
    "One moment," Mr. Lowdnes said sharply. He was now in the horned position of having to cross-examine his own witness. "This evidence was not mentioned to the police, I believe? Or in the magistrate's court?"
    "No, sir, because nobody asked me about it!" returned the vdtness, quite obviously believing every word she said. "I thought about it since."
    "Come, Mrs. Griffiths! Was the door closed and locked?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "Tlien how can you say the prisoner picked up the key from the floor inside? Could you see her?"
    "No, sir. Maybe I shouldn't 'a' said that. But I 'card her put the key in the lock—rattling like, and moving forward till it caught hold."
    "Yet you saw nothing whatever, I take it. Had you looked through the keyhole?"
    For some reason Mrs. Griffiths was outraged. "No, sir, I never did in me life!"
    "I put it to you," said Mr. Lowdnes, extending his finger impressively, "that what you heard, or thought you heard, was the ordinary rattle as someone turns a key in a lock?"
    "Sir, it was not! Besides," added the witness, "that door was open at some time in the middle of the night. Because Bill—I mean, Mr. Griffiths—and me 'eard it banging till the latch caught and it stayed shut."
    This time there was a real sensation.
    And the witness's words came as a complete surprise to Patrick Butler himself.
    Hitherto he had been pretending to study his brief, with a deaf and detached air. Now he was so startled that he almost betrayed it. That tale of the key being out of the door, so far as he knew, was untrue. With long and patient questioning, with insidious suggestion, he had
    conjured it into Mrs. Griffith's mind—or thought he had—until she beheved it herself.
    But now Alice Griffiths, an honest woman, blurted out a stor}' of the back door banging in the middle of the night. Somebody couJd have got in. Suppose his fake defence was a real defence? Suppose Joyce was not guilty after all?
    He glanced at her in the dock. For the first time Joyce had raised her head, deathly pale, and was staring at Mrs.